Alexander Valiq in S66, how did he win!?!?!

[BarzalGoat 728]

If you've made it here then you're probably wondering why I picked such an obscure award from a seemingly obscure season. The answer is really quite obvious, it's because it's the only award any of my players had ever won, but how did I, a player who has been more or less welfare only for about the last 18 seasons, win the coveted top offensive defeseman award? It was the perfect storm of below average competition, a perfect team chemistry in Helsinki, and an uncanny good prime season.

 

The Competition:

To get a good idea of the type of player to win this award, I've taken the winners for the 3 seasons before and 3 seasons after an analyzed them below. 

 

S69 Winner
Diljodh Starload (VAN)
18G 67A 85P +39

S68 Winner
Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen (DAV)
27G 59A 86P +36

S67 Winner
Joseph McWolf (RIG)
27G 50A 77P +9

S66 Winner
Dan Montgomery (HSK)
18G 73A 91P +42

S65 Winner
Tzuyu (TOR)
21G 66A 87P +31

S64 Winner
Robert Malenko (SEA)
21G 85A 106P +39

S63 Winner
Joseph Bassolino (RIG)
21G 89A 110P +53

 

What you'll probably notice from this list is that Dan Montgomery actually had the 3rd most points, 3rd most assits, and 2nd bestplus minus of all of these players, but the fewest goals. This probably has to do with the build, because Dan Montgomery had just switched from F to D in the season or so prior, and still had a Center's build, playing defense. That meant finding a lot of opportunities that other defensemen might not have had, and well, having a really high PA rating for really no good reason.

 

Now next we have to see the other players who were competing for this award in this particular season, of course again included below.

 

A true VHL historian might notice Ryan Kastelic had fewer points, does this prove that Monty was better than the 2000 TPE man? (NO, not at all). But more importantly here,we can see that Samuel Gate actually finished with more points and more assists than Monty did, which is quite interesting because it's about defensemen who provided offense. Now this Helsinki team made it to the Continental Cup, did that factor in? Probably. The stat you should be drawn to immediately here is +/-. Monty was on the sam Titans team as Crosby and Wilson, who were the top pairing with more TPE, but somehow had a much better +/-, a staggering 42! This is really where Monty separates himself from Gate and the rest of them, some might even have considered this a race between Monty and Kovalchuk where the voters decided assists > goals for a defenseman in this award race.

 

The Prime To End all Primes:

 

So I've included Monty's full career offensive statistics below, and did he disappoint with an uncanny good Prime year? I don't think he did at all! Keeping in mind that the only year that he comes close to this he is playing Center minutes on a team with only 2 other active players at the time, his S66 was ridiculous and out of nowhere. It's not unusual for a player to find the most success in the years leading up to depreciation, but it's ridiculous looking back on this career to see that he was able to dominate S66, and then very quickly fall out of favor of the STHS gods. 

 

In summary, I think Monty deserved this award, but it took a perfect storm for this welfare player to get the hardware, and it was well earned. 

[Gustav 6,098]

Short answer: the old award committee was absolute garbage based on what I heard about it. 

 

Long answer: someone probably looked at points exclusively, threw out Gate because of +/-, and went to the next-highest. Discussion was then nonexistent because old award committee (or at least what was allegedly true about it). Based on what's been shown here, my vote probably goes to Kovalchuk for the goals. Congrats on the award though, it's more than I've ever won 

Edited August 17, 2021 by GustavMattias

[Beketov 8,642]

3 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Short answer: the old award committee was absolute garbage based on what I heard about it. 

It varied heavily based on season. However S66 is when I lost my best shot at the Kanou so I'm inclined to hate that season specifically.

[Beketov 8,642]

5 hours ago, BarzalGoat said:

his S66 was ridiculous and out of nowhere. It's not unusual for a player to find the most success in the years leading up to depreciation, but it's ridiculous looking back on this career to see that he was able to dominate S66, and then very quickly fall out of favor of the STHS gods. 

Also of note on this S66 is when Thompson arrived in Helsinki and we had a dominant AF team. If I recall you were feeding me goals left right and center. S67 things got messy between myself and Borwinn so everything got a bit muddied. 

[BarzalGoat 728]

13 hours ago, Beketov said:

Also of note on this S66 is when Thompson arrived in Helsinki and we had a dominant AF team. If I recall you were feeding me goals left right and center. S67 things got messy between myself and Borwinn so everything got a bit muddied. 

Yeah that Helsinki team was ridiculous and my performance was entirely based on having an automatic scorer on the ice at the same time as my player 100% of the time