Renomitsu

By the end of the regular season, plenty of the league's most involved users have at least some idea of who they want to receive awards at the end of the season. After all, when we look at stats on the portal, in the index, or in other media pieces, we're looking for the statistical best at... well, something. Those who we deem worthy of being called the 'best' get an award to commemorate the occasion - but now with nearly seventy seasons under this league's belt, some of the very namesakes we've attributed these awards to have gone by the wayside, lost to the annals of history. Today we examine some of the honors we bestow on the statistical leaders and the legends we draw their inspiration from; and I'm sure you'll notice a very personal trend in the ones I've chosen to review once we get started! Sterling Labatte (S10 HoF) - Best Defenseman (Most Recent Winner - Joseph @McWolf) It wouldn't be one of my articles without taking a look at the "best defenseman" in some capacity, right? Sterling Labatte, a Canadian defenseman of early season fame, is in fact the oldest of the inductees here. As a selection from Season 1's Supplementary Draft, and again in Season 2's Entry Draft (specifically the seventh pick of the first round), @sterling is a name that has been well-established and well-respected in the league effectively as long as it's been around. Though I never got a chance to see him play even in my earliest stint with the VHL (~S16), Labatte has been a household name in Calgary and shoo-in Hall of Famer since the second or third season of his career. He got off to a white-hot start with the Wranglers, winning the league's inaugural Victory Cup and winning the North American Conference after being in the league just momentarily. He participated as a headliner for Team Canada from Season 2 through the majority of his career, and proceeded to win three Continental Cups - twice at the start of his career (S2, S3) and once again at the end (S8). His accolades list is as long as the stories league historians write about him, and he was a two-time recipient of the Orr Trophy -- the award given to the Best Defenseman before the split, and prior to its renaming in honor of this Calgary legend. Initially, Labatte was actually an overwhelming force on offense - with a staggering 102 points and a +93 in his very first season, he was one of the league's best playmakers. He amassed 782 points, including 572 assists, in his eight seasons, and added on to that another entire season in playoff games alone (79 GP, 83 points) while scoring game-winners in about one in ten playoff games he participated in. He wasn't much of a hitting defenseman (776 over eight seasons), but his seemingly-unmatched offensive output and career awards, there's arguably no better paragon of effective defenseman play than Labatte. Jake Wylde (S47 HoF) - Defensive Defenseman (Most Recent Winner - Ryan Sullivan Jr. @Advantage) Though @STZ was once better known for Hall of Famer Ethan Osborne, his longest-standing legacy with the league now is another one of his players in Jake Wylde. Wylde, a massive 6'5" defenseman drafted about halfway through the league's existence (by GM rule in S38) to the Helsinki Titans, epitomizes the toughest and most ruthless enforcers in the Victory Hockey League. Though he did not win a Continental Cup during his career, Wylde was a four-time All-Star and played for both the European and American Conferences. As the league was much better-established at this point in time, Wylde's early career was actually largely devoid of awards; his only accolade from his first few seasons was an All-Star selection in Season 40. By the time Season 43 had rolled around, the Titans were yet again rebuilding, and Wylde chose to leave for the Quebec City Meute so Helsinki would have better draft position (and additional assets to work with). But as he came to his latter four years, he won the Labatte Trophy twice and was in the playoffs for the last five seasons of his career. By the end of his career, Wylde would be best-known for accumulating 2,001 hits in the regular season alone -- which, to be clear, is more than the number of shots he took. He started explosively, with a monstrous 278 hits and 170 shots blocked in just his first season while playing for the Titans. And although the moniker 'defenseman' may be a bit misleading provided what we judge as valuable statistics in the VHL, Wylde was all grit and physicality. He managed well over 100 SB per regular season in his career before playing his final game on November 1st, 2015 -- a heartbreaking game 7 matchup against the team that drafted him: Helsinki. Alexander Valiq (S42 HoF) - Offensive Defenseman (Most Recent Winner: Joseph @McWolf) Valiq, one of three Swedish brothers to enter the VHL, ties in quite nicely with Wylde - in fact, Valiq's career was sufficiently before Wylde's that Valiq was in the same draft class as STZ's Ethan Osborne. Further, he went on to play for the Quebec Meute in the seasons before Wylde made a similar transfer. But instead of making Valiq a side conversation in a story that should be about him, let's cut to the chase: Valiq is one of the best offensive defensemen to have ever played the game. Taken by Riga in Season 30, Valiq, Osborne (S38 HoF), and Yuri Grigorenko were all hotly-contested and debated top selections on the night of the draft. While Osborne and Grigorenko would go on to have successful careers in their own right, Valiq made an immediate impact on the league by scoring 24 goals (including 4 game-winners) for 54 total points in his first season. And like Riga just a couple of seasons ago, this Reign team was young, promising, and ready to make a big impact on the league. Although he'd need to wait until Season 32 to make his playoff debut, he was already well-established by that point: in Season 31, he effectively doubled his offensive output, totaling 110 points with 59 goals. Indeed, as one of the inaugural members of the Quebec City Meute thanks to agent/new General Manager Pavel Koradek's promotion, Valiq had no choice but to buoy a struggling first-year expansion team. But somehow, he'd improve even further on his sophomore season by tallying a massive 121 points, good for third in the goal-scoring race and some mutterings in the conversation for the Labatte. Valiq's legacy is considerable, and although Quebec City no longer possesses a VHL franchise, his impact on the city was undeniable. Just a handful of seasons after they received their beloved hockey team, Quebec City hoisted the Continental Cup. Though some were concerned that Valiq didn't have enough left in the tank to continue carrying the franchise, he'd managed a +72 that year while contributing 29 goals and 40 assists. His thousands of hours practicing on the rinks in Riga and Quebec had paid off, and it'd all but confirmed his status as a celebrity in the Canadian city for years to come.

1. We just barely missed out on the #1 seed in the playoffs. How much does this affect our chances? 2. It's VHL History Week - what's your favorite memory of the VHL so far? 3. Matt Thompson had a historic season in terms of scoring efficiency; what's his secret? 4. Regular season is done. Who's your front-runner for MVP? 5. Malmo vs. Davos in the first round. Who would you rather face in the semis, if we were to make it there? 6. Davos' Katie Warren made a sudden retirement in the last two weeks. What do you think happened? 7. With Park inactive, the league might not see an obvious long-term solution at goalie. What's the plan? Are we going to make Kriketers a cyborg? 8. To follow up on my previous question: Is Kriketers already a cyborg? 9. Which two VHL users are most likely to be the same person? 10. How buff is Beav, really?

Another top-drawer game from Kriketers. Good win team

Ayyy, this is the kind of win I like to see!

Review Stream of consciousness articles = pretty cool. big oof for Buff Beav here, but from a review perspective it's awesome characterization of Palo's day-to-day. I have no comments as far as grammar, usage, or style are concerned here. Thanks for the media spot!

Review VHLM trades are kinda cool because turnover is absurdly fast, so you can typically see the effects of a trade immediately, or manifest entirely over the course of one season. Because of that, VHLM GM intentions are made really clear as soon as their first or second trade for the season comes through, which I think you've accurately captured here! The inclusion of a series of presser responses is really nice here; I'd encourage other media spot writers to do more of the same.

Review Let's take the veracity of opinions out of the stirring pot for a moment. I think it's great that your article drew some heated responses, and voicing strong opinions that leave some grey area is a fantastic way to write an article. This is how we get long-term rivalries, which we need for the VHL history books. Keep doin' your thing.

OBJECTIVITY GUSTAV IT'S IMPORTANT

Review The Palo/Pick/HHH trade is certainly a hot-button topic worth discussing. Obviously Vancouver gets a talented young player (and Beaviss gets his second player), but a player with Palo's accolades and the future pick give Riga some certainty for the future that they simply didn't have as long as the threat of HHH coming to Vancouver existed. Aside from a couple of factual errors (e.g. Riga getting the pick, not Vancouver), I felt as though this was a worthwhile read/review of the trade.

Review Lots of little details that give this article character - from calling the Wolves the Quebec City Meute to pointing out the fact that you're not currently part of the Davos LR Forum! This type of article gives a more intimate/personal look into how different teams run, as well as the factors that go into the choice to pursue free agency/re-sign with a given team. You've clearly delineated what it will take to guarantee a re-signing, as well as factors keeping you with the team, but only time will tell if any of those fall into place.

Review I don't know why you let this Renomitsu scrub into the committee @GustavMattias. Regardless, I felt this article had a great template/format to work from (found it pretty easy to work with from my standpoint), and clearly a lot of thought was put into each selection. One of the unfortunate complications of an averaged selection is that tricky positions like goalie always get put into weird spots numerically, which is pretty hard to avoid overall unless you fix specific selection numbers or teams to be goalies. Without including my own writing, this is overall well-done!

Review Love to see these kinds of articles. I feel like top VHLM players don't get enough time in the limelight, especially since lots of the writers from prior classes are primarily covering VHL now. I enjoyed your use of an objective metric for ranking players (I did something very similar a few seasons back!). Don't be afraid to expand this article a bit by including additional analysis: noting that Ben Storm was a big riser is a good detail to include, but little facts like what team they play on, how they did last season (if applicable), current stats, or where you project them to be drafted are all ways to show you're doing your research. Great work! Looking forward to more of your writing.

I don't know what I expected. I spent so long loathing offense that when I looked back into the abyss... I became what I sought to destroy.

Davos tryna make that late season surge for the playoffs ?

oi, you know things are bad when I score two goals Gg Malmo, hopefully we can make up this loss in the playoffs.

Palo and Dahlberg coming up huge for us again ?

Love ya Josh Also, WOW. That's a lot of FAs.

Alternatively, it could just be a portal error and there are probably a ton of free agents this season. Who knows? ?

Go ahead and take a look at the free agency page. Exactly one active player is up for team movement this off-season, and it's a Season 61 player with <200 TPA available. After last season's still-kinda-slow free agency, featuring exclusively Matt Thompson's decision and movement for a couple of veterans like Ismond Kingfisher and Kyson Blake, one might expect a few higher-priority players to spice up the FA pool, but clearly that's not the case. And I suppose that's fine if team loyalty is the most prominent value for most players. But since virtually every trade deal happens behind closed doors and exchanges for stars are quickly followed by extensions, it kind of makes the off-season a little bland. And don't get me wrong - my player isn't an exception to this rule: I signed an extension this off-season for S69 myself. This season, there will be no waiting with bated breath to watch the first of many dominoes fall - in fact, every draftee will have more TPE than the one 'active' (loosely-speaking) free agent, unless the portal isn't quite correct. I just wonder why virtually nobody wants to test the waters, especially this season provided the huge S66 class should have become FAs after playoffs; maybe it's because basically everyone's signed for the minimum nowadays. Hopefully we'll have a lot more movement after S69, because even if I enjoy seeing massive trades go down, I feel the uncertainty is only improved by a flurry of free agent signings.

1. How do you feel about Project Player 2 (second player for GMs) being ended with this season? 2. Now that this season is over, what improvement(s) would you recommend for the VHL? 3. The standings currently have EU Conference teams as the top 4; do the playoffs need to include the possibility of a cross-over to accommodate Moscow (7th in the standings, would be #3 seed in NA)? 4. Who would you add to the VHL Clown List? 5. Who takes home the gold in the World Juniors Cup this year? 6. Shout out an old minors teammate. What makes them awesome? 7. Which player in the upcoming draft intrigues you most? 8. When STHS gets inconsistent it's a little frustrating. What do you think the team could do to improve morale? 9. I saw our boss hedgehog typing away on a keyboard today. Where do you think he learned to use human technology? 10. What would you(r player) be doing if not hockey?

@nethi99 gets his well-deserved extension

Well geez, we sure got crapped on this sim.

what a big oof this kind of game makes me v sad ?

Claim 3 10/13

why does this make me happy