Markus Nygren Is Worse Than Logan Laich

[Devise 4,475]

The ongoing struggles of now Seattle winger Markus Nygren continues to remain a story. Despite some reservations that the S69 draftee would perhaps break out in his sophomore VHL season, Nygren who is set to leave his rookie contract behind next season just can't seem to find the offensive consistency to make a difference. While he has been a relatively decent physical presence and has settled more overall into a defensive forward role, Markus has only manged 3 goals and 6 assists in 46 games. While his 102 hits puts him 26th in the league in that category, considering the lack of offense being produced you'd expect that hit number to be top 10 in the league for Markus to be making any sort of impact.

 

While some of the struggles can be attributed to minutes, Markus has fallen into a funk often associated with players from the Devise agency. Even as the training hours start to pile and the build starts to round out, the breakout moment or season is never to come. The closest comparison on could find for Markus is former Devise player Logan Laich. Laich attempted to be a high scoring bruising winger, and while the checking was there early, I decided not to update his skating because I was going to prove the meta wrong damn it! This led to this as a rookie and sophomore season for Logan with that idea;

 

S37(NYA) 72GP |  6G -  6A - 12P |  -6 | 125 SHT |  2 GWG | 134 PIM | 321 HIT | 31 SB
S38(NYA) 72GP |  8G - 12A - 20P | +23 | 114 SHT |  3 GWG | 114 PIM | 267 HIT | 42 SB

 

Now compare that with where Markus is at this point in his career with nearly two VHL seasons under his belt;

 

Season	GP	G	A	P	+/-	SHT	PIM	HIT	SB	GW	PPG	SHG
71 (SEA)	46	3	6	9	12	19	40	102	4	0	0	0
70 (MAL)	72	4	6	10	-2	27	115	175	6	1	1	0

 

 

Holy yikes. Markus Nygren had a worse rookie season than Logan Laich did, and is hilariously still 8 points back of Laich's sophomore season. Logan had more points and was actually a relevant hitter for all of his career. Logan eventually switched to D and wound up being a decent two way guy who managed a point per game one season. That was after I updated his skating and succumbed to the meta. 

 

What is curious about Markus doing so much worse, is that I generally listened to the meta for the most part with him. I made him very tall and high checking, but I upped him to 85 skating pretty fast as well. The only attributes I didn't focus on with Markus was scoring, until recently bumping it to 55 and likely soon 70 just to appease the sim. Obviously, it's a different era and the version of Markus we are seeing is probably in line for the most part with the tier of player Laich was. But Laich saw top six minutes on some teams and Markus likely won't be in that position until his 4th or 5th season in the league. But even with less minutes the lack of overall hitting and in general contributions could be setting Markus up to literally be the worst Devise player ever built, and ironically.....probably the highest TPE player in the agency as well as it's likely Markus will pass wherever JB Rift ends up, which  at least Rift had one or two good seasons. 

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Wait, you don't anticipate being a top 6 forward until your 4th season?

[Devise 4,475]

22 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

Wait, you don't anticipate being a top 6 forward until your 4th season?

 

I'm probably pushing 500 TPE by season's end so it's not that. Just too hard to compete for minutes on loaded rosters has more to do with the team.