Joe Gainer: Prospect Scouting Report

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Gainer Prospect Scouting Report:

 

At the beginning of season 71, Joseph Gainer’s peer review chronicled his journey to the VHLM and the Mississauga hounds. Now with both the VHL 72 entry and VHLM  72 dispersal draft complete, we would like to take a look back at Gainer’s time on the Hounds last season, and what led up to him being selected by his dream team, the Toronto Legion.

 

Gainer came into the Hounds a 4th liner winger, playing sheltered and low ice time, as he focused on catching up to the rest of the league in terms of TPE and skill. He was able to quickly put his name on the score sheet, before coming back down to the more realistic expectations a new VHLM player would face, grinding away to get better under his sheltered ice time.

 

Gainer as a part of season 72s Mississauga Hounds were a bad team more times than it was good. It had more than 1 multi-game losing streak, many games lost by 2 or more goals, and some pretty vicious thrashings by the upper half of the league. Add onto this the rotating door of general managers that where at the helm of the Hounds throughout the season, the Hounds emotions ran low more often than they did high. The team kept chugging along though, as did Gainer.

 

Gainer, who was acknowledged by the Prospect Scouting Report as not missing any of the 12 capped TPE earn-able throughout the season, continued his steady rise on the Hounds. His break came when Andrew Su was traded to the Ottawa Lynx and Peace became general manager. With these changes came a change in the lineup, which saw Gainer move up to the 2nd line, as well as earn some time on the second power play. Gainer’s hard work had payed off and allowed him to put his name on the stat sheet more, although sometime this was for the worse, such as his brutal -29 plus minus.

 

At the conclusion of the season, Gainer was contacted by a few teams how had picks around where he was going to be drafted. One of those teams was not the Toronto Legion. Gainer reached out to them, saying how much he would love to play for them. While they did not have picks where he was slated to be drafted, GM Peace made the moves to grab Gainer.

 

Gainer’s story is only just being started. He will probably spend most of the season in the VHLM with Mississauga again, after being drafted by them in the dispersal draft. That’s fine by him. He understands hard work, and is ready to put the work in to reach his ultimate goal, raising the Continental Cup, wearing a Toronto Legion jersey.

 

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