Encarnacion - Veteran Presence

[Tagger 2,722]

I think if I were to talk about the biggest difference between being a fresh-faced rookie (or as fresh-faced as one can be at 50 years old) and being a veteran with three seasons under his belt, the key word I would use would be “expectation”.

 

Even with the amount of practice hours I had logged to my name prior to the draft, the expectation for my player in my rookie season were low. If anything, it was a pretty humbling experience to be in the company of four great veteran defensemen in Charlie Paddywagon, Brady Stropko Jr., Jordan Tonn and Cody Smith and served to be a reminder that, despite leaving the VHLM on about as big a high as you can get (being Playoff MVP on a record-setting team), I still had a long way to go to achieve anything close to the same results in the big league. At the same time though, with that lack of expectation came an acceptance that my stats would not be anything of note. Comparing that to this season just gone, there were much greater expectations upon myself and when I failed to meet those expectations, there came some disappointment in myself and also some guilt in that I hadn’t served to be as good of a veteran presence to the players like General Zod and Latrell Mitchell (whose shoes I had been in just two seasons earlier) in comparison to those who came before me.

 

Another thing about expectation would be my approach to the game both in training and in the locker room. As a rookie, while there is always the expectation that you work hard every day in training, you aren’t expected to be this beacon of inspirational light right of the gate, it’s more about listening to those around you so that when you hit that mark those veterans are at, you can become that leader. Even with three season under my belt, I think that’s been the biggest negative against me is that I haven’t even been close to becoming that leader, nor have I really even made an effort to become it. I’m in an incredibly unique situation in that they keep letting me return to this league under different aliases (albeit sometimes on fire and sometimes as a robot and sometimes as a time-travelled version of myself) yet with all that experience to my name, I’ve continued to play the role of listener rather than the role of leader. I guess that’s one of the biggest points I can make is that you are always capable of improving yourself, even as a veteran.