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BDonini · 02-26-2019, 02:39 AM

8:30am: *alarm rings for the 7th time in the last hour*
I turn around towards my nightstand ready to snooze my alarm again when I decide to finally stop it and wake myself up. I grab my phone, hit stop on the alarm app and start going through all my missed notifications. A few mentions on twitter, some new likes on instagram, some snaps from my friends, an update on my fantasy hockey score. "Oh shit! 3 missed calls and 11 new iMessages from my agent. Did I miss something important??" My new agent, SHL Hall of Famer Brandon Donini, had been trying to get in touch with me all morning. I hired him after firing my old agent Jordan Nugent-Hall for failing to submit my paperwork on time and making me miss the SMJHL draft. Can you believe that clown? My own agent making me look like some plug who isn't good enough to get drafted! I read through the texts left from Brandon and remembered that tomorrow was signing day for undrafted free agents and that I had a bunch of meetings with GMs today.

10:30am:
After showering, shaving and making myself some scrambled eggs for breakfast, I called my agent who blasted me for waking up late and giving us less time to meet with each team. He was on his way to my house to pick me up as he went down the list of teams who were hoping to meet with me today. The Halifax Raiders, the Vancouver Whalers and the Anaheim Outlaws. Hmm, the Outlaws sounded like a team that could be interesting. Since we were running short on time, I decided to cut one team out right away. After hearing from Brandon about his dislike of the Whalers from his days with the NWJHL's Detroit Falcons and from his day's as the co-GM of the NWJHL's Kelowna Knights, I told him to change our meeting with Vancouver from an in person meeting to a phone pitch with him. I had him call Vancouver's GM and pretend to entertain their pitch when in reality, that was the first team off my list.

12:00pm:
With one meeting cancelled, we had some extra time to our day so me and Brandon decided to go grab some sushi for lunch. We found an all you can eat sushi bar not too far from the hotel of our first meeting of the day with the Halifax Raiders. We ordered hundreds of pieces of sushi between the two of us stuffing our face and trying out different kinds of sushi. What we didn't realize is that the restaurant charges an extra $2 fee for each uneaten piece. When we asked for our bill we had 70 pieces of leftover sushi with a bill of $140. We fought over who would pick up the extra tab since both of us ordered way more than we ate. I ended up convincing Brandon to foot the bill by threatening to declare for the NHL instead of the SHL after Brandon publicly announced that his new client Sacha Selman would be the best thing the SHL has ever seen. He took care of the bill and then we were off to our first meeting of the day with Halifax.

3:00pm:
We had a lengthy meeting with the Raiders who had prepared a really strong pitch for me to join their organization. They understood that I didn't go undrafted because I was untalented but rather because my old agent Mr.JNH was grossly incompetent. Their GM Ed Balls was a very pleasant person. He spoke about the organization and what they had to offer and made sure that I was settling into well to the league's environment. Mr. Balls explained the the Raiders had a rough season last time out but were in a position to bounce back really well this year with some highly rated rookies having joined the organization. The team seemed interesting, it seemed like a good organization to continue my development and the team's colours and logo were certainly very interesting. Of course there was the downside of playing in that irrelevant fisherman's town Halifax but the good seemed to outweigh the bad for this team. They made a really strong pitch and might have sold any other prospect but something just seemed off for me.

5:30pm
There was a bit of time left before our next meeting and Brandon had to go pick up his kids from school, he dropped me off at a nearby Starbucks and told me he'd be back in about an hour to take me to our next meeting with the Anaheim Outlaws. I ordered myself a green tea iced team and sat down at a table. I decided to kill some time by looking into the Outlaws to have an idea of what to expect. I pulled out my laptop, opened up google and typed in the team's name. I started going through the team's social media pages and through their roster, looking up some of the more interesting players. Finally, I got to their new rookie centre Martijn Westbroek. After a bit of searching him up I realized that Martijn seemed like a really intriguing guy and I wanted to know some more about him. I brought up his Twitter and Instagram pages and loved everything I saw. His Twitter had some of the best meme content I'd ever seen and I found out that he was laso a very big fan of the Netflix show Shameless just like me. On his Instagram I saw that he had also been to the Fyre Festival just like me, I wondered if maybe I saw him there without noticing. He had a post from the festival during Ariana Grande's performance, this Westbroek fella just seemed to get more and more likeable by the minute. I followed him on his social medias and I guess he must've recognized me because he followed me back and we started chatting it up in the DMs.

7:30pm
Brandon had finally come back to pick me up and we were off to dinner with the Outlaws GM Liam O'Callaghan. O'Callaghan offered to pay both our meals and had us meet him at an upscale steak house. I had some french onion soup to start and a filet mignon as my main course. The Outlaws pitch was very week in comparison to Halifax's, I wasn't really given too much information about the organization and their offer for playing time was significantly lower than what the other teams were offering. The team itself seemed very interesting, the location in South California was obviously a very big bonus and the team has some very clean colours and logo. While most other prospects may have decided to go elsewhere in search of more opportunity, I was still thinking about earlier when I found out about Westbroek and had really set it in my head that I wanted to play with him. I decided that I wanted to go to Anaheim and that the low playing time would just serve as motivation for me to improve myself constantly and show management that I'm much more useful to the Outlaws in a larger role. I discussed my decision with my agent quickly while Mr. O'Calllaghan went to the bathroom and when he returned we informed him of my decision to choose Anaheim as my junior team. He was happy with our decision and told us that he would forward over the contract details and make everything official tomorrow when free agents could be officially signed.

10:00pm
I finally got back home after a long day of meetings but I couldn't contain my excitement at my first SMJHL contract. I decided to go to the gym near my house and practice boxing a little which was always a good way for me to blow off some steam. I got into boxing after my agent's son, Elio, showed me some Ricky Garcia fights. Me and him both started going to boxing lessons with a private trainer and whenever he wasn't available I would go to the gym and box alone. It was a good way for me to control my emotions, either keep my anger in check or use my happiness productively. I got to the gym and found my groove right away, I knew tonight was gonna be a good night of boxing and I also knew that this meant I made the right decision today.

11:45pm
I got home again and went through my phone one last time for the day, I saw more DMs from Martijn so I answered him and let him know about the big news, we were going to be teammates! He congratulated me and we spoke for a little, after a while I told him about a big secret that I had and asked him if he thought I should announce it publicly. He said it could be a bad idea to do it but it was up to me and so I ended up deciding that tomorrow after signing my contract I would make an announcement that would change SMJHL History...

Quote:Word Count: 1538 (+2x first time media bonus)
Edit: Sorry for the big wall of text, I wanted to get an article out but got lazy so I didn't end up putting in any pictures.

Chris-McZehrl · 02-26-2019, 03:08 AM

great to have you back!

BDonini · 02-26-2019, 03:14 AM

02-26-2019, 03:08 AMChris-McZehrl Wrote: great to have you back!

Noble · 02-26-2019, 04:47 AM

Been there, now I'm MVP. Heck you everyone

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