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Ronniewalker · 09-14-2020, 10:35 AM

(Double draft media! 1539 words.)

It has been an eventful few weeks in the SHL universe and first year player Lemo Pihl is still a bit woozy from taking it all in. After getting his own playoff journey cut short by the Maine Timber in the second round of the SMJHL playoffs, he has been doing his best to keep up with what has been going on around the league in general. And there has been plenty to keep up with…

The crowning of new champions in both the SHL (Simulation Hockey League) and their farm league the SMJHL (Simulation Major Junior Hockey League) – Lemo sends his congratulations to the Buffalo Stampede and Newfoundland Berserkers for winning the Challenge and Four-Star Cup respectively!

Soon after the conclusion of the playoffs in both leagues, it was already time for the management teams of two freshly formed expansion teams – the Atlanta Inferno and the Seattle Argonauts - to pull on their draft pants and select the cores of their new teams from the pool of players left unprotected by their current SHL teams. Elite veteran defenseman Cassius Darrow and young all-rookie star center Keith Lee were selected 1st and 2nd by Seattle and Atlanta, respectively, to lead their new teams to SHL glory starting next season.

The fresh All-Star and All-Rookie teams were also announced in the days preceding the event that Lemo has naturally been anticipating the most – the annual SHL entry draft. Congratulations as well to Aaron Wilson, Monkey D. Luffy, Daniel Smeb, Karlstrasse Scholtz, Rex Kirkby and Elizabeth Doyle for making this season’s SHL All-Star first team and to Cal Labovitch, Danny Marston, Keith Lee, Magnus Liljestrom, Adam Scianna and Frans Eller for making the S55 SHL All-Rookie team! They are all magnificent players who had spectacular seasons and are all excellent role models for young Lemo to look up to and attempt to emulate their successes!

While some family matters have kept Lemo from being as active in media outlets as perhaps expected from a high profile prospect, he has tried his best to keep up with whichever ways have been offered to advance his personal training points totals during the off-season as well, in order to show that he is a committed player looking to make a difference on whichever team he will eventually be drafted to.

Speaking of new teams, as the playoffs had drawn to a close and national team managers already turned their gazes towards the coming IIHF tournament, Lemo – an Estonian born player hailing from the capitol city of Tallinn, quite likely the first pure Estonian to play in the SHL and thus an unassigned free agent in the sense of national teams – was also offered to join several national teams ranging from neighboring Latvia, Sweden and Finland to even further countries like Austria. In the end he chose the familiarity of northern neighbor Finland, whose league’s hockey broadcasts once upon a time were perhaps the first of ice hockey that he had even seen and which just seemed the best option for him by heart as well, already being comfortable speaking their language and knowing quite a lot of their culture as well through the reach of finnish television broadcasts over the gulf to Tallinn when Lemo was still a kid. While Lemo eventually did not make the national team for this coming tournament, his choice in some way may also have been a small harbinger of things to come when the long-awaited SHL entry draft finally arrived…

In the days leading up to the draft Lemo began receiving more and more inquiries from SHL managers and their scouts with probing questions ranging from his own envisioning where he aspires to be as a player in a few years’ time, his role models and such, to whether he has any preferred or disliked destinations or individuals to take into account when deciding whether to draft him.

Since Lemo is a first-generation player and his agent Ronnie Walker also new to the league, they were able to say that as of yet they have no inhibitions of such kind, no quarrels with anyone and are dedicated to being the best they can be no matter what crest Lemo will begin to wear on his jersey.

His aspirations as a player are to become a reliable two-way force, capable of making good things happen in all three zones and to be a versatile player that can complement his teammates no matter what line he plays on. To achieve that, he is planning on focusing on his speed, both offensive and defensive awareness on the ice, passing and puck handling in general and also not forgetting to hone his checking skills, both body and stick. His goal is not always to be the best player on the team, but a player that makes others around him better.

Interest was also shown in Lemo’s opinions as to how many more seasons he would like or at least be willing to spend maturing in the minor league, to which Lemo replied that as long as he remained on the awesome Anchorage Armada team that gave him such a great welcome to the league and looks like they should also be a Four-Star Cup contender for years to come, he had no qualms about remaining and climbing the depth chart there for as long as the big league team wishes it. But also that if the call came to take the leap up to the SHL team, he would of course be thrilled and ready to grasp the opportunity given him.

Looking at various mock drafts in the final days before the actual event, Lemo did not seem to figure in too mane of those that focused only on the first two rounds, although a few pundits did still see him being selected as high as 22nd overall by the newly founded Atlanta Inferno. And that actually would have been very fine with Lemo, who had in fact taken an instant liking to the Inferno aesthetics when they were released and feels like the Atlanta organization has taken off on a real good note and might have presented him with an excellent opportunity to carve out his own legacy within the young history of the budding franchise.

One of many Anchorage Armada rookies to be up for the SHL draft, he was perhaps one of the lower-ranked of the lot of them, but that also belies the quality of prospects that this Armada team possessed.

In the end result Armada teammates Vladmir Petrov ended up being drafted 6th overall by the Tampa Bay Barracuda, Slava Petrov 11th overall by the Texas Renegades, Michael Withecheck went to Atlanta instead of Lemo at 22nd overall and then it was Lemo’s turn, at 29th overall he was drafted to join Armada teammate Slava Petrov on the Texas Renegades!

Coming from relative obscurity to being selected in the middle of the 2nd round left Lemo feeling good and the destination of Texas was also interesting for him on many levels.
As a lifelong fan of the NHL’s Dallas Stars, now to be going to the SHL team in the same city was a fun emotional link for Lemo and what’s also interesting to note, coming back to his own earlier choice of national team representation, the Texas Renegades are currently also the only SHL team that has a finnish general manager!

As also admitted by a member of the Renegades’ management after the draft, there seems to be ‘a bit of a pipeline forming between the Anchorage Armada and the Renegades here, as with their second pick in the draft the team had no hesitation in taking their third Armada forward in 2 seasons in Lemo Pihl.’ (the first of those three being winger Theo Kondos drafted 5th overall in last season’s draft, who witnessing Lemo’s dedication first-hand on the Armada team this season may also have had a say in his now being chosen by Texas). So while perhaps the finnish national team relation could be a bit of a reach in this instance, Lemo can again feel good about his own choices of teams that he had decided to sign up with when the opportunities were presented, his a little less than a full season’s work there with the guidance of Armada management and locker room helping him gain enough credit to end up where he did now.

While being on the Armada has surely helped him well on his way, it was not a surefire guarantee of getting drafted, as his Armada linemate Colin Fuhr was sadly left undrafted altogether. It has been Lemo’s level-headed approach and earnest work ethic that has gotten him noticed by the right people at the right time and brought him to where he is now.

Now all that’s left for Lemo is to keep on pushing down that same track of positive progress and up the depth charts of both the Armada and the Renegades, to be able to realize his dream of being an established SHL player in the years to come!

***bluesfan55*** · 09-14-2020, 10:37 AM

b o a t
g a n g

dankoa · 09-14-2020, 10:38 AM

leggooo

***Ohtaay*** · 09-14-2020, 10:39 AM

Can't wait to see how Lemo develops!

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