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*lmao* · 05-27-2021, 12:07 AM

Newfoundland Berserkers - Regular Season Recap

The SMJHL playoffs are in full swing, but the Berserkers playoff run has just started. The Berserkers ended up taking one of the top spots in the SMJHL this season, finishing third in the league. The season ended with the Berserkers receiving a bye for the first round of the playoffs as well as a well earned break. The team took their break seriously and practiced hard to ensure they would start off with a strong performance against Maine to hopefully carry some momentum into the Four Star Cup finals.

Before the current season started, the Berserkers were projected in the SJHN S59 Power rankings to finish second in the league. However, they ended up being eclipsed for the Anchorage Armada who claimed second place in the league this season. SJHN cited the team’s strong defense, with no shortage of offense either as reasons why the Berserkers were predicted to have such a strong showing in S59. The Berserkers have no shortage of active capped earning players.

Overall, the Berserkers finished the season with a very respectable 41-18-7 record for a total of 89 points. They finished behind the 2nd place Anchorage Armada who edged them out with 95 points, with the 1st place Kelowna Knights coming in with a whopping 102 points. Despite finishing in third place, the Berserkers proved that they can hang with the big boys of the SMJHL with a 0.674 points percentage.

There is reason to believe that the Berserkers could have done better and had some unlucky bounces go their way. They ended up with a +83 goal differential, which is good for 2nd place behind the Knights’ +118 goal differential, and just ahead of the Armada’s goal differential of +74.

The Berserkers didn’t seem to have much preference between playing at home or away. They sported a 20-7-6 record at home, compared to a 21-11-1 record away. It looks like there was a bit of a home ice advantage pushing the Berserkers deeper into some overtime and shootout games at home. That home ice advantage will likely grow stronger in the playoffs as the fans start to go wild when they can start to taste that Four Star Cup getting closer. It’s been quite a few seasons since the fans have gotten to see their team hoist that cup and win the SMJHL championship.

The Berserkers shootout performance was abysmal, sitting at a 2-5 record. Those five points could have made a difference in the standings but could easily have landed them in 3rd place anyways. Luckily, this will not hamper them at all in the playoffs, so the team should look a bit better should their games go longer into overtime.

Overall, the Berserkers finished in third place in the overall league standings. However, they finished at the top of the Atlantic Conference. Just nipping at their heels were the Detroit Falcons who finished with only two points less than the Berserkers. Looking at the North East Division, the Berserkers had that one in the bag. They were up 19 points on last season’s champions: the Quebec City Citadelles. In third place came Maine at 57 points, who the Berserkers are currently facing as the Timbers moved past the first round of the SMJHL playoffs.

Team Leaders

Let’s take a look at the final team leaders of the Newfoundland Berserkers’ season 59.

Let’s focus on the great group of forwards first. In points, Jesse Trudeau took home the lead with a great 64 points in 66 games, falling just short of a point per game pace. The team was very impressed with how consistent his performances were. Despite not always being the 1st star in every game, he very consistently set up his teammates to be the first star. He finished off the season with most of his points coming from assists, with 46 of them apples. Close behind him rounding the top 3 was right winger Leon Athanasios with 57 points, and Nike Kickz Jr with 51 points. On defense, all of the left defensemen ended up leading the team. First up was Shion Okamoto, the assistant captain with 10 goals and 32 assists for a total of 42 points. He did not end up scoring as much as he wanted to as a point shooter this season, but those assist numbers really helped pump up those point numbers. Very close to him was sophomore Aleksandrs Balcers with 12 goals and 27 assists for 39 points, with Matty Sandeen tied with him with the exact same stat line of 12 goals and 27 assists.

The Berserkers’ top scorer is a player who was not one of the top three points, Ric Charlesworth, also known as Big Dick Ric. He finished off the season with a healthy 28 goals. Right behind him was Leon Athanasios with 25 goals, and coming in third, Nike Kickz Jr again had 19 goals. On defense, Aleksandrs Balcers and Matty Sandeen led the way with 12 goals from the blue line, and Shion Okamoto was close behind with 10 goals.

Who was the top assist man? Of course, it had to be none other than Jesse Trudeau, with his incredible 46 assists. Second in assists we have Bas O’Bigbers, the Berserkers’ captain. He was a strong and consistent offensive force, finishing with 15 goals and 34 assists on the season for a total of 49 points. Right behind him was Leon Athanasios again, a consistent performer in the offensive categories. He had 32 assists in season 59. At the blue line, Shion Okamoto led the way with 32 assists, with Matty Sandeen and Aleksandrs Balcers again tied with a strong 27 assists.

Now let’s take a look at plus minus. Plus minus can sometimes be a very flawed stat. However, in this case I believe it showcases just how dominant this Newfoundland line of Jesse Trudeau, Nike Kickz Jr, and Leon Athanasios really was this season. They finished off with plus minuses of Nike Kickz Jr with +48, Jesse Trudeau at +42, and Leon Athanasios at +39. They really dominated any sort of opposition that they came to face on the ice. On defense, Matty Sandeen, one of the assistant captains led with +36, and Billy Brooks was just next to him at +32. If you look at the advanced possession stats of these strong players, they’d likely lead you to the same conclusion that looking at their plus minuses would as well.

Looking at penalty minutes, you can definitely tell which player on the Berserkers is NOT winning an award for the most gentlemanly conduct on ice any time soon. That player is huge enforcer Billy Brooks, who finished the season with a whopping 103 penalty minutes, a bit under 1.5 penalty minutes per game. The whole team could count on Billy Brooks to be firing up his team every game. He actually participated in 11 fights, which must’ve taken a toll on those fists. Despite this, he still produced a very respectable 32 points, proving that he could excel at any facet of the game. To showcase just how big this disparity is, the next closest player on the team in penalty minutes was alternate captain Slavakov Vladamirashenko, who had 72 penalty minutes less at 31. Coming in third was noted and beloved defensive defenseman Pasta the Turtle, who had 25 penalty minutes this season. It would be remiss to not mention the most gentlemanly player on the team: Matty Sandeen who incredibly only had 6 penalty minutes last year as a defenseman.

The takeaway stats showed that Nike Kickz Jr could do it on both ends of the ice. He finished the season with 44 takeaways to only 22 giveaways. Up next we have Shion Okamoto and Pasta the Turtle, who were both tied with 34 takeaways. However, Shion Okamoto had a whopping 70 giveaways while Pasta the Turtle only had 16, showing that one of these players was much more of a defensive stalwart.

The Berserkers ran with a somewhat experienced goaltender tandem, with a starter in Hugo Gronroos and backup in Evgeni Petrov. Both were solid and consistent throughout the year. Hugo Gronroos put up a save percentage of .907 and Evgeni Petrov put up a save percentage of .896 in his sophomore year. They both had their share of games stolen, with Hugo Gronroos holding down the fort with 5 shutouts and Evgeni Petrov with 3 shutouts in his 22 games played.

Player Reactions

To get a feel directly from the players on how the season went, we headed right into the Newfoundland Berserkers locker room to get some quotes.

“The beginning of the season showed the teams adherence to preseason personal goals, but displayed a lack of on ice discipline.” - New Newfoundland Berserkers prospect Mr. Platanocat. We’re looking forward to seeing what Mr. Platanocat (Wing Wang) can do on the team in his rookie season.

Fellow Newfoundland Berserkers Slavakov Vladimirashenko Assistant Captain (affectionately referred to on the team as Ass Cap) had this to say about this season: “Overall Newfoundland had a strong season. A 3rd place finish is great and we’re looking forward to a good playoff run. For me personally, I would’ve like to score more points, but I played well enough defensively that it evens out in my opinion. But overall can’t complain with how good the Zerks were!”

We also reached out to some prominent members of the Newfoundland Berserkers organization to get their opinion on how their players performed.

“Wawaweewa” - Former Captain and Beeg Yosh Vaseline Podcalzone

“WEH” - Mr. Juke, co-general manager of the Newfoundland Berserkers

We also managed to sit down with GM of the Newfoundland Berserkers, Nhamlet! We appreciate his time very much.

How did you feel about the team’s regular season performance?

All in all I would have to say that it was difficult trying to temper the sky high expectations we had going into this season. After finishing dead last in S57, jumping all the way to 3rd in the league in S58, finding ourselves sitting in 3rd again in the league is admittedly a little bit disappointing. More so that I believe and I know that everybody else in this organization believes that we were absolutely capable of so much more, but seemed to have the worst luck at the worst times hindering us from playing at our full ability. Thankfully injuries weren’t a thing otherwise it’s guaranteed that we would have been decimated by those as well. Whether it was scoring, defense or goaltending, we would have spurts of one or the other firing as well as it should have, followed up with the other areas suddenly losing their footing. I’m hoping that as the season wound down, we managed to get all of the bad juju out of our system and show our capabilities with games on the line. In the end we ended up in the 2nd seed for the playoffs which is what I expected even in a positive scenario. Still, ultimately I view a lot of our regular season results as just a preseason at this stage of our development because we all have our eyes firmly on the big prize. First things first though, before we get to that point we’ll have to focus long and hard on our opponents in front of us. With that, Chop Trees.

How did you feel about our prospect development?

With this being our 3rd draft of the tenure between my co Juke and I, I have to admit I am not used to drafting as little as we did this past draft, moving multiple picks into future season. A lot of that had to do with the fact that we had nailed multiple picks over the past two drafts, many of them in later rounds finding absolute gems like Okamoto, Pasta the Turtle as well as Slavakov-Ican’tspellhisnameov (Sorry sota). My advisory team was hoping that when I finally got all the roster spots filled on the Berserkers, I would be finally able to sit down and stop with the shenanigans about signing more UDFAs, unfortunately that still continued. For our single draft pick in the 3rd round, we got exactly who we wanted in the draft and are absolutely ecstatic that we were right in targeting Allbran alone. He’s shown that despite his upside down time zone difference, the value that he brings to the team as the solo rookie for much of the season, is massive. He is somewhere in the top 15 in TPE in his class, and in a redraft, I would not be surprised to see him as a 1st round talent. I know that we have a great leadership group here that helps with all of the new players coming in but Allbran deserves a lot of the credit for coming into the league like a 3 season pro, and largely being so capable that I forget that it’s my job to stay on top of the rookies. Not to mention, his general playstyle has been a perfect fit on the 4th line, playing with our resident defensive specialist and grinder, Jonas Caspari. While Caspari is more inclined to ensure that the puck stays out of his own end, Allbran has been taking advantage of the veteran help and being a menace, blocking out opposing goalies. His 12 goals with about 10 minutes a night is a clear indication of how well he’s been able to contribute and we’re looking forward to what he can do in coming seasons in a more prominent role.

As for our other late joining rookie, Maxwell King was a prospect I immediately took note of when he announced his intentions to sign with a junior team as an undrafted rookie. At first we had thought we had lost out on our chance to bring him aboard but things worked out for the better where we were able to get pen to paper and ensure that he was going to be able to develop as a Berserker going forward. His vision and ability to understand the game is at an incredibly high level. There were some concerns about his skating ability but he’s worked hard off the bat to address those and we think that while his time and chances with us so far have been short and limited, going forward he’s going to be one of those key depth contributors along with Allbran especially on offense. The pair of the two of them will be interesting to see considering the playmaking ability of King and the goalscoring ability of Allbran.

What is your main focus for the team going into next season?

There are a few things that we’re thinking about and preparing for. I think most prominently, there will be some news on our Berserker Hall of Fame. This has been something that has been in the back burner for a while, and should have gotten much more attention earlier. Still, there is not time like the present and we will have more to share on that matter later on in the offseason. The next will continue to prepare for our S60 roster given that there will be some holes, left my long time and key members of this Berserker team. Scouting efforts are already underway and I know that I in particular enjoy the aspect of being able to get a sense of all the prospects that are all available. This draft is turning out to be a potentially very top heavy class, not to say there won’t be depth but that remains to be seen. I think that anybody hoping for a solid player early on will absolutely have their pick of the litter and I don’t envy whoever has the first overall pick. The last time we ended up with it, while entirely amusing given our first round win over Maine, was an incredibly stressful event having to think of what the best option was given the myriad of opportunities and choices. I think one of the major things that we always do as we go into the next season is continuing to keep an eye on those who demonstrate great leadership qualities: being a regular member of the LR, helping others not because they’re asked to but because they want to, and simply just sharing that enjoyment of the site with others as a positive role model. It’s thanks to these standout people that our locker room is so great!

(2761 words)

***yosh*** · 05-27-2021, 01:08 AM

JNH · 05-27-2021, 02:02 AM

Just a little 2x twix media to feed the soulllllllll

Berserkers

Randominoe · 05-27-2021, 12:52 PM

Bfine · 05-27-2021, 01:16 PM

Sopath · 05-31-2021, 12:40 AM

Nice work sad I didn't see this yet

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