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***Citizen of Adraa*** · 05-31-2019, 10:49 AM

Hi.

You probably don’t care about me, but I wanted to type out something, and it pays which is pretty useful to be honest, so why not. This article is going to be a big recap of this last season for Andrej Doskočil, and for me too. S47 was a weird beast and for sure not a great season for me, so why won’t we just jump right into it?

So, S47’s stats aren’t as good as they were in S46, which saddens me a bit. S46 has been a really decent season though, so I probably shouldn’t be that surprised that I won’t hit the highs of that, even though I hit a lot of weird, kind of unexpected milestones along the way. So, with 6G and 14A, I dropped a few apples just to score some of them juicy goals myself, even though my point total dropped from 26 to 20 points. This has a lot to do with the early part of the season, and some of the strategies Halifax coaching came up with there. Because, believe it or not, my 42 scoring, 65 passing player was a first PP unit guy. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but in reality what happened was, at least it feels like it, that there was very little scoring potential on those PP units, so the sim decided to take the lowest passing guy, and force him to shoot. Surprise surprise, it was our little Andrej. So, I think I scored 3 out of those 6 goals on PP, especially early in the season before some changes occured where the stats where the weirdest. I equaled S46’s 2 goals I think 4 games into this season, doubled them about 10 games in, while simultaneously producing exactly nothing in terms of assists. Again, feels to me that I had a lot of passes forced into shots by the sim, not because I am the best available shooter, but I guess because I was the worst available passer. That is certainly weird I didn’t like it too much. However, since about halfway through the season, this normalized and I didn’t score much more since then, while my beloved assists returned again.

That would be all, if not for the surprisingly low number of hits Doskočil had. You see, I grew to expect to easily hit a hundred, and have some change on top of that in terms of hits. My rookie season, where I wasn’t quite there with my checking stats, had 92, S46 I clocked in a pretty decent 115, and this season I somehow tailed of at patheticly low 91. Mind you, with about 15 more on checking from my rookie season, and alongside a pairing partner that isn’t much of a physical presence. I don’t know what happened, really, but it was pretty sad to see and I didn’t like the development. It sort of normalized throughout the season, but it still didn’t reach the heights I wanted, and left me dissapointed in general. I don’t have all that much explanation for it besides it’s maybe caused by one of the rookies that Halifax drafted this season. You see, our dear Rush actually outpaced me on hits a bit. As he is a forward, he might be on the ice with me quite often while my defensive pairing partner didn’t matter at all, because if was Rush that was the physical presence we needed, and I wasn’t useful in that regard afterwards. However, while probable, I am still kind of angry at the sim that it would allow a forward to completely steal all them hits from a defenseman, even though they should really be on the same side of the ice.

Well, that’s for me. What has been happening team wise during the season? Well, as expected, I started as a blue liner for the Halifax Raiders, after what was a fairly dissapointing season beforehand. We lost quite some talent though, a situation that will repeat itself this season I believe, so we didn’t have big eyes coming in and that sort of confirmed itself. The final position of 9th is pretty bad, although I think if Colorado was a bit more put together, Halifax could have easily been 10th. Well, nevertheless, what happened for the first time for me, was a trade involving me. On the deadline, I was given to the Detroit Falcons to fuel their push for the playoff victories, alongside several other players from other teams, all I think just quick rentals that would all be called up the next season anyway. And, funnily enough, the 8th placed Detroit then took on the 9th placed Halifax Raiders in the playins. And swept them. That was a bit of a weird feeling, sweeping your original team with the one they traded you to, but I was a Detroit player, not a Halifax player in that series, and I have done everything I could to let my current team win. Unfortunately, as much as I hoped we could do something with Detroit, the next round’s opponent in St. Louis proved to be over our heads, and we got booted in 6. So, there was a bit of action, and funnily enough with me being called up this season it means I never exited SMJHL playoffs without at least one series win, but, well, I actually never got any further than a series win out of playins into the first round. Which saddens me quite a bit as I think at least the S46 Halifax roster really could’ve, but that couldn’t have been Halifax I guess.

And yes, to that point I just made. Being called up is definitely a new thing for me, as a 1st gen guy. Manhattan seems to be in a pretty decent spot right now, so hopefully I will be able to work as intended for them, and not completely flop like I consistently fear I will. There is quite a bunch of stuff happening though, because now I get to unbank, get to play in the IIHF, while still being eligible for WJC, which is a bit weird tbh but hey, do I care? I feel like Czechia could do really well in the IIHF, just as well as they did in the WJC ever since the entire S46 draft class joined, and I hope it could start right now, when I got called up. I don’t exactly recall how the last tournament ended for us, but it’s not about the history, it’s about now, and now is about to be very interesting for Czechia.

So, that’s it from me I think. Hopefully someone finds this interesting, but other than that, thanks for the monies, I will enjoy them very much, and see you next season in the SHL boyos and girls.
Cheers, CoA.