As you know, the VHLM as been highly criticize over the past seasons. Some people may call it "broken". Since it's an important part of the recruitment, we might need to fix it before it creates more damage for the league.
The first problem we might accounter in the VHLM is the general activity. Personally, I was supposed to be in an active locker room (Bratislava Watchmen) and it wasn't the case this season. We already lost valuable members because of that. Kyle Kingma and Sam Teibert were some very good and active prospects at the beginning of the season and now, they are gone/semi-active. They are the one who are supposed to be the "new generation" of members, and we lost multiple of them. I'm not saying we could have save them if we were having another system in place, but at least it could have helped a bit.
So if we are loosing members in good teams, I don't even think how it must be boring to be in "inactive/loosing" team in the VHLM. Most of the time, the GMs are trying to trade their active players to another team but still, we are still loosing members with those "active teams"
Here's today proposition, first of all, we must reduce the number of the VHLM teams. I think we can all agree that we doesn't have enough members in the VHLM to fill those up. It's possible, but not optimal in my opinion. Well, lets say we reduce to 6 teams (3 in EU and 3 in NA), is it fixing the problem ? Maybe, but I think we can still improve the system, let me explain. If a VHLM prospect/new gen haven't "taste" the VHL yet in his career properly, he won't be interested in staying 4 months in the VHLM (2 seasons), so we must find him a motivation to stay.
How about incorporating a recruitment system ? Let me explain. Lets say every VHLM member starts his career as a free agent and they must commit to a VHLM team. The VHLM GMs must now persuade the player to "commit" to his team. Maybe every VHLM GM will have a certain amount of salary cap and bonuses if they get certain achievement like winning the cup, promoting a prospect to VHL, etc.
Of course, there's Pros and Cons with everything.
Pros
Prospects can now decide where they play. They can decide to play with their friends and stay active.
Prospects can now win certain amount of money in their VHLM time.
Most active VHLM will be "rewarded" for their activity.
Overall recruitment will be better since prospects will invite their friends to play in the same team.
We can find a new solution to fix the "inactive players" problem
Cons
Some popular teams will have an advantage over the less popular team (The Alabama Crimson Tide Syndrome)
Will require active GMs to make it successful
New playoffs format to find.
Loosing VHLM teams
New sim since it won't be related to the VHL sim.
Sorry for the multiple grammar mistakes, I didn't review my text.