Istanbul: A Season of success

[Trazan 131]

Everyone who's been watching VHLE already knows most of this,

for those who don’t; this may come as a bit of surprise, it certainly did for me.

Istanbul won the Kings Cup and Tord Yvel had a great season. Let’s go into what went so well for us in the season of ‘89.

 

 

 

The first thing we need to get out there is our

goalie

Evan Bihler who had a monster season and saved our asses multiple times.

This feat would not be possible without such a strong netminder. 64 games played 48 wins, and 8 first star games.

Best goalie in the league with a 2,16  GAA and shared first with 93,9 sv%. Just an incredible season. But as with anything you can’t do it alone. 

 

Istanbul's defense

seen as a weakness before the season. Here’s a quote from Dougs S89VHL/VHLE/VHLM Preview (Credit to @DstevensonJr) 

 

“Weakness: Blueline. The 4th best first pairing and 5th best second pairing is what hurts the Red Wolves.

Room for growth for consistent earners Yvel (S88) and Laas (S89) could absolutely strengthen this group to get where they need to go.”

 

I don't know how our core four would stack up against the league's top pairings now but I suspect that we wouldn’t be too far off from the top.

The pairs that's been running for most of the season are.

 How about:

 

• 61 Goals and 195 assists for a total of 256 points from the blueline.
• 110+ Shot Blocks from everyone
• 160+ hits from 3 out of four d-men with Erik Finck disching out a massive 233 hits in 72 games!

 

That the defense turned it around and became somewhat of a strength was massive for Istanbul's way to success.

 

The Offense

certainly wasn't something to sneeze at either.

The team Averaging 3.51 goals per game With Steve Lattimer leading the way in scoring with a whooping 104 points, leading all leftwings with a margin of 10 points.

And looking at the top 5 in scoring for forwards Istanbul can proudly present Lattimer at place 4 and Legacy Gaming at 5 with 100 points.

The other player above 1.0 ppg is Ray Withers who I thought really stepped up when needed.

But if you want to be the team with the fewest goals against, even the forwards need to bring it at our end of the rink and although I have no individual stats to back it up, they surely did.

You don't have a team goals against average of 2.29 if they don’t. 

 

And now i would like to take a little time talking about Tord Yvel(Myself)

 

Traded from Geneva to Istanbul for a 3rd round pick  and Tullamore Dew.

Probably a fair deal at the time, Maybe even a little bit in favor of Geneva.

But after this season I believe it would take a whole lot more to get Yvel. 

Leading Istanbul in Assists and shared second place league wide was more than I could have dreamt of.

I was trying to build a defense-first Dman with a strong outlet pass to send the forwards away to do their job.

Expecting to have many blocked shots and hits but doing poorly in the points column.

It went the other way and my god it’s fun to score points, you can say I'm hooked.

So will this change the way I build my player?

Not really,

I think the goal still is to be that type but maybe my build will lead to a more of a two-way defender than I thought.

 

Let’s get the Playoff Hype going! Istanbul for VHLE Champs

 

And a big congrats and  Hurray for VHL’s Sweet sixteen!