most successful members by world cup team part one i can't think of a good title for this one but it's about europe

[scoop 3,432]

The World Cup has been a staple of the Victory Hockey League since its inception over a decade ago. Occurring following every even-numbered season, aside from a brief period of time in which it was every third season, there has been a total of 36 tournaments. Throughout that time, some members have dedicated player after player to the same nation, while others choose to mix it up a bit more. In this series of articles, I am going to be looking at the members who have had the most success with each of the World Cup teams throughout their entire time in the VHL.

 

With the exception of Team Canada and Team USA, World Cup teams are comprised of a group of several nations. These team boundaries have changed over time with the changing trends in player nationalities, so it does muddy things up a bit. While not a perfect solution, I have decided to group some of the teams together to try to closely resemble the modern divisions. I will also make note of players who have had the most success with each individual team.

 

I'm going to start with the team that has had the most messed up history: Team Europe. When the league first started, three of the six World Cup teams were comprised of the nations that make up today's Team Europe, though some of these teams would have included players that would now be assigned to Team World. Throughout the years, we have had Western Europe, Central Europe, Switzerland, Germany, and United Kingdom, often with multiple of them in the league at the same time.

 

@Phil

 

I'm going to get straight to the member who has brought the most medals to Europe: Phil Knight. It should not come as a huge surprise that Phil has had a great deal of success with the various European teams. His first player, Phil Gerrard, was part of the United Kingdom explosion of the late teens and early twenties. Over the course of two players, Phil helped them win four silver medals. While the United Kingdom no longer had their own team, Phil continued making English players. He was as steadfast with his players' nationalities as he was their first names. He had his most international success with Phil Hamilton, who two golds and two silvers with Team Western Europe. Since Phil joined the league, he has won 15 medals with seven different players for European international teams. In fact, the only medal-winning team that he wasn't part of was Team Europe's bronze medal in S24, but even that was only because Phil was representing the UK at the time.

 

@Knight

 

While Phil's success in the league has eclipsed his brother's, David has still certainly been a huge part in Europe's World Cup history. It started at the very first World Cup, where David Night was a part of the gold medal-winning Team Western Europe. He later won a couple medals with Team Switzerland when that was a thing. While he certainly wasn't in Phil's shadow during the careers of Walcott, Smalling, and Hamilton, he has not won a medal without his brother since Season 14, nor has he won a gold medal since that first World Cup. Still, nine medals with five players is nothing to sneeze at, and anyone who was in the league during David's tenure would likely see "the Knights" as England's finest as opposed to just Phil.

 

@Victor

 

Victor is someone who has just had a lot of success in general, and while he hasn't had the same dedication to one nationality as the Knights throughout his careers, he has won medals with the handful of players from the British Isles. Victor was late to the UK party, though Bentley did pick up a silver in Season 34 before a restructure which saw it become part of Team Europe, with whom Bentley won a couple more medals. The impressive thing about Victor, and this is a bit of a spoiler here, but this is not the only time he will appear in this series.

 

@der meister

 

Finally we get to some representation of continental Europe, courtesy of der meister's German-born players. Till Lindemann was not a star by any means, but he was part of Team Europe's silver medal squad in Season 37. With Christoph Klose, der meister won a pair of gold medals, which is more than either David or Victor had with the central and western European teams. It is for that reason that he gets a bump up from being an honorable mention, even if some of the members down there have just as many medals as he does.

 

Honorable Mentions:

Perhaps @solas could be more than an honorable mention, but none of his six qualifying medals were golds, and also I don't know exactly where Turd Ferguson is from. I do know he was on Team Europe when Team UK was in existence, so that does give a bit of a hint about where he was from. Later on, solas did have much more successful players in the Dutch Willem Janssen and the German Lukas Muller, who combined for four silvers and a bronze.

 

Swiss players were all the rage in the early days of the VHL, and while @scotty could get a bigger shoutout due to the legendary status of Scotty Campbell and Tomas Jenskovic, I'd like to talk more about @Quik. It's possible that Scotty's players had a bigger impact on the teams, but Quik's players do have more medals (Branden Snelheid, 3; and Matt Bailey, 2). Both Hall of Famers, Quik also had Hall of Famer Matthew Pogge from Switzerland, but he never won a World Cup medal. There are other players from the Swiss generation of the VHL that have won five medals, but I think Scotty and Quik are the standouts for sure.

 

@RawEnergy has six medals between his time with Leander Kaelin (Team Switzerland), Shane Lynch (Team United Kingdom), and Miroslav Ladic (Team Europe). For clarification, this is not the Miroslav Ladic who was RawEnergy's first player, but rather the one who played zero games in the VHL and was carried to a bronze medal while having under 60 TPE. The Ladic that did win a medal was definitely unimpressive, but RawEnergy was one of my favorite teammates when I first joined Davos so I was definitely going to include him here; plus, he was more than just a part of the Switzerland fad, and Lynch was not an entirely insignificant player.

 

 

 

1092 words; claiming for weeks ending 6/6 and 6/13

Edited June 13, 2021 by scoop

[solas 1,951]

Cool idea for an article! Looking forward to seeing the other nations. Ferguson was German fwiw

[Hank 67]

This is a great article! Nothing missing and very interesting!

9.75/10

[a_Ferk 766]

I like your title, very short and sweet 

I feel like there was a different conclusion to draw from your media spot, but the thing that stood out to me is how many players named David and Phil there were. The UK also seems like it is has overwhelming representation for the best Euro born players. 10/10 article

[Victor 10,940]

It's beautiful

[Phil 5,119]

The Golden Era, featuring Phil, @der meister and @Victor 

 

Great article @scoop. It's fun to look at that stuff and has vindicated my decision to stick with Phils and the UK

Edited June 7, 2021 by Phil

[JardyB10 4,865]

On 6/6/2021 at 7:07 PM, solas said:

Cool idea for an article! Looking forward to seeing the other nations. Ferguson was German fwiw

I thought he was Irish for some reason…

[scoop 3,432]

...

Edited June 13, 2021 by scoop

[scoop 3,432]

On 6/7/2021 at 1:35 PM, Phil said:

The Golden Era, featuring Phil, @der meister and @Victor 

 

Great article @scoop. It's fun to look at that stuff and has vindicated my decision to stick with Phils and the UK

The UK is one of the greatest hockey nations in the VHL, probably number five because Sweden and Finland have more quantity, but the UK has more players in the Hall of Fame than any nation other than Canada and the US.