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Condor Adrienne and my return to activity.

OrbitingDeath

By OrbitingDeath
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OrbitingDeath

OrbitingDeath 3,165

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Condor Adrienne and my return to activity.

 

After a great first player in Remy LeBeau and maybe my best sim league player of all time, Thomas O'Malley my activity in the VHL took a hit. Maximoff started off decently in performance, but I wasn't the max-earner that I was with my first two players. This became even worse during the two player era where I had Peter Quill and a few seasons later Adam Warlock. Quill was just above 700 while Warlock was just above 500. Not really numbers I expect from my players, but I was just tired and burned out of sim leagues.

 

It was however only a short break after Warlock's retirement. After having retired in S65, I decided to recreate at the trade deadline for one more attempt (what I thought) to have a good player on the defensive side of the game, after all, I had a goalie and two forwards in the Hall of Fame already, but the defender I had, only ruled supreme in the VHLM. Mostly due to having the update scale upgraded on the season I would go up, which made me lose my interest by alot. I even told gm's, but @Beaviss wouldn't listen, drafted Warlock and has been sad about it since.

 

I basically had killed off all my remaining sim league players at this point and I wanted to just have to focus on one league at a time. This of course should be the VHL. They had just expanded the league with some new franchises and my 100% track record of winning a cup with every (active) franchise was gone. So I returned with a goal, I wanted to try and complete the list again, but I did not see the massive recruitment coming and by now, it's a challenge I will probably never fulfill again. Having plans to join the league again I asked around in a shoutout if there were any locker rooms I could join while I waited for my player to be created. It didnt get many responses actually, but I got invited by @BladeMaidenof the Philadelphia Reapers who asked if I would join her locker room. I did and it was a fun and great experience there, one I enjoyed so much that I decided to sign there at the trade deadline and tried my best to also return in the draft. In the S66 playoffs, the Reapers continued to march strong as they already were a great team and won a cup. In my first season with Condor Adrienne, I already had locked in a Founder's Cup, even though I must admit, I didn't contribute much. But it was a great start of my career and the activity in that locker room really built up my passion for sim leagues again. I was ready to indeed go full out on this career. Not having full carryover combined with the rankings that @rjfryman

posted, gave me even more motivation to fight for that top spot, that was in hands of @CowboyinAmericaat the beginning of our draft class. A spot once taken over, I had not given back anymore. 
 

When I had decided to return, only Moscow and Malmo where new. But in my draft season we also saw Prague and DC being added. And to top it off, a few seasons later we saw Los Angeles, Chicago, Warsaw and London added. Making it 8 teams I still needed to win with.

So throughout my career I realized this might not happen, but it wouldn't stop me from wanting to add another cup to my repetoire. Before my draft I had set myself the following goals.  1) Make a HoF offensive defender, 2) Join an expansion franchise to set some early franchise records and 3) Win a cup with one.

 

Now the league has 16 teams, the chances to win a cup have become a lot less. Especially if you remain at one team and hope for the best, instead of trying free agency and join one of the top teams then. Nonetheless, when I was drafted I had already told @Advantage that I would be in for the long road. I did not see myself leaving in trade OR free agency, I wanted to be and remain with the Malmo Nighthawks. I would have done the same for any of the other expansion franchises, and as I would have liked to experience playing for @Victor, I also told him to tank prior to my draft year. He didn't. Malmo ended up winning the lottery and was dead set on picking me, even denying an offer of three first round picks (of a franchise I actually had no interest in playing for) , so to this day, I thank ADV for denying that offer.

 

So Malmo it was. And in my rookie season we held a big campaign to get @Beketov's player on board for his last season. The Beketov to 400 campaign was a success as he joined us and helped Malmo win a Victory Cup and a playoff run that lead us to the finals, where unfortunately, we were swept by the Seattle Bears. While individual hardware didn't come that year and I was dissapointed in my own rookie season, the team was great and I knew our time would come again. All we needed to do was to replace Beketov. And that challenge turned out to become a hard one for the franchise. From winning the victory cup, we went to the 4th seed in Europe. And to top it off, we just couldn't score again. Joseph McWolf was our top scoring player with 61 points and Adrienne had his worst season of his career with just 40 points. The sophomore slump was real. In the playoffs we didn't make it out of the first round versus the Riga Reign and went out in 6. Adrienne scored 6 points there and this made him a point per game for that season of playoffs for the first time in his career. Season 70 was the first season that we no longer made the playoffs. Falling four points short of both Helsinki and Prague, we were on the outside looking in. I did win my first Jake Wylde trophy that year, a nice motivator to continue the grind. In Season 71, my performance as an offensive defenseman still fell short and I just was clueless on what i needed to do better. That next season, it was time for a rebuild for Malmo and a lot of the team got moved. Being the top player on the team, this did wonders for my offense. I went on to be the first one to score 100 points in a season (thanks to a  close finish with scoring 4 points versus Prague in our last game), while @Kendrick's player also hit 93 points that year. Despite finishing last with the team, this did jump start my future as a potential hall of fame player. I added the Brett Slobodzian Trophy, Alexander Valiq Trophy, Sterling Labatte Trophy and the Mike Szatkowski Trophy that year.

 

This would be the start of the rebuild of Malmo and the season after we were indeed surprised with not two, but four expansion teams at once.

The new expansion teams in the league made sure scoring numbers also rised again, which were good for me as a player as the year after my 100 point season I once again got to 90. And my -29 rating from a year before got closer to zero again as i ended with a -1. It was also the return to the playoffs with Malmo, which we haven't missed since. It was a close race however to get back immediatly after our tanking season. Davos and Prague both lost their last game which secured our spot in the playoffs, as we lost our last two games ourselves as well.  But with the rookie seasons of @Hylands, @FrostBeard, Dickson, @Advantageand @BigTittySmitty, the team looked very different than the year before. Next to that @Zetterberg and @tfong were added and the outline for Malmo's future was made. We got through the wildcard game in five to almost give Helsinki a run for their money. But the top seed of Europe beat us in seven. This season I picked up my second Jake Wylde trophy.

 

In season 74 we went up again in the standings as we managed to get the second seed in Europe again. This also proved to be a great year for Adrienne, with the scoring in the league trending upwards, he went on to set a personal best season with 110 points. But not only offensively he was a rock, also on the defense as that year I won both the Alexander Valiq Trophy. the Jake Wylde Trophy and the Sterling Labatte Trophy, I believe a feat that hadn't been done before. We made it to the conference finals, but suffered a 4-0 loss against Helsinki.

 

So with just one year remaining in my career it was all or nothing. And to be honest with you, I didn't feel that confident. The start of our season was horrible and we were more on the outside of the playoffs looking in. But luckily we managed to turn it around, we found lines that worked and during the season @FrostBeardmade a trade that moved Dawson to Calgary and got us back @Infernal. We believed this would solidfy our team for both now and the future. Before this trade happened, earlier that season, I had actually offered Frostbeard the option to move me if he believed it was better for the franchise. But he kept positive and he kept believing, telling me it would be alright. And yes, I didn't really believe him, but I was ofcourse on board with the plan, as I would love to retire a Nighthawk.

 

So when the playoffs started we struggled against Warsaw (just like we struggled versus expansion teams the entire season, London for instance kept having our number). But in seven games we got throuh. In six games we then managed to get Moscow. And just like that, we once again were back in the finals. We just had to wait to see who would be our opponent. I asked Frost which opponent he prefered and he mentioned DC, as our season record was a lot better versus them. I was cautious to celebrate when we got DC as I felt it could bite us back if we were too optimistic about it. And quickly i felt i was right. 2-0 behind after two games, and the jokes of Malmo and being swept 4-0 in the finals appeared again. But I think, this joke of @Victor saved our season. He basically counter-jinxed us and instead of being swept, we went on and performed the reverse sweep and even with the last game, I was the opposite of confident that we would make it, but I couldn't be happier that we did. With the last chance I had, I got a cup afterall, and this meant a lot for me, because despite the greatly filled award cabinet, this would have been my first VHL player without a cup for me.

 

 

So in short, with this cup I:

 

- Keep my VHL cup streak going with all six of my players winning one

- Keep my Triple gold cup streak going with winning it with five of my players straight.

- Join Smarch and Victor with 13 wins each

- Win the fifth cup together with @tfong (3 different franchises, and our last three cups we won together)

- Win the VHL, EFL and SBA all in the same season.

 

I would like to thank everyone who was a part of this career, but mostly @BladeMaidenfor giving me the fire again to go all out with a player again, @Advantagefor drafting me and @FrostBeardfor working together closely the last seasons and keeping me around in Malmo.

 

Condor Adrienne now holds the following franchise records in Malmo:

 

Regular season:

Games Played: 576
Goals: 156


Assists: 442
Points: 598
+/- : 74
Penalty Minutes: 1417
Hits: 1936
Shots: 1663
Shots blocked: 1144

The only category I don’t have is Game Winning goals, as Ray Sheilds has this one.

@Zetterberg: score some more next season to give the others a challenge for beating it ;)

 

Playoffs:

Games played: 66
Assists: 55

Points: 69
+/- :  18
Penalty minutes: 148
Hits: 232
Shots blocked: 144

 

So to all current and future Malmo players. I hope you all demolish these records, as I would love to see the Nighthawks flourish into the future. But for Condor Adrienne, this chapter closes here. Thanks to everyone for being a part of his career, as teammates or as opponents.

 

Words: 2000+  (claiming for 4 weeks)

 

 

 

Edited by OrbitingDeath
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OrbitingDeath

OrbitingDeath 3,165

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Just now, Victor said:

Not a bad career huh (I'll save the eloquent words for the HOF induction post).

 

Problem with your assist for Fong is he is now ahead of us both. :P

 

Had to catch you first before worrying about Fong. Don't worry, you will tie him again next year with Rasputin :)

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