Booberry Making the Leap?

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Helsinki, Finland -- The first two seasons of Xavier Booberry's professional career were relatively pressure-free. Playing for a team that was finishing off its rebuild and had potential, but not overly pushing, for the playoffs, Booberry could grow and take his lumps. While he played solidly and showed flashes of what he could become, Booberry also had enough poor games in there to say that he was still growing.

 

But now, it seems the time to be a star may be here. Not only is Helsinki as a team expected to take a leap this season, but Booberry himself has been garnering additional buzz as a breakout player. In fact, not only has he been garnering Top Goalie consideration with a number of S75 goalies retiring, but he's received a few MVP prediction votes as well.

 

For the third-year player who does have a previous VHLM MVP to his name, it would be a bit easy to be overwhelmed. But Booberry is dealing with the hype in a simple way: not listening to it.

 

"All I can control is my training and my play, and whatever will be will be after that," Booberry said. "I'll let the marketing folks deal with all of that hype stuff."

 

In the preseason, Booberry finished with a 2-1 record, playing strong in two games against Riga but getting chased from the game against Moscow. If Booberry is going to be an awards contender this season, he'll need more of the former and less of the latter as the regular season begins in earnest this week.