Taro Tsujimoto - Veteran Presence

[Gustav 6,081]

 

So I'm old now, is that it? I'm officially a veteran? A boomer? Call me whatever you'd like; Taro is in his third season now and that means I get to write this thing up--arguably my least favorite of the career tasks as "write about what it means to be a veteran" doesn't really sound interesting in the first place...and there isn't much that I can say about myself as a member. I've grown into a locker  room  presence  over the past three seasons? No, I'm the GM. I was that before. I'm leading  the  team  to  success ? No, I play for Davos. There's really not much personal career arc I can talk about with my player, so forgive me if I'm a bit cynical about this. And I'm still in my rookie contract; I'm not a veteran yet.

 

Anyway, about that being a veteran and all that...I guess I could start off by mentioning that I came into the VHL with 300-something TPE, which was then right at the top of the draft class. I don't know how this class made it up to the 340-350 range for its top players at the time of the draft, but maybe we had a long offseason or something like that because I did all the earning I knew how to do. I started off on the second line, stayed there last season, and this season I'm the team's #1 center--though that's more because I traded Hornet than because I've grown into that spot.

 

700 TPE is a solid mark for any player, though, which is what makes Taro finally worthy of some level of recognition beyond just "hot prospect, big earner, also Gustav" (if you like me, the last bit is a plus too; if you don't then you're probably not reading this anyway unless you're at the level of really hating someone where you follow everything they do just to have stuff to complain about). Next season, I'll be somewhere over 800--finally getting me to "this should be a good player" territory rather than just being on the good end of average that I am this season.

 

I will mention that hopefully Taro does serve as one of the league's more recognizable names in the seasons to come--hopefully I'm drafted onto fantasy rosters, put in people's predictions, seen in a cool article or two, finally able to get an award or two after Garcia won none. 

 

And that's 406 words, so there's my cranky old veteran ramble for this career.