Looking at the Short but Sweet Career of Leon Gutzwiler

[Gwdjohnson 40]

Well, now that I have recreated on VHL, I wanted to look back on how the career of my first league player, Leon Gutzwiler, went. It was not a long career, but I want to say a lot happened during it! I will make an article detailing the entirety of Leon's career, dating from the time of his creation, to his eventual retirement after being dropped by Toronto for his inactivity. It should be fun going through Leon's entire career and looking back on the stuff he did out on the ice and the things that he accomplished with the 5 different teams he played for. Let's get into it, starting with when I created him in the first place!

 

The Start (S69)

 

It all began when I created along with my friend, as we made the Swiss Gutzwiler bros, Leon and Gabriel. I was pretty excited about the opportunity to join another sim league and have a different experience from what I got in my main league, the Simulation Hockey League. I distinctly remember that we made the mistake of signing up like right after the timeframe you could sign for a team until the draft had expired, and that was frustrating while we tried to figure out how things worked. I earned a lot up until the time of the draft (I think lol) and made a few waves for myself before the draft. My goal was to have both Gutzwilers drafted together, but Daft and I both went in understanding that would be pretty difficult to accomplish. With Gabriel Gutzwiler having a bit of a TPE buff because of the recreate bonus, he went 17th to Halifax, 4 picks ahead of where I eventually went, which was 21st overall to the Las Vegas Aces.

 

Las Vegas Aces (S69)

Going 21st overall was pretty nice for me, it was pretty close to where I went in the juniors draft in SHL, so it felt pretty good to kind of fly under the radar again. As I mentioned before, I was drafted to a different team from my friend the other Gutzwiler, going 4 picks after him, but that ended up not mattering much, as after a very short stint in Las Vegas, I found myself traded over to join Daft in Halifax before my rookie season even started.

 

Halifax 21st (S69)

 

It was pretty wild getting traded basically immediately after getting drafted, as in SHL I was firmly a one-team person in both juniors and the major league. But sure enough here I was being dealt right away. I completely forget exactly what I was traded for, it was like a 2nd and 3rd or something like that, if only I knew where I could find it. I was traded there off a recommendation from Daft, who was begging the management in Halifax to trade for me and unite us on the same team. Despite the awkwardness, it was very nice to have the boys playing on the same line together and I was ready to hit the ground running with Halifax. Seems like the S69 VHLM index is not functional at the moment, so you will just have to take my word for it when I say that Leon was one of the league's best rookies in his debut season, scoring an impressive 34 goals and 81 points in 71 games. Halifax also won an unlikely playoff round before being eliminated, and in that run Leon scored 13 points in 11 games. It was a great debut campaign, in contrast to SHL where I sucked badly in my rookie season lol. I was looking forward to another season in Halifax, when the unthinkable happened, yet another trade. I was packing my bags again, getting ready to join my 3rd team in the span of one offseason to another.

 

Minnesota Storm (S70)

 

This time, I was traded along with Daft, as both of us, along with I'm pretty sure someone else who I forget (sorry), and we rounded out what was a fiercely competitive Minnesota Storm team. Halifax was nice so it sucked being traded from there, but I understood that with the team's timeline it made more sense to ship Daft and I to a competing team. Playing for a more competitive team seemed to immediately pay dividends in my second and final season in juniors, as Leon scored a whopping 44 goals and 60 assists to crack the 100 point mark, notching 104 on the season. Being one of the best juniors players in the league that season was awesome, because in the SHL one of my biggest regrets in juniors was not having a very productive juniors career before going up. In the playoffs, things only got better, as Minnesota plowed through the competition in the playoffs on route to an emphatic cup win. It was my first juniors cup in sim leagues, and was a nice feeling. You get a very limited timeframe to win something in juniors, so it was very nice to secure that. In the run to the cup, I put up a very impressive 11 goals and 21 points in 14 games, to cap off what was a great season. In the offseason it was unclear what next season would have in store for me, as I was hovering around the minimum TPE to be automatically called up, but in the section I will cover what happened!

 

New York Americans (S71)

 

So I wanted to split my juniors and major career into different sections, but after my rookie season with Halifax, I found myself drafted to the New York Americans in the S70 VHL Draft, going 18th overall to them. The Gutzwiler connection stayed nice and strong because of this, as Gabriel Gutzwiler went 2 picks before me also to New York, 16th overall. Anyway, after the season spent in Minnesota, my future hung a little bit in the balance, and it was pretty unclear whether or not I would be coming up to New York or staying down another season. In what ended up being pretty controversial circumstances, the decision was made to call me up from Minnesota after the VHLM Draft was done, which to say the least did not go over well with Minnesota management lmao *ducks*. That ended up being a whole situation that was pretty awkward for Daft and I, but the conclusion was we were now in the big leagues! Yay!! We started off playing on the third line for New York, and it was nice and relaxing, UNTIL....yet another trade lmao.

 

Toronto Legion (S71-S75)

 

You really are never truly safe in this league. Just 14 games into our VHL major league careers, Daft and I found ourselves traded as a package to the Toronto Legion, for what I remember being very little compared to what I thought our value was at the time (smh Esso). Getting moved for the first time when I was leaving Las Vegas was pretty cool, but by the time it reached this trade it was pretty frustrating to be on a new team every season, and I just wanted to root down somewhere. After being somewhat disappointing in his rookie season, Leon got 19 points in 72 games by the end of S71. To play a bigger role in the team, I switched Leon over to defense, where Toronto could play him in a bigger role. It paid off immediately, as Leon's points improved from 19 to 31 in his first season on the blueline. Unfortunately, I lost interest around this time, which brings me to what I will call "The Corpse Years", where I was an inactive 339 TPE  body on Toronto's team lmao.

 

The End of the Road AKA the Corpse Years (S72-S75)

 

So while the switch from forward to defense improved my role in Toronto's team and gave me more importance in their squad, I still totally fell out of interest with the league at this time and left Leon to the void to collect dust. In S73, Leon had a very good season for a corpse only just over a juniors level player, as he got 15 goals and 54 points for Toronto, completely smashing that previous career high of 31. The season after is hilarious to look at, as after the 54 point season, Leon put up a whopping 6 points in 72 games. I can only guess this was because he was relegated to a basically irrelevant role in the roster, but my head canon will be that he just had THAT bad a season. After that off season for Leon, Toronto in S75 decided to throw him back into the spotlight, dragging him out of obscurity. He put up a season of very similar quality to his 54 point one, as despite Toronto as a team being worse than in S73 (I am assuming this based on plus/minuses), he still managed to put up 17 goals and 52 points for them. Leon was promptly dropped from the team following this season, after honestly getting way longer a stretch with Toronto than he deserved lmao. In S76, Leon was a free agent following his releasing. I found this out through someone else, and at that point concluded that it might be fun to try going with a new player and retired. Such is the end of the not so illustrious but I suppose satisfactory career of Leon Gutzwiler.

 

Thoughts on Leon's Career, and the Recreate (Now!!)

 

To summarize my time with Leon, I think it was definitely an alright career. At the VHL level I accomplished basically nothing before retiring, but I did get to experience an immensely successful juniors career for the first and only time in my experience on sim leagues. Leon was awesome in his rookie season with Halifax, and things only got better when he was traded to Minnesota, as he blossomed into one of the best players in the juniors league, and even managed to get a cup in his cabinet after that dominant campaign with the Storm. I think juniors was pretty alright in the league culture wise, the teams I played for were decently quiet most of the time, but as someone who's priorities lied in a different sim league at the time, I could not really complain about the relatively passive Discords I experienced here. Getting to have my desire to play with Daft's player was accomodated my entire career, with us having played on 4 different teams together across both leagues, and never played a single game apart from each other. Well, that is until Toronto dumped off my inactive corpse but kept Daft's on the team lmao. I think one of the main things that led to my loss of interest in continuing Leon was the trade from New York. I was already losing interest big time in the league at that time as I was pretty busy already juggling real life with SHL, but having to go through yet another change of scenery was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Toronto just did not really offer enough to me to counter my growing loss of interest, so I just ended up dropping the league completely and went back to just being SHL only full time. Well, now I have a new player to start a brand new and different career with on the site, and we will see where his career goes compared to Leon's. I have no idea what to expect in the longevity I can get out of Arvid, because along with being active in two different sim leagues already, I am currently in the hunt for jobs in real life, which has shown in the past to cut my sim league time big time lmao.

 

In conclusion to this long summary of Leon's career, I am looking forward to seeing how far I can get with Johansson compared to Gutzwiler, and hope I can top the peak I reached with him. I believe that no matter what, I should be a pretty safe bet for a juniors player, and I would like to believe I can carve out a lengthier major league career this time!

 

Thanks for reading, now gimme those 4 weeks of 6 TPE  

 

2043 words

 

[ROOKIE745 570]

Sorry to hear about the loss of interest in the league with Leon, having  played with you in Halifax, Minnesota, and Toronto it was cool to share that much time with you. I know in Toronto our locker room was dead at times and I'm sure that made it hard. What I can say this season our LR has been the most active it's ever been. Wish you luck on your new player!