SD Here, I forwarded this question on to Slip and here's the swill that I got back,

Well, I'm, uh, coming into this league pretty much a total blank slate both mentally and physically, so I don't really have any long standing idols.  I have been watching the current SHL preseason tho, and I'm noticing a couple players standing out with the play-style I'm modeling my game around.  I found Alexis Metzler (@Avakael ) and Svatoslav Bodnar (@Cyanide ) as the defensemen on the Hits Leaders charts (as of 35 games played).  I would consider these studs to be my, uh, role models at this early point in my career.

I think Alexis made it onto that chart by nature of just being really good overall, because he actually has Checking as a weakness.  Svatoslav, on the other hand, is closer to how I see myself growing as a Defensemen, without any focus on scoring.  While I want to follow that same physical checking path, I also want to try and mitigate the PIM that come more generously when you are busting heads every night.  These guys have obviously been around in the league for a while, so I'm going to keep an eye on them this season to see what I can learn from how their play-styles, uh, play out.

As an honorable mention, I've also been paying attention to Dakota Reid (@Jiggly_333 ) since filling out my, uh, S44 Award Predictions.  I saw that she predicted herself for the Turd Ferguson which struck me as a bold statement of "I'm gonna get out there and mess people up", and her Checking / Fighting stats really backed up her claim.  Even though I'm a totally Defensive Defensemen and she's a Forward, I feel like I have a lot to learn from the physical side of her game.

Thanks for the, uh, interesting question, SD