Zak Trokker | Rookie Experience

[Peace 1,577]

Zak Trokker
LW | 6'1 | 215 LBs 
27 Years Old
Drafted 10th OVR by the Warsaw Predators

 

 

EXPECTATIONS

Howdy everyone, Zak Trokker here; as a standing tradition players of the Peace Player Agency have talked about their expectations and reservations heading into their rookie VHL season in a blog-like way. Well here I am, doing what the Peace's and Killinger's before me have done, so now I get to tell all you wonderful people what I expect from my 'rookie experience' with the Warsaw Predators.

 

If I were to go back and reread everything that has been written about me I figure Warsaw has been mentioned quite a few times. I've always said the Predators would be a welcome destination but do recall projecting myself to go fourth or fifth overall before my, er... motivation dipped heavily through my time in the VHLM. Now that I am with the Preds, who selected me tenth overall in the last entry draft, I can comfortably say I am excited to finally be with the organization. 

We spoke about it last off season and discovered I lacked the talent to join the roster: Not by Warsaw's definiiton, but by the leagues' rules and regulations. You see you've got to have a certain skill set to be eligible to play with the big dogs of the VHL and I lacked that skill set. Arbitrary numbers determined by scouts entered into a program on the computer can bar you from joining your own team when they truely wanting to call you up.

 

"Blah, blah, blah; just spill the beans already, Trokker!" Okay, okay... Unlike Killinger [who hoped for a sixty point rookie campaign] I'm going to ground my expectations within the capabilities I bring to the club. The off season brings so many variables that it is quite literally impossible for me to predict my own success, but if I were a betting man I'd wager a more realistic approach could win me some serious cash. Some goals here, some assists there and a handful of points on the board. There's two ways I could approach this: I could be bold and toss my bet towards what my goal for... goals could be, or perhaps I take the safe way out with what I'd be happy with.

 

I choose what I'd be happy with every time.

If I could score twenty goals, I'd be happy; if I helped the team score twenty goals, I'd be happy; and if I could get to forty points as a rookie, I'd be happy.

 

RESERVATIONS

Obviously my bigger reservations are shared among a far larger group than just myself: it is my motivation, my discipline in improving myself, and my engagement as a whole as both a player in the VHL and a member of its community. I can't promise any of those, I'm very much a high risk - high reward player, and I know it; you should too. Here's the thing about motivation... it comes and goes like the elbows of a river. A strong current comes along, errodes the elbow and suddenly a loop is drying out with no place for the water to go. In this analogy once my motivation errodes whatever 'water' is left to power my engagement evaporates, and I disappear until something comes along and restores my interest.

 

Sometimes that is a request by the GM directly, or one of my teammates sending me a message... other times I stumble upon an article and discover a surge of interest, or it could be as simple as watching NHL highlights and feeling engaged with hockey as a whole. So what kills my interest? Poor performance is a big one, but the killer for me stagnancy. If I see no effort to find a better system, a better tactic, I get irritated and disassociate. At no point should 'sucking' be the status quo, even if it is the reality. If you're not constantly trying to improve both yourself and the team you manage then how is it reasonable to expect the players under your leadership to - frankly - give a fuck about doing it themselves?

And those are the biggest reservations, right?

Secondarily - beyond my own involvement with myself - I am a bit of a hot head. I will say what I mean and won't hold back; those days are over for both the Peace Player Agency and truthfully I've never had a good filter. I do believe I am the first PPA player to not be restricted to what they can and cannot say given the management implications with the agencies former players. the agencies founder Rylan Peace was GM of Saskatoon and Toronto at the time, but now he's retiried from that position...