Simulation Hockey League

Congratulations on being drafted! The hard work starts now - but first you're going to need to get to know your teammates.

Written option: Write about a team-building exercise your team did and describe how some players acted and reacted during and after the event. Must include 150 words.

Graphic option: Make an image depicting a couple of members of your team participating in a team-building exercise or hanging out together in the locker room. Must include the team logo somewhere.

(ty to notorioustig for this PT concept)

Reward
4 TPE for doing the thing. (Just one of the things, not both.)


Only S51 SMJHL Rookies (S52 SHL Rookies) are eligible for this PT.

Do not claim this TPE until a post is made in the claim thread.

Deadline: Monday 12/02/2019 @ 10pm ET

With the idea of sparking a new tradition, the Falcon’s rookies were put in charge of this year’s team building event. On a cold Saturday morning, me (Cal Labovitch), Jmac NCheese, Luke McMaster and Oleg Igorevich Burov were waiting for their more senior teammates on the Jet Blue Airways Arena’s parking lot. The bus they hired was already there and one by one their teammates started to drop in. When Kaarlo Kekkonen was the last to show up, everyone got in the bus.

Given the many requests for boobs and drinks, the rookies had hired a party bus. As soon as the driver closed the doors, music started playing and James handed out the first round of beers to everyone. About ten minutes later, the bus stopped and opened it’s doors. A full squad of cheerleaders joined the Detroit team in their bus. More drinking ensued. The booze and half naked left me with no recollection of what happened after this, but somehow we all managed to get home and ready to play the next day.

The Paintball Park
Oceanside, California

The Anaheim Outlaws paid visit to Camp Pendleton's famed paintball park for some improvised team building and relaxation before the pre-season opener against Detroit.  Lead by Alternate Captain Ivan Maximus, the group met with a couple of Marine instructors for safety briefs before starting.  There were mixed opinions on how well the exercise would go however one of the rookies, Strom Chamberlain, was extremely excited.

Quote:Back home in Missouri we would always go out and play paintball and airsoft on rented farm property or local fields like BingField over in Edwardsville.  It's a really awesome game to play and very team oriented.  This field here is nothing like I've ever seen before.  Is that....is that an actual helicopter!?

Breaking up into teams, initially some Veterans vs the Rookies, the Marine cadre helped the Outlaws in working on verbal and non-verbal communication.  One of the instructors, who preferred to not be named, said:

Quote:Verbal and non-verbal communication is as important on the battlefield as it is in the ice rink.  If you don't communicate properly between your team members you won't pass properly or set up those wonderful rebound garbage shots that goalies hate.  Even simple head nods on a breakaway can help players pick apart what little defense there is in order to put the biscuit in the basket.

After wrapping up a full 8 hours of play, there were definitely some bumps and bruises and a couple of hurt ego's but otherwise all smiles and laughter from the Anaheim team.

In a small hazing tradition, one rookie was selected to end up footing the bill for the outing.  This year, it was given to rookie net-minder Strom Chamberlain who took it all in stride...to the tune of $1,155.

It was a relatively normal event. We ended up hiking the grouse grind, which is always a tough way to go about your day, but we made the best of it. Once at the top the boys all had a competition with the Lumberjack Skills competition they run up at the top there, turns out I suck at throwing an axe at a log, but it seems at least some of the alumni were doing fairly well. While we are talking about the alumni, the strangest thing kept happening. For some reason Efiug kept just quietly saying “efyoooooog” to himself. Didn’t really bother me and more to him really, but it was interesting for sure. Anyway, after the lumberjack skills we ended up at the restaurant at the top of the mountain overlooking the lower mainland. I ended up with a steak, but then coach started up with some weird analogies about mashed potatoes, so I skipped my side dish.

With only a handful of players coming into a group that were the defending Champions , it wasn't so much as team building as it was more like pledging a fraternity. We've all heard the story of being kidnapped during the middle of the night and forced to into the wilderness on some weird vision quest involving carving sticks, but not many people talked about what happened during the middle of pre-season - inside the Kraken locker room.

It was time for the players to play an infamous game of "Find the Water." The goal? Find the cup of water among the cup of clear booze which includes vodka, gin, and others. Once you pick up the cup you're forced to drink whatever is in it, but once you find the water you're done! Only catch is the team was doing this before a 6AM bag skate.

Velveteen Dream steps up to the plate, picks up a cup and immediately gets the water. "I'm just like anyone else: I need love and water" he says before heading to his stall to get dressed. Casimir Blaszczyk is up next and he finds the newly placed water among the 20 other cups a few rounds in. "Hopefully this doesn't hit me during practice" he thinks to himself. Last up is MacTavish, the Krakens new court jester as it seems everything he does is met with bewilderment and heavy laughs, usually at him. One, two, three cups are up and then pounded back, no water. After a few more the locker room is starting to resemble something like a bar. A clearly intoxicated MacTavish is telling stories, waving around cups seemingly forgetting what the game's purpose was. It was about 3/4 of the way through until someone asks "Mac, why haven't you found the water yet? Dream and Cas found it super quick?"

"Water? You mean that bullshit cup that I thought was booze when I first started? Why would I need wa-" Mac exclaimed before falling face down, passed out from the sudden intake of 15 shots. Safe to say, that practice may have gotten him a permanent place on the fourth line in the coaches eyes.

For the Kelowna Knights, the team building exercise of choice was to go on a party bus around the many Kelowna Bars. For seasoned veterans of the team, such as Ryan Shepard and Andrey Barashev II, the Kelowna Knights pub crawl is usually an easy task.

However, for some of the newcomers, mainly Morgan Forestier, the Kelowna Knights party bus is a thing of nightmares. Forestier was immediately iced twice upon getting on the bus and forced to drink 2 beers really fast as soon as he got on. As a guy who doesn't drink very much, it immediately made him pretty sick.

Other newcomers such as Noah Nystrom and Adam Scianna could handle their liquor a lot better than the young Forestier, which made it a much better experience for them.

Forestier had to go home early because he was too drunk after the second bar so he couldn't tell you much that happened after that.

157.

Paint night with the boys.

After a long day of paintball as mentioned above, the Anaheim Outlaws decided to cool off with a coconut drinking competition, taking place at Disneyland Park. A crowd was starting to form as rookie Grant Thurber cut open his first coconut to kick off the event. 12 coconuts later, the Finn was looking pale as his whole shirt was dripping with milk. The crowd cheered intensely as the number 12 lit up the display showing the current lead. After numerous attempts from teammates including Petrenko's pina colada strategy, the number 12 still lit the board as the final challenger cleared the bench. Staring down a line of 50 coconuts freshly picked from the palm trees outside of the stadium, the glorified D-man Jacob Riley raised his stick high for the last attempt at bringing Thurber's accomplishments to shambles. The first 10 coconuts went down cold as the well built Riley showed minimal signs of relent until the 12th coconut, slowly drinking the cold water down. To win the competition, he would have to finish the last coconut in whole. Gulp by gulp, sip by sip, the contents were drained into this beast's body, until an empty shell was all that fell to the ground. With accomplishment in his eyes, his teammates rushed up to Riley to greet him with chants and celebration as Thurber stood in shock. The crowd that had formed around Thurber now made their way to the stage as a new winners was announced, and at the end of the successful (not really) team building exercise, Thurber found himself pondering alone with no more things to autograph.

Here's a little more context to the story by @ligma

Well I was put in charge of organizing a team activity for everyone and what do I get together? A bunch of guys ready to ride and one guy crying. The team was split into smaller groups and we had to put a car into a demolition derby. The Franciszek brothers was one team and they was shirtless drinking vodka while fixing theirs. They laughed at us being cold as they drank and sung in their native language. 
Gordon, Marston and Tron made up the other team. They had fun with the car and even came over and joked with us about our car. The last group was Myself, Blake and Doyle. As we finished up the car the brothers came up to us and threw a firecracker down beside Blake causing him to jump and hit his head on the exhaust under the car as he was underneath it working. Poor Blake laid there and cried as the brothers laughed and walked away. Blake got the last laugh though as he took out the brothers first and then was taken out by Tron as he rammed Blake in the aide knocking off both wheels and killing the engine. 
We all shook hands and then drank together afterwards. Of course the brothers was still drinking vodka when I woke back up about 9 am. Those guys are some serious drinkers.

The Anaheim Outlaws did a couple of team building events including the Paint-balling described above that helped me and the other rookies start to feel integrated and comfortable in the locker room. As someone who grew up in the UK and had little familiarity with any US cities, much less the Anaheim and greater LA area, my personal favorite was the city wide scavenger hunt. They had us split into teams and of course put the three of us rookies (Strom Chaimberlain, Grant Thurber and myself), together. So the first item was to get a girls number at a specific bar that will go unnamed here but it was all the way over in Santa Monica across town. Now none of us rookies are familiar with the area so I put it in my GPS and it tells me it's going to be over an hour and a half from our team facility. First of all, it took us even longer than that and when we got there none of us were even old enough to get in. Strom ended up getting a number in the parking lot somehow, and we go on with the hunt. The whole thing took us hours. When we got back to the team facility all the vets were just laughing at us. The whole thing was basically just rookie hazing and none of the vets even did it. Plus we missed a team meeting. Coach was pretty tough on us at practice the next day even though I'm pretty sure he was in on it.

Nothing brings people closer together than tragedy, a fact made clear by the annual, murder a rookie's relative event held in Kelowna this past weekend. The first to get the call was Oscar Cordero, the Cuban right winger. Apparently the Kelowna upper management has ties with the Castro family and arranged for his cousin, Michael, to be murdered swiftly and painlessly. Luke McSquirrley's wife was shivved in the grocery store while reaching for the on sale mild taco seasoning, the worst way to go. Noah Nystrom's aunt had a piano dropped on her from a 12 floor balcony. Adam Scianna's grandfather was snuck up on in the dark and given a heart attack of fright. All the rookies lost somebody close to them, except Theo Golury, for he had no friends, no family and nothing to lose. The team came together to mourn though, and Theo was right there with them, helping them get through every step of the way.

I guess this wasn't really a team-building exercise that we all did, but it really helped me get to know some of my teammates during a tough time in this holiday season.

We got some bad news today in the family. My grandma, who lives back East in Virginia, was unresponsive this morning. My brother and I had to leave early in the morning to go celebrate Turkey Day with my mom since my parents split a while back. We ate a shit ton of food (as expected), met some of my mom's friends, and took a bunch of pictures. I was grabbing some pie to go when my dad pulled up and wanted to talk with my mom outside. I walked out with them by accident and asked if he wanted me to go back inside, to no response. He...told us the news. He has to fly out tomorrow and has no idea when he will come home. I might have to fly out to go see my grandma's funeral. It's been rough. I'm still in a state of shock. I had to tell someone. So...I opened myself up to be vulnerable to Anchorage. These guys were all there for me today when I needed it most. My heart goes out to my teammates in Anchorage as their hearts and thoughts go out to me. I am thankful today for the amazing amount of support I've had in this locker room in the short amount of time I've been there. My brother lost his hamster earlier this week, and now losing our grandma...it's going to be a process. It always is. I'm thankful to have the family around me, physically and on Discord. Thank you all Anchorage and the SHL. This doesn't mean I plan on disappearing as soon as I make my player, but if I seem off for a couple of weeks, you know why now.

To help build the team, the three Franciszek brothers treated their European companions to a night of drinks at the local pub, and the denizens of the bar were treated to a heated drinking challenge. The chugging lasted well into the night, and the boys ended up more than a little tipsy, but eventually a winner was crowned. Says Danny Marston "I was the designated driver, so I got to witness the whole thing soberly. Honestly, I can't believe anyone lasted that long, but Zaporozhets was the clear winner." Ruslan Zaporozhets, who had 38 points in 50 preseason games, won the contest with an assumed 23 chugs. There were, however, some teammates who chose not to participate in the activity. Borys Franciszek, though not necessarily the biggest brother, seemed to purposefully lose so he could make sure his brothers ended up alright. "I wanted to make sure they not killed themselves."