VSN - A Blast From The Past - Alexander Chershenko

[SlapshotWrangler 864]

This series will be about old stars and familiar faces and what they are doing now.

 

I asked Mr. Chershenko if I could follow him around for the day and interview him. He said yes. When he retired, he told me that he helped out the recruitment crew by promoting posts on social media and he worked in the background of that league. He moved back to Ukraine as the league's representative here. He eventually became head of the VHL's eastern European scouting wing. They work in conjunction with a few player agencies to find players from the Czech Republic to Russia. He says that he is currently helping a team of scouts to find a GM player for his old agent, Victor Alfredsson, so that Victor could bring it to Moscow. He jokes that he is probably more busy now than when he used to play, which, by the sound of it, might not be wrong.

 

An interesting post-retirement. (if you can even call it that) I followed him around for most of the day. He really was busy. We kept moving from place to place and there was almost never a time he wasn't helping the league. We did have a nice lunch at McDonalds. He ordered a Big Mac with fries with some Coke. I just sat there, eating my salad. When he saw my salad, he told me to forget about hockey for a while and that I should treat myself. Kinda hypocritical, don't you guys think? After a few more hours of him working, we finally returned to his house.

And, of course, like any good reporter should do, I interviewed him.

 

My first question was, who is your favourite young player in the VHL. He replied, "There's the player I know best in the VHL because he's come through the same agency and that's Podrick Cast, but I'm not sure if he qualifies as young anymore, even though they're all quite young to me. I like the look of Julian Borwinn personally, he's got an eye for the net, a shoot-first, think-later kind of guy which is my favourite part of the game." Borwinn, for those who didn't know, won top rookie in Season 63. I admire him as well. He seems to find ways to score even when it's thought to be impossible to score.

 

Knowing that some players are retiring soon, I asked if he had any tips for players who are retiring soon. He said some wise words that young players should remember for when it's my time. "Start planning ahead, get into contact with people and stay in the game, whatever you do. There's so many opportunities to suit anyone and it really helps move on from hockey. You don't want to be the miserable old former player who's constantly reminiscing about his glory days 20 years ago."

 

Wise words to remember. I pondered those words. After a while, I interviewed him again. I asked him what moment in his career was he most proud of. After all, the guy was a superstar, winning awards left and right. He laughed and said, "That's a tough one, I was blessed with a pretty good career if I may say so myself haha. My last season was pretty dreamy, coming back to my VHL home in Calgary, and winning just about every award there was to win, just a shame we fell in Game 7 of the finals. Ending a very long cup drought in New York was also a highlight, but wish we could repeat it the next season. The #1 moment has to be captaining Calgary to the cup in S30 and scoring the cup-winning goal - that's just everything you could wish for growing up and wanting to play hockey. I've enjoyed a pretty friendly reception in Calgary ever since, I can tell you that! " 

 

We both laughed at his little joke at the end. Of course, as a reporter, I couldn't just leave it at that. Being the negative little person I am, I asked him what moment he regrets the most in his illustrious career. "Weirdly, despite the whole cup drought breaking thing above, the trade to New York. In hindsight, I wish I could have spent my entire career in Calgary but I wanted a change of scenery and it looked like a good solution to the cap problems we had. In reality, I think only NY came out of it as the winners and I'm just glad I had a chance to finish where it started which I'm not sure I necessarily deserved. The grass is not always greener, that's for sure."

 

I nodded and thought about his words. We talked and chatted about hockey and the League before I left. Now, I should get him to be my agent.

Edited February 10, 2019 by SlapshotDragon

[SlapshotWrangler 864]

@Victor

[Victor 11,014]

Blast from the past indeed.

[BOOM 8,812]

I thought he was dead. My bad. 

[Victor 11,014]

6 hours ago, BOOM™ said:

I thought he was dead. My bad. 

Nah you thinking of Boomchenko - easy mistake.  

[BOOM 8,812]

Oh yeah, that guy. 

[SlapshotWrangler 864]

38 minutes ago, Victor said:

Nah you thinking of Boomchenko - easy mistake.  

Who the hell is Boomchenko? Never heard of him. (I am aware it's Boom this is a joke)