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For club and for country (2x IIHF media)
#1

The SHL season always ends for a player, whether its at the end of the regular season or after a heartbreaking playoff series or for a small number of players, after they win the Challenge Cup.  Playing alongside your SHL teammates is a bonding experience, in the 50 games during the regular season you come to know your line mates, you know where to be when they want to make a pass or where they will be when you want to make that same pass.  You establish a connection with them, something that takes time and effort to achieve. 

You and your teammates not only get to know each other, their strong points and maybe even their weaknesses, you also learn the same things about your opponents.  The players that you line up against during the regular season, the players you try and get the better of each time the puck drops.  The players who you would happily hit into the boards to avoid having them do the same to you.  Your opponents are essentially your enemies during the season and they are definitely your enemy during the playoffs.  You try and learn everything you can about them so you can take advantage of their flaws, so you can be ready to compete against them and come out on the winning side.

But when the SHL season or playoffs end, a new season begins, a season that is with a different team than you had just played with for a whole lot of games.  A team that for the most part will contain players that aren’t on your SHL team, your new teammates are the same players that you just spent a season trying to beat, trying to find their weaknesses.  Not only that, but while playing in this new season, you will be lining up against you SHL teammates.  The players you just spent so many games and possibly seasons getting to know and working together with are now your opponents. 

This new season, the IIHF or WJC tournaments are a sight to behold.  All of the best players from each country get together to find out which country will reign supreme.  These players need to put their friendships with their SHL team mates aside and they also must bury the hatchet with any of the fellow compatriots who they just went to battle against.

Let’s take a look at one player in the SHL to get a better idea on how drastic the change ‘scenery’ can be.  Lyle Odelein III is a defender for the New Orleans Specters.  This season the Specters played 50 games in the regular season, just like every SHL team, but they went on to the win the Challenge cup, adding 17 more games to their total.  17 playoff games were everything was on the line.

Lyle hails from Montreal, Quebec, he is the only Canadian on the Specters current roster.  He once again will be playing in the IIHF tournament for his country, in hopes to bring home the gold.  He will be playing with players that he just played against in the SHL playoffs, players that saw their hopes of winning a Challenge Cup dashed out by Lyle and his Specter teammates. 

In the Specters first round match-up, they were squared off against the Edmonton Blizzard a team that has two players who wear the Canadian maple leaf during the IIHF (three now with Theo Morgan joining the club), Jean-Paul Boivin and James Troung.  The back and forth series saw Lyle and the Specters knock out the Blizzard in 6 games, leaving Boivin and Troung wondering what could have been.

In the second round for the Specters, they were matched up against the Los Angles Panthers, the team that knocked the Specters out of the playoffs to previous season in a seven game series.  This season was much the same, but this time the Specters were the victors.  Thomas Bathory and Simon LeBlanc are both Canadians, Bathory will be playing alongside Odelein again this IIHF tournament and LeBlanc as always will be there to support the team.

In the Challenge Cup finals, the team from New Orleans faced off against the defending champions, the Hamilton Steelhawks.  The Steelhawks team has a 5 players (if recently acquired Dick Clapper is counted) who also play for Team Canada.  For of those players played in the finals against their Canadian teammate Lyle, Hugh Jazz, Gabriel Johnson, Aaron Wilson and the Team Canada captain, Robert Phelps.  The Steelhawks were swept in four games this time around with help from their IIHF teammate Lyle Odelein III.

Lyle’s story isn’t rare, it happens every single season.  SHL players do everything they can to win it all for their SHL team, they put it all out there, for the 50 games in the regular season and how every many playoff games they are lucky enough to compete in.  And then at the end of that, they take off their club jersey and put on their country’s jersey.  They put everything that may have happened in the SHL aside and skate with their compatriots.  And in many cases, against their SHL teammates.

In Lyle’s case, his Specters teammates are spread throughout the IIHF tournament, but you’ll find the most of them playing for the United States of America. Seven of the Specters will be lacing their skates up for the red, white and blue it attempts to defend their gold medals.  Williams, Johnson, Fox, Serpe, Manius, Cain and the living legend who just played his last game for New Orleans Joe K.  The Americans are the team to beat yet again, and Lyle and the rest of the Team Canada players will look to stop them from winning another gold, much to the dismay of his Specter teammates.

This is the way it is for SHL players, the players you sweat and bleed with for the entirety or the season and hopefully for a long playoff run, quickly turn into your opponents come the off-season.  And the reverse is just the same, the players you try as hard as possible to outplay and punish during the SHL season and especially in the playoffs, become team mates that you rely on to watch your back and support you through the tournament. 

Lyle wouldn’t have it any other way.  When he puts either of the jerseys on, New Orleans or Canada, he knows what he has to do.  Whether it’s for club or for country, the jersey he is wearing is the only one that matters…

2x IIHF media - Word count - 1106

[Image: Ci4nm13.png]sig by @Bruins10 
Scarecrows   Specters   Canada 




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