After Shaky Start, Toronto and Rift Settle In

[Devise 4,475]

There was a bit of a panic to the impatient fans who overreact to the first ten games of the season, to start the season. Shocker, of course. However what may actually be shocking is that panic surrounded the defending 2 time Continental Cup Champion Toronto Legion. The Legion made a few solid moves in a very chaotic VHL off-season, and ultimately many agreed that other than in net where the team lost Playoff MVP in JHC to expansion draft, and the younger but buddingly talented JB Rift took over. Still though sentiment was  that Toronto had generally a better team this season than they did last. 

 

Of course the big question though is regardless if Toronto was better, overall league improvement went up so it remained to be seen if those improvements could help the Legion keep up with where team growth was headed. Compound that by the fact that the Legion appear very much to be an "old school team" in the sense that while they are very talented and loaded with starpower, in the modern day VHL 6 forwards, 4 D and 1 goalie is no longer considered a full roster. Several notably competitors made moves to get younger and bolster even 3rd line depth. And an early trend in stats has shown that while star players still do make an impact, some games they seem to cancel each other out. This has lead to increased point production for a lot of the second line players in the league, even at lower TPE levels, allowing teams who invested well in their depth second line to pick up clutch wins against enough the leagues toughest teams. 

 

Legion GM Ryan Power spoke to the media about Season 66, his thoughts on the Legion start and a bit more.

 

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I mean you can read a lot into the first ten games of the season or you can panic. For us Rift showed up to training camp a bit out of shape, he's never really faced the load of being a VHL starter and after back to back wins we felt the time was now to put the pressure on him. Because no matter what going forward for the next several season, he's our guy, so the quicker he can get comfortable in his role the better. That said I get the panic. We opened 3-7. But I mean I'm pretty sure we gave up 41 goals in those first 10 games. If your giving up over 4 goals a game in the VHL your going to need some high octane offense to keep up. We only scored 24 goals in those first 10 games and several of them were the outburst games we won. 

Still though, a lot of that is our goalie needing to really settle in from our side. In the 13 games since that first stretch of ten, we've gone 8-4-1, we've only given up 33 goals in those 13 as Rift settles into the 2.5ish goalies a game average. We can live with that. The big thing for me this season now as our goalie has settled is for our offense. They are finding that rhythm scoring 34 in the last 13, but if you look at the shot totals for sure King and Arroyo are even more due. It's a tough season and a tough schedule, with parity at all times highs but we feel like after whatever that opening ten game scare was, we are ready to battle it out and really see what the playoff race looks like all the way to the end this season. 

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by Devise