Zeljko Ranogajec: A Season in Review

[ColeMrtz 571]

Ranogajec's second season in the VHLM was nothing short of shocking. The rather off-meta puck mover was expected to be mediocre, having put no points into scoring and having the majority of the TPE allotted to physical defensive play. This was not the case. Zeljko instead dominated on the Reapers top pairing, posting 90 points with a league leading 84 assists and ranking 4th and 3rd among blocked shots and hits respectively. This performance won him the Vladmir Boomchenko Trophy and runner-up for the Ryan Sullivan, the VHLM's top defenseman award. Sitting about 40 TPE shy of the VHLM cutoff, Zeljko will be spending another season with the Reapers in the VHLM before moving up to join the Malmo Nighthawks, a prospect rich season that should hopefully be entering its window shortly. 

 

I had zero expectations coming into this player. Zeljko was going to be purely a welfare+ player and ideally fade into mediocrity as I played with weird build ideas. Then this dood wins an award and almost wins another. Assuming similar if not improved results this season, Zeljko may clean house with defensive awards. Clearly there's something here that works, and works well. I'm going to try and make Zeljko live up to an award winning player's expectations. Does this mean max earn every week, probably not, but I'll at least look to develop more and hopefully turn into a Moritz Seider-esque piece for the Nighthawks in seasons to come. 

 

Also writing is a lot harder than I remember it being I think this pandemic gave me brain rot.