A Gustav 30 in 30, #28: Art Vandelay

[Gustav 6,406]

 

I don't remember who made this image--somehow I think I remember @CowboyinAmerica, although I could be wrong--but Art Vandelay made a name for himself early on in his career by absolutely wrecking both Chicago and DC for some weird reason.

 

 

When I started in the VHL, I set out to create a defensive defenseman. After that, I switched positions to a goal-scoring forward and then experienced a full career as one. So, unless you consider offensive defenseman a separate position, I'd gone over all the viable options by the end of my second career. That is, all the options except goaltender. With my career ending and the first season of my recreate also being the first season of hybrid attributes, I wanted to play the one position I never had before, and I was pushed farther in that direction by a desire to hold on to the past. 

 

So, Art Vandelay came into the VHL world, and in a more awkward fashion than I may have wanted. I created right at midnight on trade deadline day, the first player in the S84 class--except the portal hadn't flipped yet and I actually ended up as the last player in the S83 class. I got made fun of for this, of course, and I remember someone saying something way more mean than the situation warranted to me on Discord, but all was well as I caught that and got it sorted out right away. 

 

Perhaps somewhat ironically given their sudden exit from the M later that year, my first GM with Vandelay was @diacope, and my first team Ottawa. This was the only team that offered me any playing time at all, and I delivered on it with four wins in as many games. The next season, I had enough TPE to go up to the E, but I think you can take a good guess as to how I felt about doing that. 

 

As it turned out, the M would be Vandelay's stomping grounds for an amazing S83 campaign in Miami under GM @Ledge. Running away with VHLM goaler stats, Vandelay took the team to a 48-17-7 record with a .924 SV%, a 1.88 GAA, and 11 shutouts. I'd never won any VHLM awards, not even after Taro had an amazing campaign in his time, but Vandelay took it to the next level. Not only did I win the Devereux for being the M's top goaler, I was the VHLM MVP. Miami faltered a bit in the playoffs, but it was still a successful campaign that culminated in me being drafted #1 overall to the Stars in S84.

 

I'd been familiar with @InstantRockstar for quite some time by that point, because he's continuously been a GM since we were both hired into M roles at the same time in S66. I'd never played for him, and after a decent talk over DMs, that changed a bit. LA had the first and third picks in the S84 draft and chose to honor me with #1, something that I was very proud of. I was also very proud that I said long in advance that I never wanted to touch the VHLE, and LA let that happen by calling me up right away. Art Vandelay was officially a 9-season player.

 

Something I'd be a little less proud of was the state of LA that season. Logically, I never needed to come up right away, and it hurt my TPA trajectory to do so. Still, I'd made the VHL and I was a starter right away. Vandelay almost won 20 games in his rookie season on a roster that had started a rebuild, with a surprisingly high .927 SV% putting him in the running for Top Rookie. This was something that I'd lose to the legitimately better choice in IR's Augustus Kennedy (who consistently beat Vandelay in head-to-head matchups throughout his career), but with one season that was about as good as I could have hoped given my and my team's low TPE level, I was looking forward to the rest. Vandelay had already gained a reputation as an up-and-comer, had been a thorn in the sides of a couple better teams (hence the meme up top), and had a personal brand built up. In every game thread where Vandelay either went 2-0 or recorded a shutout, I'd simply comment "Art Vandelay" and others (mainly @jacobcarson877 but others too) were happy to follow. 

 

S85 went surprisingly well from a team perspective, and Vandelay came close to putting up his first winning record. I do remember being a bit frustrated around this time by the team's performance in overtime and particularly the shootout, and my 8 OT losses seem to reflect that. Despite starting Vandelay twice more than was legal, LA didn't make the playoffs, but that was OK. We were on track to do nicely in the future.

 

Maybe, though, "the future" would have to wait a little bit longer. Vandelay's third season was his worst up to that point, with only 16 wins and a career-low SV%. Ironically enough, Vandelay was started four fewer times than he could have been in S86, sparking BoG speculation that LA was tanking the season after they supposedly tried to sneak out a few more wins. I do suppose that it could be fair to want to watch Art Vandelay as closely as league administration did, but this was never true. LA didn't even own their first-round pick in S87, so we couldn't have logically tanked on purpose anyway. On top of this, the first-round pick that we did have was used on a player who went to free agency before ever making it up to the VHL, making the S87 offseason a big waste of time. More or less, LA needed to worry about developing their core first and foremost.

 

Vandelay re-signed prior to S87, despite no team success to that point (not that I've ever been used to that on a rookie contract anyway). Luckily, this worked out great. With a 41-win season and a career-high SV%, the Stars were back in the spotlight and back in the playoffs. Plus, Vandelay was right at the center of it. I got my first-ever nomination for Top Goalie and my third for MVP.

 

This was an MVP race I'd lose (for the first time ever), thanks in some part to @FrostBeard's Sirdsvaldis Miglaskems being LA's top scorer and the eventual MVP winner that season. Miglaskems' 54 goals in the midst of an insane era for goalers propelled the Stars into postseason standing, where Vandelay reversed the usual course of my players in the playoffs and did horribly. I only had to wait until S87 to make the playoffs, but it turned out that it would be a little bit longer before I got my first playoff win.

 

That first win came just the next season, when LA made it to the playoffs yet again off the back of 35 wins and a .928 SV% from Vandelay. I'd yet again be nominated for the two big awards, and I'd yet again lose pretty easily. It was another baby step forward for the Stars, though, with two playoff wins in a close wild-card series. Finally, it seemed like LA was consistently at least decent, and Vandelay was a big part of it.

 

S89 was a little step back, and it was Vandelay's first in a while. Don't get me wrong, the team was still decent, but the numbers dipped quite a bit to levels that really weren't very good for the era. LA took the slightest dip possible afterward, with just one playoff win instead of two, and you can tell that what that means is that we were once again (predictably) out of the playoffs early on.

 

In S90, though, the team turned a corner. We had a new superstar (and a new MVP winner!) with @KRZY's Todd Cooke, right on top of a lineup that held the bare minimum number of players but pressed its finances right up against the cap. In other words, we were stacked in exactly the ways STHS favors a team, all with Vandelay running the show in net. S90 was the best Vandelay had ever done up to that point, with a whole 45 wins more than making up for his early career failures. 

 

The playoffs rolled around, and Vandelay did what he never could before: win a series. More specifically, LA swept DC in the first round. We had officially gone from competitive to really good, and we were one series away from the finals.

 

The NA championship against Toronto, who were built in much the same way we were and were arguably better on paper. Any lineup where one of Ronan Lavelle, Mac Atlas, Tomas Sogaard, or Jimi Jaks wouldn't be able to crack the top line was stacked, and that was the exact lineup that Vandelay needed to make his way through to make it to Cup contention. The Legion went up 2-0 early on in the series, before LA rebounded and tied it up at home. The series went back to Toronto, where they won, and then came back to LA, where the Stars saved their chances with a win of their own. Game 7 was in Toronto, in a series where neither team had lost at home, but LA finally reversed the trend. Rookie Gregger McKeggegger scored the go-ahead goal in the second period, and Vandelay held on for the rest of a game where the Stars were outshot. We were in the finals--only my second trip there ever, my first since my Nighthawks got swept by Seattle way back in S68, and my first time ever winning a NA conference championship.

 

Where, as it turned out, we would get swept by Prague. I have now been in the VHL for five and a half real-life years and have still never even won a single game in the Cup finals.

 

Pain.

 

Anyway, you can tell by that that Vandelay would never achieve that ultimate goal. LA remained as good as ever in the next two seasons, but S90 was as far as I would ever get. They're practically not worth mentioning because they're basically the same minus the playoff success--super good regular season, 43 wins followed by 45 again, don't get any consideration for awards because the era was absolutely insane to goaler numbers and other people were still better. Rockstar gave everything he had to give us one last chance at winning it all in S92, but Vandelay was done after then and so was everyone else. Much of the team retired, putting LA in the hole it's still in today, but I like to think that all the memories we made in that time justified that to some extent. I never required that someone keep me around for a full career, but I'm glad that it happened to me once. VandeLAy was one of the greatest Stars of all time.

 

Art Vandelay is currently the winningest goaler of all time to not make the Hall of Fame, and as he was never even on the ballot, it's very likely that we're talking about something that will never happen. But, I managed to make a pretty darn good player for the second time in a row, and the impact he had on the league in his time cannot be understated.

 

Art Vandelay

 

 

Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience:

 

#1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name

#2: Can't We All Just Get Along?

#3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway?

#4: The House That I Built

#5: Can We Fix It?

#6: American Beauty

#7: The Kids Are Alright

#8: Dogs In A Pile

#9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

#10: This Old House

#11: Go Directly to Jail

#12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball

#13: How I Messed Up Davos

#14: Ello Gov'nor

#15: Weewoo

#16: Jolly Kranchers

#17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2

#18: I've Been Everywhere, Man

#19: The Sun Also Rises

#20: Ripple In Still Water

#21: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 3

#22: I Hate the Meta

#23: I Hate the Mods

#24: I Hate Bureaucracy

#25: I Hate the VHLE

#26: Mint Jams

#27: It Ain't Easy Being Green

[Daniel Janser 2,168]

ART VANDELAY

 

[MubbleFubbles 1,290]

4 hours ago, Gustav said:

 

I don't remember who made this image--somehow I think I remember @CowboyinAmerica, although I could be wrong

TFW you see your work of art make it into a Gustav piece but they credit someone else for it.

 

Deserved graphic though as you shut the door on us on such a consistent basis. 

Edited October 22 by MubbleFubbles

[jacobcarson877 2,529]

Art Vandelay

[CowboyinAmerica 2,889]

6 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

TFW you see your work of art make it into a Gustav piece but they credit someone else for it.

 

Deserved graphic though as you shut the door on us on such a consistent basis. 

 

Lol I was about to say very much not me. Good read though!

[Gustav 6,406]

5 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

TFW you see your work of art make it into a Gustav piece but they credit someone else for it.

 

Deserved graphic though as you shut the door on us on such a consistent basis. 

 

I knew it was someone who had been here longer than me but my guess didn't feel right. Congrats on making the best Vandelay meme though!

[OrbitingDeath 3,183]

Can't wait for this series to be finished so Gustav can write a 30 in 30 about me.