Jakub Kovar - Rookie Experience

[MichkovSzn 158]

As much as Jakub Kovar wanted to be a professional hockey player his whole life, he never really knew if he’d make it a reality, never knew if one day he’d be the VHL star he always hoped he could be, but now he’s completed the first step, getting to the big stage. Selected 31st overall in the M he’s always had some doubts about his true potential, I mean, if all the scouts couldn’t see anything special about him, did he even really have any sort of talent deep down, or was he destined to be just another player that never makes it out the VHLM and wastes away their true potential peaking in the 350 TPE range. You would think that being a first round pick in the S98 VHL draft would help soothe Kovar’s nerves, prove to himself that he did deserve to be here, that he was ready, but at first it almost made it worse, sure he had made a ton of improvement right before the draft, and teams saw that, scouts, media members, fans saw it, they wrote articles about it, but still there was so many players that performed better on the stat sheet than he had, so many that had higher TPE totals than him. Jakub struggled with this as he went through season 98 still in the M, but with much higher expectations on his shoulders, now a team was truly relying on his success, to help bring the team back to being competitive again, along with the other prospects of the franchise. After the end of season 98 however, one massive move would change Kovar’s perspective on his career and future, his GM in Warsaw, called him up to the VHL from his VHLM squad in Philadelphia. It was late when it happened, maybe 3 am, but for whatever reason, fate, God, pure chance, Jakub couldn’t sleep a wink, nothing he tried worked, reading a book, melatonin, some warm milk, nothing. Kovar was sitting in his bed in his apartment, watching a movie, Good Will Hunting to be exact, when he heard his phone ring. “Who could possibly need to call me right now?” Jakub whispered to himself, almost seeming to be asking the universe itself for answers. He looked at the screen, the name “Cole Pearce” slid across the screen, the GM for his VHL team, the Warsaw Predators. He picked up, and Cole spoke, he told Kovar that the team was calling him up to the Majors, and that they had ordered for a private plane to take Jakub out to Warsaw to meet with management for the Predators. Hearing the news, Kovar’s insomnia was soothed and he fell asleep for few hours before he had to wake up for the flight. The flight itself went rather smooth, but Kovar’s heart and mind were racing a mile a minute as he got closer and closer to landing in Poland. Still, even now with his dreams finally realized, he still wondered if he was truly ready to be in the VHL. When he arrived at the Predators training facility he met with the GM and the training staff, he’d only met them briefly before on draft night. Jakub and the GM discussed their plan for the upcoming season and the future. Knowing that he would likely not make much of an impact on the ice and that Warsaw was poised to have another losing season near the bottom of the standing, Jakub asked Cole Pearce if he could stay down for one more year in the VHLM, where he could be a top player and lead the Reapers, a franchise he had grown to love in his time there. It was a tough decision, but Kovar knew that he would have an even better VHL debut in a year, and keep proving his doubters wrong.

 

Word Count: 646