The VHLM's Biggest Upset, Part 3

[solas 1,952]

The VHLM's Biggest Upset, Part 3: An Immovable Object

 

This is the final article of my three-part series on Vasteras IK J-20 in Season 26, “The VHLM’s Biggest Upset”.  Here are the previous parts if you’d like to read them:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: An Unstoppable Force

 

The playoffs were now approaching.  Vasteras was fresh off of winning a Prime Minister’s Cup and entered their first playoff series as the #1 seed.  The regular season dominance was over, now it was time for the coronation.

 

The first warning sign came in Game 1 of the European Conference Finals.  Vasteras was playing the Bern Royals, over whom they held the aforementioned 53-point lead.  They’d played Bern eight times over the course of the season and only lost once.  Surely it was just about a foregone conclusion that this series would be a sweep.  The Royals seemed to disagree.  In this first game of the series, Bern came away with an incredible overtime win as they scored three powerplay goals in the third period to tie it, followed by a game winner from Dernière Unetir to win it.  This was a stunning capitulation from a team that just about everyone had expected to comfortably win the cup.  

 

While Vasteras was forced to abandon any ambitions towards a first-round sweep, they were able to avoid any additional bumps in the road by winning the next four games of the series and closing things out with an overtime winner by Zack Curry in Game 5.  Next came the Founder’s Cup finals.  Their opponent, the Brampton Blades, had it even more difficult in the North American Conference finals.  The Blades had suffered a surprise start of their own, going down 3-1 in the series to the Syracuse Wolfpack before bringing it back by winning the last three games to book their ticket to face Vasteras.  

 

Brampton, in the shadow of Vasteras’ dominance, had been having a pretty successful season of their own.  They finished with a comfortable  lead on top of the North American Conference.  Defenseman Seth Plaut had helped lead the team to glory with an incredible 215 points, which made him the VHLM’s points leader, assists leader, top defenseman, and MVP on the season.  Winger Aidan Richan had also had a season to remember, scoring 204 points of his own and placing in the top three in goals and assists.  

 

The Brampton Blades were quietly having a good season themselves, thanks to players like Seth Plaut and Aidan Richan

 

Regardless of Brampton’s own success, however, what happened in the finals was still unexpected.  Once again, Vasteras lost the first game of the series before rebounding in Game 2.  But instead of an eventual IK J-20 victory, Brampton pulled themselves back into the series lead with two straight wins - marking the first time Vasteras had lost twice in a row in 50 games.  Both games, they’d outshot their opponents, including a particularly disappointing Game 4 in which they held a 33-13 shot advantage but lost 4-3 due to an underwhelming performance from Marius Henchoz.  Suddenly, the team who’d gone through the entire season as the overwhelming favorites now had the momentum against them.  Down 3-1, they’d have to win the next three games in order to win the series.  No margin for error.  One loss meant the end of the season.  

 

Vasteras responded well in the next two games, as they began to show why they had been so dominant the entire season with two 4-1 wins to force Game 7.  But Game 7 didn’t start so well.  Brampton was able to start off the period with two goals, and while Vasteras was able to bring it back with a powerplay goal from Emerson Byer, Lars Strundman’s second goal of the night gave the Blades a 3-1 lead after the first period.  Things got even worse in the second, as Brampton was able to add two more despite a goal from Alexander Chershenko.  Brampton was up 5-2 going into the third period, and what was supposed to be a legendary season for Vasteras IK J-20 was now on very thin ice.  They needed three goals to push the game to overtime.  There were signs of life thanks to a goal by Nic Riopel twelve seconds into the period, and Chershenko followed up with his second to bring the game to 5-4.  Vasteras put everything they had into scoring.  Satan was pulled with a minute and a half left to give them the extra attacker.  They absolutely peppered the net with shots in the last twenty seconds, but it was all for naught, as Brampton held out.  The season was over.  Despite the hype, despite the regular season dominance, despite their arsenal of draft picks and top-level talent, Vasteras had fallen at the last hurdle.  The Brampton Blades were Founder’s Cup Champions.

 

Vasteras IK J-20 had gone from losers, to the talk of the league, to losers once again.

 

In a series with hyped-up prospects and big names, it was a largely unheralded player, a player who had been a third round selection in both the S24 VHLM draft and the S25 VHL draft, who was the star of the playoffs.  Aidan Richan, the man who had won no individual awards in the regular season despite a 204-point display, became the Playoff MVP after being the playoff leader in goals, assists, and points (including two goals and an assist in Game 7).  And sure, many of the Blades’ players (Richan included) didn’t quite have the careers that their star-studded list of opponents did.  For many, this would probably be the high point of their career.  But Vasteras wasn’t the only team to have elite prospects either.  Goaltender Alexander Labatte, who was the son of legendary defenseman Sterling Labatte and would later become one of the best goalies of all time in his own right, was a prospect for the upcoming S27 VHLM draft and had joined the Blades as a midseason free agent signing.  Labatte quickly established himself as the starter in time to play every game during Brampton’s playoff run.  Labatte wasn’t the only future hall of famer to join the team either - Ukranian winger Volodymyr Rybak, a future teammate of Chershenko, had also joined the Blades mid-season.  He wasn’t much of a contributor in the playoffs, with 6 points in 14 games and 0 points in Game 7, but this Founder’s Cup was just the first accomplishment of many in Rybak’s legendary career.

 

Vasteras IK J-20 was left with disappointment and heartbreak as Game 7 came to a close.

 

Coincidentally, there was more than one serious cup contender in Vasteras that season.  In fact, the VHL’s Vasteras Iron Eagles, only a couple seasons after returning from the brief move to Madrid, won both the Victory Cup and the Continental Cup in a legendary curse-breaking season capped off by a 4-1 series victory over the New York Americans.  It was Vasteras’ first Continental Cup since Season 1.  It was also the first time ever that both Vasteras teams had the best regular-season records in their respective leagues in the same season.  It could have been the first time Vasteras teams had won the VHL and VHLM cups in the same season, but that was not to be.

 

By the time Season 27 came along, much of Vasteras IK J-20’s roster left for the big leagues.  Of the 16 players drafted in those first two rounds of the S26 VHLM draft, 10 were gone.  The juggernaut that had come together in the previous season was mostly gone.  But there were still some remnants that stuck around - goaltender Marius Henchoz stayed in the VHLM and took over the starting job, putting up a Sawchuk-winning season.  Despite the team’s top three defensemen (Riopel, Incognito, Byer) moving up to the VHL, Kraphf Dringus came into his own on the first pairing with 124 points.  And Rybak, who had been a part of the Brampton Blades last year, joined Vasteras via a trade from the Syracuse Wolfpack halfway through an MVP-winning season where he lead the VHLM in goals.  

 

Despite the significant players lost from last season, Vasteras IK J-20 were once again winners of the Prime Minister’s Trophy in S27 and heading into the playoffs with momentum.  This time, they closed things out in a fashion that might’ve been expected of last year’s team.  Marius Henchoz was dominant in net as he won Playoff MVP and the offense was firing on all cylinders.  Vasteras swept the Bern Royals in the conference finals, then beat the Saskatoon Wild (who were only behind them by three points in the regular season) 4-1 to win the Founder’s Cup.  Over their nine playoff games, Vasteras only allowed 8 goals while scoring 20 of their own.  In short, it was a dominant playoff performance.

 

As a result of all this, the Season 26 Vasteras IK J-20 team has a complicated legacy.  At first glance, they’d undeniably be considered a failure.  When one looks at the amount of talent this team had, talent that was never assembled before in the VHLM and probably never will be again, it’d be pretty clear that they should’ve won and gone down in the history books as maybe the greatest VHLM team ever.  But then, despite the great players they lost, they did what they couldn’t do the season before and won the cup in S27.  And even in that “failure” of a season, they still accomplished a feat that nobody else could by putting such a team together.  

 

When you think of what you love about sports, what do you think about?  Do you just remember the titles, the cups, the championships?  Or do you remember the moments?  The players?  The stories?  This was a team that was unmistakably unique.  They were remarkable in their defeat, redemptive in their success, and above all else, memorable.

 

And what is that, if not Vasteras?
 

1,647 words, good for three weeks

Edited June 27, 2020 by solas

[Victor 11,009]

10 minutes ago, solas said:

Chershenko followed up with his second to bring the game to 5-4

carrying the team as per

[solas 1,952]

Claiming for week 2/3

[solas 1,952]

Claiming for week 3/3