Does an MVP player mean Rookie success?

[CowboyinAmerica 2,911]

 

How did VHL MVP winners do their rookie years?

 

The reigning VHL Christian Stolzschweiger Trophy holder for Rookie of the Year is Antonia Bucatini, which I think is a cool thing. I’ve put in some hard work to be a good player to this point, and it’s always helpful to see those results be reflected on the ice.

 

However, I know as well as anybody that winning Rookie of the Year is not a sure thing. In fact, this is my third Rookie of the Year trophy - and it’s come with mixed results. My first RotY was with forward Gabriel McAllister, in S56 with a then-rebuilding Seattle Bears team. Of course, that trophy was the first of many for McAllister, who would go on to win multiple MVPs and Finals MVPs en route to an illustrious career. My second RotY, though, was with defenseman Lance Flowers with the New York Americans in S68. And while Flowers actually won two trophies that year, including the Top Defensive Defenseman, he would win just one individual award the rest of his career and no VHL titles en route to a solid, but unspectacular career.

 

So with those in mind, it got me thinking: Just how much does a rookie season actually portend a successful career? To figure it out, I decided to take the prompt from the other end: How well have recent MVPs done in their rookie season? Was the talent evident from the start, or did the league’s MVPs arise out of unremarkable rookie means?

 

To decide, here’s a glance into the MVPs from the past ten seasons, with a brief look at how their rookie campaigns turned out.

 

S93 and S94 winner: G Lachlan Summers @kirbithan

Rookie Year S88 (DAV): RotY, 64 GP, 39-18-7, 0.932 SV%, 2.30 GAA, 4 SO

 

Rookie goalies are a unique case in that so much is dependant on context of the team they’re placed on. For many top goalies (including ones we’ll explore later), they’re drafted to rebuilding teams and thus their stats look horrible until the team around them grows. Summers, though, had the opposite situation: Taking over for Xavier Booberry after a backup role during S87, Summers burst onto the scene right away on a Davos team expected to contend for a title. As a result, it’s maybe no surprise that Summers won a Stolzschweiger Trophy with one of the best records and an excellent save percentage and GAA for a rookie. Already, you could tell with their rookie appearance that Summers would be an eventual Hall of Fame goalie.

 

S92 winner: G Merome Dilson @MexicanCow123

Rookie Year S89 (CGY): 55 GP, 27-21-7, 0.917 SV%, 2.84 GAA, 1 SO

 

Already, we get to one of those goalies with a slightly different team situation. Calgary was solid - they would finish third in North America and seventh overall, providing a halfway decent team around the rookie Dilson. But unlike Summers, it was not enough coverage for some goaltending deficiencies. Dilson’s .917 save percentage would rank next-to-last among VHL goalies with at least 50 games played, only above rebuilding Helsinki’s Fuuka Rask. Meanwhile, journeyman backup goalie Karl Pederson would finish with a .920 save percentage for the same Calgary team in 17 starts, providing a bit of an unflattering comparison. Dilson would obviously turn things around quickly though, with their MVP season for Calgary coming in just their fourth year.

 

S91 winner: F Scotty Sundin @fromtheinside

Rookie Year S83 (CHI): 72 GP, 31 G, 32 A, 63 P, -36, 127 hits, 54 SB, 6 GWG

 

Sundin’s stats should come with a bit of a disclaimer, seeing as how they were one of the first pioneers to go skip the VHLE and go after a 9-season VHL career once that was made an option in Season 80. But especially with that context, Sundin’s rookie season doesn’t look too terrible. Their 31 goals ranked second among rookies in the VHL that season (behind teammate The Board Game Clue on Skates), with their 63 points ranking seventh overall. Especially paired with Clue and co-RotY winner D Bo Johansson, the future was bright for the Phoenix rebuild, even if it meant a rough plus-minus this season. Another MVP here that you might have been able to see coming.

 

S90 winner: F Todd Cooke @KRZY

Rookie Year S86 (LAS): 72 GP, 10 G, 19 A, 29 P, -27, 25 hits, 13 SB, 3 GWG

 

Now we get to our first MVP that it would have been really tough to predict after their rookie year. Cooke was drafted 27th overall in the S84 VHL Draft and took until S86 to reach the majors. Once they did so, it wasn’t a guaranteed thing either - Cooke received spot minutes for a next-to-last-place Stars team that was clearly building for the future. Although Cooke actually finished eighth on the Stars in points this season, that might not be the best stat, given that the team lead was a tie between Scoish Velociraptor Maloish and Poopy Peepants at just 53 points. But Cooke would grow rapidly from here, with his points raising from 29 to 66 by the next season, then 83, 91 and finally 110 in his MVP campaign with the Stars.

 

S89 winner: F John Jameson @Frank

Rookie Year S86 (PRG): RotY, 72 GP, 28 G, 39 A, 67 P, +14, 61 hits, 22 SB, 5 GWG

 

Jameson is an interesting counterpoint to Cooke in that they were rookies the same season, but Jameson was on a playoff Prague team rather than the rebuilding stars. And it shows not only in the plus-minus, but in the opportunities Jameson was afforded playing with strong teammates. Although Jameson’s 67 points were just fifth on Prague, they were a higher total than anybody on L.A. that season, and experienced teammates such as Erlantz Jokinen (65 assists) and Saku Kotkakoivu (50 assists) were more readily available to set Jameson up. Our second Stolzschweiger Trophy winner already on this list, it’s perhaps no surprise to see Jameson as a future MVP winner given his rookie season.

 

S88 winner: G Xavier Booberry @CowboyinAmerica

Rookie Year S81 (HSK): 65 GP, 29-30-4, 0.909 SV%, 3.63 GAA, 3 SO

 

Hey, it’s me! Or maybe I don’t want to look back at Booberry’s rookie season stats, because boy were they not good. Unlike Summers or Dilson, who debuted on strong teams, this Helsinki squad was very much not that - if I remember correctly, I might have been close to the team lead in TPE even as a rookie. That resulted in a .909 save percentage that ranked third-from-last among full-time goalies, only above Warsaw’s Andrew Bowman and Chicago’s Barry Taffe. And there was no way Booberry was touching that year’s RotY winner, Seattle goalie Em Em Flex who put up 39 wins and a .920 save percentage. The HOF numbers for Booberry would come in short order, but you’d never know it by his rookie season.

 

S87 winner: F Sirdsvaldis Miglaskems @FrostBeard

Rookie Year S82 (SEA): 72 GP, 16 G, 56 A, 72 P, -7, 159 hits, 34 SB, 1 GWG

 

Miglaskems’ rookie season looks very similar to Jameson’s in that they were a solid player on a good team. Seattle would finish third in North America during Miglaskems’ rookie season, with six different players (including fellow rookie Hulk Hogan 2) topping 70 points for the team. Miglaskems played more like a distributor for his three seasons in Seattle, in which he’d rack up 154 assists compared to just 57 goals over that time period. But that ratio would soon flip upon joining the Stars, where he’d go for 54 goals and 51 assists in his rookie campaign. A solid enough season for Miglaskems that could have portended some bigger things, even if he was nowhere near Nils Godlander’s insane-for-a-rookie 131 point number that season.

 

S86 winner (1): G Dusty Wilson @dustywilson22

Rookie Year S84 (SEA): 64 GP, 40-19-5, 0.924 SV%, 2.44 GAA, 2 SO

 

One of the two co-MVP winners in S86, Wilson showed bright but burned out quick in four VHL seasons. The first of those campaigns in S84 saw his situation as similar to Summers soon after, on a strong team with true title aspirations in his rookie season (in fact they would get to the finals, but lose to Warsaw). With that strong team behind him, Wilson was able to come out firing, with a .924 save percentage that ranked right near the middle of the league and a 40 win total that was top five in the VHL. Wilson would lose RotY this season to fellow goalie Augustus Kennedy’s .930 save percentage on a worse New York team, though one might have expected that both would be goalie chart mainstays for years to come (and not, as actually happened, that both would be retired before the end of S89).

 

S86 winner (2): F Daniel Janser @Daniel Janser

Rookie Year S82 (CGY): 72 GP, 23 G, 50 A, 73P, +40, 198 hits, 36 SB, 1 GWG

 

The other co-MVP winner in S86, Janser’s rookie S82 campaign looks very similar to Miglaskems who would win MVP the next season. Playing for a strong Calgary playoff team, Janser would initially play the role of distributor to some of his Wranglers teammates like 50 goal scorers Reylynn Reinhart and Gustislav Nasherov on a squad that would ultimately have a whopping eight players top 70 points. Even if Janser was technically seventh out of those eight in scoring, it’s clear the talent was there - Janser would never score below 70 points in eight seasons, and would ultimate reach 120 points in his Season 86 MVP campaign. Even if once again not at Godlander’s crazy S82 heights, it’s clear that the talent was there his rookie season.

 

S85 winner: F Jerome Reinhart @MexicanCow123

Rookie Year S79 (VAN): RotY, 72 GP, 35 G, 38 A, 73 P, +18, 90 hits, 15 SB, 4 GWG

 

Reinhart’s inclusion to finish off this list is going to come with two caveats. First, Reinhart’s rookie season came before the advent of the VHLE, meaning that rookies as a whole were entering the league at a lower TPE level. But second, and perhaps more important: This was the height of Meta Vancouver, where a whole load of 99 scoring, 40 passing players would be a major impetus for the hybrid attributes that the league now enjoys. Jerome Reinhart and teammate rookie Tyler Reinhart definitely took advantage of said meta, riding Vancouver to 35 and 33 goals respectively, while their nearest rookie competitor tallied just 22. It would be a Rookie of the Year for Reinhart, the third of recent MVPs on this list, which is evidence of a trend by me.

 

What I’ve Learned

 

It’s interesting to me that of the 10 MVPs from the past 10 seasons, three of them won the Stolzschweiger Trophy for Rookie of the Year beforehand. But it’s perhaps even more interesting that, even among those rookies that didn’t win the title, they still had good stats. All of the position players bar one had 60 points during their rookie season, while all of the goalies bar one had at least a .917 save percentage. In fact, when looking at the list as a whole, there are only two real outliers: Todd Cooke, whose fortunes really rocketed up near the back half of his career, and my own Xavier Booberry, who played for a really poor Helsinki team that first season.

 

One thing that does stand out to me, though, is how few of these future MVPs played for bad teams at the beginning of their careers. I would expect a decent number of future MVPs to be drafted high, play for rebuilding teams to start, and eventually grow into the roles that would make them MVPs. But I’d say almost the opposite occurred here: More than half of these future MVPs played for playoff teams their rookie year, learning from the best before going on to be the best themselves. In that way, Cooke and Booberry are once again outliers, with Sundin added to make only three future MVPs that played for rebuilding teams their rookie year.

 

Of course, only 10 players is a small sample size, and who knows what will happen as the fluctuations of the VHL keep turning. But it’s an interesting thing to see: Maybe there is some correlation between rookie season success and ultimate victory down the road. If you’re looking for future VHL predictions, maybe start by looking at the rookie scoring charts.

 

 

 

Edited August 26 by CowboyinAmerica

[CowboyinAmerica 2,911]

2000+ words for Theme Week, but finishing off a multi-week claim so starting claiming next week

 

Claiming for VHL and SBA the weeks ending:

9/8

9/15

9/22

9/29

[CowboyinAmerica 2,911]

On 8/26/2024 at 4:54 PM, CowboyinAmerica said:

2000+ words for Theme Week, but finishing off a multi-week claim so starting claiming next week

 

Claiming for VHL and SBA the weeks ending:

9/8

9/15

9/22

9/29

 

Claim 3

[CowboyinAmerica 2,911]

On 8/26/2024 at 4:54 PM, CowboyinAmerica said:

2000+ words for Theme Week, but finishing off a multi-week claim so starting claiming next week

 

Claiming for VHL and SBA the weeks ending:

9/8

9/15

9/22

9/29

 

Claim 4