A Brief History of Davos vs Riga

[Victor 10,851]

If you did trivia last week you might know that Davos vs Riga is the most lopsided playoff matchup in VHL history. Fittingly, with this being a playoffs theme week, we also have a Davos vs Riga matchup in the first round of the S66 VHL playoff and if you've seen any of the defeatists posts by Riga GM Benjamin Zeptenbergs, you'll know that the 13^th all-time for Davos is currently halfway there. The two teams didn't meet during the 8-season World Conference era, which is quite nice as this was distinctly a European rivalry, which started the moment Avangard moved to Davos in S11 and ended with Davos upsetting (yet again) Riga in the S56 conference finals. Let's have a look at the 14 times the Swiss and Latvian teams have met so far.

 

S11 – The Legend Begins

I can't really do justice to the original and probably still the greatest Davos vs Riga series – I don't think any single season created such a large rivalry and it really was only one season, with Avangard not a threat as they were swept by Riga in S10, and then Davos retooling in S12 while Riga went into a rebuild by the time Davos won the cup in S13. Fortunately, I don't have to put too much effort into it as the great Zero immortalise the S11 rivalry in a 20 in 20 article which can be found here: https://vhlforum.com/topic/906-vhl-20-in-20-13-cats-and-dogs/

 

Long story short, Davos was the cool kids of early days VHL, the ones who liked to form cliques and ostracise the slightly different characters of the league, like the hard-working but opinionated Slobo (Layken Heidt), Kendrick (Torsten Schwarz) or Elmy (Blake Beukeboom). There were lots of fairly neutral players on both sides but the cores of the two teams were at each others' throats and it only added to the tension that the Davos GM was commissioner and simmer Scotty Campbell. The Dynamo were probably the slightly weaker roster on paper, but came through with a first championship in their first season in Davos, in large part thanks to an iconic Game 7 victory (3 goals in 14 seconds and all), which set the tone for the next 13 playoff meetings and counting.

 

S19-S21 – Davos establishes dominance

As that article I linked above states, and it was written right around S19 or S20, the Riga/Davos rivalry was sort of revived at this point, but was nowhere near as loud and brash. It was less about polarising member bases and more about polarising ways of building a team. Riga was the classic VHL team – all out attack, an OK goalie in Ma'a Nonu, and a serviceable defence where the best player was Olivier Scarlett, whow as highly rated but still on his entry-level contract. The offense though was something else with Tarik Saeijs and Max Kroenenburg's joint lead with 157 points telling its own story in S20. That's not even counting two Hall of Famers in Mikka Virkkunen and J.D. Stormwall who combined to great effect in Calgary and kept it up in Latvia.

 

Yet this was one of those times when defence triumphed and continued Davos' strange stranglehold over the Reign. The Dynamo were nothing special in S19 and especially S21, but the killer blow was in S20, when they had an alright forward core, but largely reliant on Anton Brekker, but really turned up the style in defence, with the great Daisuke Kanou in goal. They had Patrick Bergqvist, one of the few defencemen to be crowned MVP (another trivia question connection there) and really won the cup by trading for Geno Esposito and Jordan Berglund midseason. The fact it was just one of three straight playoff eliminations for Riga just poured extra salt on the wound.

 

 

That's theme for Cast done, moving on to part 2....

[Matt_O 897]

26 minutes ago, Victor said:

S11 – The Legend Begins

I can't really do justice to the original and probably still the greatest Davos vs Riga series – I don't think any single season created such a large rivalry and it really was only one season, with Avangard not a threat as they were swept by Riga in S10, and then Davos retooling in S12 while Riga went into a rebuild by the time Davos won the cup in S13. Fortunately, I don't have to put too much effort into it as the great Zero immortalise the S11 rivalry in a 20 in 20 article which can be found here

I wrote a VSN article about this series. I don't think it was ever edited though

[Matt_O 897]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1von7tjVRZzPpIUF8pQ0K35tPtQTytM94tN-jg12o94Y/edit?usp=sharing

 

this is the article i wrote