It's been quite a while since I've written a media piece in the SHL, so this is probably going to be a massive word dump about life in this league over the past 3-4 seasons. I believe my last, and first media piece was a self-interview of sorts, though what it was about - I have no recollection of. But I did spend all of my money on personal coaching for the upcoming season, so I suppose there's no better time than now to try to make some money to sustain me for the rest of this season.
I suppose the first thing I could touch on is why I haven't really put out any content on this site. As most of the folks in Newfoundland know, I'm spread decently thin in the sim league realm, or at least I was before this summer. I have a player in the SHL and ISFL, but also players in three TPE leagues - the VHL, the EFL and the SBA. I started off in the EFL, so TPE leagues are my area of familiarity. I produce content that nets me TPE towards my cap, not accumulates cash towards my bank account. It's a bit lower stakes, especially since content produced in one league can be easily multi-claimed in the other two leagues. Similar structure to how PT's here can replace PT's in the ISFL or PBE, I believe. However, the main PT's in TPE leagues are worth 6 TPE, and since I'm not a graphics guy, I either chunk out podcasts that are 30-45 minutes long, or I write a behemoth of a piece that is 2k words, and then coast on it for the next 4 weeks. It's a pretty efficient system, but it's difficult to get motivated to produce new content for media in each of the money leagues I participate it. Twitter is a nice way to make some money here and in the ISFL, but I've simply been unable to make media in money leagues a priority.
However, I've cut down on two of the TPE leagues, simply because I had to face realities and assess not only my priorities in life, but also my happiness. Being in the EFL and SBA felt more like a chore to extend my network and get affiliate checks, than to be involved in the day to day of those leagues. I also graduated from college and began full-time work. Time really goes out the window like it never did before, and coupled with COVID restrictions being loosened and getting fully vaccinated, my weekends are no longer a cesspool of boredom and dullness. Time is no longer available in droves, and I've had to try and get efficient with what I do.
Granted, I've tried to make some efforts in the past to put out content. I joined the Newfoundland podcast a couple of times to get some money, and it had mixed experiences. The first one was some sort of new faces introduction, so it was just talking about myself as a user, my goals, my initial experiences. Nothing overly tricky. The next podcasts were a bit more in depth, assessing predictions for SHL teams compared to their moneylines for the casino, as well as final standings predictions. While I had simulations run by a few FHM-savvy folks in my LR's, I still felt woefully underprepared and clueless to speak about anything other than myself - mainly because I just hadn't put in the time to understand the day-to-day activities of the league, to meet new people, and to take the time to actively look into....everything.
One thing I take major pride in in the VHL is my knowledge of what goes on. I generally know all the top players in the league, who their users are, the top prospects coming up, team states, etc. Even before becoming a VHL GM, I had to scout nearly every new create over a 4-5 season span as a minors GM, and then also assisted my pro team with scouting for 3 seasons within that time frame as well. Granted, the VHL portal is quite easy to navigate and collect information from. It's a bunch of links and search functions that just make it easy to find things if you know what you're looking for. I suppose I've been spoiled in that way.
Here in the SHL though, I struggle to even correlate people in the Newfoundland LR to their players on the ice, and to their usernames on their site. To this day, I still do not know Reno's player's name. And I'm pretty sure he was our starting goalie this past season. People like Evil Allbran make live easy, his name is his player's name as well. Same for Pasta's, but Ric Charlesworth - a player I've played alongside for like 3 seasons - I have no clue who he is in the Discord or the forums. I can correlate about 3 people whose names aren't the same as their player's - Juke (Timmonen), Astatine (Luffy) and Hotdog (EVO). I genuinely don't know anyone else's. Maybe this is my plea for guidance. Someone please tell me how you keep track of all the players in the league and their users, as I really don't want to go through every team's update pages. There has to be a more efficient way. But yeah, that about wraps up this first section of why I haven't put out any content on this site. I'm simply clueless about what goes on in the league, and don't know how to get my feet wet in an efficient manner.
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I suppose the 2nd part of this piece is going to be wrapping up my time in the SMJHL. I believe I was a post-draft FA in S57, recommended to the site by MattyIce. I should probably pester him about claiming recruitment TPE since I'm around 700 TPE or something, and we only claimed the first milestone. I was spoken to by a few GM's, mainly the ones who had a friend of mine on the roster who made a mild advocation on my behalf, which was nice. I only really joined the SHL because I knew that the league moved away from STHS and into FHM, which was very intriguing to me. I knew what the pains of a forum-updating, money league would be, but diversifying a build and seeing more engaging sim streams was definitely the driving factor to when I joined.
During the FA process though, I ended up deciding to join Newfoundland for probably one of the weirdest reasons. I had asked Colorado, Nevada and maybe another team outside of Newfoundland for LR invites, just to see what was up. During that time, I think I chatted with some zerkers about Music, as it was around the time where Spotify was releasing their end of year recaps. Somehow the chat turned to Bring Me the Horizon, one of my favorite bands, and funnily enough, others really liked the band as well. I reached back out to Ham and signed with them that day - just because someone talked to me about BMTH, and we've barely spoken about it since then.
Even though my decision was made on a pretty...niche factor, there hasn't been a day where I've regretted being part of that organization. Juke and Ham have been the two most helpful people in my corner since I joined the league, and they've got the GMotY trophies to show for it. A lot of times, the GM's who are successful in the minors end up with their sights set on a position in the pros, but I really think both of them should stick around in the J to continue guiding new members for seasons to come. I'll be grateful to both of them for pestering me to update every week, to get my claims in, just to motivate me as I have asked so many GM's in my sim league career to do, but not many can actually execute. Ham's provided so many builds and options for me to follow, and almost even allowed me not to touch passing in my build at all. While Leon's playoff stat line this past season showed that he simply does not pass the puck, I do think it was wise to follow Ham's advice, and recommend all future players to do the same.
I'll admit though, my development has been a lot slower than I would have liked. Maybe joining the league at a point in life where I had one semester left in college was not the best decision, but it did give Leon a nice career in the SMJHL, as shown by the stats below.
Stats wise, Leon started off pretty slow his first couple of seasons before really taking off in his 3rd year, when he finally hit that 250 TPE mark. A pretty major liability in year 1, and a non-factor in year 2, Leon really had to make up for those two lost seasons in S59 where he exploded in just about every statistical category, just about doubling them all. Goals, Points, +/-, shooting percentage, powerplay points, hits, blocks, fantasy points. He stepped up to be a strong leader on the ice, albeit a quieter and less vocal presence in the locker room. S59 was a season I definitely thought he'd have peaked in, considering there was a lot of strong talent brought in after S57 that quickly challenged for those top spots. I was certainly pleasantly surprised when Leon retained his top 6 slot in the lineup, and continued to have another strong season for Newfoundland, where the team set the record for most wins in a season. I'm definitely brushing over a lot of moments in the middle of those four years, but I can only really go into so much depth before I'm just abusing 4 seasons of shitty earning for like, 2 million of money. For a time to payout ratio, this piece is already super not worth it., but I'll try to grind myself to 3k words just so I can make a decent amount of millions of of this shit. Anyways, gotta move on.
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Alright, so a couple highlights of my career deserve their own little section here before I wrap this up. One of them, championship victory, and the second, the 5 goal game. Both of these occurred in the past playoffs of S60, which is certainly a super pleasant way to wrap up my final season in the J. Before I was traded to Edmonton, I genuinely expected to stick around with Newfoundland for another season, as Hotdog told me that Atlanta didn't have the space to call me up. I was happy to stick around as a prospect for Atlanta, extend my contract, and continue playing for Newfoundland, but I was a bit torn as I knew I'd be taking away a top spot from a player with a much brighter future. Luckily Sota came around to snatch me away, leaving Newfoundland behind.
First, the 5 goal game. I'd joked around for a while that Leon was really "playoff Leon" since he always just seemed to put up a bit more points per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. In his first season, he scored 8-11-19 in 66 regular season games, but then dropped 2-3-5 in just 11 playoff games. Similarly in S58, he went 13-18-31 in 66 regular season games, but 6-7-13 in just 15 playoff games. Both years, he had significant increases in points per game in the playoffs. Hence, the Playoff Leon moniker was born, and I ran with it. In S59, that legend really came to fruition. In 12 games, Leon had 10 goals and 5 assists, and was even nominated for playoff MVP as the sole candidate who didn't even make the playoffs. It was super cool to just see the joke come to fruition year after year, and it peaked in Newfoundland's first round series against the Maine Timber.
This image just really explains it all. I didn't catch this game live, but rather got about 20 pings from the NL LR while out of the house one day since Leon had scored his 2nd goal of the game, and then his 3rd. I tuned into the chat live, and then came the 4th, eventually the 5th. Truly something really special to be part of, and to cement a bit of a small legacy with a historic performance.
I think Sopath has recorded Leon at 21 Zerks of the Game, which makes him the leader all-time for the award, by 6 or 7 wins. It's honestly just really crazy to think about now that I'm out of the SMJHL. I came in as a TPE league veteran, at a massive point of flux in my life with the end of college coming up and a full-time commitment to adulting in the near future. His first two seasons were slower, but he suddenly stepped on the gas to be a key part of a team that's been one of the best over the past few seasons. Despite never being a major presence on the team, Leon will have his own little nook in team's history for his ZotG's and the single game performance. Winning the championship in this last season just felt right - the perfect end to a completely unexpected career, and I sincerely thank everyone who's been part of the Newfoundland Berserkers team or a presence in the locker room since I joined in S57. I've had a great time, and it'll be sad to move on, but I don't regret a thing. I made the right choice to go to an unknown team in Newfoundland over a team I had prior friends on. Thank you friends <3
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Anyways, I did want to briefly thank the pros teams I've been a part of for the past few seasons. First, Buffalo for taking a chance on me in the draft despite being a very competitive team, and really lacking the ability to ever call up a slow earning prospect such as myself. I'll always appreciate the gesture and the time spent to assist me, as well as the chance to befriend Luffy who is truly my idol. I vote him for MVP every season when I remember to fill it out. Fuck CBJ btw, I will always lord that over y'all.
Also, thanks to Atlanta for also taking the chance to acquire me and to Hotdog for being super open with me over the duration of the time I was there. It was always going to be a longshot to make the pro roster, but I really had a blast in that locker room, and I'm glad I got to be part of that.
Lastly, I'm super excited to play for Sota and Boom in Edmonton, and to finally make my pro debut. Sota really is taking a chance to trade for me and play me immediately, and I think my activity has sort of peaked right now. I think the writing is pretty clearly on the wall that this is one of my last chances with Leon, as this is the 3rd time in 4 seasons that I've been traded. I'm only worth 3rd line time now, and it's going to be difficult to ever be much more than that. I've sort of accepted that this is likely a last chance, and will probably retire Leon and recreate once his time on Edmonton is over. I don't think I've put myself in a good position to be any more than a 3rd liner, so I think that it'll be for the best to simply restart from scratch (but hopefully with some money in my bank account) and try to be better with my next player.
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Overall though, I've truly enjoyed every season (except maybe the really bad 1st season with Newfoundland) and will appreciate the moments I've gotten to be part of. I'll continue playing league with the Newfoundland lads, hop into Buffalo to praise Astatine and whatever player he makes next, drop otter gifs in Atlanta, and just try to be a decent member of the team here in Edmonton. I really don't know when I'll be able to complete another piece like this, but I know that I'm on thin ice in Edmonton, and need to maximize this opportunity. I'm really going to have to fight for my roster spot, and there are some talented prospects coming up right behind me. Sota and Boom took a risk on me, and I think that it's only fair that I do my best to try and do everything I can to make that risk worthwhile for them.
Thanks again for believing in me and the team, it just makes this past season that much sweeter knowing that we were able to pull together and get it done.
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