RSHL.blog

A spotlight on the career of David Seaman #1

a.k.a. How does Daveo still not have a cup?

The Hmm Years

A young David Seaman would find his break in the RSHL in Season 9 with Hmm.
Rather than playing in the spider that he would become known for, David started out in net like his real life namesake, putting up a lackluster 63% save percentage in his rookie season. For comparison, luminate won the 0ski Award that season with just under 90% (that’s one to add to Boogieman’s list of top goalie seasons).

David was banned for racism at the start of Season 10, and with his goalie position filled on Hmm, he signed for Money Inc. but would only take to the space ice for one game. Money Inc. finished bottom of their conference, one place behind Hmm.

For Season 11, he returned to his original home of Hmm permanently. After convincing Krystalline to don the goalie pads in his stead, Daveo would take to the green machine and hone his skills as a tenacious midfielder over the following years.

Originally created by BurnAngel, Hmm were dubbed the Retard Army as the outcasts of the league. David led the team himself for half of their seasons. Hmm perennially finished a spot or two outside of the playoffs positions.

They came agonizingly close in Season 13, tying on points with Misconduct and Execution for the final spots, but with 6 of their points coming from bonus points for overtime and/or shootout losses, they missed out due to the tiebreaker rules. A run of five consecutive losses to end the season proved decisive.

Hmm finally cracked the playoffs in their ninth season as a franchise. Bos gave them much needed stability in net after replacing nimzo, and an opening run of 10 wins pushed them to fourth in the league despite struggling in the second half of the season.

For Judge69, who had been a mainstay of the Retard Army, this was the season where he finally became exhausted of David’s captaincy:

I was with Daveo in the early years. I can’t speak about how he is now, but back in the day he was a pretty shit captain.

It all came to a head for me in season 17. If you look at Hmm that season while I was on the team, we were 8-0 and I was +20.

During the Breakaway game I specced to let others play because David was shit at calling lines. At the start of the 3rd period David didn’t call a line and no one would spec to let me back in.

I was finally fed up with David’s captain style and left the team.

In the playoffs they narrowly defeated Baby Seal Killers in the Quarter Finals before coming up just short against Breakaway in the Semi Finals where they were without Leafy for much of the deciding game of the series and Lawn Dwarf failed to find top gear after missing the regular season.
After reaching this high point as a franchise, the team would disband with Leafy carrying on the Retard Army in spirit with Red Dragons for Season 18, but Daveo was jettisoned and had to find a new home with Creasers.

His hunger for hockey zone glory would dip in the following seasons, distracted by a Russian temptress.

I played with Daveo?

A recurring theme from my interviews with David’s former teammates has been that they erase those seasons from their memory.

Despite racking up a combined 770 regular season minutes for Creasers in Season 18 and 20 and every minute of the playoffs Quarter Finals where they were swept both times, violence doesn’t remember Seaman being with the team.

Verez was the only other captain on Troll Warlordz for Season 21 with Daveo, but has no recollection of it at all.

Season 22 saw Daveo captain what looks to me to be a very strong team on paper, with Bulldozer with Fire Out The Back sporting big names like Leafy, Lawn Dwarf, Rage, UKillMe and SuperDan, but the team only just scraped into the playoffs before being swept by Baby Seal Killers in the playoffs, and no one I ask can remember why the team underperformed so badly.

His first Blackie Cup Final

The five seasons after Hmm’s swansong resulted in five first round sweep losses for Seaman in the playoffs. It wouldn’t be until Season 23 with Creasers that David would taste another playoff victory.

Creasers topped the league to take the President’s Trophy (one of only two cups in David’s trophy case), but found themselves without their top scorer nine going into the playoffs.

David Seaman #1: that regular season was a wild ride: the coke, the money, the women, riding nine’s coattail to poundtown

In the Semi Finals, Creasers struggled to dispatch the wild card team Short-Handed, showing only 5 players to their first game resulting in a heavy loss before good performances from violence in net and Zanaz helped them recover to take the series.

Their opposition in the Blackie Final was a strong Dirtybirds team, colloquially called DBSK that season as it was effectively a superteam mashup of Dirtybirds and Baby Seal Killers. David played well individually in the games themselves, being Creasers’ highest rated player in two of them, but he was already mentally checked out, not believing they could overcome the loss of nine from the team. He subbed himself out of the opening game for JDMSpoon, resulting in the only ever mercy loss in a Blackie Final. Dirtybirds swept them with a crushing 22 to 5 aggregate goals.

viop: I was the keeper that season, and we were the best team by far. But then, get to the playoffs and nine’s internet, she lose her internet, and Seaman throw in the towel. She start feuding the V-Flex & the 10 pavel bure. She say we can’t win. She give up on the team. And so we get shit-kicked by the BSK. I allowed so many goals, and Seaman quit, she say we can’t win before the series start just because nine isn’t there. So that was terrible.

The Draft Seasons

With the zone population struggling, RSHL went to a draft format for Season 24.

David was drafted by Batman2 to Yung Money, but with some masterful draft fuckery, managed to engineer himself off the team to join Thrill‘s Goat Milk in what was on paper a terrible trade for the goat herders.
Even with this poor transaction, the team were very strong comprising of Leafy, Lawn Dwarf, Rage and SuperDan. They easily topped the league in the regular season to earn the President’s Trophy, giving David his second (and currently last) piece of hardware for his trophy shelf.

The playoffs were a different story though. David only played in the opening game of the Semi Finals series against eventual champions Salty Puckers, where they were unfortunate to lose on a lagout goal. He was replaced by tjian for the rest of the series.

David was one of the draft captains for Season 25 with his team Greasers. He had a relatively hostile relationship with his #1 pick Cereal n’ Milk, perpetually worried that cnm was faking lag issues to get out of playing with the team. Weight vests of JDMSpoon, Mean Gene and Pity would drag the team down, although what may have hurt them most was the lack of an established warbird. They tried to grind their way to victory in the playoffs, but lost in the wildcard series to Zeppelin’s team.

Stevewhitmer drafted Seaman to The Top Rope for the third draft season, but the team was hampered by their #1 pick linix not showing most of the season, having to rely on old Hmm goalie/weight vest nimzo to fill in between the pipes. They ended the season bottom of the league.

The fourth draft season would see Seaman drafted by Doobie to Team Zamboni. Like many of Daveo’s other former teammates, Doobie has wiped this season from his memory. They had a good regular season record of 10-4, but suffered a surprise loss in the wildcard game to a team with a much poorer record.

David again took the reigns for the (to date) final draft season with Stand And Deliver. Despite having issues with their top draft picks (vigilanty struggling to show to games and violence holding out for the keys to the warbird), the team achieved third in the league, but were outmatched by eventual champions Mazer in the Semi Finals.

viop: He never believed in me, never showed me the respect I should automatically be getting. He wanted me to switch to spidirmin, but he never showed me any respect. He didn’t say “viop, you’re a great warbird, you could start for any team, but we need you in the spider-mid for this team to play big minutes. You’re a great spidirmin, can you do that for the team?” He never did that.

The Whitmer Years

stevewhitmer: I played with Dave for several years and have known him to be one of the stronger hockey zone players. I think he’s the best checker in the zone and a strong force in the midfield. His offensive presence is skillful with generally poor decision making (I’m not one to talk).

The Whitmer-Seaman partnership began in the Greasers draft season. With the team desperately in need of a warbird pilot, stevewhitmer was entrusted with the keys towards the end of the regular season and for the playoffs, but was broadly ineffective. Nevertheless, a strong bond had been formed and the pair would play together for 5 of the next 7 seasons.

In Season 26, Daveo led Heel City Steamrollers, but skaters of stevewhitmer, Lawn Dwarf, Rage and Image could only get a 7-7 record, suffering from not having a regular goaltender behind them. They won the play-in game against Royal Road Runners, and then put up a good fight against #1 seed and eventual champions Creasers, losing both Semi Final games by a single goal.

The next non-draft season was Seaman’s only true “throw away” season of his career. Perhaps trying to relive his Retard Army days, The Program was j. jagr, stevewhitmer, mean gene, nimzo in net, and a bunch of rookies jumping off the bench (one of which was bick, the only one of their rookies to graduate into a regular hockey zoner). The Program went on a run of 11 consecutive losses, before managing to grab a couple of wins at the end of the season to escape the embarrassment of finishing behind a team of newbies from Death Star Battle Zone.

Season 30 was one of several Everest attempts by Lawn Dwarf, but The Smith Machine suffered turmoil even before setting off to base camp. Before a preseason game had been played, stevewhitmer and bick were brutally axed from the team. Exactly who was responsible for firing the gun in this betrayal out of David, Thrill and Lawn Dwarf is still debated, but it set the tone for a fractious locker room, with both Leafy and Lawn Dwarf leaving during preseason before being tempted back. The team would eventually implode entirely, with Seaman losing his captaincy after the league had to step in to stop it disbanding. Suddenly finding himself as a gun for hire, Seaman was signed by The Boogieman to Predator, and along with a late signing of Doobie, helped push a team of Falconeer, Iggy- and a rookie Singer to an unlikely playoff spot just ahead of his former teammates:

Predator beat the odds again to win the wild-card game against Short-Handed, and performed well in the Semi Finals against #1 seed and eventual champions Baby Seal Killers, losing game 1 in overtime.

Less Try-Hard Daveo?

After the disastrous Smith Machine implosion and a difficult draft season, it looks like Seaman concentrated more on playing for fun again instead of chasing the elusive Blackie…

Heel City Steamrollers were brought back by David for season 32, and despite arguably having less star names on the roster than their first iteration, went on to a better league record of 8-6, helped in no small part by a huge 31 goals by Killer Soldier. They won the play-in game against Pucking Ducks before coming up against the titans of Blades with Fire Out The Back (Evil Blades). Heel City were the only team to beat Evil Blades, taking one game against them in the regular season, as well as game 2 of the Semi Finals, and they only lost the deciding game of the Semi Final series by a single goal.

Seaman joined King-‘s Goal Diggers for Season 33, a team who arguably punched above their weight on their way to a wildcard spot, beating Short-Handed in the play-in game, but comprehensively beaten by the nerd krew’s Tune Squad in the semis.

Singer: That was the perfect kind of “fun” season where we fought all the way for a playoff spot with a few tight 1-goal games, which is what a Daveo team will usually strive for. Personally for me, it was one of the only season where I allowed myself to go full-censoredbydai on offense with Daveo’s blessings, so it felt good to go all out in the jav and score some goals alongside Rage during that season.
Q: Goal Diggers is often mooted as reforming, why do you think it hasn’t so far?
Singer: I don’t think you can have a Goal Diggers #2 without having King- coming back, that team was very much a two-headed beast that would constantly bite itself due to drug abuse and over-dramatics.

Season 34 was perhaps David’s best chance at a cup, but only due to what team he could have been on. Joining image‘s Execution in preseason, they looked set to be one of the Blackie favorites. However, when no challenging team formed from the nerd krew with both leafy and lawn dwarf sitting out the season, Execution were too strong for Seaman to happily stay on the roster and canter to his first Blackie Cup (although who knows what other ear worms there were to convince him to press the leave button).

David Seaman #1: To be the man, you have to beat the man

Instead, Seaman landed on my ragtag team of Banditos which resulted in one of David’s most fondly recalled moments of his career when we beat Thrill’s Goth Milk in the last game of the season to take the final playoffs spot from them. I don’t know what it says about Seaman that this is in his head his defining moment rather than any of his 59 playoffs games… We ended up losing to Lizirds Strikirs in the play-in for what was there inaugural season.

The Davebird

Season 35 would be another Lawn Dwarf expedition on Everest, but this time with one major difference: Seaman would be in the warbird rather than his typical spider. He’d spent three years of Beer League flying the bird to prepare for this moment.

Lawn Dwarf: Daveo was the most boring version of himself I’ve ever seen. Not locked in at all, not locked in the locker room. Weeze and I both felt we got cheated from the true Daveo experience.

neW neW neW WOrld Order finished third in the league and lost to eventual champions Execution in the Semi Finals. The Davebird proved to be not good enough for the big leagues, even if it could regularly light up the minors.

There’s Nothing Family About Family Matters

In their three seasons in the Beer League, David’s team Family Matters were always mid-table, but he decided they were ready to be promoted to the RSHL for Season 36. It was a renewal of the partnership with stevewhitmer, this time playing under the wayne arnold alias. There was a large disparity between the top and bottom halves of the league, and Family Matters could only compete with the other minnows, managing just four wins.

The Return Of Hmm?

A Hmm reunion seemed on the cards for Season 37, but with the roster lacking the usual flavors of the Retard Army, the team was rebranded as Hamburger Hill for the regular season, leaning into David’s cosplay as an army sergeant.

Both seasons, they were contenders for the Blackie…

In Season 37, they went into the playoffs on an eight game win streak, sweeping Mazer and Creasers in the Quarter Finals and Semi Finals respectively to get Seaman into his second ever playoffs Final. Only the Mega Powers stood in their way, and the Hill had no answer for their double warbird, getting swept with an aggregate score of 14 goals to 6.

Season 38, the Hill would again go into the playoffs on a good win streak, beating lizird strikirs in the play-in game, but failing to get past Creasers in the Semi Finals.

Weeze: I really enjoyed the last two seasons on Haburger Hill. Daveo is, I think, the most fun person to play any game with (unless your objective is to win.) I am okay with the last two seasons, but I think both seasons we were capable of winning it all. This season I had always planned on bringing Blades back and the first person I asked to join was Daveo. I kinda built the team with his play style in mind and I’m personally pretty hurt that I gave him everything I had for two seasons and he wouldn’t even trust me to try it.

The Death Of The Four Horsemen

Season 39’s Daveo team didn’t even make it to preseason. The Four Horsemen included Leafy, Rage, The Boogieman, NCVinyl and Morgan. The team name was intended to aggravate Lawn Dwarf, the original four hockey zone horsemen being himself, Rage, UKillMe and Meow Mix. With a classic case of Daveo self-sabotage, he nuked the team after having misgivings about The Boogieman, but by all accounts he had already descended into a paranoid mess, possibly from shell shock from his days in ‘nam.

Leafy: Daveo came up with the idea to recruit the Boogieman, which the entire team signed off on to make it work. Daveo became repulsed with the Boogieman because he took an afternoon nap and Dave doesn’t think Boogieman deserves to have a nap. Boogieman was also telling Daveo that ‘if he wanted’ he could take over for Linix at anytime and that broke Daveo’s brain that Boogieman’s mental illness could think that was a real possibility to join Schedule Fukkers and steal Linix’ job.

Seaman wanted to use nuking as a loophole around a commitment to not axe the Boogieman, and then resubmit the roster minus Boogie, but his teammates and the league staff refused to go along with it.

Again finding himself as a gun for hire, Seaman was this week signed by Creasers-reject violence to The P1ssm1n, hypocritically going against his own rants in Hockey Zone Discord about the team:

David Seaman #1: You little 5’3 pipsqueak carrot top censoredbydai clown censoredbydai need to stop hiding behind a trash team of censoredbydais and losers and report to basecamp. No one’s buying your horseshit, you’re lucky the CR guys haven’t gone public with their votes to cast you off the island for Darter. Only thing that’s gonna come out of this is everyone realizes you are the posterboy for the 4 S’s of a shittirmin. Coward freckled nancy loser gonna hide behind pissmin and bitch about Bluegoku but do nothing about it.

Violence is at least happy with the signing, even if his loyalty may be in question:

Q: Does Daveo qualify as a full fledged p1ssm1n, or is he too talented?

viop: so David is a tier up for the p1ssm1n, I admit that. I didn’t ask anyone in Seaman’s caliber of player until after the preseason started I realized that, you know what, there’s not that many p1ssm1n out there that actually don’t stink, okay, especially after zipiti left, we need another player to reliably field six players so I reached out to people above the p1ssm1n tier like Seaman, lsdykstermin, itc, KoR, and other players, even the Boogieman I would have played with her as the weasel-keeper hybrid. So Seaman’s above the p1ssm1n tier, but we need another player so it is what it is, and now she’s a p1ssm1n. Happy to have her!
Okay.
Seaman as a player, I’ve always been a fan, okay, I think he could have won the cup many times. Only one team can win, sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way, sometimes you’re a piece of shit and you lose it for yourself, which Seaman has definitely done many times, but she’s definitely capable of winning the cup. As a player, after me (I’m the only good box-to-box spider midfielder in the history of hockey zone, because UKM is a forward, not a midfielder, she lunge all over the place, she’s not a midfielder, I’m the only good one), but Seaman she’s right there after me in terms of midfielder who you want on the pitch. I know with myself as warbird striker, there is no other spider midfielder I’d rather have behind me than Seaman.

We will have to wait and see if Seaman has the tenacity to stick out a whole season with the team…

David the “Player Coach”

David has a self-acclaimed 96 leadership rating and 99 heart rating. I asked his former teammates if this is accurate…

Singer: For as vocal as Daveo is, I would say his leadership is very much non-verbal, he’s just a guy you want to follow because he’s entertaining as fuck.
When you join a Daveo team, you hop on that train and you know damn well that the train operator is off his meds and on drugs and that it’s going to turn out into a trainwreck but you can’t help but go along for the ride anyway and hope for the best.

Leafy: I’d have him comparable to Vio. Almost always is captaining which is great for the game. Always has a group of regulars who are willing to suit up with him because they find it fun, which is what spaceship hockey is about yeah?

Lawn Dwarf: Daveo’s leadership style is “a players coach” his words not mine.
Usually involves yelling homophobic or racist terms with no actually X’s and O’s coaching.
He will remind you that he loves the pick n roll offense that leads to his only move the TOP POST BANGER.
Leadership should be flipped from 96 to 69, I’m okay with a Heart 99 rating.

viop: I think he’s a terrible leader.
He show up, he play his best, but unless he the favorite to win, he always has the doubts, and he puts that doubt into the team.
He can fuck himself as far as I’m concerned as a ciptin.
I know many people follow her, love playing with her, so that says a lot. That says he is a good leader, he has the followers, people like to play with her.
But my experience with her was that she was a shitbox captain to me personally.

Weeze: Daveo says he is a “player’s coach” but I think that just means he doesn’t coach at all.
Two years ago, the first preseason game, I said some basic things about how I’d like to see our defense work and multiple longtime Daveo teammates told me, “that’s the most coaching I’ve ever seen.”
His heart is 99, but I don’t think his coach rating exists.

stevewhitmer: Dave’s leadership style was always an enigma to me, but I don’t find that anyone here has particularly had a leadership style that has had a significant influence on the success of their team. We have very little “overcoming the odds” teams and generally having the better players will result in a victory with even matchups showing themselves to almost always be based on a combination of luck, lag, and patience in the critical playoff games.
Self proclaimed leadership of 96 might be a fair value for him, it’s hard to say without comparing him against every other person.
Heart of 99 is a joke. Dave’s heart is only in anything for a short period of time and will back out of any situation in which he may feel success has potential.

Judge69: David deserves a leadership rating of about 30, but I will allow his heart rating of 99.

Doobie: Daveo doesn’t have a leadership style, certainly not worthy of 96. His only role is begging and threatening self harm to recruit the team.
Occasionally he may call lines if he over-recruits and ends up riding the pine. Otherwise he leaves everything to someone else.

Would former teammates want to play with Seaman again?

stevewhitmer: I really like Dave and have always gotten along with him for the most part. I would be glad to play the zone with him again some day.

Singer: We’ll see how the current season goes with Blades, but yeah, probably, for all the bad that can be said about Daveo, this is a game meant to be played for fun and he enhances that fun factor whenever you’re on his side.

Weeze: I would play with Hamburger Hill again probably, but I’m really excited to try a way different style this year with Blades.

Judge69: I would 100% join another Daveo team. I would even be willing to show up to 10 PM games for that type of season. Life is so serious and can be boring, playing on a Daveo shirt storm team would be hilarious to me. I don’t take this game serious enough to give a shit about his antics anymore, they are just hilarious now. I have the worst +/- in the history of the zone, just here for the fun of it. However, David is still a tryhard so he doesn’t want to play with me anymore.

Lawn Dwarf: no i’m done with Everest attempts for reasons that don’t actually really involve Dave. I hope he makes it up the mountain and someone can say they helped him but it won’t be me.

Doobie: I will never play on a team with Daveo again.

Will David Ever Scale Everest?

David has had several good shots at a Blackie, and it’s not always been him that has been the cause of his failure, but even in minor leagues or off-season events he is prone to self sabotage. In the second season of Beer League, Family Matters were one period away from winning the deciding game of the Final when he subbed himself out, allowing Smoove Swervin’ to come back and win. In the recent summer league, he failed to show up for the playoffs, resulting in his team forfeiting. Will he ever break his duck and reach the Everest summit? This is what his former teammates think:

Lawn Dwarf: The Everest moniker started at 3am on discord during a round table session with Daveo completely blasted out of his mind ranting about Nepalese hookers and drugs.
Collectively we talked about it being a mission that starts at basecamp 1 and how the end result is we end up dead.
I think Daveo should have won a cup by now but just doesn’t want to. I think his entire gimmick at this point is being HZ’s greatest loser. The mystique will be completely gone if he hoists lord Blackie.

Singer: He seems to be willing to bury some hatchets in order to achieve that goal but you never truly know what version of Daveo you’re going to get into the playoffs.
The season is long and he likes to play mind games with his opponents but it also seems to be messing with his own mind.
If he can stay focused the whole time, he’ll have his shot at the cup.

Weeze: I think eventually he will win a cup, but he might be running out of bites of the apple. There might be no apple left.

Judge69: Daveo being an integral part of the team and winning a cup has low probability. Heart only gets you so far. Him afking to a cup is a possibility.

Leafy: Yes, we would have won this year but he doesn’t want to do it without his daddy

stevewhitmer: I don’t think Dave will ever win a Blackie and that is solely going to be on Dave and his decision making.
He doesn’t want to win and if he did he would have already.

Doobie: Daveo will never win a cup.

viop: I think he will definitely win the cup this season on the p1ssm1n

The path up Everest is long and hard, and it always provides lots of twists and turns.

Career Record

Regular Season: 241 wins; 251 losses; 12 ties
Post Season: 18 wins; 41 losses

Exit Points:

Blackie Final: 2
Semi Final: 10
Quarter Final: 7
Non-playoff d00d: 11