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Raw Charge Secret Santa 2018: Highlighting Seldo

The offseason is a great time to look back on the past year and reflect. Not just for the team, but also for our writers here at RawCharge. So we did a Secret Santa to select a writer for each person. It’s a great opportunity to focus on one person and what they did throughout the year. When I reached into the virtual hat, I pulled out the name of one of our prospect experts, Seldo.

Seldo is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, but he’s also a big prospect follower. He’s been working on the Pension Plan Puppets’ staff for some years, but he joined our group to help out with prospect coverage. Having Seldo around the staff has been a great addition for his insight into prospects, especially from the OHL. He takes the time every week to check in on the Lightning’s prospects, gather highlights, and write a couple sentences about the games and players.

To be perfectly honest, the way he contributes made it hard for me to find anything to really highlight from his writing for Raw Charge. The majority of the work for his articles comes from gathering the data and formatting it each week for these posts, work that definitely does take a good amount of time. Because the Lightning’s non-professional prospects were spread out, he was gathering information for games in the QMJHL, OHL, WHL, USHL, NCAA, and USHS leagues. Lucky for him he didn’t need to dig for game information and highlights from European clubs last year (but he’ll have two players in Magnus Chrona and Dmitri Semykin this coming season).

Where a lot of his impact to RawCharge comes from, though, is through our staff chat room on Slack. He brings a level of sarcasm and jokes that helps to keep the room fun. When we have questions about prospects or potential draft targets, he’s quick to jump in and offer his opinion. He’s also somewhat curmudgeonly and has earned the nickname “Dad” in our group.

While that personality doesn’t shine through in what he writes for RawCharge, I wanted to show that off by featuring a great article he wrote for Pension Plan Puppets titled “Auston Matthews is better than Connor McDavid.” Before you go screaming about the typical Maple Leafs superiority complex, read some of the highlights below and you’ll begin to understand Seldo.

Today SB Nation announced what most people already assumed, that Connor McDavid was voted the #1 player in the NHL under the age of 25.

I’m here to tell you why this is wrong.

Oh sure, McDavid is a pretty good hockey player. He was a superstar in junior, playing in a league well below his skill level by the time he got to his draft year, and he (not Kris Russell or Milan Lucic) led the Edmonton Oilers to their first playoff berth since they lost the 2006 Stanley Cup Final to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Most people have bought into the media fueled campaign that Connor McDavid is the best thing since Sidney Crosby, however I have the truth. Allow me to open your eyes and show you the truth.

As you can see here, the sarcasm is already in full force straight from the intro.

Does he play for the Toronto Maple Leafs?

This is a key question in picking the better player. The Toronto Maple Leafs are the greatest hockey club in the world, and it seems to be an unwritten rule that one former Maple Leaf must be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame every year, so you know they’re an important franchise.

Connor McDavid: Plays for the Edmonton Oilers

Auston Matthews: Plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs

Advantage: Auston Matthews wins this one because, unlike Connor McDavid, he plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Does he want to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Wanting to be a Maple Leaf is key to being a successful player in the organization. We can’t hold the fact that someone who wants to be a Maple Leaf is currently playing on another team, see also: John Tavares.

Connor McDavid: Of course he does. He was clearly disappointed to be heading to Edmonton.

Auston Matthews: Clearly he does, look how happy he was to awkwardly put on a jersey over a suit at the draft.

Advantage: Tie. Both players clearly want to come to Toronto. See you in 2026 Connor!

This is really just a taste of the kind of personality that we see from Seldo all the time behind the scenes. Without a doubt, his addition to the Raw Charge staff has been a fun and welcome one.

Thank you Seldo for the work you put in for us and always keeping it fun!

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