Art Vandelay Junior Review

[Gustav 6,428]

Vandelay reflects upon his life, during the summer that changed it.

 

Art Vandelay was like any other perfectly normal New York kid. He loved the Yankees, hung out at the local café, and dreamed of a career in architecture. Professional hockey wasn't even a consideration, until one day years later when his mother took a nasty fall at home.

 

By this time, Vandelay was 33 years old and working as an importer-exporter. His life was flipped upside down as he left work to care for his mother--a shift that led to him sitting in the hospital for extended periods of time away from the daily grind. With his mind off work, he started to realize that he had lived his whole life out of shape.

 

"It was at that moment that it hit me," he says. "I had to stop treating my body like it was an amusement park."

 

He started off slow, as he had to when much of his life was taken up by sitting down. There wasn't much lifting that could be done in a hospital, so he started off by juggling. "I felt that I already had pretty good hand speed, so I thought, 'why not improve my coordination as well?' I was right about the first part and did a lot to build up the second within just a couple weeks," Vandelay revealed about his start. "It's different from what I'd ever done with my hands before, and the skills I picked up over that time even won me a bet or two."

 

At first, Vandelay simply returned to his job with a new hobby. After a messy breakup with his then-girlfriend, though ("I noticed one day that she had heterochromia! What kind of insecure individual doesn't understand that they are going to be faced with questions about that?"), he needed something to do to pass the time and joined a recreational hockey league after seeing a flyer posted at the community pool. Taking his juggling skills to the net, Vandelay found that he was a natural and quickly branched out, finding more competitive leagues and training in a more formal context. After finishing one short season at a .940 SV%, he soon found himself trying to walk into the Rangers' training camp--and though he didn't make the cut there, he made connections.

 

It wasn't long before he landed a mid-season backup role with the Ottawa Lynx, making appearances in 4 games and winning them all. And though S83 didn't end in a championship, it did end in a great deal of growth and success, as Vandelay put up a .924 SV% and a 1.88 GAA en route to top-tier prospect status. It remains to be seen what will happen with Vandelay's big-league career, but his rapid growth and minor-league domination point to a promising and intriguing future.