Unsung Heroes: The Matthews Story

[diamond_ace 3,114]

Headed into the S62 VHLM Draft, 4 teams seemed to be going into the season with a bit of hope, at least based on picks available to them: the Ottawa Lynx, Las Vegas Aces, Saskatoon Wild, and Halifax 21st. Each had 3 of the first 12 picks, and through as far as 23, the other two teams (Yukon Rush and Oslo Storm) had only one each. We're here to focus on one team only: the eventual cup winning Ottawa Lynx. GMed by current Prague Phantoms GM Jason Glasser, Ottawa was the team with the most experience behind the helm, but a few of the others would end up being very good in their own right (well, in this draft that can really only be said for @ShawnGlade, although @Jubo07 would be soon after).

 

At this draft, however, are @Da Trifecta, @BarzalGoat, @Dtayl/ @Gooningitup, @jacobaa19, and the two mentioned above, me/Shawn. Oslo (Trifecta) actually had a good chunk of pieces left over from the prior season so their sporadic picks wouldn't appear to cause them much trouble (they did) but Yukon I think had largely resigned themselves to being out of the picture that season.

 

Since this is an Unsung Heroes article, some might expect one of the draft picks to be the unsung hero, and those people would be right. Is it 4th overall pick Kallis Kriketers @hedgehog337, the one safe goalie pick in a draft where Alexander Pepper @Sonnet and Rhett Stoffiday @Stoffiday had the same approximate level of TPE as Kyle Desjardins and Potato, and all four could have gone either way? Nope. Is it Joseph McWolf @McWolf, from the mid third round who would later become one of the best players of the era? Not so much. Is it Vaydar Odinsson @BOOM™, who looked relatively safe for quite some time, and definitely was at least for the VHLM portion of his career? Eh, the idea is there, but no. These guys are all sung. You could always go the other direction and pull from the bottom of the draft, maybe James Lombardi, the 9th rounder who would be flipped for a 2nd and 3rd almost immediately. Maybe Jerome Mitchell, the 10th rounder who actually built a nice little niche for himself and earned a decent chunk of TPE before being bdu and getting himself banned with porn in the general discord and more multis than he could count. Arguably good value for their rounds, but not really a big enough contribution. Maybe Rzerk, the technically active but not really 8th rounder who participated a little bit in the league, liked posts, played VHFL, did a few articles, but didn't actually claim most of what he did and only ended up with maybe 8 extra TPE beyond his creation points, despite earning probably triple that, and despite clearly knowing how to claim because he did it for the first few? No. No no no, definitely not Rzerk.

It's actually 4th rounder Chance Matthews @DaftRaincloud. Even into his eventual inactivity this guy kept on giving. In S62, he was active much of the season, got up to 162 TPE (in the 200 cap era) and was a solid 1st line center, at a time when we definitely needed him. Playing alongside guys like Odinsson, midseason pickups Dan Wilinsky @oilmandan Jesse Wilson @monkeywrench15 and Chace Trepanier @ChaceT, McWolf, Lando Baxter @Elhandon, and later trade acquisition Ryan Kastelic @Enorama, Matthews was one of the best forwards on a defense-heavy team. He was a big part of winning the S62 cup, and he slowed down in activity at just the right time to carry over into S63 as well.

 

That sounds weird, and it is, to an extent. The VHLM is about development, so a guy who went inactive is good? Well, to be honest, he wasn't fully inactive in S63, and helped out on the lines with S63's star draftee Elias Dahlberg @Nykonax. S63 was largely a failed experiment, trying to compete without the roster to do so, but we had yet again solid goalies in JB Rift @Devise and Finn Davison @Poptart.

Even in S64, the year that would see Matthews off the roster, he played a bit of a key role, even if a bit sneaky. At this point, he was fully inactive, and therefore playing at the bottom of the lines as per league rules. S64 was another year we were going for it, eventually losing in the finals, drafted a ton of great players but nearing the deadline, I thought we could use a little help. Coincidentally, I'd been playing in a D+D campaign run through SBA, and in my party at the time was @evrydayimbyfuglien who was the member behind Shawn Mendes. He'd been inactive over here as well, and was stuck in largely the same situation for Vegas as Matthews was for me. However, I could get him back for a few more welfares, enough to count as active (and barely slip within the rules enough to play him higher on the lines, bumping down guys like Luke Allman who would be around on the site on occasion but largely didn't seem to get the concept of TPE, despite my annual in depth post in the LR on how to do it). So I proposed a trade to Jubo, one which has been criticized as a bit sneaky (and was called "9d chess" by Shawn in the trade thread) but honestly was a win for both sides: Matthews and a 4th for Mendes. From Vegas' side, they get a better inactive and a pick for a worse inactive, and Evry wasn't likely to come back in for welfares for Jubo like he was for me. They improved their team at the time, and also got a pick out of it. I managed to move some pieces around in order to play my "inactive" legally on the 2nd (by trading him for a slightly worse inactive and bringing him back to activity) and all it cost was a 4th.

Chance Matthews, a relatively minor player in the grand scheme of the VHL and VHLM and all their history, was a key figure in three consecutive seasons of Ottawa Lynx hockey. He is the true definition of an unsung hero, with one Founders Cup to his name and now largely a footnote as we watch Gabriel Gutzwiler continue where he left off.

1065 words

[diamond_ace 3,114]

Oh and as is custom:

@GustavMattias @Renomitsu

[diamond_ace 3,114]

Bonus for both

 

https://vhlforum.com/topic/74672-unsung-heroes-the-merrill-story/

[Nykonax 1,570]

6 hours ago, diamond_ace said:

S63 was largely a failed experiment, trying to compete without the roster to do so,

But we made it to finals :thinking:

[BarzalGoat 728]

Never forget the great Yukon tank