Leaving A Legacy: Season 63's Best First-Gens

[Renomitsu 934]

Leaving A Legacy: Season 63's Best First-Gens

 

First generation players are the lifeblood of the VHL. They keep things new and exciting, bringing ever-essential enthusiasm to league jobs and media while challenging the old greats of the past. They're one of the few ways that we can progress as a collective and re-define what it means to have a thriving community: some help us migrate from one platform to another, some make the league more accessible to younger and older users both, and yet others introduce fantastical new builds and strategies to the league that invariably alter its course forever.

 

Today, I begin a series that celebrates the careers of some of the league's first-time users -- most of which have become grizzled veterans and leaders in their own right. As their eighth or ninth season on the site comes to a close, their first players' careers must end. And while I could exhaustively comb the accomplishments of these users, I instead hope to bring to light their retiring players. We'll start with an unmistakable face, Ryan Kastelic.

 

 

D/C Ryan Kastelic @Enorama, Riga Reign (1941 TPE)

 

We start with Ryan Kastelic, a defender-turned-forward who has set the bar for work ethic and success among first generation players for the last ten or so seasons. Born on a farm just outside Slovenia’s capital, he was first exposed to hockey rather late – and instead was a multi-sport athlete in what we’ll call less contact-heavy sports. Inspired by his late grandfather’s outlook on life, Anze Kopitar, and a chance encounter with an extracurriculars board, he fast-tracked his way on to his high school hockey team and a chance at greatness.

 

After a sudden disappearance from his hometown team earned him the nickname “The Snake of Ljubljana,’ Kastelic had a brief stint with the Sudbury Wolves in his first professional hockey appearance. A few possibly-tamper-like talks later, the VHLM snatched up this promising young Slovenian defenseman, earning a spot on the Ottawa Lynx in Season 62. Heralded as a high-class skater with excellent athleticism and an eye for passing lanes, Kastelic easily earned his place as a first-pair defenseman alongside now-Americans’ defenseman Joseph McWolf. He placed ninth among defenders with 62 points (15G, 47A) and 108 hits – an excellent start for an unknown quantity on a mid-table team. More impressive was his composure as he and fellow blue-liners Lando Baxter and Jesse Wilson led the Lynx to an improbable 4-game sweep of the Halifax 21^st for the franchise’s twelfth Founder’s Cup, including a Game 4 victory with a 31-15 shot disadvantage and a 0-3 deficit before the end of the first period.

 

ABOVE: Cows on Kastelic family farm, Ljubljana metro area

 

Kastelic’s first-overall selection of the S63 Entry Draft was of no surprise to the league’s more astute scouts, as his rapid ascension in the minors made him a consensus first pick. The Reign were quick to cash in on Kastelic’s talents, and the team – led by captains and future Hall-of-Famers Podrick Cast and Edwin Preencarnacion – earned their way to a Continental Cup. He’d managed a perfect point-per-game pace (14 goals, 58 assists), improving on his VHLM performance despite being a pro-league rookie.

 

Both non-cow image credits to Enorama.

 

Though he continues to be regarded as one of the top talents in the VHL, Kastelic’s individual numbers have not recently reflected his perceived stardom. His point production increased gradually through his first four seasons, and Riga has continued to be perennial playoff contenders, but never managed to win the Continental Cup since Kastelic’s rookie season. At his peak as a defender, he was an 80+ point player with over 100 shots blocked – certainly at least putting him in the argument for Top Defenseman. This was particularly the case in Season 66, when he earned second team All-VHL honors. With a Riga Special (i.e. D -> F position change) in Season 67, Kastelic doubled his hits per season and had a reasonable argument for the league's best two-way forward.

 

Season 69 was arguably the Slovenian skater’s least impressive, with 64 points scored on a team that was as staunch defensively as the league had seen in recent seasons. But as one of the team’s primary scorers since converting to forward, the line chemistry hasn’t been quite what history book writers would have liked to see from Kastelic. All of the tape suggests that the Slovenian has one of the best shots and pass touches in league history, as well as the strength and skating ability to match the absolute best in spite of Riga’s recent struggles. His performance in three consecutive World Cups (one gold, two silvers) corroborates that. Independent of some subtle Halifax voodoo magic (a.k.a. STHS) or a subtle mismatch in surrounding talent, however, he’s proven that he has the wherewithal to outmatch any other forward in the league. As a first generation player, there are fewer better arguments for greatness.

 

 

Image credit to Dil for signature below

LW Julian Borwinn @Jubo07, Helsinki Titans (1724 TPE)

 

It’s hard to separate Julian Borwinn from his teammates Kronos and Matt in a historical context, largely because they formed one of the most feared first forward lines in league history. Born to an unassuming household in Ontario, Canada in 1991, Borwinn’s early career starkly contrasts that of Kastelic. He scored his first goal in his first game of pee-wee ice hockey after receiving his first hockey stick as a present from his uncle, and was quickly scouted for bantam league by the age of 12, an ostensible prodigy at age 14 while leading his high school club to two consecutive city championships.

 

Tragically, he suffered pulmonary collapse during a boating accident on his 16^th birthday and was kept off of the ice for months – a poison pill for most players’ professional ice hockey aspirations. After a lengthy recovery, he found a home in roller hockey and was a perennial national championship contender over his eleven years in the sport. The call of the ice proved too powerful, however, and a career change at 27 years of age found a more senior Borwinn as an elite playmaker even on entering the VHLM with the Las Vegas Aces.

 

The Canadian forward made his mark immediately on the minor leagues – scoring 87 points and a massive +44 on an Aces team that featured past and current teammate Alexander Pepper. Arguably more important were Borwinn’s 121 hits (1.5/g), an early showcase of his two-way forward talents. This set him up for a high first-round draft selection – which the Titans made good on by taking him third overall in a draft that proved to be incredibly top-heavy.

 

It didn’t take long for Borwinn to achieve individual recognition, as an 84-point rookie campaign in Season 63 earned him the Christian Stolzschweiger Rookie of the Year award. He received the best possible individual outcome as a rookie, but a rebuilding Helsinki team (with just two defenders in total) proved to be enough to keep the Titans out of the playoffs.

Seasons 64-65 were quiet ones for the Canadian forward, as the Titans took on aging forwards in The Charm, Vesto Slipher, Oleksiy Revchenko, and Keaton Louth in a final push to earn Helsinki a championship – all to no avail. It was in Season 65 that the team introduced Kronos Bailey to the team, and Season 66 that the team burst through with a massive 55-14-3 regular season by introducing Matt Thompson to their first line.

 

Image credit to Jubo07 for above.

 

Borwinn’s production matched the talent surrounding him, as he broke out for an incredible 114 points (including 51 goals) in the team’s no-brainer championship run. Borwinn ultimately had more trophies to hoist in that season than most players do in their entire careers: the Funk, Slobodzian, Brooks, Campbell, and (the first of his) Szatkowski trophies were all added to his trophy case at the end of Season 66. At the half-way point of his career, Borwinn had an argument for the Hall of Fame already.

 

In the seasons since, Borwinn has been over 1 ppg without fail – including seasons approaching 100 points in S68 and S69. He’s gradually transitioned from pure scorer to a high-quality two-way forward, arguably peaking in his second-to-last season with 93 points and 241 hits (penalty minutes aside). Like Kastelic, he has remained loyal to his drafting team for his entire career, extending with the Titans for one final ride last season. With a Boulet, Szatkowski, and first and second-teams All-VHL in the interim, Borwinn has the accolades and the statistics for a Hall of Fame berth. But with the Titans sitting in fifth place with a top three offense, Borwinn might just have one more season of trophies to throw on to the pile.

 

 

Image credit to BOOM™

 

D Joseph @McWolf, New York Americans (1433 TPE)
 

Oh, McWolf. As a beat writer for the Reign, seeing two (current or former) Riga players on this list in the first three is a pleasant sight for sore eyes. This young English defenseman started his career in New York, and after a trade in his sixth season, will end his career the same way. He claims Worcester Park as his home, born to parents that own the family-run Wolf Gardens Café. He grew up under modest means and largely uneventfully – but with a competitive streak corroborated by his brothers. A multi-sport athlete, McWolf was originally on track to become a footballer as a top-flight defender, but gradually was swayed over with encouragement as a stay-at-home defender on the ice in spite of a rocky secondary school start.

 

McWolf’s moment of clarity came not as part of a world-class team, but instead after a menacing hit on his school team’s captain that caused gloves to drop and fists to be exchanged. Though not perfectly transferable, the English defender’s football mentality translated well to ice hockey and a gradual development of point-scoring ability. He eventually finished as the UK’s Defenseman of the Year in college and drew some interest from the EIHL before committing to the VHL Minor League, best-known for his defensive technical ability and physical play.

 

Like Kastelic, McWolf started on the Ottawa Lynx – and he quickly re-established his identity as a stay-at-home defenseman with hard hitting (238 hits) and defensive efficiency to his name. As a result, these two budding stars helped lead the Lynx to an improbable Continental Cup victory over the Halifax 21^st. His impact wasn’t as visually obvious as Kastelic’s, but a remarkable +8 in just 9 playoff games showed that the young English defender had a significant positive effect on the ice even when faced with high-quality opponents. Though he had not developed his scoring acumen to a pro league-effective level, McWolf was the second overall selection in the Season 63 Entry Draft and made an immediate impact for the New York Americans.

 

Though his impact on offense was clearly felt by the Americans, McWolf’s most startling career numbers come from acting (basically) as a puck sponge in his first two seasons – where he accrued 196 and 189 shots blocked, respectively. His scoring numbers (64 and 80 points) were notable for a defenseman in any season, let alone his first two, and he started his streak of >200 hit seasons with his rookie campaign. For his efforts in his first season, he earned an All-Rookie Team berth. It should come as no surprise that in his second season he earned the Labatte (and a First Team) – his first of two. After four seasons, he was traded away as part of a New York fire-sale to Riga, joining a consistently playoff-worthy Reign team with a chance to put them over the edge.

 

Image credit to Enorama. I miss you McWolf ;-;

 

Through all eight of his seasons, he has firmly established himself as an elite defender with unrivaled shot blocking acumen (>100 SBs/season) and is most certainly on pace to continue that trend  45 games into this season. He’s remained steady at 60-70 points per season, and notably earned both Top Defensive and Top Overall Defenseman trophies (and another First Team, of course) in Season 67, his first of two with the Reign. Afterward, he gave something of a veteran presence to the Malmo Nighthawks, a recent expansion team with what was a miracle trip to the finals in Season 68. He capped this off with another Second Team in Season 69. Now he’s back to where it all started: the New York Americans, fighting and clawing for a North American Conference playoff spot.

 

And I suspect that’s exactly how he wants it to be.

 

 

RW Dan Wilinsky @oilmandan, Malmo Nighthawks (1423 TPE)

 

Strangely, Wilinsky’s hockey career was initially more tightly bound to the NHL than any VHL team. Born in Edmonton, Wilinsky’s father was an icemaker for the Oilers – and as a member of a sport family, his start with hockey was early and constant. A record breaker from the beginning, he flipped the Edmonton hockey system on its head as a multi-sport athlete before eventually narrowing to strictly hockey at age 15. At that point, he played a couple of years with the Prince Albert Raiders (winning one Memorial Cup) and eventually chose the VHL over the NHL in spite of his ties to the Oilers.

 

Image credit to DollarAndADream

 

As if they hadn’t been featured enough, the Ottawa Lynx also had Wilinsky in Season 62 – a pretty good sign of what was to come in the playoffs. Some suggest that he was the most impressive member of the Lynx at the time as the goal leader (40), second overall in points for the team (84), and the fourth-best plus-minus in the league at the time. Despite his impressive numbers, the Canadian winger fell to seventh overall in the draft, and was one of three first round selections by New York, who seemed poised to take the league by storm with McWolf, Shawinganen, and Wilinsky.

As many in the league know by now, that promising New York roster was not able to hang a championship banner from the rafters in the interim. Although they kept their first rounders for multiple seasons, they unfortunately weren’t able to break through to the finals before sending off their promising S63 class. Regardless, Wilinsky established himself as a prominent two-way forward, accruing over 100 hits and points in the 50s-60s in each of his four Americans seasons. In his rookie season, the Americans were understandably bad: they had just three forwards and two defenders. But after drafting Joel Ylonen and Ryan Sullivan, Jr. the roster filled out a bit.

 

The Americans managed a playoff berth in S65 after acquiring Leph Twinger, Carles Puigdemont, and Matthew Materazo among others. But when New York failed to make the next step forward in Season 66, the Americans decided to fire-sale most of their mid- and late-career players in favor of high draft picks and younger/cap dump options. Wilinsky was shipped off to Helsinki immediately after their S66 Continental Cup, and immediately experienced a resurgence – 86 points and 230 hits later, he earned his way to a Scott Boulet Trophy.

 

Image credit to Bushito

 

Season 68 brought him a similar level of personal success (84 points, +22, 206 hits) on a Helsinki team that managed a close third place in the regular season – again without a championship, but with ‘proof-of-concept’ including Wilinsky as a featured player. In the following offseason, he was traded to Seattle – a team with burgeoning playoff success – in exchange for a second rounder and a semi-active forward.

 

Wilinsky was steady as ever, accruing 81 points, a cool +40 plus/minus, and the greatest number of hits he’d ever had in his career (273) en route to hoisting the Continental Cup with the Bears. He fittingly had several key contributions – including the assists on the third game’s tying and winning goals – while sweeping the Riga Reign and earning an All-VHL Second Team, the second of his career.

 

Still one of the better scoring defensemen in the league, he’s found his way to Malmo in the off-season – the fourth team of his career. Though they’re facing tough times, they have a battle-tested and championship-experienced leader in Dan Wilinsky.

 

G Alexander Pepper @Sonnet, Helsinki Titans (1380 TPE)

Image credit to Sonnet.

 

In a strangely perfect way, we cap off our S63 First Gen players with a top-flight netminder in Alexander Pepper, part of the tandem synergizing with Julian Borwinn in his time with Helsinki. One of the core career Titans, Pepper had far humbler origins in an arid Clark County, Nevada – and remained there for the greater part of his early career. Left without a major professional sports team, Pepper initially followed a few minor league teams in his youth – but Nevada, a desert-filled state, had a few barriers to entry with regards to ice hockey. Nonetheless, he honed his athleticism with baseball, a sport he displayed natural talent for, and gradually convinced his peers to approximate hockey with roller skates and goalies with baseball mitts. He eventually earned his way to proper goalie equipment and university resources at UNLV before finding his way on to the Las Vegas Aces.

 

His impact on the Aces was well-understood that season as he accrued a 50-15-7 record, among the best in the league with an 89.6% save rate and just a hair under 2 goals allowed per game. Pepper pitched ten shutouts that season while facing nearly 1,400 shots and earned a well-deserved Devereux Trophy in goal for Las Vegas.

 

Unfortunately for Nevada, Pepper couldn’t become a proper VHL professional in Vegas. And in spite of his success with the Aces in Season 62, some scouts still doubted his ability to convert to a pro style, suggesting his over-reliance on his primary glove hand would be a curse on his career. He was drafted tenth overall by the Helsinki Titans, sending the young Nevadan over five-thousand miles away to Finland in a draft filled with early Titans picks. Borwinn and Sidney Crosby became core members – with both playing their entire careers with Pepper.

 

As the clear-cut #1 goalie in his class, Pepper was a lock for the S63 All-Rookie team – and with a 0.918 save percentage, he was a no-brainer in spite of his 25-31-8 record. After all, he managed to make it through his rookie season without becoming Swiss cheese, facing an absurd 2,599 shots on a rebuilding team. The next two seasons saw improvement on Pepper’s behalf, as he pitched thirteen shutouts between S64-65 and greatly improved his win percentage (38 & 41 wins, respectively), all while allowing nearly a full goal less per game. He deservedly earned a Season 64 Second Team selection for his efforts.

 

Image credit to gregreg

 

The mid-60s saw Pepper reach the top of his game, and the Titans not-so-coincidentally ascended to perennial Finals contention as his save rate approached 0.92. In spite of facing a red-hot Beau Louth and Jake Davis, Pepper’s lowest save percentage in the four-game Season 66 finals was 0.929 – including an impeccable 22 of 23 shots saved in Game 3. Indeed, Season 66 Playoffs Pepper posted a 0.931 overall save percentage and just 2.15 goals against while leading his team to an 8-1 playoff record. To no one’s surprise, he hoisted both the Continental Cup and the Daisuke Kanou.

In the back half of his career, Pepper has remained with the Titans and has been remarkably consistent in spite of the team going into something of a rebuild. He posts a few shutouts per season, about 40 wins, and just about 2.5 goals per game – and his percentage has remained a steady 0.91-0.92. Unsurprisingly, Helsinki has had an incredibly difficult time finding a protégé for the Nevadan; Season 67’s Virgil Ligriv has been steadily improving and has shown glimpses of excellent goaltending, but it’s unclear as to whether he will prove a worthy replacement.

 

In the meantime, Helsinki has swelled into a playoff-ready beast for Crosby’s, Pepper’s, and Borwinn’s swan song. Will they ride out on the sunset champions or bittersweet shadows of their former selves?

 

 

[3,344 words]

[McWolf 3,115]

Oh wow, you digged for that old biography. Solid journalism.

 

25 minutes ago, Renomitsu said:

I miss you McWolf ;-;

I'm not crying I swear ;-;

 

Nice read throughout

[Jubo 1,839]

Really enjoyed this read. Awesome job!

[Enorama 2,035]

2 hours ago, Renomitsu said:

Both non-cow image credits to Enorama.

 

You just had to use one of my first graphics eh smh

[oilmandan 688]

This is truly beautiful stuff. I had forgot most of that biography. Wonderful read throughout. Was lucky to be teammates with everyone of these guys. And proud to be mentioned in the same article as well. 

[gorlab 4,321]

Some fire sigs in this piece tbh. 

 

 

Great article! 

[Peace 1,518]

How could Peace not be on here. Fucking FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY! 

[oilmandan 688]

8 hours ago, Peace said:

How could Peace not be on here. Fucking FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY! 

You have 2 Flames as your sigs and as your profile pic, it's amazing you haven't been banned from the site

[Peace 1,518]

29 minutes ago, oilmandan said:

You have 2 Flames as your sigs and as your profile pic, it's amazing you haven't been banned from the site

 

Well at least I didn’t waste a giveaway on a James Neal jersey. 

[Banackock 8,036]

I like it.

[Ricer13 2,794]

Amazed that you wrote 3000 words! This is a really good read.

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Almost 2000 TPE?

 

TPE inflation at the top of the charts!

[Enorama 2,035]

16 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

Almost 2000 TPE?

 

TPE inflation at the top of the charts!

 

:]

 

I'll probably hit 2k considering I won't be retiring this TDL. Bow down to the king of the TPE whores.

[Renomitsu 934]

Claim 1 of 4, week ending 03/08/2020

[gorlab 4,321]

Damn, that's a solid first gen class tbh. 

[Renomitsu 934]

6 hours ago, gorlab said:

Damn, that's a solid first gen class tbh. 

 

Seem to come in waves. All of those guys listed have been in some type of leadership role since joining too!

[Renomitsu 934]

Claim 2 of 4, week ending 03/15/20

[Renomitsu 934]

Claim 3 of 4, week ending 03/22/20

[Renomitsu 934]

Claim 4 of 4, week ending 03/29/20

[NotAVHLM-GM 1,858]

What a great class

[Peace 1,518]

On 2/15/2020 at 5:30 AM, Peace said:

How could Peace not be on here. Fucking FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY! 

Still applies. >_>