BLOCK BUSTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE S68 VHLM PLAYOFF MVP--A Fairly Annoyed Retrospective

[Gustav 6,469]

As some of you may know, the voting for VHLM awards is done by the GMs in private. I'm usually very happy with the nominees and feel that the possible choices which are put out there by the commish team are good ones that reflect performance accurately. 

 

This past season, though, there was one big glaring oversight--BLOCK BUSTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN PLAYOFF MVP AND WASN'T EVEN NOMINATED. 

 

The Hounds began the playoffs against the Yukon Rush, an OK team who was a bit below us in the standings and who we'd done well against in the regular season. I knew the Hounds could win the series, and was confident that this would end up being the case. Game 1 hits and I open up the summary. Hounds outshoot Yukon 21-9; we should have dominated on the scoreboard. Nope, Buster shuts us out 2-0. Tough luck, but I'm not worried. I open up Game 2 and see the same story--Hounds beat them up shots-wise yet again and lose 2-1. So this is interesting--I'm still not incredibly concerned as we're outplaying them, and I just consider it weird sim luck. Being the idiot that I am, I don't change the lines at all because, hey, we're playing well.

 

Game 3 comes up and we finally get the results we're looking for. Outshoot Yukon 28-10, win 5-1, life is good, we've finally busted the Block. Cool, maybe the first couple games were just flukes and we can turn it around and dominate the rest of the series like we were meant to do.

 

...yeah, no. Game 4 hits and it's the same thing all over again. Yukon gets outshot 25-15 and Buster still manages to pull out a 4-3 win. We're now down 3-1, and nobody is surprised when, in Game 5, Buster shuts us out again, 1-0, to close out the series.

 

Buster continues to win in this fashion, stealing three games from the heavily favored Aces in the next round. Yukon yet again is outshot in every game in the series but one, but still manages to pull out a series win. At this point, they are in the finals solely because of Buster. Sure, they lose the finals (no links here, I think anyone who remembers the finals last season can take a guess as to why), but there is no player more singlehandedly instrumental to the success of their team in the playoffs than Buster. I've already decided at this point where my vote will be cast (does Victor search this word anymore? I guess we'll see).

 

Voting comes up, and the nominees for playoff MVP are--drumroll, please...Khalabib Stiopic, Nate Telker, and Sean McGee, all of the heavily stacked, heavily favored, cup-winning Houston Bulls. I've got nothing against any of these fine players--in fact, two of them are former Hounds--but the fact that Buster--in my eyes the clear and obvious choice for MVP--was not on the ballot is a glaring oversight. The award is "most valuable player," not "best player on the cup-winning team," and Buster was, simply put, most valuable.

 

@Banana2311

Edited December 19, 2019 by GustavMattias

[Gustav 6,469]

Claiming the 1-TPE theme week bonus. If this isn't an unsung hero article I don't know what is.

[Motzaburger 1,590]

Who?

[Enorama 2,039]

1 hour ago, Motzaburger said:

Who?

 

That's D.C. Dragons backup goaltender Block Buster pal