Werbenjagermanjensen, the Hall of Fame, And What It Would Mean To Me [1/2]

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Werbenjagermanjensen, the Hall of Fame, And What It Would Mean To Me

 

These past two weeks, I've been pretty busy with work and wedding venue visiting/planning, so I wasn't on VHL a ton besides checking the individual games for Moscow and some of the Board of Governor threads. All of a sudden, I started getting tons and tons of notifications that I was tagged in media spots, graphics, and fan590s. Low and behold, the theme week this season is "potential hall of famers." Naturally I guess, Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen has been mentioned in a lot of these. I'm going to take a slightly different spin to this since Smitty has already had his stats explained multiple times this week - after going through his current accolades, I'm going to talk about how I personally got to this activity level with Smitty and how my prior players affected Smitty's career.

 

Werbenjagermanjensen only played for the Ottawa Lynx in the VHLM. After being picked up on waivers during S63, he was drafted by the Lynx in S64. Smitty didn't really put up any insane numbers. During the regular season, he put up 3 points in 13 games during S63, and 68 in 72 games in S64...which I guess is actually pretty good by today's standards. As a result of his hard work off the ice and production on the ice, HC Davos Dynamo selected the young defenseman with the second overall pick in the S65 VHL Entry Draft.

 

A lot has already been said about the Dynamo during the time Smitty was a member of the team, but I'm just gonna summarize it with I enjoyed playing with @ShawnGlade and thought we got the short end of the stick a couple of times sim wise, but at the end of the day, we weren't good enough to get it done. At the very least, the Dynamo put Smitty in a position to be successful. From the start, I believe Werbenjagermanjensen was the number one defenseman on the team, or at least was by the end of his rookie season. Also, during his four seasons in Davos, the team made the playoffs twice and was only truly bad during his first season. This allowed Smitty to not only earn a large number of points at the beginning of his career, but also accumulate a large number of hits and blocked shots. He also only had one "minus" season on the team, going -1 during his rookie season. The points slowly increased from 47, to 48, to 63, and then to 86 in Season 68, which helped propel him to the Labatte and Valiq trophies. During the off-season, there was an amicable split between Werbenjagermanjensen and Davos, at which point the defenseman went to free agency and signed with the Moscow Menace.

 

Things only continued to improve as a member of the Menace. During S69, Smitty put up another 83 points season and 264 hits, earning the Labatte and Wylde trophies, and also narrowly came in second in the Valiq voting. Although the playoffs of S70 are still on going, Werbenjagermanjensen put up another 86 point season, and is the presumptive winner of the Labatte, Valiq, and Beketov trophies. Even without a Continental Cup currently to his name, it's very likely that Werbenjagermanjensen will be joining the ranks of the Hall of Fame, perhaps even as a first ballot member.

 

For a large portion of the league, Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen is the only player associated with myself. Those who don't know my player history may be surprised to know that even though I am already a member of the Hall of Fame as a builder, I haven't had a player really come that close to the Hall of Fame. However, there are three of my past players in particular that I want to discuss - Robin Gow, Jeff Gow, and Shayne Gow - and how that affected my career with Smitty.

 

Robin Gow - Robin Gow was my second player and really when I became "noticed" in the VHL. During my first player, I was inactive for about a season and a half, and he was only an "OK" defensive defenseman. I knew that when I created Robin, I wanted to make an actually great player. Robin was either first or second by TPE in his draft class come draft time (I believe it was second, but there's a slight chance I was first) and was selected 2nd overall by the Riga Reign. Robin would play with the Reign for the entirety of his career except for the last half season of his 7th and final season. During Robin's career, I became GM of the Reign, and was tied to the team due to the "GM Player" rule at the time, although it's very unlikely I would have left anyway. Robin always put up good/great numbers, but I don't think he ever won an individual award in the VHL. Robin only had a season or two where he was the number one center on the team. For most of his prime, he was behind a more advanced player (most notably is probably Kameron Taylor) or a trade deadline acquisition (most notably @boubabi's player who is escaping my name right now...Niklas Lindberg?), and then played behind someone else when he moved to Cologne. What Robin's career taught me was that not only do you have to be a top TPE earner to join the hall of fame, but you also need the right circumstances around your team's roster.

 

Jeff Gow - Jeff Gow was supposed to be the hall of famer. Coming off of my third player - Bernie Gow, who was a no good, completely average goalie who will most likely scar me from ever making a goalie again in this league - I wanted to create the best goal scorer in the league. Jeff was going to be a winger who did nothing but put the puck in the net, and I wasn't going to put a point in faceoffs or checking in order to maximize my offensive counting stats as efficiently as possible. The actual specifics of the story don't matter here, but at the end of the day, I didn't find the individual success I thought I should have had early on in my career. Between failing to meet my own lofty individual expectations and starting a new position at work, I found myself burnt out of the VHL. I was semi-active for maybe 1.5 seasons and completely inactive for close to 1 season. What Jeff's career taught me is to manage my expectations of what I want to get out of the VHL and to make sure to take a break when I feel like I need it. Coincidentally, I'm somewhat doing that with Smitty this season. After doing a media spot almost every single week of his career up to this season, I've done welfare primarily all of this season as a way to step back and take some time from the league while still maintaining a presence in other aspects of the site, primarily the Board of Governors.

 

Shayne Gow - Shayne was my player right after Jeff. I sort of wrote about how he was going to be a hall of famer, but deep down, I knew that probably wasn't going to be true. He was going to be a good offensive defenseman, but I don't know how much he even played on the top pairing of competitive teams. The main thing I learned about Shayne is to be comfortable jumping teams. Up until this player, I had never gone to free agency as an active player (I don't count doing so with Bernie, since being a goaltender is a different story), and the only way I moved between teams was trades towards the end of my career. With Shayne, I was drafted by Helsinki, played there for a couple of seasons, then I was traded to Seattle, didn't re-sign after my ELC expired, and signed with Calgary for one season. As a free agent again, I signed with Helsinki, and finished my last three seasons there, but I'm pretty sure they were all one year deals. What I learned with Shayne is that it's OK to leave a team in free agency as long as you're upfront with the GM. When everyone's on the same page, it might lead to some disappointment or disagreement, but it's much different that doing it as a surprise at the end of the season. Being comfortable doing this with Shayne was a big reason why I was comfortable leaving Davos and becoming a free agent. 

 

So all of a sudden, this has become a media spot that is almost 1,500 words. Personally, I will be very proud if Smitty makes the Hall of Fame, since I doubt my next players will have the same level of activity that Smitty did at the beginning of his career. Not to say that my next players won't be very good, but I don't know if they'll be "Hall of Fame good" unless I get lucky. At the end of Smitty's career, I'll go into more detail about the who helped me and the thank you's and all that, but that's a story for another day. At this time, I'm just hoping that Moscow can win the Continental Cup this year, do it again next year, and then we'll see where my eighth and final team will take me.

Edited March 1, 2020 by flyersfan1453

[Speed 126]

Smitty is a beast, and you indeed won the Cup so congratulations on that feat. As a newer player it was good to hear about your past player creations since I do not get to see much history of the league other than trivia questions. Good read and smitty on brotha

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Claim 3/2 - 3/8

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Claim 3/16-3/22

Edited March 15, 2020 by flyersfan1453