First season down

[Xflexz 179]

The first season is in the books for my new career. I ended up joining up with the Mississauga Hounds near the end of the season, I wasn't instantly the starter but it took only a few days before I was given the full time starter role in the net. Our forward lines were pretty filled out with decent to good players so our scoring was usually fairly decent. The only issue was our defense was being propped up by a single player and when that happened the other team was getting some juicy juicy goal scoring opportunities. When we would play good teams I would get pounded by shots and let in a few goals as a result but we still found ways to keep the games close. I'm overall pretty happy with my team selection and we did well enough to call it a success. 

 

Near the end of the season, we went on a hot streak. Was my joining of the team a part of that hot streak? I would like to think I helped in making that hot streak possible. Since the standings were already pretty much dead set for where we would finish even that hot streak didn't change the seeding one but for us. We could've actually gone on a freezing ice cold streak and still stayed in the same spot so that streak was mostly a confidence booster heading into the playoffs. To end the season I had a total of ten games played, six wins, two losses, and two overtime losses. My save percentage was what I would classify as hot garbage at a grand .893 save percentage. With that save percentage, I'm shocked we won more games than lost but I guess our offense carried that hard. I let in an average of three goals per game and had a pretty neat shutout tucked in there in the little amount I was able to play.

 

We entered the playoffs as the seventh seed and were set to play the Saskatoon Wild. Their team was actually better in every single area of the game compared to us. We were fighting an uphill battle the entire time with no help from anywhere. We opened the series with a two to one win. We managed to win it in overtime on an Ozzy Batty goal to put us up one to zero in the round. I faced thirty three shots and saved thirty two of them for an elite .970 save percentage and also won the first star of the game! We lost game two four to five in overtime. I faced an amazing fifty five shots this game saving fifty of them. Even though I let in five goals I still say I had a decent game but could've been better and stole a win. We sadly lost games three and four as well losing seven to six and two to one. We lost game three in overtime just like game two and it was probably my worst performance of the series while I played a pretty great game in game four but the offense couldn't get over the hump to get the win. Now we were down three games to one in the series and were facing elimination. The first three games of the series went to overtime and were all won or lost by a nose hair and even game four was only lost by a single goal. We've been pretty unlucky thus far in losing three out of four one goal games but if we could keep that up we had a chance of coming back. We ended up playing our worst game of the series as a team and lost four to one :). 

 

Getting bounced out of the playoffs is always a down feeling. Especially after losing that many games by a single goal and a couple going into overtime. We were so close to stealing the series away if a couple of things went our way. My personal performance in the playoffs was actually better than my performance in the regular season even while playing better competition. I ended the Playoffs with one win, two losses, and two overtime losses. I have a save percentage that was over nine hundred this time at .901. My goals against average was 3.63 and I had zero shutouts.

 

Now that my time has concluded here in Mississauga it is time to be released and sent into the pool of draftees for the upcoming VHLM draft. I honestly do not mind a whole lot about who ends up taking me in the draft. Coming back to Mississauga would be nice but probably not realistic. I do not anticipate myself being a top five draft pick but maybe a very end of the round first or early second round pick simply because my tpe totals aren't high enough yet since I just created a few weeks ago. Me being a goalie might help my draft ranking a small amount since there are only so many great goalies you can get but with the low tpe cap for the VHLM having a mid goalie isn't nearly as hurtful to the team as it would be in the VHL. The only thing I'm really looking for in a team is one that will start me on day one and have me play nearly all the games. I understand sometimes you gotta rotate some days so I don't mind not playing one hundred percent of the games. I'm also wanting a team with a semi active locker room or more so I can pop in and have some short conversations on occasion. And lastly, i'd like a team that is going for a cup. They don't need to be a top contender necessarily but if hate to be added to a team that is struggling to make the playoffs or is on a downward spiral. If I were taken to a team like that I wouldn't really complain all that much since I'll probably only be down in the VHLM for one more season since that pesky tpe cap will kick me up to the E pretty quickly.

 

1032 Words

 

Claiming for Weeks ending 7/14 & 7/21

Edited July 8 by Xflexz

[mmrs617 321]

You did amazing for us in such a short time. I'm excited to see how you do next season!

[Xflexz 179]

Claim week ending 7/21