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There were some shocking payouts this week with the VHL Virtual Bookie. The biggest impact on this was because it is playoffs and the odds were applied to all the games. Now that the round is over, here are some highlights. The New York Seattle series ended with more goals per game than predicted, costing the Bookie 515 in wages. The Bookie bounced back by counting on Wwwwwwwwwwww Wwwwwwwwwwww @rory to make over 35.5 saves, which he did 3 out of the 4 games, increasing the Bookie’s pockets by 990. FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY Analfist @STZ split the shots on goal, by going over 5.5 twice, and under twice. The biggest loss for the Bookie was placing a wager of 1000 on Daryl Dixon, @Ricer13to score over 2.5 points. Unfortunately, Dixon was flat the entire series. On the Toronto/DC series, the Bookie picked up 500 on Bobby Bob @Baby Boomer, only to lose 100 hoping for The Frenchman @OrbitingDeath , to get the first star. The Bookie managed to add 200 from a wager on the puck line. The Malmo/Moscow series was lucrative for the bookie, thanks to Gregger McKeggegger @TheNeonShaman getting over 4.5 shots per game. The Bookie got 3500 out of that wager. Adding a 400 money line wager made up for the 100 wasted on hoping for Reese McFleury @Spaz to get second star. The Bookie should have placed a wager on Grimgor Ironhide, @FrostBeard getting the third star, as that payout was 12000. The big payout came from the London/Prague series. The Bookie placed a 500 wager on John Jameson @Frank to win 45000, and it paid off. Jackpot!! Thank you John Jameson. And the biggest disappointment goes to Rip Wheeler, @ScottyP. A 1000 wager was placed by @Tetricide to win 250000. Go big or go home, and tetricide went home sad. 306 words

I promise this image made perfect sense in context. The game of Mafia was invented in 1987 by a student at Moscow State University who has definitely never heard of the VHL. That student probably never envisioned Among Us the lengths to which the world would go to study the game, from profitable spin-offs to home-brew versions to even real mathematical research devoted to its analysis. Playing a game like Mafia requires intuition, wit, and lots of knowledge of game mechanics. And running one takes even more. My first exposure to Mafia came much earlier than I thought it was, when @Nykonax floated the idea of a game way back in May of 2019--this would have been S66. He ended up getting a decent-sized player list and making a game happen. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Not much that was being said in the game thread made much sense to me, and I walked away from the experience considering it largely forgettable. But, I was now aware that this was a thing that could be done on forums. I must have retained that knowledge pretty soon after that, because I remember playing a game in the SBA right around the time of our affiliation fallout. That changed not much of anything about what I knew about the game, but I had retained the basic idea of talking during the day and doing things at night. I'd also joined the EFL (which I will openly admit was fueled by wanting affiliate checks), and in one of those affiliate leagues, I had my first exposure to Town of Salem--a game that you can find on Steam (although I've never played it) that is essentially just a fancy version of Mafia. It turns out that, as a fancy version of Mafia, Town of Salem (or ToS) is readily adapted to a forum game. I still didn't really know what I was talking about in the EFL, but they had a long rule thread and I was more comfortable hanging around there with it being a league that I knew had nothing against me being VHL-first. By this point, it was clear to me that--even though I was clueless--the Mafia concept had managed to stick around for more than just a one-off in our affiliate leagues, and I'd also watched lots of people in those leagues play the games and like them a lot. It was something the VHL was missing, and I was bored--so I figured I should take matters into my own incompetent hands. For those of you who are unfamiliar by this point, Mafia (in general) is a two-sided game consisting of an "informed minority," or an "evil" group of players who plot with each other behind the scenes to kill the others, and an "uninformed majority," or a "good" group who must use their own skills and find out who the bad ones are by talking out in the open (where the bad ones try to blend in and mess with their plans). There are lots of variations on this, many with more unique roles than others. I wasn't confident, so I eventually found myself digging through rule sets on some mafia game forum and settling on a game called Cult in the Jungle Republic where 12 of the 19 people who would end up playing were just residents of the town with no special abilities. We played the game, but most people didn't really like it for that reason--why would you want to play the game where you really couldn't do much aside from following votes? So, it was clear to me that to keep this thing going, we would need to go full Town of Salem--where every single player has a job to do and there are lots of layers to the game beyond just Town and Mafia. Did I establish by this point that I had no clue what I was doing? Whatever. In any case, I relied on two things in equal measure to learn the game, without either of which the game would not be possible. The first was the Town of Salem Wiki, which has every possible role extensively documented with enough information that a game can be run if you read closely enough. The second was @omgitshim, who has every possible role also extensively documented in his head, as well as enough patience that a game can be run even if you're stupid. I spent lots of hours over lots of days dealing with both of those until I felt that I got the point, and then I finally put up the sign-up thread for the VHL's first-ever game of Town of Salem, just over a year after I joined the league and about four months after Cult in the Jungle Republic flopped. Check out the date on that one--is it really a surprise to anyone that we all had the time in our lives to get the game off the ground? ToS #1 was a success, all in all. It took forever--no other game we've played has even started to approach Day 13--but it was a big learning experience for lots of people (myself included) and I had an absolute blast every time I started the night phase and got to see in real time who was taking shots at who. I stuck with asking OMG everything for the most part, but made it through my first game ever without a major crisis. I knew I'd run lots of games at the start, but I had no idea just how frequently I was doing it and I could never pull that type of thing off today. Within a week, I was signing people up for Game 2, and we'd run up 10 games between the end of March and the end of August--that's one game (which itself took just over a week on average between sign-up and last kill) about every two weeks over that time. I'm honestly shocked that we were able to maintain our player base that constantly, but I suppose that's all we had going on over the summer of 2020. In a way, I wouldn't doubt it if COVID was what gave us the amount of interested people to begin with, or if it was the reason why ToS caught on. Regardless, lots of those interested people deserve my mentions. My handy-dandy stat tracking sheets give me all the info I need to tag those who have been involved the most--obviously OMG, but he and @eaglesfan036 have been considered our nastiest, most competent players from the very start. @Doomsday, @Ricer13, @jhatty8, and @Berocka can also all claim to have played just about every single game we've run (with Eagles, Berocka, and @Devise both running their own spin-off versions of ToS at one point or another). Some others who have stuck around consistently for a long time and are still active in our threads today are @Spartan , @Advantage, @N0HBDY, @rory, @Alex, and even @Ptyrell, who has never had a VHL player but has posted over 1,000 times on our forum for ToS and related games (including his own creative project, Town of Pallet). All of these and much, much more have made Town of Salem what it is, which is an awesome way for the community to really feel like a community. I've had so much fun watching everyone go at each other over the past four years (!) and I'm looking forward to a lot more. To bring it back to being a point in the series about my own personal history, this wasn't the first time I decided to just do something fun for the community rather than waiting for it, but it was the most work I'd ever put into that. I think the league would be a much better place if it had more "just doing" in it, and Town of Salem is something I'll always be able to point to as an example of that. Even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the sim hockey part of the league (and therefore is just one of the "intangibles" on my record), I consider it one of my biggest VHL accomplishments and really feel that it deserves a solid place in this series. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House

We do not talk of TOS#1

Today we celebrate "May Day" in Finland. To celebrate a day off and the beautiful weather; the sun is shining and it is warm outside, I decided to buy a hotdog from the supermarket's "bakery section". Because I am not an animal, I wanted to eat the hotdog when I got home, so I could eat the hotdog like a gentleman - using a fork and a knife. As I was walking through the crowded city center, the refrain of the song "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton started to play in my head: pa pa pa pa making my way back home, hotdog in my pocket, pa pa pa pa pa. I was having a good time. I then started to think about VHL and the playoffs. I noticed that walking home with a nice hotdog shares similarities with the VHL experience. When you walk home with the hotdog instead of eating the hotdog right away you don't get the instant satisfaction. In VHL you don't get to enjoy the fruits of your labor right away either, you need to be consistent and work hard before your player gets better. A person who eats a hotdog in a public setting is close to a user claiming welfare in VHL: they lack patience, they do not want to work hard, and they often lack the ability to plan ahead. If you are able to walk home with the hotdog, it shows you have patience and discipline, you are willing to work for it, and you have the ability to think ahead. In general, if I think about what the world would look like if all the people ate hotdogs out in public vs eating the hotdog at home later, I think the world would be a better place if people would walk home with the hotdog. The playoffs and the championship are what you are playing for in VHL. Daily and weekly you work towards being the best possible player and in the end, you hope it will translate to championship glory. Sometimes you will get lucky and you land in a solid VHL team, so you might win the championship sooner than many other players, but generally speaking, you need to have patience and discipline. If you ask me, I think it is only a good thing that you need to "work for it" as hunger and hard work make the victory taste even more special. For that reason, hotdogs should be bought from a store located a fair distance from your home. The walk home will make the hotdog taste even better. When you must walk for some time you also have the time to think about eating the hotdog. After a while, simply making the playoffs is not as big of a deal as the championship is the only thing that truly matters. Similar to buying a hotdog. If you buy a hotdog every time you can, after a while the idea of a hotdog gets less exciting. You would have to get some special hotdog or maybe eat it in some special place, or after some special event to make the whole "getting a hotdog" as exciting as it once was when you rarely got one. Luckily in VHL, it is still quite difficult to win the championship. However, it is easy to buy a hotdog and build a solid player in VHL, I think that is not good. I think the price of hotdogs should be higher and building a solid player in VHL should be harder. That way the status of the hotdog would automatically reach new heights, same with building a player. Right now in VHL, you get to enjoy multiple strong seasons as a strong player before depreciation hits, you also start scoring at a fair rate quite soon after entering VHL, but the journey is not as satisfying as it could be as the difference between hard work and showing up doesn't feel as strong as it should feel. If buying a hotdog would be a difficult thing to do people would proudly wait until home before eating the hotdog as they don't want to be too flashy and rub it in the faces of other people. Eating a hotdog would be a rare thing, shared only with friends and loved ones. If building a strong player was harder thing to do users in vHL would feel more proud about building a strong player. The idea of playoffs still carries you through the weekly grind. The regular season is a long process, you have to do a lot of work to improve your player, especially after a certain point. The idea of competing and maybe ending the season in championship celebrations is what pushes you to earn as much TPE as you can. The walk home today was not as bad as it could be, the sun was shining and birds were singing, but I still had to walk a fair amount. The thought of the nice hotdog kept my feet light. When you walk home with a nice hotdog, you make sure you walk home as fast as possible, but you make sure you are not taking any dangerous shortcuts that could prevent you from getting to enjoy the hotdog. Similar to VHL, you don't necessarily have to produce top quality every single week and spend hours researching something, but you can't take shortcuts and let the AI do the work for you. As I have now eaten my hotdog, I feel sad. I came home and started to write a small piece of this article. Then I ate the hotdog. I discovered that the idea of eating the hotdog is more satisfying than actually eating the hotdog. I am currently playing in a team that made the playoffs, I did not get a huge rush when we secured the spot in the playoffs. But the idea of competing still felt good before we were anywhere near the playoffs. Now that I am in the playoffs and still competing, just like with the idea of eating the hotdog, the idea of competing is more enjoyable than actually competing. We as people have the ability to hype things up in our minds to levels that reality can not match. 1030 words 29.4 - 5.5 6.5 - 12.5

The off-season has begun for me and the Vancouver Wolves and it's hard to be out of the mix in the playoffs, which is a fun time. While our future is looking super bright maintaining motivation during the dreaded off-season is tough. Added to this I missed both the damn trivia questions today!! I have been checking in on the VHLM,E, and VHL playoffs and it's been surprising. Ive been rooting for New York in the NA and Prague in the EU. New York mainly because since I have joined the franchise has struggled. It would be cool to see them get to the finals. In the M my buddy @Thunder has been playing well with a point per game average for Saskatoon, so I am rooting for them. It truly does suck missing the playoffs since it's an extra long off-season but I think Vancouver will be sitting pretty next season if we all keep earning. Anyway best of luck to the playoff teams especially Prague, Oslo, and Saskatoon. See ya next week.

Cold but before it wrinkled, if it was still prime condition!! I thought you got three? I’d have eaten two on the road. Those damn pics make me hungry for dogs

Shame and other spices, I didn't stop to look. The idea of eating a hotdog when I get home took over my body and soul, I was blinded by the hotdog. I ate it cold, but it was in prime condition, because I can't come home with a half-eaten hotdog

One of many posts I came across back in the day that featured someone who was really important in one of our affiliate leagues saying negative things about ours in their league's Discord server. Did we deserve it? On some level, yes. Most people know that there are things you just shouldn't say anymore. Maybe not everyone agrees what those things are. Maybe some people aren't quite up on what means what and how those meanings have changed. But you've got to be living under a rock if you aren't aware that much of the Western world has fairly recently come to terms with how our choices of words can affect others, intentionally or otherwise. Whether with any intent to hate or not, lots of words are out there that once were generally accepted in most casual settings and have since been looked at with a bit of hesitation. "If I were a member of this group, would I appreciate this word being used in this way?" is a fair question that's made lots of people reflect. If you're over 20 or so, chances are that you've had both the exposure to such things being common and the life experience to question it. I'm sure you know the sorts of things I'm referring to, so I don't think I need to keep explaining. I won't act like I haven't cringed at a thing or two I've said or found funny in the past. I'm also not going to act like the VHL hasn't, either. Talk to any super-old member, and you'll probably hear a whole lot about how the league used to be the Wild West of the Internet. I've read lots of "if you think this is bad, you haven't seen anything"-type comments, and I believe them. I've seen members attack each other personally and drop comments that really aren't OK in general. But by the time I'd joined the league, it was a good bit tamer than it was. And it's a good bit tamer today than it was then, as well. The single most impactful day in the history of "what is and is not OK to say in the VHL," though, came about after I'd joined. October 31, 2019, should have been a really cool day for the VHL. That morning, @Beaviss, who had revolutionized league recruiting and brought it back from the brink of nonexistence by reeling in the great classes of the S60s, was hired into a very deserved role as league commissioner. The VHLM was in the middle of their Cup finals in S68, with a Game 6 slated for that day that could have given the Houston Bulls their first ever championship. And it was Halloween! What's not to like? There was a lot to like in Houston, that's for sure--that Game 6 I'd mentioned went their way. The season was over and the M had their champion. But the story didn't end there--in fact, this one starts at this point because one comment that responded negatively to the game did so with a choice of words that would not be accepted in the VHL today. Though you can find the thread easily, I'm not going to link it for a couple reasons--mainly, what was said initially came from members who I genuinely believe are good people, who apologized for what they said and took accountability to settle their own business. I consider the start of the situation much more their business than mine, so all I think is absolutely necessary to know is that one of those "ways to describe things that used to be common and now are considered less fine to say" made its way onto our forum. It isn't OK now and wasn't OK then--but it's also a matter that has been settled. Houston, interestingly, was helped quite a bit by deadline signings. The VHL had recently rolled out a strengthened affiliate program (the one still in existence today that gives a free 12 TPE to the super important people in our affiliate leagues), and much of the SBA's leadership had created right at the deadline and signed with the same team. With that being Houston, and with a full weekly cap claimable by all these players, all of SBA leadership saw the thread when they won the Cup--and that also meant that all of SBA leadership saw what was said. At the time, the SBA's guidelines for personal conduct were very different from ours (and much more strict). I had been in their league for a very short time at that time as a very casual affiliate member and never had an issue with anyone there myself, but I was familiar with a few stories that at I thought were ridiculous (I really don't remember most of the stories or most of the details of what I do remember, and it's also been almost 5 years, so I'm not sure if my opinion is any different now). But being a league with stricter guidelines, I can understand where some people may have been shocked to see things posted that they would have dealt with personally on their own website. I'm not going to say that the SBA response was entirely in the right. Our league wasn't given much opportunity to officially respond to a fairly aggressive pushback, and later on that same day, the SBA had removed their affiliation with us entirely. Their justification for this was (legitimate or not is up to you) that the VHL had generally held relaxed standards that the SBA was not interested in promoting, and that recent events had made it clear that the VHL was not interested in changing them. One day in the books for Beav as commissioner, one affiliate partner lost, and one serious dialogue that hadn't even begun to reach a conclusion--what a start to a job (and an admittedly funny one). This was something that made lots of VHL members mad--myself included, and I had nothing at all to do with that game thread. From my perspective at the time, the entire community, just about none of which I felt were actually hateful people and most of which really didn't go around regularly dropping off-color words, had just been punished over something that probably never would have gone down the way it did had the Hounds been able to win a few more playoff games the finals been anything at all other than the team with the SBA's entire BoD up against the team that dropped the first comment. I had a lot to say about this, mostly on Discord, and although I remember being very opinionated and openly saying that I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid, that was about as far as I ever took it. The first few days on the VHL end saw some reactions from our members, though, that certainly didn't help the situation. Some people went to their league to call them the same sorts of words that lit the fire, and not only got banned for it but became shining examples of people the SBA could point to and identify as parts of the problem. I remember disliking some people I'd never talked to personally, and I felt that even though my own disagreements never broke any rules (written or otherwise), I felt that I was disliked by some people as well when I made them known--something I confirmed much later on when I joined BoG and found a screenshot of the list of people the SBA had a problem with, with me on it. Things were pretty quiet after the first few weeks or so, though. We kept observing the affiliation agreement on our end because we didn't want to punish any regular SBA users who had nothing to do with the situation, and while the topic kept coming up (it was huge news!), it didn't ever turn into people going at each other's throats. The only differences were that VHL tasks weren't claimable in the SBA, and lots of us had grown to distrust one another. After five months of sitting around and passively disliking each other, though, the VHL was informed that affiliation was gone forever. The league had been working behind the scenes to try to work out a set of policies that were agreeable to everyone, and it was eventually decided that this was no longer realistic. VHL leadership claimed that this decision was made unilaterally, and you can read the thread I linked there to try to develop your own opinion on the matter. That was one of the more interesting arguments featuring really important people on both sides that I've ever seen, and it relit the fire on our end. Lots of people made it clear how much they still hated the SBA then--I think I did too, but I don't remember. Something that made me think about things a lot, though, was this post made by SBA member @Beowoof a couple days after that announcement. What was detailed in that post didn't fully line up with what I'd seen or my own perception of the situation (I was in BoG at that point and had access to all the primary sources of info), but if I tried to look at it from the SBA's perspective, I found the thoughts laid out there pretty reasonable and could see how someone on their end could have viewed things in that way. I also liked what @okochastar had to say there and thought a bit about how I'd gotten to know a handful of people from the SBA in the past months and really liked them. The sim league world was really a better place once we stopped wondering how we could run around shit-talking each other and got past all the stupid league identity stuff to just have a little bit of fun together in our free time. Plus, I'm sure the VHL wasn't perfect then and isn't now--but the league had taken a harder stance against the sorts of things we were called out for in that time and I really didn't miss seeing them. Why, though, is this in Gustav 30 in 30 instead of just being a recap of the league in general? I'm mostly describing things done by other people, and the most I was ever connected to the situation was that I complained about it a lot. Well...I talked quite a bit in my second installment about how I'd been part of a very tribalistic team-versus-team drama in the VHLM and how that shaped my views on having basic respect for people. I think that did quite a bit in terms of adjusting how I dealt with people I knew I'd have to see again around the site. But I think that sort of tribalism popped up again on the level of the entire league, had real league-altering consequences, and sucked me back into the mindset to some extent. I was important enough as a VHLM GM that the league knew who I was, and so now I had to make sure my league was taken seriously. The SBA, much like any other league, has tons of good people in it that deserve my respect whether I've met them or not. I think this was the last time I jumped on any "my group is better than your group" train in a sim league as blindly as I did, and I think I learned a lot by watching things go down that helped make it so I wouldn't jump on things like that again. Also just like any other league, following incentives for benefit takes priority. Reddit recruitment was pretty much the only source of new members for either of us at the time, and the SECOND our accounts were reported and blocked from a bunch of communities, guess whose affiliation was magically back. I will also clarify that I have NEVER believed the VHL to be a hateful place in general. At the end of the day, now that I'm done caring about it, I think this was an unfortunate situation featuring lots of immaturity both ways that somehow eventually ended up changing the vibe of the league a little bit for the better. For the most part, I think we had good people who had gotten used to a certain environment and evaluated how they did things once that environment was challenged. To some extent, that was eventually me too. I did some growing that I'm almost glad happened as a result of staring alone at a screen instead of saying something wrong in real life and hurting people close to me. That isn't to say I learned to be offended by everything, or that I'm now whatever cartoonish representation of "woke" some people have in their heads over things like this (in fact, I really couldn't care less about that sort of mindset). There's a huge difference between that and just having respect for people and treating them normally--and I think the VHL has largely learned to adapt in those ways. I'm not sure that I'd say I'm glad this was a big chapter in VHL history, but I'm glad that we're past the negative parts. Enough of that--it's time to have fun with what's left of my Wednesday night. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience (hi Berocka): #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile

God I don't miss that time. So much bickering with the SBA guys while also trying desperately to control our own members who seemed hell bent on actively making things worse. Made us better in the end but was definitely hellish to go through. But yes, was also really running that it happened on Beav's first day and I definitely never let him live that down,

graphic courtesy by Leandrofg (stats for Janser, stats for Kagamine) The regular season has come to an end and the Americans made it into the post-season. That is the good news, the bad news is, that they lost the third seed they held onto for most of the season. So they need to go through the purgatory of the Wild Card series, which they lead 2-0 at the moment of writing this article. We will review the last two regular season matches. 6-5 (OT) The first game featured on this review was against the Swedish Uberteam, Malmö. The teams showed a very entertaining game, at least for the fans of highscoring hockey. Defense-afficionados were sorely disappointed. Lecavalier opened the score with the end of the first period already looming on the horizon. In the second frame, the Swedes tied the game on the power play, when Champagne got a minor for high sticking. This won't be the last time his stick was where it had no business being, but more on that later. New York then scored three consecutives markers. Jeannot, Davis and Mancini found the back of the net for their colours. But the Nighthawks put up a fight and with two back-to-back goals, they culled the lead to one goal. On the third period, Malmö equalized the score with only twenty-two seconds played. Midway through the period, Analfist reinstated the one goal league. At this point in time, Freddy was already taking a shower as he was expelled from the game for a spearing offence. Apparently he forgot for a moment what sport was being played here. With less than six minutes left in the game, the Swedish outfit evened the score again, and the teams had to go to overtime. Less than two minutes passed in same before Malmö secured the extra point. This was the Americans' eleventh OT loss in the season, which is the most league wide. A questionable record for sure. Jeannot (1g/2a), Stone (1g/2a) and Queefson (1g/1a) were awarded the tree stars of the night. 36W (.878) was considerably less awful than Sparks (.800) in Malmö's net. New York's power play was top notch (1/2) while their penalty killing was almost impeccable (7/8). Janser left the ice with 0g, 1a, +0, 6 PIM (High Sticking, Interference and Cross Checking, none of which lead to a goal against), 1 hit and 3sb Rin was credited with 0g, 0a, -1, 0 PIM, 3 hits and 1sb 1-7 The last match of the season was even more of a defensive nightmare for Vince Wong than the previous one. We are sure that he was questioning what his erstwhile rock solid back row was doing out there. The Dragons came out breathing fire and scored five unanswered goals in the first period, two of which were on the man advantage. They took it down a notch in the second, where they only scored one more on the power play and in the final period they scored their seventh of the night. Alas, the Empire State franchise manage to save at least some of its dignity and managed a consolation goal by Kagamine with five minutes left for Tucker to secure his shut out. It should marvel absolutely no-one that with Grey (2g/2a), Calaway (1g/3a) and Frenchman (1g/2a) all three of the post-game honours went to DC players. In net, it was a no-contest between 36W (.706) and Tucker (.974). New York's power play (0/5) and their offence in general was atrocious, matching the box play teams' performance (2/5). Callum was noted with 0g, 0a, -3, 2 PIM (Slashing, did not affect the score), 4 hits and 6sb Kagamine had 1g, 0a, +0, 0 PIM, 1 hit and 2sb to her name It is frustrating that the guaranteed playoff seed was given away what was arguably the worst defensive effort of a New York team, since Janser joined the roster. However, this is water under the bridge and the Americans need now to focus on the games ahead. We are certain that they prefer this collective defensive blackout to happen in the dying games of the regular season rather than the post-season. Here are the final stats for our Dynamic Duo playing for the squad out of the Big Apple. Rin: 72gp, 8g, 15a, 23pts, +10, 28 PIM, 64 hits, 111sb, 4ppg, 2gwg CGY: 72gp, 12g, 51a, 63pts, +30, 182 PIM, 225 hits, 128sb, 6ppg, 1gwg, 1 First Star nomination As a closing analysis, we can say that Janser has made progress in almost every aspect of his game. He doubled his goals, had more assists and therefore points, showed a significant improvement on the +/- rating, reduced his time riding the pine by a smidge and remained a physical player as well as a reliable shot blocker. Further and in addition, he could celebrate his 100th apple in the league. So all according to plan and there is no reason, why the management should not be happy with his development. Sadly, Rin's progress is a different story. It looks like despite undeniable talent, the Japanese defender projects at the moment to become a depth player. In fact, whereas the Swiss Giant showed improvement in most of his stats, the opposite is true for Kagamine. She scored fewer goals as well as fewer assists than last season, despite a better team offence. The +/- rating improved, but not to the same extent as Janser's. She took more penalties on top of the aforementioned. Admittedly it is still a low two-digit number we are talking about and some of it has to do with an improved physical play. Just to be clear, Rin got a gig in a storied VHL franchise, which is more than most can claim for themselves. This is certainly something to be proud of. Alas, we cannot help but feel that with a 15th overall pick, the New York management were looking more in the direction of a franchise player than a bottom four defender. Let's see whether the 'Nagasaki Nightingale' can address the issues that cripple her development and become the star player she was always meant to be. We will revert with more news in due course. In the interim, why not reading one of the below articles? https://vhlforum.com/topic/146308-the-cgy-janser-story-part-xxii-an-inter-season-interview/ https://vhlforum.com/topic/146571-vsn-presents-s93-vhl-preview/ https://vhlforum.com/topic/146609-the-cgy-janser-story-part-xxiii-a-new-season-is-upon-us/ https://vhlforum.com/topic/146757-the-cgy-janser-story-part-xxiv-a-quarter-done/ https://vhlforum.com/topic/146863-the-cgy-janser-story-part-xxv-contender-or-pretender/ https://vhlforum.com/topic/147258-the-cgy-janser-story-part-xxvi-an-89th-interview/ GM 568: Malmo Nighthawks vs. New York Americans (vhlportal.com) GM 575: New York Americans vs. D.C. Dragons (vhlportal.com) 1000+ words