I think after the young guns announcement i'm gonna continue putting music to my media, this should by read to any of the following songs: 
Choice 1
Choice 2
Choice 3
on repeat
forever


Well I’ve been on this site for 4 seasons and now that it's time to move from the dinos to the pride I figure it's also the perfect time to reflect a bit on my time in the league and with the Raptors. Even more than that I’ve barely ever made an actual media which seems so funny to me. The only reason I used my 2x was last season for the British Isles roster announcement, obvi it's not really my favorite thing to do. Still sometimes the best thing to do is not your favorite thing to do. 

It’s weird to think about, because compared to so many people in this league I’ve been here for less time than they’ve had their sig up. Still I try and look back at the beginning of my SHL career and it’s almost just a blur. Obviously I have great SHL memories, I’m not drunk THAT often, but it's the type of thing that you can't remember when you try to think about it because it just feels like such a casual occurrence at the time, and truly that's what the SHL has become to me. More and more I realize that so many of the random ‘highs’ of my week are from interactions with SHL folk or the happenings surrounding it.

I randomly decided to re-find this sim league ...truthfully ANY hockey sim league after I also randomly decided to get back into EHM and saw them mentioned on r/hockey. Simulation games, RPG games, and hockey are my favorite things in the world so I figured it could be time to try something like this again. (for reference I joined a league a while back and after getting drafted and about to start my updater job I found out the league was taking ‘a break’.) It quickly became obvious to me that I couldn’t have made a better decision joining the SHL, immediately I found inclusion and acceptance. Immediately I found a place where I had to try harder to be the guy that's too nerdy about hockey. Immediately I found a community so large and interactive that no matter what interest I had, I could find someone else who was in my sim league AND did that. 

Regardless, once I decided to join I pretty much immediately found @Halkohol in the draft class discord. Now, I definitely can be a person that gets immediately ‘too’ invested into things, but I can't say that without halks early competitiveness I would be anywhere near where I am today. Obviously I didn't keep up….. But I still think I’m doing a decent enough job to stay competitive against you lol.  As soon as I joined, and I joined the discord essentially immediately after signing up, I found someone who was just as interested in being involved in this league as I was. I cant explain how happy I was to see that. We both became uDFA’s with COL and so be It I was the one who ended up being drafted to COL while halk went to DET. Still Halk will always be my SHL big brother. Probably the only person whose stats I will ever actually want to compare myself to. Love you halk and I wish you nothing but the best, because you WILL be the best and i'm damn sure of that. I even pushed for halk in my draft interviews because I was both still confident in myself and confident in halks greatness to take that risk

@Birdman and @Jumbobone19 thank you so much for believing in me before I had anything to prove. Thank you for answering so many of my stupid questions as I frantically tried to get up to speed on the site. Thank you for even indirectly pushing me to do some fun stuff on this site that I never would have if I hadn't joined the team. You guys are such a great duo, Birdman does something and Jumbo does all the hard work… jk lol. I love you both and I can’t wait to see where our careers intersect now that I'm making my way to the big leagues for the first time. (Also sorry birdman I couldn’t bring myself to put that line in here lmao)

Thank you @Carpy48 for giving me a chance at my first site job as graphics assistant. I’ve always loved graphics ever since I started making even though I might not be the best artist (and I’m colorblind rip). I can’t explain how happy I was to find something that fit into a side of the site I truly enjoy while also doing the site a benefit. I feel like you're my SHL dad and really hope I don't disappoint as much as the real one lmao. 

Obviously there’s so many more people that I have had great interactions with all the time that I just clearly can't type out everyone. Between the rest of the S57 crew, the dino gang, the pride, graphics squad, the HTT geniuses, recruiting team, as well as any of the other people that I don’t really have a discord channel connection to (shout out to fitted). A very large majority of you are awesome people and I can’t wait to see you on the big boy ice. You know who you are, there isn’t anyone I actively interact with on this site on a semi-usual basis that I don’t think is a good person and I’m grateful to get to know even more of you soon. 

On that note, I’m always ‘on discord’ unless I’m asleep. If you ever want to chat feel free, I’m extremely understanding and have so many interests I’m sure we could find something to talk about. I’ve definitely been in a few ‘bad positions’ before so I know what it's like, everyone deserves a voice and those who can listen should try their best. 

Go Raptors
Go Pride
Free Palestine

Yours always sweetly and passionately, 

Ruggsy

Graphics “grader” (No I’m a goddamn assistant)
Recruitment Team
S56 - SXX Jess Simp 
S58 British Isles Bronze GM
S59 Young Guns GM 
S57 COL Ass Captain
S58 - S59 COL Captain


[/url][url=https://twitter.com/RuggsySHL]PS: why arent you currently smashing the fuck out of my twitter follow button right now