der meister

Now this is going to be legendary!

I do (:

@The goat of hockey likes fighting people

Player Information
Username: der meister
Player Name: Konstyantyn Shevchenko
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 17
Position: RW
Height: 79 in.
Weight: 214 lbs.
Birthplace: Ukraine

Player Page
@VHLM GM

I knew the user by the player name 🤣
 
Good luck with the new player, aimkin.

Unfortunately no, lol. I work for a private contractor tree company in Connecticut. Though that is a bit odd, we usually call trees against lines and such our problem not the customers. Sounds like your power company and town don't get along!

I knew the user by the player name 🤣
 
Good luck with the new player, aimkin.

Player Information
Username: aimkin
Player Name: Ahsoka Tano
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 31
Position: D
Height: 75 in.
Weight: 165 lbs.
Birthplace: Greenland

Player Page
@VHLM GM

1. The time has come, trade deadline is here and players can recreate for the S95 draft. With that being said, a new Right Winger joins Houston! Konstyantyn Shevchenko @der meister comes from Ukraine and is looking to add to our playoff push! How is Houston looking now heading towards playoffs? We currently are tied with Saskatoon for 1st in the Western Conference.
 
Houston looks to be in great form, and the addition of a quality player like Shevchenko can only solidify Houstons chances of glory.
 
2. Hulk Smash @Cuffy  just recently got engaged! Congrats brother! Of course we will all be invited to the wedding, what wedding gift are you bringing? As GM I am bringing season tickets for everyone that was invited.
 
Poor bastard. It's all downhill from here. I'll buy a set of premium noise-cancelling headphones. They'll come in handy at some point.
 
3. Houston is cruising now! Less than 20 games to play and we still are fighting for 1st in the West. Playoff format follows as 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, and 4v5 by league overall. If playoffs started today, as 4th seed we would play 5th seed Las Vegas Aces. Is Vegas a team you do or do not want to face in the first round? Are there other teams you would prefer to play?
 
Well as an alumni, I always think that the opposition should be afraid. Very afraid.
 
4. I'm always itching for summer as it is my favourite season of the year and I don't have school to worry about. What are you most excited for this summer? I'm heading home to work on the water again and I am very excited for that.
 
Well we are into Autumn down here, so I'm looking forward to cooler temperatures and watching more Rugby.
 
5. Houston is a southern state known for Space Exploration apparently (google searched it, might need @LucyXpher to confirm). If you could travel through space where would you go? I'm heading out of the milky way to find aliens in other galaxies.
 
I'm headed towards the planet/galaxy that contains the sexy space version of the Amazons.
 
6. How has your week been? Anything exciting or fun happening lately? What do you have planned for this week?
 
My week has been pretty quiet, but knocking out sim league PT's and working towards the weekend.

I'm an Electrical Clearance Arborist.

Player Information
Username: der meister
Player Name: Konstyantyn Shevchenko
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 17
Position: RW
Height: 79 in.
Weight: 214 lbs.
Birthplace: Ukraine

Player Page
@VHLM GM

Kostyantyn Shevchenko was born in Rokhmaniv, Ukraine, a small village in the western part of the country, in Ternopil Oblast. It's a tiny town of fewer than 1,000 citizens, and a town where Shevchenko always stood out. Standing almost exactly 2 meters in height and weighing in at 97 kilos, Shevchenko was always highly athletic and physically capable. It was as a young child on a field trip to Kremenets, the nearest city of comparatively substantial size, where Shevchenko first witnessed hockey, though in this case it was a group of slightly older boys playing a variation of street hockey. Shevchenko slipped away from his group to join the boys, who provided him with a battered old stick. The young Kostyantyn, despite not understanding the rules, proved to be a fast study and dominated the impromptu game, using his size and strength to gain control of the ratty ball they used as a puck.

Several years passed before Shevchenko had another opportunity to grab a stick, though this time it was on ice, skating on a lake west of Rokhmaniv. Although only a passable skater, his size led to a traveling scout who happened to be in the area, Volodymyr Andrichuk, to ask the young Shevchenko if he had ever played hockey before. Shevchenko told of the trip to Kremenets, and the scout gave him a stick and a handful of pucks to "show what he's got." The scout appeared impressed and asked the youth his age. When Kostyantyn revealed he had just turned 12, the scout's eyes went wide, as even at that age, Shevchenko was over 1.7m tall. Due to his rapid growth, most of his clothing was too small, so his musculature was plainly evident as well.

Within a month, the 12-year-old Shevchenko was offered an opportunity to relocate to Kalush, nearly 4 hours southwest of Rokhmaniv, to play for the Legion Kalush youth team. After a series of discussions with his parents, Kostyantyn finally accepted the offer, conditional on being provided an apartment in Kalush for himself and his mother.

Playing for the 16u Legion Kalush squad, Kostyantyn Shevchenko registered 13 goals and 4 assists in his first 9 games, mostly as a power play specialist. Within a month, he was being recruited by several different teams in Slovenia, Poland, and Belarus. His loyalty remained with Legion Kalush, however, and his skills grew rapidly. While Legion u16 did not win their league championship, the now 13-year-old Shevchenko was clearly the star of the team and often drew double-coverage. Learning to play through adversity of that nature proved to be an extraordinary development tool, and in 36 games the following season, Kostyantyn set a league record with 103 goals and added 35 assists, en route to a team mark of 34-1-1.

Not everything was positive for the young Shevchenko, however. Rumors swirled that the Russian Federation was planning an invasion, likely launched from the illegally-annexed Crimea region of Ukraine. While Crimea is nearly all the way across the country from Kalush, Shevchenko could sense the anxiety from both his coaches and his mother. On one particular weekend, Shevchenko overheard his parents speaking from the living room in their apartment, and heard his father, not yet 40, express concern that he may be conscripted to fight against the Russians should a full-scale invasion take place. Secretly, Kostyantyn wondered if he should use his ice hockey talents to get himself and his family across the border into Poland or Slovenia, having fully discounted Belarus as an option due to their political closeness with Russia.

Before he had the opportunity to broach the subject with his mother, a representative of a team located in Vienna, Austria, reached out to the coaching staff of Legion Kalush. To this day, Kostyantyn is unaware of all of the details of that conversation, but what it led to was his head coach, Roman Levchuk, encouraging his family to sell their home in Rokhmaniv and move to Vienna. Levchuk had negotiated on behalf of his star player, concerned that Russian grandstanding could lead to outright violence and war. Levchuk had arranged, if the Shevchenko family accepted the offer, for Kostyantyn to play for the 15u UPS Vienna Caps, and between UPS Vienna and Legion Kalush, would provide the family with the funds necessary to relocate and secure housing.
 

 
 
Fast-forwarding a few years, Shevchenko has become a promising blue chip prospect in the International Central European Hockey League, or ICE Hockey League, playing for the Vienna Capitals. The league consists of 8 teams in Austria, 3 in Italy, 1 in Hungary, and 1 in Slovenia, and while Vienna hasn't won the league championship since 2017, before Shevchenko joined them, he has proven to be a stalwart left winger who projects as a top line scorer at the highest levels.

With the VHLM Entry Draft on the horizon, Kostyantyn Shevchenko has declared himself eligible, despite the fact that he would be once again asked to uproot his life, this time to move to North America to play for one of the 10 teams that make up that league. As for his parents, they have grown accustomed to life in Austria, and as Russian aggression did indeed escalate into war, they began working to secure evacuation for fellow Ukrainian civilians, having started a foundation within Austria to aid refugees. Kostyantyn's biggest reason for declaring for the VHLM Entry Draft is one he has kept secret from his parents: he wishes to provide them with the money they need to continue their foundation and grow it as much as possible. 

Player Information
Username: der meister
Player Name: Konstyantyn Shevchenko
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 17
Position: RW
Height: 79 in.
Weight: 214 lbs.
Birthplace: Ukraine

Player Page
@VHLM GM

Both of the images on this page are stellar

Both of the images on this page are stellar

Both of the images on this page are stellar

Player Information
Username: der meister
Player Name: Konstyantyn Shevchenko
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 17
Position: RW
Height: 79 in.
Weight: 214 lbs.
Birthplace: Ukraine

Player Page
@VHLM GM

Zagreus is impressed

Player Information
Username: Phil
Player Name: Phil Sakic
Recruited From: Member (Knight)
Age: 17
Position: LW
Height: 71 in.
Weight: 195 lbs.
Birthplace: United Kingdom

Player Page
@VHLM GM

welcome to houston

Player Information
Username: der meister
Player Name: Konstyantyn Shevchenko
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 17
Position: RW
Height: 79 in.
Weight: 214 lbs.
Birthplace: Ukraine

Player Page
@VHLM GM

Thank you! I figured it was for the greater good.
 

Welcome back to the VHL!

Every time I start a new player in the VHL, I think about the history I have with this league, so I thought it would be fun to do a cursory revisit on the players I've had in the VHL since joining around Season 30. As the title suggests, this will be broken into two parts.
 
My first player here in the VHL was Till Lindemann, a heavy, shutdown defender where I roleplayed the singer from Rammstein. That was fun until real life got in the way and Till more or less went inactive. Not an auspicious start. Further, last year [2023] the real life Till Lindemann was accused of some pretty heinous shit, particularly as it comes to sex crimes. I haven't looked into the current status of those allegations, but needless to say as a fan of Rammstein's music and persona since 1997, it was deeply unsettling, and I have regrets about my first player here being modeled after Lindemann.
 
Next was Christoph Klose, which was a really fun player to have. In this case, I was roleplaying my old SHL player coming out of retirement in the "rival" VHL. Klose was my most successful player, and was an excellent two-way forward. For anyone who's read a number of my pieces, undoubtedly you've seen me say things like "Klose was a Lord Karnage away from being a Hall of Famer". That was because Lord Karnage was frequently a quarter of a step ahead of Klose in key categories, which meant that he won a multitude of individual awards while Klose was the runner up. Still, winning 3 Cups in 5 seasons with 3 different teams, and getting to the finals in the other 2 seasons, is a hell of an accomplishment.