Theme Week - Mexico City All Stars

[der meister 2,937]

Note: I'm taking a departure from my Sakamoto-centric series to do this dream team article for theme week.

 

Thinking about the idea of a dream team is always an interesting experiment. Last time, I made a team of all of my different players: Christoph Klose and Essian Ravenwing up front, Till Lindemann and Casey Jones on the blue line - and then added a goalie and a third forward. This time, though, I thought I'd focus on the history of my current VHLM squad, the Mexico City Kings.

 

Any team worth its weight in salt (or some such similar expression) starts in net. To that end, the starting netminder for the Kings' dream team is Wrike Chyrnoble. Chyrnoble is the Kings' franchise record holder for save percentage with a 0.912 and goals against average of 2.24 after playing all but 1 game in season 66. His record on the season was 41-25-5, which was good enough to see him get selected 32nd overall by HC Davos Dynamo. Sadly, Chyrnoble was a flash in the pan and never played a single VHL game, nor did he have the opportunity to return to the VHLM to continue his dominance. 

 

On the blue line, I'm going to be a little self-serving and select my own player Ryuji Sakamoto, along with Flynn Remy, a @jhatty8player. I've spoken at length about Sakamoto's shot blocking, which looks like it could end up second on the Kings' all time rankings (behind a player who played 3 full seasons in the VHLM), so I'm going to focus more on Remy. Drafted 17th overall by Mexico City in season 79, Remy posted 70 points in 72 games in his only VHLM season, along with an excellent +46 plus/minus rating, 146 hits, and 126 blocked shots. The all-around defender was selected 18th overall by Helsinki in season 80 and looks to be a solid contributor at the VHL level already.

 

For the forward group, it was a little harder to decide who to select. Some players went on to have very good to excellent VHL careers, but didn't do much in their time in Mexico City. Ultimately, I'm going with Deke Rike, Shush Nyko, and Chris Foley. While none of these players did much at the VHL level, it's hard to ignore their contributions to the Kings franchise. Rike played a total of 98 games for the Kings, Nyko had 216, and Foley an astonishing 288. Foley and Nyko rank first and second in all-time scoring for the Kings (clearly beneficiaries of spending a lot of time South of the Border, living mas, with Nyko being the team's leading goal scorer and Foley being the number one playmaker. Sadly, they didn't play together, as Foley was a member of the Kings from season 73 through 76, and Nyko from 68 through 70. Both players enjoyed some success at the VHL level, with Foley's 77 points in 72 games for the season 81 Chicago Phoenix the best scoring season between the two of them. He was also a -96 on the season. Gulp. Rike, on the other hand, bounced around the VHLM quite a bit, playing for Saskatoon, Philadelphia, before finally settling in Mexico. In his 98 games for the Kings, Rike put up an excellent 133 points, on the strength of 96 assists, though he never played a single VHL game. 

[jhatty8 662]

Thanks for the shout! Had no clue my VHLM career was significant to any extent.