How do Del Rocco's first two seasons compare to my previous forwards?

[Victor 10,824]

I am two seasons into my most ambitious player, in terms of personal goals, in about 30 seasons, having been through a GM player (Pavlov), a GM player / goalie in the meta era (Rasputin), and a subsequent hiatus. So with the stated aim of getting back into the Hall of Fame, how do Gianfranco Del Rocco's first two seasons compare to my previous three HOF forwards?

 

Podrick Cast

We'll start with the most recent previous forward, for the primary reason that he's not really comparable at all. Cast had the best first two seasons ever of anyone not named Scotty Campbell or Brett Slobodzian, helped in no small part by a 174-point sophomore season that was the greatest in VHL history. Both Cast's rookie and sophomore seasons were better than any put up by Del Rocco to date, but just that second season alone is superior to Del Rocco's career totals. If anything, I'm hoping that Del Rocco is the inverse of Cast who peaked very early and had a relatively underwhelming second half of his career, both in personal and team achievements.

 

Alexander Chershenko

Ah, my favourite son. Chershenko was remarkably consistent, only dropping below 100 points twice in his career and his worst season, his first, was still better than Del Rocco's output to date, with 84 points as a rookie. Despite that, Del Rocco is only 44 points off the pace, in a more competitive league and playing for a cup contender whereas Chershenko started off on the rebuilding Wranglers. Indeed Del Rocco is already in his second postseason whereas Chershenko only had 7 playoff games to his name by the end of his third season. That said, it would be foolish to aim to outdo the Ukrainian's playoff record, which is another one in the “probably better than anyone not named Campbell” category.

 

Lars Berger

Heading into the depths of VHL history here and again it's nothing to get too excited about for Del Rocco – Berger already had over 200 career points by this stage of his career and was en route to a surprise Continental Cup victory with Calgary as a sophomore top line center. Berger came into his own later, as seen by recent updates to the Toronto Legion all-time stats where he features prominently despite only spending half his career there, but definitely had a quick start as well, landing in the top five all-time scorers at the time of his retirement (and still sitting in ninth place). His trophy case didn't grow massively even at his peak though, so that is something that can be improved on by Del Rocco.

 

So, on the face of it, some grim reading a quarter of the way through Del Rocco's career. I didn't expect to be competing with Cast at this point, but even 40-60 points off Chershenko and Berger's pace is not ideal. However, it is first of all a reflection of the era we live in – since the start of the hybrid era in S83, only six players (Axle Gunner, Jake Thunder, Tomas Sogaard, Bo Johansson, Molly the Cat, and now Antonia Bucatini) have cracked the 150-point mark across their first 2 seasons. None of those players accumulated more than 180 points and only one has so far been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Secondly, I am comparing Del Rocco's start to three of the top 15 scorers ever, so it is bound to be a sobering comparison. The trajectory is positive and the team results have been strong as well so let's see what the next few seasons have in store.