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My first season - first media x2
#1

Hello

First let me introduce myself. I am Jst Maro from Slovenia, I play on center position and last year I decided to leave my home country and try myself overseas. People said you can earn good money playing hockey there and since you have good potential why don't you try, just look at Anze Kopitar. So I signed up for draft and eventually got drafted as 62nd pick by newly formed team Quebec City Citadels. I bought plane ticket and went to Quebec.
In preseason I got first taste of hockey here. And it tasted quite bitter. I started in 4th line but coach distributed ice time between lines quite evenly. My first game (also team's first ever game) was home game against defending champions Carolina Kraken. Everybody was nervous but also pumped up. With some beginners luck it was 3:3 in regular time, no goals in overtime and Quebec won after shootout with game winning goal scored by Zdenko Beranek. In that game I manged to get my first shot on goal. Thru out preseason team played 7 games but I didn't manage to get one single point. Smaller ice ring really gave me lots of problems since in Europe we play on bigger ones.
Once regular season started it was obvious that it will be hard season for newly established team formed mostly by rookies. My first point came quite quickly, in 3rd round I got my first assist in 4:3 shootout defeat against Carolina. For my first goal I needed to wait quite a while; in 14th round I scored against Maine Timber. I believe I will never forget that goal. It was first goal of the game, Kev Kevens got the puck on blue line and right away he passed in front of goal where I just tipped puck into net. Maine goalie Suzuki didn't stand a chance. Regular season was long, exhausting and had some ups (5 games long win streak) and downs (11 games long losing streak). I was slowly gaining confidence and managed to raise my level of play on a decent level. This was seen by my coach and he moved into 3rd line. At the end Quebec ended up in 10th place. In 50 games with just a little over 14 minutes average ice time, with game rating of 58 I managed to get 17 points (5 G + 12 A), +/- was -13 and my faceoff percentage was above 55%. After bad start that was encouraging.
My wishes for playoffs were to play at least 5 games (get one win) and get at least one point. Team and I did awesome in first round and eliminated Anaheim Outlaws with 4:2, I managed to get 4 points (2 G + 2 A). In second playoff game which was first ever QCC playoff win I had best game of my short career. I scored my first playoff goal and added one assist with +/- +2, that got me 3rd star of that game. In second round we faced 1st seed; Newfoundland Berserkers. They showed why they are biggest favorites for cup and over outperformed us in all 4 games. Citadels only managed to score 1 goal in those 4 games, so my playoff stats ended with 4 points. It was very humbling experience for me and very good motivation to train harder in future.
What can I say about my first season. Well after poor start I really improved my game, trained well and I did learn a lot. Finally I got adjusted to smaller ice rings. I am really looking forward for next season, there was some interest from SHL so I guess I will stay overseas. I sure would like to stay.
Last but not least I decided to join team Latvia and hopefully we will do big things on international scene in future.

Cheers

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#2

+1

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Knights|Dragons|Austria
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#3

Fantastic 1st season, excited to see the how you elevate your game next season!

Citadelles

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#4

Awesome read

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