After an incredibly crushing near sweep to the Vancouver Whaler's, I needed some sort of reprieve and mental break from the unending grind that was my season. After last years disappointing end, and the general rapid climb that the Mammoths underwent this season, I genuinely believed that we were contenders for the championship, which only made the inevitably decimation from Vancouver all the more painful. Over the past season, I had developed an extremely strong bond with our backup net-minder Grim Wastlund, and despite only being a second year pro myself, I took it upon myself to impart every bit of wisdom and advice I could on him, and in turn he did the same for me in what was an extremely promising pairing. As a result of how much he improved my overall game, I decided to arrange a vacation for both of us to Hawaii as a brief get-away from the game of hockey, where both of us could finally just decompress mentally and reset properly for the coming season. Despite the time in paradise, we've still tried to haphazardly follow both the SMJHL and SHL playoff races, as it's clear that no matter how hard you try to enact a mental break from the game, the game refuses to let go.

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In a world where MVP's and hero's are typically the flashy forwards who can score goals from impossible angles, or the play makers who make seeing-eye passes a regular occurrence, I've often leaned towards defencemen who can be under the radar statistical monsters as my unsung hero's, and the major proponents of their teams success. In this particular instance, I wanted to look at Vancouver Defenceman, Danny Mete. While he doesn't quite have the point production of fellow teammate Liam O'Callaghan, Mete has put forward an incredibly well-rounded statistical display, ranging from his 7 points in 8 games proving that he's a force offensively, to his 7 blocked shots, 18 hits and 15 shots. Doing this while averaging nearly 22 minutes a game already, while being relied upon to play hard PP and PK minutes on top of his regular duties, Mete is one of those defenders that any goalie would absolutely adore playing behind, and that's why he'd be my front-runner for unsung hero of the playoffs.

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PM Sent!


The upcoming SHL playoff final between Minnesota and Los Angeles is one of those fascinating stylistical match-up's, where in my opinion it's an arms race between an immovable object and an unstoppable force. Simply looking down the point totals to-date in the playoffs, Minnesota has 7 players in the top 10 of scoring, to Los Angeles's total of 2. While it would be easy to pick any of the high scoring forwards of Minnesota, I believe that this match-up is balanced on a pinhead, between Minnesota's Max Weber, and Los Angeles's Timo Haas. While it may seem odd to compare a defenceman and goalie from opposite teams, in this instance I feel it's prudent as the strength of Los Angeles has fallen upon the otherworldly performance so far by their goalie, which will undoubtedly be the pillar of strength that they rely upon to win a series against a team with significantly more firepower. On the other hand, the difference in goalie performance between Haas and Olli O'Koivu is rather significant, which is why I tapped Max Weber as a major factor to not only be a world-class offensive defenceman, but also to leverage his high shot-blocking and commitment to team defence as the catalyst behind bridging the gap in goalie performance and ensuring his team walks away with the championship at the end of the series. This one is going to be fascinating to watch.

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Sebastian Strange