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***yosh*** · 11-24-2020, 06:18 PM

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Beeg Yoshi is back with another Newfoundland Berserkers media piece, as promised! That’s right, in our past installment of all things Zerkers, we touched on our great crop of rookies that ended up getting drafted over the weekend to their Simulation Hockey League teams.

While this article won’t be fully touching on that, I think it would be nice to have a brief follow up on where those players went.

Firstly, right winger Dwayne Gretzky went fifth overall to Winnipeg. Gretzky was pegged to go to either one of the Jets’ consecutive first round picks. Based on my sources (also known as Juke’s announcement in our locker room), this was the highest a Berserker has gone in a Simulation Hockey League draft since Steve Harrington a few seasons ago.

A few picks later, blue liner Matty Sandeen was drafted 13th overall to the Manhattan Rage. Sandeen will join former Berserker player Juuka Timonen in playing for the Rage in the near future.

A few picks later, Bas O’Bigbers was selected 16th overall by the New England Wolfpack. Bas was projected to go to one of New England’s consecutive picks, but ended up sliding down a bit. Nevertheless, O’Bigbers going at 16 is an absolute steal for the Wolfpack. He will join former Berserker, the one and only Clean Andrei Kostitsyn, in playing for the Wolfpack in the near future.

Berserkers brick wall Hugo Gronroos went 30th overall to the Minnesota Monarchs! The goalie Gronroos will join advisor Kluster, along with former players Jack Klompus and Tinke Jutila, in playing for them once his SMJHL career concludes.

Finally, blue liner Chad Alfa went in the 3rd round to the Edmonton Blizzard! Alfa will hopefully prove to be a late round stud, and has plenty of time to develop with Newfoundland before hopefully getting the opportunity to prove the doubters wrong once he makes it to the big spotlights of the Simulation Hockey League.

Well, with this rambling aside, let’s take the time to talk about the main piece of this article! Taking a look at the new crop of Newfoundland Berserkers that were just drafted to the team on Sunday!

This new Berserkers crop features several rookies, as listed below:

The Berserkers first took defenseman Billy Brooks, also known as Billy Benson, 11th overall in the first round.

They then selected centre Ric Charlesworth 31st overall in the third round.

In the fourth round, the Berserkers had back to back picks, going with right winger Nike Kickz Jr and left winger Jesse Trudeau, picked at 37th and 38th overall respectively.

In the fifth round, the Berserkers selected left handed defenseman Shion Okamoto 50th overall, followed by another southpaw blueliner in Ilya Sokolov a few picks later at 57th overall. The Berserkers concluded their draft by selecting Sebastian Andrew 63rd overall.

ROOKIES SPEAK ABOUT DRAFT PROCESS

We talked with fellow rookies Billy Brooks and Shion Okamoto about what the draft process was like with him.

Brooks stated, “I am loving Newfoundland! I was scouted a few days ago by Sopath and we had a good conversation. We talked about the league and different things related to hockey and such. I was scouted a few days later by SDcore and I really appreciated my conversation with him. I knew SD previously from other leagues so I was happy to hear from him. The locker-room environment in Newfoundland is great and I am very excited to spend my new next few seasons playing for the team!”

Okamoto stated, “The draft process was great. Being really new and not knowing anyone, I expected to be picked up in the last round. I did talk to Sopath (sorry don't know his actual name lol) about some of the old sim leagues I was in and it was pretty cool to hear him be hyped about the pick in the stream. It seems like most of the teams did a really good job at scouting.”

Okamoto also praised the Berserkers, stating that they “were one of [his] top teams, based on the short initial conversations [he] had.”

“I’m really happy to have been picked by them. [The] locker room seems like a really chill group of guys to hang out with.”

BERSERKERS' SCOUT WEIGHS IN ON DRAFT PROCESS

We reached out to Sopath, who helped with the Newfoundland Berserkers’ scouting process heading into the Season 57 Simulation Major Junior Hockey League draft.

“This was my very first season scouting for any team. I really enjoyed the opportunity to do so but wow this class was exhausting to scout due to its massive size. I’m going to write more about how the draft played out compared to my expectations in my article which will be coming out later this week, right now I’d like to focus on how we made our 1st round selection of Billy Brooks aka @supertardis101.”

Sopath explained, “There were so many ways we could’ve gone with this pick but ultimately I’m really happy we all felt strongly enough about supertardis101 that we could select him in the first round with little worry. This year was tricky because we didn’t have a 2nd round pick to select another player we were really high on at 11th overall. This pick had to work. Brooks’ journey to the first round was something that appeared to be increasingly inevitable as draft day approached. When I first scouted Brooks’ it was the very beginning of the scouting process for most teams. In a class this deep with so many top tier recreates at D it was not hard to imagine Brooks getting lost in the shuffle. After speaking to him the first time, and seeing how much money he was earning before he was even on an SMJHL team, it was pretty obvious that Billy Brooks would be a really good first round pick. For a day or so there might’ve been some conversations about trading into the 2nd round where I thought we could still get Brooks but ultimately that venture became far too risky to explore.”

“Anybody who spoke to Brooks pre-draft could’ve figured out that this was a no brainer after the A tier recreates were gone. supertardis101 has previous sim league experience and is a GM no less in the PBE. He has got lots of experience with OOTP and is really eager to learn about FHM to make the best player possible. This is a really good player and I got the feeling as the week went on that there were some teams picking around our 1st round pick that were starting to figure that out too. It became pretty obvious at a point that at 11th overall we were going to take Brooks or not take Brooks at all because he was not going to be there in the 3rd or high enough in the 2nd that we could trade into. So on draft day we ran our scenarios and we came to the decision that if Brooks was there at 11, that was the pick to make.”

Sopath then sung some praises towards the young 1st round pick, Brooks:

“I’m really happy to have Brooks on the team. When you think about how many elite recreates were present in this draft it really isn’t shocking that new players, who’d otherwise be going in the very high 1st round were suddenly finding themselves at the bottom of the first or top of the 2nd. It’s a blessing we had the opportunity to get a guy like Brooks and I think he is going to be a foundational part of what we are building to make it back to the Four Star Cup. Welcome to the team Billy Brooks, [also known as] supertardis101.”

Sopath then discussed another player that he scouted, the aforementioned Shion Okamoto.

“Lastly I’d like to talk about one more player. I didn’t have a big part in scouting many of our other picks so I’d like to talk about a prospect that I really liked that we took that I did scout. Player Shion Okamoto, [also known as] user @lmao, at 50th overall. Lmao is an old school sim league player. This dude was part of a sim league that used NHL94 as their sim engine. Absolute madness that that must have been. He’s been away from sim leagues for a while but I hope to see that Garfield avatar more often. Seems like a really cool guy. He has already been pretty active in the locker room and I’ve loved reading his stories about the apocalyptic wasteland of Canada in which you couldn’t even purchase flaming hot Cheetos. Seriously mind blowing stuff.

Sopath concluded by saying that he was excited about the entire rookie group, not just the two that he scouted:

“To all the other rookies I’m happy to have you here! I’ll leave it to other scouts or FO officials who knew you lads better to comment on you! Also here is footage of what that old sim league looked like on NHL94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOgt9zFX5s”

BERSERKERS GM HAM WEIGHS IN ON HIS FIRST DRAFT

Finally, we had an opportunity to discuss the Berserkers’ draft process with the man that called all the shots on Sunday, Newfoundland’s newest General Manager NHamlet.

“With this being our first draft as the GMs of the Berserkers, Juke and I knew how important this was going to be for us to start off on the right foot and keep the consistency of excellent drafting set by the previous management duo of JNH and SDCore. To be honest, this was a big first time experience for us since neither of our backgrounds are in scouting, having primarily been the tactics member of the team. We knew that we were comfortable on the coaching side of things so this was an eye opener in a lot of ways.

Still, with the hecticness of this draft, whether it was because it was our first time or the fact that it was such a big class, made for an incredibly first time experience that I’m sure both of us are going to look back at for a long time. One of the major things was trying to make the most with our relatively limited assets, but also a large need to fill a variety of roster spots. We walked into the draft with possibly 5 picks that had strong chances at bringing somebody with real potential in and walked out with 8 new members of the team.”

Ham then weighed in on some of the players, beginning with Ric Charlesworth.

“To speak about some of them, I’ll start with Ric Charlesworth. He comes from a great background, has a lot of experience in the family with it comes to professional sim sports in areas such as American Football, Baseball and Cricket even maybe. It sounds like maybe he might not take off as quickly as some of the other top picks in the draft but what he lacks in growth speed will be more than made in effort and consistency. There’s going to be a lot to like with him likely spearheading our middle depth being the only natural centre we drafted.

Another guy with that history is Nike Kickz Jr. Now while I haven’t been in the business as long as some of my predecessors, it might seem that Nike is a well known brand across this league. There was significant interest in connecting him back to his family roots, where he’d be surrounded with the right supports and the right kind of crowd to not only keep this guy focused on his development but also on the long term success of his career. They also appear very team focused and willing to ply their trade down the middle and take draws.”

Ham then covered Jesse Trudeau and Ilya Sokolov:

“Jesse Trudeau was the pick right after, and one that I know that some other teams also coveted [somewhere] around this spot. Truth be told, the name history raised some questions about whether he was related to the Prime Minister of Canada, but honestly it doesn’t matter to us. We’re just excited to see what they can do for themselves and they seem to be just as excited as well. As a very skill and speed focused winger, they’ll likely become an offensive force for us to rely on for seasons to come. Whether we hone that edge or round out his game with some two-way play will be in discussion but the sky's the limit with this kid.

Ilya Sokolov was an interesting name that seemed to get lost in the muddle of this massive class. They’ve got an absolute laser and a cannon for a shot, but having started later than their peers in their career, seem like they’ve got a lot to make up to round up their game in order to best make use of their talents. I think there could be some questions of seeing him playing wing while he becomes accustomed to the other elements of his game but his shooting ability is easily already best in the league. Certainly a longer term project but this might be a name that is pointed out from opposing coaches if we can make sure to put them in a position to succeed with the strengths they have.”

Finally, Ham discussed the Berserkers’ final pick, Sebastian Andrews.

“Last but not least, our final pick in Sebastian Andrews is a bit of an enigma. They’re coming from abroad and while they initially declared their interest in wanting to join the junior league in the SMJHL, a lot of efforts in trying to contact them and their party have been met with little response so far. They seem to be coming and going at their own will and while I expect them to be there when they’re called on to start games and be there for them, whether they’ll come back around and buy into the team development and team locker room will be an interesting question. Nothing’s final yet with this.”

IN CONCLUSION

Only a few seasons ago, the Berserkers only brought in two rookies in Jonas Kahnwald and Vaseline Podcalzone to the mix in their Season 55 draft. Kahnwald and Podcalzone are now third year veterans coming back in to help the Berserkers capture another title. Since then, the Berserkers have had two large drafts that have certainly given the team a lot of energy, as their old core of players have all mostly gone up to call ups now outside of a few.

It will be interesting to see how this core of players progress. Not only will the team require vocal sophomore seasons from their Season 56 draft class, but this Season 57 draft class will also have to give it their all to help push this team into another berth in the Four Star Cup finals.

Word Count: 2500
Special thanks to @Sopath @supertardis101 @Nhamlet @lmao for their help on this media piece!

***SDCore*** · 11-24-2020, 06:21 PM

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeg

Clean Andrei Kostitsyn · 11-24-2020, 07:08 PM

wow

i not reed it but is many words congrate

*Festinator* · 11-25-2020, 03:49 AM

yessir thats BEEG

Samsung virtual assistant · 11-25-2020, 06:58 AM

BEEG

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