Riga Playoff Recap

[Da_Berr 219]

It is official your VHL season 72 champions are the Riga Reign! To commemorate such a momentous occasion for the team and players, let's look back on their playoff run. Despite being far from the best team on paper, Riga absolutely stomped over the competition this year with an almost perfect 12-1 record, with their only loss to Calgary in the Finals. In the first round, they encountered the HC Davos, a team that had just sped up their rebuild by adding multiple superstars during the trade deadline. The biggest two pieces and superstars of the last couple of seasons that HC Davos got were Jet Jaguar and HHH. That, coupled with the presence of a few veteran players like Garcia and a couple of promising prospects, many expected the series to be competitive at the very least. What happened next was a complete stomping. Of the four-game sweep, Davos was only truly competitive in one. HHH never truly showed up only notching a single goal in 4 games, and the majority of the team were in negative +/-. Even with those that did show up on Davos, their top scorer only had 3 points. This could be accounted for Davos's players not showing up, but it also shows how strong Riga's defence was. Led by the elite duo of Apollo Hackett and Lincoln Tate, Riga's defence is what was able to propel them to become the cup champions. Furthermore, despite not having any superstars on offence, Riga's still had a respectable lineup that could still net points. In the next series, Riga once again swept their opponent, the perennial powerhouse of Moscow. Once again, only one of the games were even remotely close. With their sweep of Moscow, Riga got to enjoy some off time while waiting for the closely fought series between Calgary and New York. When Calgary was the one to move on, many thought it would be a tightly contested battle for the cup. It was the hottest team in the postseason versus the best team of the regular season. The first game was an absolute shocker that had beaten the seemingly unbeatable Riga Reign 3-1. Many thought that Riga would crumble after this loss as they had never experienced defeat or adversity in the postseason yet, but they rebounded stronger than ever. In the following games, Riga won 4 straight outscoring their opponents 16-7. That combined with a one-sided slaughter in game 3, where Riga had a 5-0 shutout showed everyone that Riga was indeed worthy to hoist up the cup. At the end of it all, everyone on Riga showed up for the playoffs and contributed to get the cup win. Leading the team in points with 18 was defenceman Apollo Hacket, closely followed by Lincoln Tate and Kyle Offerson, both with 17 each. For Riga, it wasn't just their top guys scoring, but their depth pieces also. 8 players on Riga scored over 10 points this postseason. All in all congrats to Riga and it's definitely time to party.

[NotAVHLM-GM 1,858]

I just expected more of a

 

win

win

win

win

win

win

win

win

lose

win

win

win

win

 

or so as a summary

 

Congrats though!