Victor

Lol obviously Seattle and Riga are just absolute chokers now.

Devise hasn’t lost a playoff series since he started aiming just sayin

Nah fuck right off

#FreePavlov

Berger Can't believe Helsinki beat that team.

Everything is beautifully poised, love it.

Shieeeet, playoff Kallis is back.

Lawson going off definitely didn't help Toronto haha, but dayum 2nd line.

Common sense surely tbh, why would we have five teams out of ten make it.

Mark Gebauer from Moscow. @Sova

Moscow is ready

You're not top five in TPE lol.

I'm back and I bring you this season's toughest question. 1 or 2 capped TPE up for grabs: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3tGm1bGqjD6buiSsNQKYc4SzpKqCP6kKSMU4HOXUZtawyng/viewform?usp=sf_link

lol time to retire from my position

Mark Gebauer @Sova is also a rookie FYI.

Bonded by surviving this long if nothing else.

https://vhlforum.com/topic/118-s1-vhl-dispersal-draft/

To be honest, it's been done for more trivial shit, probably should.

Nice.

Agreed - just wasn't sure if that was the Faroe flag.

It's Saturday so just about everything looks to have been written about in regards to the S66 draft. Maybe this has too. But I'm not going to check, so here's a ranking of the nations represented by the draftees. United States Very American draft, S66 is. The top 3 prospects are all American and then a few more – Bert Meyers, Charlie Paddywagon, Kyle Sabertooth, Jerry Garcia. Understandably the US of A are WJC favourites and will get a big boost for the World Cup in the future. Sweden Probably the next best single country represented in S66. Current fourth overall in TPE Max Kirbsson is Swedish, as are Ludvig Sederstrom, Andreas Sundell, and DWin Championship. Already good just for Sweden, but for Team Scandinavia things get even better with the addition of Mikko Aaltonen (Finland), Arnor Sigurdsson (Iceland), and Aron Nielsen (not actually sure, Faroe Islands? @solas). Russia The biggest contributor to Team World's gold in S64 (probably) is getting another boost in S67 with the great Vladimir Pavlov... but also in S66 with Dimitri Volosenkov and Valeri Morozov featuring high in the rankings. Czechia Possibly the most under-represented nation in the VHL, but making a resurgence this year. Shawnomir Jagr and Mat Tocco are two fine prospects putting the Czechs back on the map.

Vladimir Pavlov has just joined the league and is not expected to contribute much in the VHLM this season, having accepted a 4th line place on the powerhouse Minnesota Storm. This might however give Pavlov a Founder's Cup ring when the dust settles, which would be a first for his agency (which first had a player in the VHLM back in Season 10). This hasn't stopped Pavlov from continuing to push himself in training so he is in the best possible shape prior to the S66 VHLM Dispersal Draft and to keep up with the pros in the VHL when he graduates to Moscow in S67. This will involve competing with some of the forwards soon to be drafted in the S66 VHL draft, of whom Pavlov had this to say: “There are a lot of great forwards who will be drafted in S66 which I will be in direct competition again for pretty much the entirety of my career. That will be quite difficult, given how far ahead guys like Helmsley and Mars already are. As a center, I've been paying particular attention to others in my position – Kirbsson, Jaguar, Meyers, Sederstrom some of the best right now. It will be very interesting to see how these guys develop but it definitely won't be easy for me.”

Well then everyone should find it. I think most GMs make weekly posts anyway.

Wow, what a surprise, Victor putting a historical spin on a draft theme week. Well, perspective is always important and few things are better at giving that than looking at the past. Even before doing that, I am reasonably confident that on paper the S66 draft will be the best in the VHL's history, at least in quantity of VHL players. However, let's have a look at some of the famously good drafts throughout the years, with a brief summary of S66 for the sake of comparison to start us off. Season 66 So how good is this draft? Someone else can and probably has done all the tallying but 11 players are already going straight to the VHL in S66, which will likely triple at least when we look back in eight seasons' time. Some of the top players, like Helmsley and Mars will probably become stars, although that is a guessing game with the sim, but guys like Kirbsson and Freeman and Aaltonen are also very strongly poised to take the league by storm. What we don't know is how many players will end up becoming Hall of Famers, but we can safely assume a fair few will given the strength in depth. Season 18 This is the draft that is still held as the gold standard in the VHL. Not the result of any great recruitment push (that wasn't really a concept back then) but instead a perfectly timed recreate wave, essentially the first 24 picks all had some time spent in the VHL, as did 29th overall (fifth round) pick Robin Big Snake, which was pretty much unheard of by this point, and indeed for many years after. Just as importantly, this draft combined quality with quantity, with a very strong five Hall of Famers and quite a few others on the cusp of induction, including as far down as third-rounders Joey Clarence and Mathias Chouinard. Possibly the best indicator of S18's quality is the impact it had on teams. Pretty much every contender afterwards had to have a S18 player to stand a chance, be it Shaw, Kanou, or Saeijs. Toronto and Davos would both go on very impressive 7-season playoff streaks (still joint-third all-time), largely as a result of building their cores around this draft. We won't know for a while if S66 will be as influential as S18, but it will certainly be given a run for its money on quantity at the very least. Is any other post-S18 draft in contention? Not really. There have been drafts with superb first rounds, but which dwindled soon after – prime examples of these are S27, S45, and S53 (probably the best draft in the Project Player Two era). S33 was a solid draft about two rounds deep (20 players) without too many superstars, but the highlight of the original expansion era was S40, the draft that was the jolt that kept the VHL going for another decade. However, despite some late steals, the quality here also disappeared by the third round. Of course, some of the main competition for S66 comes from its immediate predecessors as since S62 drafts have been increasing in depth every season. It's already pretty much accepted that S66 is the best of this generation (although I reckon it could be tight with S64 when the dust settles). That means there is one comparison left... Season 1 Can any draft be better than the one that started it all of? Well, it's hard to beat 56 players jumping straight to the VHL to the eight original franchises, but as can be expected without any time to assess beforehand (the draft was held on July 28, 2007 – five days after the VHL opened to public), a lot of these players had no lasting impact in the league. When removing players and members who did not stick around, the number decreases to just over 20, so perhaps S18 is indeed the draft to compare with and maybe S66 is already the best draft there ever was. We'll see if this crop of players can prove it in the long run.

Can't fit everyone in or let people know my real thoughts.