The First Rookie to win the Daisuke Kanou

[SlapshotWrangler 864]

RIGA, Latvia - As a fresh faced rookie, you look to make a name for yourself in the league.. That was the goal of Reign rookie Ryuu Crimson coming into the 63rd season of the Victory Hockey League. Ryuu Crimson would play six seasons in the league, three with the aforementioned Riga Reign and three more with HC Davos Dynamo. A solid player who could net you a guaranteed 20+ goals, the scrappy winger may not have had much VHL hardware but the one individual award he has is a forgotten but special part of league history.

 

In Season 63, there were a good amount of rookies looking to make a name for themselves. Without a doubt, the best out of all of them was Julian Borwinn. Scoring 42 goals and matching that total for his assists, 84 points was certainly no easy feat for any player, let alone a rookie. Borwinn would prove to be a standout of his time with 705 points in 576 games. He would later win a multitude of awards including the Szatkowski, the Brooks, the Slobodzian, the Funk, the Campbell, the Boulet, and most prominently the Continental Cup.

 

Ryuu Crimson was nowhere near the best rookie and had nowhere near as prolific a career as Julian Borwinn. In the regular season, he tallied a respectable 22 goals and 40 assists on Riga’s second line. This team was a special one; a championship pedigree team looking to finally cash in. Podrick Cast, Leph Twinger, Edwin Preencarnacion, Jack Shephard, Jeff Gow, and Mikka Pajari were the forwards with the first three proving to be one of the most underrated first lines in history. On the back end, Joseph Bassolino led the league in assists (even though he was a defenseman!) and he won the Valiq as the best offensive defenseman. Paired with him was another rookie, Dylan Nguyen, a great young defenseman that Ryuu knew from their VHLM days. Truly an excellent first pairing. The second pairing? A rookie Shawn Glade and a rookie Ryan Kastelic. A second pairing good enough to be a first pairing on other teams. Ryan Kastelic would later become the first player to hit 2000 TPE and would continue to find success even after becoming a forward. Then Kallis Kriketers, who Ryuu maintains was the best goaltender he ever had the privilege of playing with, was in between the pipes and would prove to be an excellent starter for Riga in his rookie season and onwards.

 

Back to Ryuu Crimson, in the midst of all of this excellence was a relatively unproven winger looking to justify being picked 9th overall. After spending one season in the VHLM to develop, Ryuu was slotted with Jack Shephard and Jeff Gow to form a second line that continued to provide depth scoring.

 

This excellent roster from top to bottom brought the Reign franchise to championship glory. Then the VHL awarded the Daisuke Kanou to a rookie Ryuu Crimson, who shared it along with legendary goaltender Norris Stopko.

 

“I’ll be honest, I was extremely surprised to receive the honour and even more surprised to have shared it with such an excellent player.” Ryuu Crimson stated when asked about the award.

 

It definitely wasn’t the flashiest Daisuke Kanou run. With 6 goals and 7 assists in 11 games, Ryuu is still shocked to this day that it was enough. But no matter how shocked or surprised he is, what doesn’t change is the fact it happened.

 

“The best part of that run was that championship winning game 6. We’re on the power play. It goes from Jack to Jeff to me. We go up 4-2. Revchenko would score for the Wranglers to go up 4-3. Kallis plays amazingly in period three and we win it all. To this day, I still am proud of being the game winning goal scorer. But I am even more proud of being a part of that Reign team that made it all the way.”

[Victor 10,946]

All time great playoff run