A Quick look at the Menace's new players.

[Seabass 593]

The Moscow Menace are currently participating in a dogfight for the 1st place in the VHL Standings. The team is currently sitting with 34 points in the standings which is good for third in the VHL tied with D.C. Dragons and 1 point behind the Chicago Pheonix and Warsaw Predators who are both tied for the top spot at 35 points. 

 

The team has underwent a bit of a culture change the last couple of seasons, first starting with the trade of superstar Paul Atreides to Toronto two seasons ago and then last offseason with the trade of their longtime captain Duncan Idaho to the Dragons. Yet, every year somehow, Moscow still ends up being one of the most competitive teams in the VHL and has made the Continental Cup Finals the last 4 years. A lot of the success has to do with the General Manager of the team, Spartan who has made the right moves at the right time to keep us cap compliant and competitive. It's not easy leading the team to 4 straight cup finals but Spartan has made it look easy. He's still waiting for his first championship as a GM however and we're all eager to finally kill this finals curse and win it all. 

 

Today we're going to be talking about our new guys from this season. Yeah I know there's been a few new faces the past few years but I'll just be focusing on the guys who made their Menace debut in Season 84. 

 

Flynn Remy

 

Remy is the only player to be featured in this article that isn't a rookie. He was acquired in the offseason from Helsinki in a trade that sent back our third round pick in the S85 draft. @jhatty8 has been around the VHL for a bit and from what I've seen he's pretty active guy and I've never played with him before so I was pretty happy to get to opportunity to know the guy. Remy had a pretty good rookie S82 rookie season in Helsinki, posting a career high of 44 points but seemed to have regressed offensively in his sophomore season reaching only 29 points. It was pretty surprising however to see a 5'8" defender putting up over a hundred hits in a season so there is a physical element to this player's game. 

 

We're about a quarter of the way into the season and Remy is already doing better playing in Moscow and is sitting with 18 points in 25 games.  He's been defensively sound and has shown a lot of discipline out on the ice. He's only got the 11 PIM for the season and he's been a solid, low maintenance solution on the Menace's back end.

 

Jason Argos

 

The first rookie to be featured in this article is Jason Argos. I also believe this is @Insypher's first player, correct me if I'm wrong. Argos was drafted by Menace with the last selection of the third round of the S82 draft. He's had some pretty impressive numbers in the VHLM hitting 91 points in 72 games for the Mexico City Kings in S82 and getting 58 points in 72 games the next season with the Instanbul Red Wolves of the VHLE. He seems to be a player that also has a lot of grit to his his game as he's also got 100+ hits in his last few seasons in the VHLM/VHLE. 

 

On the Menace's 2nd line Argos has done well, putting up 10 points and going +11 in 25 games. He's already collected 81 hits and brought a lot of energy to his line and has been just as effective physically at the VHL level as he has been in the lesser leagues. He's been a solid contributor to this team and i'm looking forward to see how he progresses from here. 

 

Tomas Sogaard

@Brandon

 

Tomas Sogaard has some draft pedigree as he was drafted 8th overall in the S83 VHL Entry Draft. Last year he was playing on the same squad as Moscow's other rookie Argos for the Instanbul Red Wolves and even though Sogaard eclipsed Argos in TPE, the older player Argos posted the better offensive numbers. Sogaard finished his last season in the VHLE with 42 points in 72 games with the Red Wolves.

 

This year the Menace gave him the opportunity to start the season playing on the team's first line. Sogaard took that opportunity and ran with it as he's collected 19 points in 25 games and has been on the VHL's rookie leader board since the season began. As of today he's the 7th best scoring rookie in the VHL and he's just 4 points away from tying the rookie scoring leader, James Teekirque of HC Davos. What a great start to the year this kid is having, he already looks like he belongs in the VHL.