Victor

You're not inactive you're a phantom x I identify you as TXC only

He can score cup winning goals. Just needs to make the playoffs.

This is a great metaphor actually. Hate something so much and so irrationally that you'd rather make life worse for yourself just to get rid of it.

All time great playoff run

After several weeks of speculation, Seattle's prize asset Gianfranco Del Rocco put pen to paper on a 1-season extension with the Bears through to the end of Season 96. Coming from an ambitious agency with Hall of Fame ambitions, the former second overall pick did not sign a long-term contract as soon as he was able to last off-season, but instead focused on his on-ice performance. After early struggles which put Del Rocco at a lower point-per-game pace than his rookie season, sources reported that he was considering his options and the rumour mill suggested that management put him on the trade block in the meantime. Fortunately for all parties involved and Bears fans, that speculation can be quelled for the remainder of the season. “We definitely had some concerns in the first quarter of the season, but nothing that couldn't be resolved through productive dialogue,” Del Rocco's agent, former Davos and Moscow GM Victor Alfredsson told reporters. “There's a good working relationship with [GM] Blake [Campbell] and we came to an agreement which worked for all parties. Rumours are always just that, rumours.” Del Rocco followed up the announcement of the new contract with a 2-goal and 1st star performance against LA, before notching his 40th point of the season in a 4-2 loss against Moscow. “There's certainly room for improvement,” he said after the game. “But I think things are clicking better already and I'm just happy to put any distractions behind us and focus on finishing the season strongly and going even further in the playoffs. Da Bears.”

There are a lot of talented rookies in the VHL but we've had lots of talented rookies over the years. As we well know, I am not hugely bothered about the present but I do love the past. So naturally I will not be talking about today's rookies – have a good enough career and I will talk about you all when you retire – but some of the best rookies I have witnessed over the years. I wasn't around to see Christian Stolzschweiger, but he wasn't actually a rookie in S2 so that was all built on a lie. No, here are some legitimate rookies from the 2nd decade of the VHL onwards. Jardy Bunclewirth in S18 @JardyB10 The first man to challenge Stolzschweiger's crown and the famous story of the third-round steal who became a Hall of Famer, GM, and commissioner within four seasons. The ghost of Jardy we see today, much like yours truly, is but a shadow of the alcoholic bubble of activity that was Jardy circa S16-S24, with S18 being the year Bunclewirth broke out. Playing on a team with 4 Hall of Fame forwards, including himself, yours truly again (Lars Berger), Mikka Virkkunen and J.D. Stormwall, Bunclewirth was almost the star of the show and with 132 points he pushed the long-standing rookie record to the limit. It's still the 3rd best result from any rookie ever. There's the wider story here as well. Jardy was the symbol of a a new wave of VHL members, proof that the VHL drafts could be deeper than one round and the first of many promising first-gens to rise in that time period and go on productive VHL careers and high-ranking roles in the league, driving much of the league's activity through to the lull of the 50s and in some cases, still going today. It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that the momentum spearheaded by Jardy back then is a key reason why there even is a VHL today. Plus, the general positivity of the league in S18 with storylines like Bunclewirth's rookie season and the excitement post the legendary S18 draft class, was crucial against the backdrop of what went on the off-season before. Long-time commissioner Brett Slobodzian, having pursued free agency with his player, bonafide superstar and unrivalled top defenceman Emerson Hrynyk, had a public outburst and ragequit his position while retiring his player. It transpired later, after he returned under an alias (Ignatius Feltersnatch) but had a lower-profile meltdown a few seasons later, that Slobo had been secretly managing at least 4-5 other players in the league through a convoluted multi scheme which was not truly outed until seasons after his many forms went “inactive”. That was probably part of the pressure that led to his breakdown but the repercussions could have been much more serious. Instead, despite mass retirements, the league chose to dishonour some of them even if they took place before the pre-season, including that of Calgary goalie and former first overall pick Demetrjusz Dudek. With a zombie Dudek and a a mishmash of journeymen on defence (although also a 5th Hall of Famer in Alexander Sauve), we, being Jardy and co, won an unexpected Continental Cup. Rookie seasons don't really get better than that. With the unexpected Slobo detour adding to the word count, this is actually all I am willing to write on the rookie topic this week. Let this be an inspiration to rookies everywhere. Good night.

Pleased to see several fellow accountants, there's clearly some crossover between that and sim leagues. I am just an accountant now, having spent 8 years and the bulk of my drinking days as an auditor.

AMA

Meeting up with Frank isn't for everyone

I guess

This I do agree with and gets lost in the noise. In that first season when Rara was on Moscow we were 3-1 up against you. Although the gap between Vancouver and Moscow did seem to widen in the next 2 seasons. And it's not like the Wolves were a random mishmash of journeymen. You had the Reinharts, Sales was obviously the best goalie anyway, Dear and Lamb stopped by. As a general collection of good players, regardless of expoiting the builds, it still holds up. I think the more annoying teams were someone like London in S82 who were basically a bunch of nobodies but now have some of the highest rookie scoring seasons ever. I'm glad it all got killed off before that became the norm. Being a goalie in that era was utterly shit though. I think there is an element of a bigger picture solution being preferable to putting on band-aids. And I think mostly the crazy ideas are kept in check. What are the really big changes implemented relatively recently? VHLE? The alternative to that would have been expansion (and by now, contraction) so I still stand by that being the best option and we were picking between 2 drastic courses anyway. Hybrid attributes? Well that had to be a big change anyway. We still do tweaks well like the goalie adjustment the other season, and other stuff.

It's nearly Hall of Fame ballot time as we approach the mid-season mark of Season 95 and as I sometimes like to do, here are my musings on the new candidates to be added to the ballot. G – Lachlan Summers This is not just a slam dunk ballot addition, this is someone I expect will receive 100% of votes for a first-ballot induction. I'll save the listing of the accolades until the inevitable induction post but Summers was head and shoulders above his generation and the best goalie we've seen in decades, since Kallis Kriketers retired in S70 if not even further back. C – The Frenchman After his big S92 when he won his cup and led the league in scoring I thought OrbitingDeath had done it again. But S93 was only as good and S94 was a disappointment, so I suspect The Frenchman will linger around on the ballot for a while. But he will make it, he kinda has to after narrowly beating Nico Pearce to be the top scorer out of the 9-season guys and Pearce is still on the ballot. RW – Leonard Triller I debated this one for a while. Triller actually matched Frenchman's point-per-game pace in a wonderful 7-season first-gen career. And he was undoubtedly a big part of London's mini-dynasty and their 3 runs to the finals, probably second only to Teno in terms of importance. But you have to be spectacular to make it off 7 seasons and I think Triller's peak was just below that. Bonafide Hall of Very Good. G – Joel Castle Ended Toronto's cup drought in some style in S91. But like his predecessor in the Legion net, Oskar Lindbergh, who finally had his one crowning season in Calgary, Castle just doesn't have the overall body of work to make it. Murdock and Wallob are probably his most comparable peers and they didn't get a HOF shout so sadly neither will Castle.

With 8-season career limits (or 9 for some chosen few in more recent years), the constant churn of players and GMs (with some exceptions), VHL franchises don't necessarily mean much on their own. People or attitudes you may associate with a team in one season are all completely removed 10 seasons later. You can't really be a fan of a VHL franchise, or, with some exceptions perhaps, a bonafide hater of one. On an individual level, most of us have any feelings towards VHL teams based on emotional attachment from previous players and rivalries, even though in many cases those are very much bygone eras. For me, unsurprisingly, the easiest way to distinguish between franchises is their history. Not the day-to-day "who won the most cups" or "who was most successful in a particular decade" but bigger picture. The themes associated with the teams. Are they the villains of the story more often than not? Do they always seem to find a way to stay relevant? Did they go through a rough patch but followed it up with success that feels like it was earned from those years of struggle? Or perhaps like I recently did with Seattle, is the GM more of the star than the players? That Seattle example is what brings me to this article. As one of the "original 7" franchises still standing in the league, the Bears have nearly a VHL century of history to piece together into some kind of theme or trend. There's a few other examples I may get to in due course. But it feels quite opportunistic now to look briefly at the New York Americans. They sit in 6th place in North America midway through S95, on the outside of the playoffs looking in which is a sight we have become accustomed to. If you have been in the league for the last 30 seasons, that's basically the story of their life. If you were in the league in its very first 10 seasons and only came back 30 seasons ago then that's still all you've ever known about the Americans. Yet of course there's the bit in between - the incredible period of success which makes New York the bell curve of the VHL. I visualised New York's successes and failures over the years purely by charting their playoff performances. From a quick glance at the below you can see the spikes (the successes) are bunched in the middle of their existence more or less, especially if you look past the maiden S14 championship. The troughs are either side of that - a fairly miserable start immortalised in a 20 in 20 article and somehow an even more miserable present day. For those for whom jagged triangular and rectangular lines don't quite do it, I have also created a more artistic version of the above, clearly showing the bell curve itself. Again, it would look slightly better if I started the incline in S24 rather than before S14 but it is what it is. It would also be a bit more evenly spread if I wrote this in S75 but how were any of us to know that New York's drought would still be going 20 seasons later? Those are the not so pretty pictures but sometimes these things land better with some numbers and stats. In the first 23 seasons of their existence, the Americans made the playoffs 6 times. In the most recent (through to S94) 21 seasons of their existence, they have made the playoffs 5 times. In between, more specifically from S24 to S61, New York only missed the playoffs 8 times in 38 seasons. The Americans have 7 Continental Cups, now the least of the active original VHL franchises (and even less than Quebec/Vancouver who joined the league 30 seasons after them). 6 of those Continental Cups were won in 22-season span from S32 to S53 i.e. in 23% of the team's existence. Despite being the last original franchise to win its first championship (S14) and waiting more than twice as long for its second (S32), by the time of the 7th win in S53, the only teams with more cups than New York were Davos (9) and Calgary (8). The Americans worked extra hard to undo all the reputational damage caused by their first two decades in the league but then somehow relapsed harder than before. They are now the owners of the 2 longest playoff droughts in VHL history, 7 seasons from S5 to S11 and a whopping 10 seasons from S79 to S88. Yet in between the Americans went on an 11-season playoff streak (S24-S34), including 7 (seven!) trips to the finals, which set the record then, wasn't beaten for 40 seasons, and is still the fourth longest ever. 41 seasons without a Continental Cup (and counting) is by far the longest we have ever seen, a decade longer than Vasteras' last drought (before they were contracted). For the last 34 of those New York hasn't even made the finals (also smashing previous records) and to be honest hasn't even come close. Since that last finals appearance in S60, the Americans have won 5 playoff series, 3 of them in the wildcard round. 2 wins against Seattle (in S72 and S89) enabled New York to get to the conference finals on two occasions in the last 34 seasons. It's not been bad luck in the playoffs either as the Americans' last Victory Cup was also in S60. Is any of this new or ground-breaking information? Not really, although it does help to have it all laid out in one place. Is New York's slump, if that's the right word at this point, anyone's fault in particular? Also no. There were some missteps by some GMs but nothing that you would call catastrophic mismanagement. There's been bad timing, both in terms of who the Americans had to compete against and their GMs maybe not having the right energy for the task at hand. There's been some terrible luck in the drafts at times, particularly when drafting early or accumulating lots of picks in 1-2 drafts. And there's been a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy as the drought extends and as the halcyon days drift further and further away. The only two acceptable outcomes from here on out are as follows. 1) A massive rebound with another 20-to-30 season spell of unprecedented success to make up for all the lost years or 2) indefinite failure. Anything else would ruin the bell curve theory and we can't have that.

Jameson - @tcookie Teno - @jacobcarson877 Doomsday Builder - still up for grabs!

This is not Sandro Clegane @JardyB10

Wasn't an important factor also that there was just too much TPE which meant people maxed out preferred bits too quickly and all 99s across the board was also dumb and not what the sim intended?

Guess who else is hot

Wonder what the longest previous streak was. I know there was a point all 8 original franchises won in 8 successive seasons (would have been including S26 Vasteras and S32 New York) but then we got some dynasties after Quebec and Cologne came in which would have ruined it. So might already be in record setting territory.

As another Sunday arrives, nothing has really happened in the VHL this week. The Seattle Bears are better than .500 now, reasonably comfortable in the midst of the North American playoff race (6 will not go into 5) but whilst the top line of Severus Targaryen and Eric White Jr has led the way, the other forwards have fallen off track, chief among them sophomore Gianfranco Del Rocco. With 15 points from 20 games, Del Rocco is currently below the pace he set as a rookie, a performance he was already not particularly happy about. With fellow S93 draftee and Italian rival (or lover? Who knows) nearly 50 career points ahead, the mood is quickly changing in Del Rocco's camp from patience to impatience. Can the rut be stopped? Is the Bears' historic mantra of team above player conducive to good individual performance season after season? These are the questions going through Del Rocco's head and threaten to spill over into feelings which go against the direction the rest of the team is pulling in. Will the volatile Italian get in line and wait for his turn or will he implode? The clock ticks and we will have to see the situation by next Sunday.

Week 4 of 4

W

With 3 games from 6 games, 20 goals scored and 21 conceded, the Seattle Bears have had a forgettable start to Season 95. Their sophomore winger, Gianfranco Del Rocco, encapsulates the generally mediocre start to the season with 3 goals and 2 assists through 5 games, with the player and the team not performing to the levels and goals they are striving for. “It's a tricky one to explain,” says Del Rocco, “We seem to have games where we are scoring goals at the level that we'd expect and then following up immediately with conceding just as many and struggling to get any good chances. No doubt we have a competitive conference and I think that has shown in the quality of opposition we're facing so far this season.” Critics have been quick to point out that the Bears' meteoric rise to the top of North America and ultimately the Continental Cup in S93, followed by another strong season and a conference finals exit, was spurred on by the acquisition of ex-Helsinki stalwarts Daryl Dixon and Fuukka Rask midway through S93. Dixon and Rask have now both retired but perhaps fans' optimistic hopes they'd be seamlessly replaced by off-season acquisition Jasper Davis and Rask's long-time backup Georgiy Costanzov were misplaced. “I think we have to avoid jumping to reactions,” Del Rocco says in response to such comments. “The season has just begun and while we've lost a couple big names I think the strength of the unit is just as good as last time around. We'll come good.”

Well deserved for being such a drama queen about the world Cup Nike >

Big B is a goon