Almost Time

[der meister 3,122]

Time is running out on the VHL postseason, which means it’s almost time for free agency to open up and teams to start making their pitches to Japanese defender Ryuji Sakamoto. For his part, Sakamoto has not been idle, though it’s hard to make a lot of waves during playoffs if you’re not actually in said playoffs. He has returned to his apartment in the Redmond Barrens, one of Seattle’s suburbs, and has been ticking off the days to the start of free agency on a calendar that never leaves the table. While his time in Seattle was now three teams ago, the stints with each of those teams were so brief that he never really settled in. For my part, I’ve been doing my best to keep him away from The Jump House, the wretched little dive bar where Sakamoto’s alleged illicit activities began.

 

His offseason training regimen has changed over the years, and he is more focused on maintenance than building muscle, keeping his physicality in a similar place to what he’s developed over the past few seasons. Never a particularly high scorer at the VHL level, Sakamoto has dedicated the majority of his time to cardiovascular exercises, which shows his intention of being a top pair defenseman next season, at least in my opinion. His daily stay at the gym is lengthy, typically north of six hours a day. This is not a player who is ready to call it a career by any stretch.

 

Personally, I’m a bit of a planner, so this job honestly drives me a little crazy sometimes. Not knowing where I’m going to be in two weeks is stressful. I pride myself on being familiar with a great number of hole-in-the-wall restaurants around the world, but again, I am a planner, so the uncertainty is causing me some anxiety. But you don’t read these pieces to get to know me, the embedded journalist.

 

Ryuji Sakamoto’s career hasn’t exactly gone the way I’d anticipated. When he was drafted to a rebuilding Toronto Legion, I assumed he might spend his entire career in Ontario. A sudden change of management later saw Sakamoto traded, quite unexpectedly, to Seattle. In the literary world, that kind of thing would be called foreshadowing. In fact, now that I reflect, almost half of the teams for which Sakamoto has donned a uniform have been, shall we say, questionable, in terms of communication from the top. It’s impossible at this point in time to not question the owners who actually hire the general managers for some of these teams. As someone who has been doing this for a rather lengthy amount of time, I find the degeneration of VHL management to be concerning, to be quite frank.

 

To that end, there is no doubt in my mind that Sakamoto has also felt slighted by some of his experiences as he has traveled around the league. When I met him, he never struck me as the kind of player who would make demands of a team, whether it pertained to ice time, utilization, personnel, or honestly anything. He was the epitome of a guy who was happy to be here, wherever here might be. Now, though, he has a different outlook on the process, and realizes that this is a two-way street. Management can put him in position to succeed, or to fail. He has a clear idea of what is required for him to succeed, and I know he’s chomping at the bit to get into some real discussions with General Managers who actually want that as well.

 

All but one team will have to face the wrath of Sakamoto next season...