Theo Matsikas: Career Titan

[Victor 10,941]

Oh look, another theme week which I can just sleepwalk through. One of the Media Spots that will never happen because it's too much work (I say that, while being 4 letters into the greatest player by nationality series) that I have considered writing is about some underrated player from every cup winning team. That realistically won't be written as that's like 68 underrated players, potentially, but I will now write about the one player who was the inspiration behind the idea: Theo Matsikas.

 

Who is Theo Matsikas? He was a defenceman who won back-to-back Continental Cups with Helsinki in S45 and S46. It was quite a good start to his career which began when he was drafted with the final pick of the S43 first round by the Titans. Matsikas was one of the first pieces of the Titans rebuild, a franchise reeling from failing to win a cup with their previous generation, pretty much the first time this had ever happened. However, new GM William Shaw @Will went about his rebuild in a way which made it one of those inevitable future cup winners, so long as no one went inactive. After spending two additional seasons in the VHLM, Matsikas would graduate to the VHL in S45 alongside three future Hall of Famers in Phil Hamilton @Phil, Greg Clegane, and Aleksi Koponen, and a future collector of cup rings, Marcel Faux.

 

Seeing how the team was shaping up, Shaw gambled on his young team developing quickly and traded for the best forward in the league Thomas O'Malley and his sidekick Christoph Klose. The back-to-back cup wins followed. Yet while there was a fair amount of star power in this Helsinki roster, the defence flew under the radar. Yes, Hamilton's talent was clear to see as the first overall pick, but he manned the defence alongside Matsikas, Souryuu Kaminogi and Pablo Escabar. This article could have been realistically about any of those three, but the reason I chose Matsikas will reveal itself shortly.

 

That fearsome foursome on defence stayed in tact from S45 to S48. In fact, as the forward core was slowly decimated by the salary cap, you could argue the Titans' solidity, backed up by Clegane, was what kept their contending cycle going, even making another finals appearance in S48. Then, like all good things, it had to come to an end but unlike his fellow blue-liners, Matsikas never moved on from Helsinki. The member behind him, @Individual, never made another player to my knowledge, and had already drifted away from the VHL meaning his player had little value, but this is what makes Matsikas a bit unique – he stuck through the rebuild and became a career Titan.

 

S45: 46 points, 85 hits, 113 shots blocked

S46: 33 points, 46 hits, 72 shots blocked

S47: 41 points, 16 hits, 93 shots blocked

S48: 45 points, 34 hits, 95 shots blocked

S49: 50 points, 105 hits, 195 shots blocked

S50: 48 points, 194 hits, 128 shots blocked

 

There's his career stats – nothing flashy but very dependable. While Escabar quite amusingly played for 4 teams in S49, while Kaminogi and Hamilton also moved on to pastures new, Matsikas remained and helped guide some young players. This became a Helsinki mantra, replicated the next decade by much better players in Franchise Cornerstone and Rudolph Schmeckeldorf and still carried on today by the likes of Dan Montgomery, Jesse Wilson, Julian Borwinn, and Alexander Pepper. It was no foregone conclusion that Helsinki would become the VHL's model franchise in S45, in fact they'd never won more than one cup per generation before. Since then, they've added another six. This is in part because of the star power but also in part because of the loyalty of someone like Theo Matsikas and those who followed him.