Victor

yes very special

Thank you all for your nominations. I note some overwhelming support for @Dil who will sadly not be making the final ballot despite his enduring kindness. The people actually receiving more than 1 vote and therefore a place on the final ballot are: @ace_five_ @AJW @Banackock Congrats all! Also receiving 1 nomination each were @Aimee , @Beketov, @Enorama, @kirbithan, @N0HBDY, @Ricer13, @rory, @Sjin, @Spartan , and me, yay. As always if you would like to know the reasons behind your nomination, just drop me a PM on the forum or a DM on Discord.

Hmm maybe you do look exactly like me then.

Funnily enough also someone I nearly mentioned from the Helsinki team me and Ahma were talking about but decided I'd named too many old people. Christoph Klose forever I also tell @Kendrick we were both idiots when we were younger in response to eaglesfan's question at 02:08

Not a good time for Del Rocco to disappear Also Davos vs Riga, we know how that's gonna go eh @Ahma @FrostBeard

Would you have stuck around as unofficial AGM

Triller and animal, my apologies, we nearly hit the 3 hour mark on our podcast and still didn't get to your questions. But as a bonus, you get them answered in written form by me before the podcast is even posted! Woo! Honestly, given the niche I found in the league between my last 2 players of just existing for awards and HOF purposes, I don't think I have a need to fully retire - it's not too time consuming and genuinely stuff I enjoy doing. There's a few people who have offered to help over the years and I think ultimately it'll have to be a committee job should I leave - I don't think anyone should be expected to do this on their own. Or the league can last until I leave for good and call it a day then. No but genuinely I have no expectation at this point. When I joined it would have been ludicrous to expect S50 or S100 but here we are. We've had our low points but powered through and we are less reliant on 1 or 2 people than ever before - something very bad would have to happen for an end now, I don't think we'll die out organically any time soon. 1. Funnily enough long after I became VHL historian. I actually did all my stuff on the forum and guys like @scoop and others were more spreadsheet-savvy. I don't think I used Excel in any meaningful way before I started working at 18 and it was only after that I started moving much of the HOF to Google Sheets. 2. @Spartan was doing some magic for me in my late Moscow GM days so he knows his stuff. There's a few others who I've not interacted with as much but certainly anyone who knows their way around the portal or has contributed to the VHFL/Fantasy Zone is pretty decent. 3. It makes things and achievements meaningful. If we don't look back at what happened or at least have something to compare to, then all we're looking at is some random numbers in some old software. 4. I think I've done a Media Spot ranking them before. Chershenko was my most enjoyable for the awards he won and the teams he was on and my level of activity vs achievement I felt. But Clegane had such a fun storyline and was objectively my most successful player and one of the best ever, so he's a close second mainly due to my own being less active by then. Of the HOFers, I wish I was more present for Clegane so he probably answers the 2nd question but I also would have done things differently at the end of Cast's career to make his legacy better (and maybe make Cast vs Thompson more of a debate) and at the end of Rasputin's to give him a fighting HOF chance. 5. Season 18 Calgary forever the highlight, we didn't expect, I can still remembering opening the Game 6 result thinking we'd lost and would have to go to 7, but there we were, champions. Two cup winners - Berger in S21 and Chershenko in S30 - rank highly as well, as do two GM victories - the first with Davos in S36, ahead of schedule, and S70 Moscow, the first expansion team win of the current expansion era and the culmination of probably my most difficult time as GM, trying to prove I still had what it took. 6. Nothing comes to mind but there were many who would fight over some grammar mistakes to then be proven wrong. I think the grader community of the time and the competitive nature of it, guys like @JardyB10, @Phil, and @frescoelmo, was what made it an enjoyable experience. 7. I have a few things tracking football stats (the European kind obviously) just for my own use, as it helps me consume the sport sometimes. Not as many as in the VHL though.

NA tight, Riga and Davos not holding back though.

Compliments just become that much more powerful when they're rare x doing better than VHL 40 in 40 tbh

Onto the next one, good effort Calgary.

I am two seasons into my most ambitious player, in terms of personal goals, in about 30 seasons, having been through a GM player (Pavlov), a GM player / goalie in the meta era (Rasputin), and a subsequent hiatus. So with the stated aim of getting back into the Hall of Fame, how do Gianfranco Del Rocco's first two seasons compare to my previous three HOF forwards? Podrick Cast We'll start with the most recent previous forward, for the primary reason that he's not really comparable at all. Cast had the best first two seasons ever of anyone not named Scotty Campbell or Brett Slobodzian, helped in no small part by a 174-point sophomore season that was the greatest in VHL history. Both Cast's rookie and sophomore seasons were better than any put up by Del Rocco to date, but just that second season alone is superior to Del Rocco's career totals. If anything, I'm hoping that Del Rocco is the inverse of Cast who peaked very early and had a relatively underwhelming second half of his career, both in personal and team achievements. Alexander Chershenko Ah, my favourite son. Chershenko was remarkably consistent, only dropping below 100 points twice in his career and his worst season, his first, was still better than Del Rocco's output to date, with 84 points as a rookie. Despite that, Del Rocco is only 44 points off the pace, in a more competitive league and playing for a cup contender whereas Chershenko started off on the rebuilding Wranglers. Indeed Del Rocco is already in his second postseason whereas Chershenko only had 7 playoff games to his name by the end of his third season. That said, it would be foolish to aim to outdo the Ukrainian's playoff record, which is another one in the “probably better than anyone not named Campbell” category. Lars Berger Heading into the depths of VHL history here and again it's nothing to get too excited about for Del Rocco – Berger already had over 200 career points by this stage of his career and was en route to a surprise Continental Cup victory with Calgary as a sophomore top line center. Berger came into his own later, as seen by recent updates to the Toronto Legion all-time stats where he features prominently despite only spending half his career there, but definitely had a quick start as well, landing in the top five all-time scorers at the time of his retirement (and still sitting in ninth place). His trophy case didn't grow massively even at his peak though, so that is something that can be improved on by Del Rocco. So, on the face of it, some grim reading a quarter of the way through Del Rocco's career. I didn't expect to be competing with Cast at this point, but even 40-60 points off Chershenko and Berger's pace is not ideal. However, it is first of all a reflection of the era we live in – since the start of the hybrid era in S83, only six players (Axle Gunner, Jake Thunder, Tomas Sogaard, Bo Johansson, Molly the Cat, and now Antonia Bucatini) have cracked the 150-point mark across their first 2 seasons. None of those players accumulated more than 180 points and only one has so far been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Secondly, I am comparing Del Rocco's start to three of the top 15 scorers ever, so it is bound to be a sobering comparison. The trajectory is positive and the team results have been strong as well so let's see what the next few seasons have in store.

The Fredrik Elmebeck Memorial Trophy is back, as a reminder this has become a biennial award only taking place in odd-numbered seasons but covering the previous 2 seasons. Every member can nominate one other member who they feel demonstrated great work ethic, passion for the VHL, and/or made some notable contribution which in your eyes made them stand out. This covers the period of S94 to S95 i.e. May to September 2024. There are no restrictions on who you nominate, but we will not necessarily vote for someone in a position of power. This should whittle it down to a few candidates which the BOG will vote on prior to the off-season awards ceremony. To nominate a fellow member, simply fill out the short form below: @Members

Its dominance had grown out of control!

Good start Bears

eeeeeeeeee

Love to see it Love this even more 3 censors in the same thread

1. What did you get up to last weekend? Got up at 2:30am on Saturday to be at the airport at 4 for a 6am flight to Spain where I've been the past week. 2. What is your favorite TV show of all-time? There's so many which have some incredible seasons but not the full thing. E.g. I was so invested in GoT S1 to S4 and wouldn't have been sad if it ended in S6. Or Westworld season 1, if they did nothing else, was a perfect show in itself. But given those disappointments it would have to be something light viewing like 30 Rock. 4. Thoughts on how your player did this season? It started off a bit disappointing, but a few line changes later we smashed the point per game mark for a significant improvement on my rookie season. Now nearly point per game for career which is where I would have wanted to be at this point. 5. Most surprising team of the regular season? In a bad way, New York, didn't expect, history notwithstanding, for them to crash back out of the playoffs. In a good way Toronto, thought they'd score loads but be inconsistent but haven't really missed Castle at all. 7. Who was Seattle's MVP for the season? Our 100 point man, Eric White Jr. Really came into his own after some high profile retirements. 9. Playoffs are around the corner. What are your predictions for Seattle? Our mindset has to be that we believe to go all the way therefore this is what I predict.

Del Rocco has made things personal against Chicago.

This one's the HOFer I can sense it

Elgar Trade Voided It's quite rare to see a trade voided for reasons of competitive balance but this one does seem clear-cut enough. Admittedly I may not be best placed to comment as I didn't even know Elgar was a goalie when I saw the trade but upon further research it does seem to be pretty blatant tanking. Toronto are top of the conference despite having a slightly better, and younger, goalie than Elgar and Bobbly is outperforming Elgar in the sim as well, so there can be no claim of better build for Elgar. The only team which would have benefited here is London seeking to halve the quality of their goalie in the hopes of finishing below D.C. and Prague. Well voided. New York Firesale Something wasn't clicking for the Americans (story of the last 40 seasons), probably the fact that the team was unbalanced in favour of high earning defencemen rather than prolific forwards. Even with that in mind, you'd expect a bit more luck to go your way and that wasn't forthcoming, so the decision to sell seems the sensible one. Form has already picked up for New York despite losing most of their best forwards, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them sneak into the playoffs now – but expecting a deep run would have been foolish so pulling the plug was the right choice.

Just one game??

Oh yeah, picked this up at a hotel just over a month ago and agreed, very enjoyable. Makes the science very digestible and plot twists were all well set up.

Week 2 of 2

Dynasty

Davos' 1st round pick sorted