A Stroll Down Muffmory Lane, Part Reik (I)

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Last week I wrote a 1,500 word article on my phone at work about my history going into the VHL and up to the point of Joey Clarence. I can still claim that article for two more weeks as of this writing, but some people were interested in seeing part two of the whole article now, and I’m a man of the people so of course I’ll oblige. Not to mention it’s really easy to write long form articles where all you’re talking about is yourself and your basic sim league memories. I hope you enjoyed part 1, now let’s get into my time from Tukka Reikkinen.

 

Chapter 4: The Season 25 Draft

 

As I touched upon a bit in the Joey Clarence section, I hit a wall with him where I wasn’t enjoying the goalie position anymore. It gave me an easy in to a sport that I didn’t know much about, and gave me a chance to get a better idea of what successful skaters looked like build-wise and what statistical outputs to look forward to. With that in mind, I was in like a Macy’s or a TJ Maxx one day when I came up with the name Tukka Reikkinen for my next player. I thought it was a great name and to this day I think it’s the best name I’ve had for a sim league player, aside from maybe the Aeschylus Jigglejawns brothers (more on them later).

 

So I retired Joey Clarence going into his seventh season and created Reikkinen for the Season 25 draft. It was an interesting draft in that it had a strong high end of players, but was sorely lacking in depth. Although this draft had some bigger name members, like Sandro (Gaz), Devon (Devon Marlow), and Jeff? (Bahr Downey), none of those three were really super active leading up to the draft, combining for 184 TPE by the time of the draft and all going in the second round, when expectations for that point of the draft weren’t particularly high.

 

No, the prizes of this draft would instead be four members who had built up varying levels of credibility to that point, enough so that they’d all be considered franchise prospects. Those players were Tukka Reikkinen (me), Ansgar Snijider (Kyle), Kasey Braun (Kendrick), and Jason White (Beketov). Also as an aside, since I’m more or less done with this paragraph and don’t have anywhere else to cleanly fit this information, this draft resulted in two of the greatest members in VHL history being drafted: Vladimir Boomchenko (Boom) and Viet Trieu. Boom was actually an old acquaintance when he came in, as he had a background in the baseball leagues as well. Trieu, meanwhile, amazed everyone with terrific articles full of misspellings and broken English that mystified everyone before I think retiring or at least dropping out of the league.

 

When it came to this draft, the top four was debated ad nauseum as far as what order the league thought they would be selected. All four players were close to each other in TPE (the draft thread would show Reikkinen about 30-40 TPE behind his contemporaries, but that was just because I was lazy about updating my player for the couple weeks before the draft, and by the draft I had already had an update posted that would put me in the same ballpark). The four teams selecting in the top half of the first round had distinct characteristics to them: Riga had the first overall pick, was looking for a new GM and had a second first rounder as well. Seattle picked second and had another first rounder as well. New York had the third pick via Calgary, but were finishing off a rebuild and really in need of a center more than anything else. Vasteras picked fourth, coming off a season where they almost made the playoffs and showing a ton of promise for the future.

 

Riga’s GM at the time reached out to Kyle to ask if he would take over the GM spot if he was picked first overall, which he said he would, and so that was that, Ansgar Snijider went first overall. I was miffed that I wasn’t given that proposition as I would have gladly accepted it. Seattle went BPA, drafting the highest TPE player in Braun, a defenseman. As I said before, New York needed a center and thus went with Beketov’s player Jason White. I would have also had no problem moving from winger to center, but New York GM Streetlight didn’t ask. As I remember it, most projections I saw didn’t have me on the board at fourth overall, but I was actually ecstatic with how things went leading to me being selected by Vasteras. I went to a team that was knocking on the door, and had a chance to help them break their cup curse that had haunted them since they won the league’s first cup.

 

Chapter 5: A Curse?!

 

In my first season with Vasteras, Tyler had GMed us to a playoff spot, although we lost in the first round, I believe in seven games. That offseason the team was able to acquire Sterling’s and Phil’s players, giving our roster some legitimate strength and positioning us for a cup run. And so it went, with the addition of James Bencharski and Phil Gerrard, as well as a midseason acquisition of Kevyn Hesje, Vasteras was able to finish with the best record in the VHL, with Reik’s 70 points being eighth on the team. In the postseason the Iron Eagles made quick work of Helsinki, winning in five games, before beating New York in five as well to break the 25-season cup drought.

 

Tyler was looking to step down from the General Manager post, and he already knew I was interested in potentially succeeding him after I made a stink when the whole Snijider-to-Riga situation played out. I took over as the GM of Vasteras in the Season 27 offseason, and took over a bit of a tough situation. Players like Phil Gerrard had retired, while goalie Andreas Bjorkman moved on to Riga, and overall the team returned only two players from the previous season, Reikkinen and Lasse Milo, whose handler Pensfan would only play for Vasteras. Because of the team’s strong cup push, we had only a single fourth round pick in what was a very strong draft for the standard of the time, and had only a single second round pick in the previous draft, so our roster by the time Season 27 started was extremely barren.

 

Chapter 6: General Manager Extraordinaire

 

With a barren roster comes ample opportunity to put up points, and so Reikkinen and Milo did. The two players finished top two in the VHL in points and goals, while Milo led the league in assists as well. Reikkinen’s 78 goals were 11 more than Milo and 14 more than any player not on Vasteras, and his 152 overall points reached the 150-point barrier that many were convinced would never be reached again. Despite a roster that was two players deep, Vasteras finished the season 35-32-5. Reikkinen had eight hat-tricks, including a game with six goals, two more games with five, and a three game stretch with 14 goals scored. This doesn’t really add much to the story, but it was a fun stroll down memory lane within the stroll down memory lane and I wanted to brag.

 

Going into the Season 28 Draft, we of course didn’t have our own first round pick, which Tyler had traded away in the past to aid the cup run. That pick ended up going to Toronto, who selected Tyler’s next player, center Connor Evans. We had had Davos’ first rounder in that draft, but apparently 16-year-old me was impressed enough with our core to defer that pick to Season 29 for some reason, as I sent the pick to Calgary. They were able to select future Hall-of-Famer Ryan Sullivan third overall, while we ended up going into another solid draft without a first round pick. In the ensuing season, we were as bad as we should have been the previous season, winning only eight games with just Reikkinen, Milo, and JaMarcus Simmons making any type of impact on the roster.

 

We had traded for Riga’s S29 first rounder, which ended up working out in our favor. Although the Reign finished second in Europe, the league had crossover back then, and so they missed the playoffs and gave us a lottery pick, which ended up being first overall. We had naturally owned the second pick of the draft, and in-season traded two firsts for what ended up as the fourth overall pick, as well as a second rounder (good god I was a scrub of a GM). Unfortunately, Season 29 would not be nearly as strong a draft as Season 27 or Season 28 were.

 

The first overall pick went towards a recreate in Al Wilson, who ended up earning another 100 TPE or so before going inactive. Second overall, I made my only good draft pick, selecting Thomas Corcoran. I used the fourth overall pick in a recreate, Brandon Merritt, but he was already not very active by the draft. I had three second rounders as well, but with the weak draft none of them came close to doing anything.

 

I eventually realized that the rebuild was just too tough for me and I was only making things worse with the moves I was able to pull off, so I decided I would step down. The team’s eventual GM, 8Ovechkin8, was not on the roster, so I had to trade Reikkinen to bring the new GM in. Despite Reik’s inherent value, I was only able to get 8Ovy8’s player Troy Athera (a Season 28 2nd round pick) and a Season 31 first rounder for him.

 

Chapter 7: Proud to be an American

 

Joining a steady contender following the in-season trade to begin the second half of his career, Reikkinen struggled to bounce back from a fairly disappointing 90-point season in Season 28. Reikkinen had only 89 points, falling short of the 50 goal mark after two consecutive seasons above the mark. He continued to show strong physical play, following up on his 285 hits in Season 28 with 281 the following year. New York made the playoffs thanks to crossover, but failed to make it out of the first round, falling to Toronto in six.

 

Season 30 would prove to be the season that really cemented Reikkinen’s status as a Hall-of-Famer. New York finished third in a North American conference where every team topped 90 points, making the playoffs as a beneficiary of crossover once again. Tukka scored 58 goals, most in the league, and also topped the league with 124 points. Reikkinen also broke the league single-season hits record with 430. That all came together to give Reikkinen the Campbell, Slobodzian and Boulet trophies. Without longtime franchise great Daniel Braxton, however, the Americans fell in the first round once again, to the Bears in five games.

 

Crossover evaporated in Season 31 as the VHL had their first ever expansion, adding Quebec and Cologne to the league. New York still made the playoffs after finishing second in the NA with 104 points, while Reik totaled 102 points and 361 hits. In the postseason, New York was able to sweep the Bears that eliminated them the previous season, and then beat the 123-point Wranglers in five games, before falling to a shallow Davos team in seven. Interestingly enough, the aforementioned Braxton spent seven seasons of his career on New York with no cups, then saw the Davos team he was traded to win a cup… a season after he retired. Reikkinen dominated in the postseason with 12 goals and 25 points in 16 games, winning the Kanou award despite being on the losing side.

 

With New York losing another franchise great in goalie Brandon Glover to retirement, many expected the postseason mainstay to rebuild, but general manager Devise aka Device aka Denise had different plans. He re-tooled the team, and with a rookie goalie, New York hardly missed a beat. They once again finished second in North America, with 102 points. In his final season, Reikkinen’s physical elements had regressed somewhat as he totaled only 244 hits, but he still notched 52 goals and 125 total points while being joined by players like Connor Evans and Troy Athera that had shaped his journey to New York.

 

With one last shot at the cup, New York was considered an underdog, but had little problem dispatching the Quebec City Meute, who had made the playoffs primarily as a formality with 45 points in the standings. New York then won North America with a five game series win over the Wranglers, matching their output from last season. New York then had to face off against Riga, the best team in the VHL, and went down 3-1 in a tough start to the series. The team was able to rattle off three consecutive wins for one of the more improbable cup wins in VHL history, overcoming losing two of the best players in franchise history on Braxton and Glover to win with a rookie goalie. Reikkinen didn’t win the Kanou, but he was once again spectacular, notching 16 goals in 17 games.

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Watch out for Part Reik (II), coming to a VHL.com Articles section near you!

 

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Edited January 6, 2020 by .sniffuM

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