Daniel

33. BERN ROYALS: JAYDEN FASTH 34. OTTAWA LYNX: AIDAN ROZEL 35. MOSCOW RED WOLVES: PIERRE LUC-LEFRANCOIS 36. BRAMPTON BLADES: AZOR AHAI 37. BRATISLAVA WATCHMEN: MANHOLE SIEGFRIED 38. YUKON RUSH: BRANDON LAPHAM JR. 39. OSLO STORM: STUMPPELL AURINKOINEN 40. SASKATOON WILD: MATT GATSBY "AND IT'S ALL OVER! Bern make one last bid to win it all by picking up nifty super Swede Jayden Fasth, young man honed his skills in Skelleftea with fellow country-mates Erixon and Runblad, all three of them studs! Ottawa pick up Aidan Rozel and let me tell you something, this kid's 100% blue chip, dynamic, big body presence! Moscow grabs Pierre Luc-Lefrancois, big ol' d-man from Quebec, also home to Tampa Bay stud Jonathan Drouin! Brampton acquire Azor Ahai, light footed Irishman who knows how to put a biscuit in the basket, Bratislava add another sublime Swede in Manhole Siegfried, Yukon get Philly born winger Brandon Lapham Jr. who's got sky scraping hockey IQ and a world class wrister to match, whilst Oslo pick up another fab Finn in Stumppell Aurinkoinen Jr. Saskatoon close us out with Mr Irrevelevant, or in this case, Mr Relevant! Matt Gatsby is a star in the making, what a steal! Hailing from Florence, Ontario, just down the road from Sarnia, where the great Steven Stamkos honed his craft! This is Pierre McGuire signing off!"

25. BERN ROYALS: JON PANIK 26. OTTAWA LYNX: THOMAS ANDERSSON 27. MOSCOW RED WOLVES: LUCAS VILLA 28. BRAMPTON BLADES: ZACH VOSS 29. BRATISLAVA WATCHMEN: FILIP LUNDQVIST 30. YUKON RUSH: LARS SIKTANC 31. OSLO STORM: KANE HAMILTON 32. SASKATOON WILD: KENNY KEELY "What a round! The Royals add yet another young superstar in the making in big Jonny Panik, rough and tough d-man from Toronto, or as I call it, the 6! Ottawa goes smart and grabs Super Swede Thomas Andersson a left winger who'll have no trouble leaving you behind! Moscow go continental and select scintillating Spaniard Lucas Villa, this kid's on a fast track to greatness! Brampton get a big body presence in young St. Louis blueliner Zach Voss, this kid can break your body with hits, break your face with punches and break the net with goals; the full package! Bratislava add hot young goalie in Filip Lundqvist, he's got the skills of the king as well as his name! Yukon pick up an elite scoring talent in Lars Siktanc, but let me tell you, you don't want to be on the end of a check from this tough as nails Czech! Oslo gets English winger Kane Hamilton but the Wild steal the headlines again as they go bold and select Kenny Keely, a Bulgarian who's as green as Saskatoon wheat but has the tools to shine. Kabam!"

17. BERN ROYALS: BENJAMIN TUMACK 18. OTTAWA LYNX: ETHAN HENDERSON 19. MOSCOW RED WOLVES: BOBBY BOUCHER 20. MOSCOW RED WOLVES: LUCAS GALEANO 21. BRATISLAVA WATCHMEN: MICHAEL BURCH 22. OTTAWA LYNX: GEOFF REID 23. OSLO STORM: SUPER COCK 24. SASKATOON WILD: NEILS SKOVGAARD "Did someone say Round 3 round-up?! Bern adds big, bad Benjamin Tumack, a human wrecking ball with a shot like lightning from Edmonton, home of the world famous Oil Kings and former hometown of former NHL d-man Theo Peckham! Ottawa picks up hotly tipped Ethan Henderson, a real-deal winger from Hamilton, Ontario, which gives him something in common with the legendary enforcer Marty McSorley! The Red Wolves add Bobby Boucher and Lucas Galeano, and let me tell you, woe betide the teams that have to face these hot prospects next season. Ottawa play it smart and pick up Geoff Reid, a mobile d-man from Germany, whilst Oslo add the brashly named Super Cock! What a ballsy guy! Saskatoon however go and hit another home run with the world class Neils Skovgaard, another Great Dane who's got it going on in a big way. What a stud pick!"

12. BRAMPTON BLADES: MAXIME DESCHAMPS 13. MOSCOW RED WOLVES: JACE HINES 14. MOSCOW RED WOLVES: TANNER HYNES 15. BERN ROYALS: KOL MIKAELSON 16. SASKATOON WILD: JONATHAN KILLEEN "UNBELIEVABLE! Brampton bolster their side with Deschamps! From France! Moscow get Jace Hines AND Tanner Hynes, two stud picks who are no relation I assure you. The Royals show you just why they've earned that name and pick up the princely Kol Mikaelson! This fabulous Finn by way of Ottawa will leave his mark! But the big news, the champion Saskatoon Wild go way off the board and pick up young centre Jonathan Killeen! Now this kid isn't a big guy but he's got hands like you've never seen, and guess where he's from? St. Catherines, ON, hometown of legendary Buffalo Sabres winger, Andrew Peters. If that doesn't bode well for the kid then nothing will. Mark my words, this kid's a steal!"

9. BERN ROYALS - SEAN BLACKER 10. BERN ROYALS - MATHIEU BAPTISTE 11. MOSCOW RED WOLVES - BITCH HIGGINS "Mmmhmm baby they don't stop! The soon to be legendary Bern Royals add Irish centre Sean Blacker, a guy who's rode that luck all the way to the top! What a star! Mathieu Baptiste too! What an acquisition, a rugged, goal-scoring big body presence up the middle from Marieville, Quebec, near enough the same place as Pascal Dupuis of the world famous Pittsburgh Penguins! What are they putting in the water?! Bitch Higgins to Moscow is a great pick up, he's from Denmark, just like elite Winnipeg Jets prospect Nikolaj Ehlers. These kids are something to behold!"

7. Moscow Red Wolves - World B. Free 8. Brampton Blades - Saul Hackett "They just don't stop coming! Moscow picks up the infamous d-man World B. Free, and let me say this, this guy's German, but he's not melting like German chocolate, and he's got all the meat of German sausage. What a big body prescence! And Brampton! The hometown team of the notorious Rick Nash acquire Saul Hackett a guy with one mode; GO!"

"THEY'RE COMING THICK AND FAST!" 3. MOSCOW RED WOLVES - SHAUN MULLER 4.BERN ROYALS - JORDAN MAVERICK 5. MOSCOW RED WOLVES - ARCTURUS MENGSK 6. OTTAWA LYNX - LUCAS ZHUKENOV "UNBELIEVABLE! The picks are flying in, with the Red Wolves bolstering their attack by adding Shaun Muller, from Germany! I've never visited Germany but I imagine Muller's an efficient sort of guy! Bern go off the board and pick Jordan Maverick, but trust me, this guy's a steal at 4, Moscow pick up Arcturus Mengsk, another mighty German, just like famed Edmonton Oiler, LEON DRAISAITL! And the legendary Ottawa Lynx add towering big bodied d-man Lucas Zhukenov, oh baby this kid's a force to be reckoned with on the blue-line!"

1. BERN ROYALS - ZACH PERECHKIN 2. BERN ROYALS - RYAN PRICE "BOOM! Just like that the Bern Royals jump right in and transform their team by adding Parechkin and Price, a big body prescence in net from Chicago! And you know who plays in Chicago? Bryan Bickell of Orono, Ontario! If he's anything to go by this kid's a winner!"

Do these things usually end up being this late?

"Just had word from Darren Dreger on the floor! I'm hearing that proceedings are slightly late getting underway."

"Oh boy, it's getting close! I'll be very surprised if we don't see young phenom Zach Parechkin go first here. Half Russian, half Canadian, all monster this big body prescence from Burnaby, BC can do it all. And you know else is from Burnaby? Only a guy called Joe Sakic, Parechkin's not quite Sakic but he's going straight to the top, mark my words! Just under three minutes to go folks!"

any GMs reading this, I'm listed as 0 TPE but I actually have like 40 or so, snag me up early and I'll be a guaranteed stud pick

Be the Darren Dreger to my Pierre

Don't thank me, thank #basedpierre

"Wham! It's everybody's favourite pundit Regis Pierre McGuire here, and oh boy you guys are in for a treat tonight! S45 VHLM Dispersal action coming at you live, and I'll be here every step of the way to give you useless facts and pointless trivia about each player! Stay tuned!"

Is anyone planning on live streaming this? I would more than likely watch for sure

A special S45 draft edition of Coach's Corner, with Don Cherry. "Well, it's this time once again ladies and gentlemen, we're here in the offseason, I'm back watching the jays and the draft's coming up. You all know I'm a Tronna Reign guy, I own season seats, I walk the walk ever since I was a little boy, but I gotta tell you, the Legion need to learn their lesson this year and do one thing right; draft some Canadian kids! Even Ron knows that we make the best hockey players in the world; you gotta take 'em just on principle! I can tell you, if I had the choice of picking an Ontario kid like Paul Bissonnette or a loser Swede like Sundin, well, you know where I'd be leaning. Now I know a lot of you have criticised me for this in the past, all you folks out there that've never played the game, but back when I coached the Boston Bruins I learned one thing; I'd rather lose like a good Canadian than win like a cheating European. Now don't get me wrong, I love winning, don't forget, I won the Calder Cup THREE times with the Springfield Indians (how many Europeans can say that?), but the kids growing up in Tronna are never going to play for the Region because they always pick the little Swede or German and it's an insult to anyone whoever stepped on the ice! Don't get me wrong here folks, Alistar Grim is a good player but he's not great like a Canadian, and the same goes for all the Latvians and Swedes they have there too, a crying shame I tell you. These kids are growing up playing hockey in Tronna but they're never gonna play for the Reign! It's simple, draft some Ontario boys and you'll never lose!" Donald. S. Cherry

Thanks man, I'm super bad at design in general but thought it could be fun to give a go. I'll check out some stuff and see if I can't get better next time

Never done anything like this before, give me feedback so I suck less in future

Way ahead of you bud!

Good old Don gets it right again

inb4 anyone thinks I'm serious as opposed to willing to stoop to incredible levels to get TPE

A special S44 roundup edition of Coach's Corner, with Don Cherry. "Oh boy what a season! The best team in the VHL won and won well, did you see all those penalties? It's war on ice, rock 'em, sock 'em, the way it should be played, the way it was played until the small swedes took over the sport, but anyway. They're good guys down in Calgary with a good system but do you wanna know why they win? It's simple, because they're stock full of good Canadian boys! Back when I was coaching the Boston Bruins we had so many Canadians playing for us that Bobby Orr suggested we annex TD Gardens! But anyway, let me tell you something kids, you look at a good Ontario boy like Tyler Cote, and you think an American kid like Thomas O'Malley has half the trucelence he does? Don't be ridiculous! And Christoph Klose? I know all about Europeans, I once coached the Swedish Sieve, and let me tell you something, anything a European can do a Canadian can do better, and I mean anything."

Down On The Farm: Statistics And The VHLM Edition 1: Evaluating Shot Differentials. This is going to be the first of hopefully many looks into the more statistical side of the VHLM, where I'll do my best to provide some insight into what's been going on and ideally, what it could mean for the future. The point of this series is mainly to show that although I'm not particularly great at using statistics, scratching slightly below the surface can provide both interesting ideas and further evidence of what we already know. I'm sure everyone with an interest in the league has been following the S44 playoffs, which look to be winding down with the Saskatoon Wild holding a comprehensive 3-1 lead against the Oslo Storm. With this in mind, and as we're moving into the off-season, I thought it might be a good idea to go through each team and judge their S44 regular season based entirely on one thing; their shot differential per game, ie. the average number of shots a team takes against the number of shots taken against them. The shot differential is widely regarded as a telling statistic, with the majority of successful teams having a positive shot differential. For example this year's President's Trophy winning New York Rangers held a shot differential of 5.5, while the last-placed Buffalo Sabres held one of -11.4, a telling difference. For the purpose of this article, we will calculate the shot differential per game as follows; Shot differential per game = Shots taken per game - Shots allowed per game. I've collected all the information into the table below. Looking at the shot differentials from this perspective, and when we compare this table to the regular season standings, one blindingly obvious point becomes clear; the higher your shot percentage, the more games you win. We can observe from the table that the three teams with the best shot differentials are the Saskatoon Blades, the Yukon Rush and the Oslo Storm, whilst the three worst differentials belong to the Moscow Red Wolves, the Ottawa Lynx and the Bern Royals. The main significance behind this is obviously the fact that the three teams with the best shot differentials were the three best regular season teams, whilst the teams with the three worst differentials were the worst regular season teams, however, the carry-on from this is evident in the playoffs. Saskatoon and Oslo, two teams with high shot differentials are currently competing in the championship final, with Saskatoon, the team with the best differential, poised to win. This enables us to essentially define the shot differential as a measure of dominance; a team like the Wild have evidently controlled the majority of the games they've played by being able to take so many shots while being defensively sound enough to allow so few, whilst teams like the Royals and the Lynx have had a bad time of it, getting massively out-shot throughout the regular season. It's worth nothing that the huge range of shot differentials we see in the VHLM is due to the massive gap in quality between certain teams, where compared to a league like the NHL, where a good number of teams are of roughly the same level. Whilst in this case we haven't really learnt anything new from the shot differential, it's worth noting that it confirms what we already knew, and is another way of showing the dominance that Saskatoon have shown throughout both the regular season and the playoffs. Thanks for reading, hope you found it interesting and learned something new! **Note**: I had originally intended on doing this piece about the slightly more advanced statistics involving all shots attempted including those blocked and those that missed but wasn't able to find the complete data. Apologies!

NAME: Jonathan Killeen POSITION: Centre AGE: 17 HANDEDNESS: Left HEIGHT: 6'1" WEIGHT: 185 lbs Jonathan Killeen hails from the hotbed of hockey that is Southern Ontario, the son of a former Canadian lacrosse great. Despite being considered an unexceptional player throughout his junior career, he worked hard and played at the AAA level before his penultimate-round selection by his hometown major junior team, the Niagara Ice Dogs in the OHL Priority Selection. Jonathan played a bottom six role in his rookie season in the OHL but began to excel when given more ice time, allowing him to work on developing a responsible two-way game while improving his skating and playmaking abilities. His draft stock went up highly during his final season with the Ice Dogs, earning a first line position and going through a growth spurt that pushed him to just over 6" in height. Jonathan is eligible for the S45 VHLM dispersal draft and the S46 VHL draft and hopes to surprise and earn a high selection in both. STRENGTHS Skating: Jonathan is a technically strong skater who possesses dynamic speed on and off the puck, particularly through the neutral zone where he can really surprise unsuspecting defensemen. When coupled with his strong playmaking skills, this can make him especially effective at creating odd man rush situations. Hockey IQ: Jonathan's game is built around a solid hockey IQ and a great sense of how best to expose an opponent's weaknesses. He seems to possess an uncanny skill for spotting open lanes before anyone else on the ice notices they're there, which coupled with his skating ability can cause some real problems for opposing teams. Passing: Jonathan's definitely of the "pass-first" mentality, and is more than capable of opening up defensive systems through pinpoint passing. He's been considered by all his coaches to be a real playmaking talent, and he also possesses the crucial skill of making everyone around him better. WEAKNESSES Defence: While his offensive awareness is considered strong, one of Jonathan's big question marks can be his occasionally fatally poor judgement of defensive situations, and he can also be found to be overly passive on the forecheck. He carried a negative plus/minus rating throughout his time in major junior, which has been a contributing factor to his somewhat lukewarm draft stock. Although his two-way game has somewhat improved, he must strive to become more of a 200-foot player before he can make the jump to the VHL level. Shooting: Jonathan possesses what can be called at best a below average shot for his age group. While this could be disguised if playing alongside a strong goal-scoring winger, his goal-scoring numbers definitely bring down his overall offensive game. This weakness could have more direct consequences if his VHLM coach believes him unable to shoot at an elite level, potentially leading to a reduction in minutes in powerplay and 4-on-4 situations. Physicality: Although of average height and build, Jonathan lacks the instinct to go for big body checks and rarely wins battles in the corners or along the boards, preferring to allow his team-mates to put in the majority of the work in the dirty areas. If he's to succeed at the VHL level it is vital that Jonathan learns to play a gritty game, where he's more willing to put in the effort and work for the puck. PLAYER COMPARABLE Nicklas Backstrom A lofty comparison to make, but Killeen has the potential to develop the elite passing skills and razor sharp offensive awareness to help him progress to the point where he can be a playmaker on a top offensive line. Like Backstrom, his playmaking skills are fantastic, and his ability to quarterback a successful powerplay should prove very attractive to VHL teams looking to add a centre with star potential. SUMMARY Whilst Jonathan is at this stage a very raw talent, he possesses all the tools to go on and be a top-six forward at the professional level. Whilst his game is a long way from the VHL level as of now, the time he spends in the VHLM should allow him to make the key changes that he needs to go on and succeed. Projection: 1st/2nd playmaking Centre