Spade18

I’m not gonna lie. I had almost given up.
 
I first joined the VHL way back in the summer of 2017.  I had been moved from a more physical labor type of role in my company to a squishy desk job, and had way more time on my hands during the work day than I had previously.  Writing has always been a passion of mine, and I have always one day hoped to write a book.  I would work on it here and there at work, but found myself burning out and losing the passion for it when it became part of my “work day”, so i figured I should find a way to keep my writing skills sharp and keep my desire for my book alive. I should note that this is also around the time where “GM sites” were very popular, and through being involved with them, I stumbled upon the VHL.  A site where I could be rewarded for my writing, AND IT WAS HOCKEY!?!? Like fuck me up fam, I was in heaven.  But strangely it seemed like once again in my life I was joining up when it was too late.
 
During my first season here The VHL was in DIRE straits.  Few accounts posted more than the bare minimum, there were little to no media spots being posted, and longtime members spoke everywhere about it being time for the league to fold.  I was disappointed but decided to ride the wave out and enjoy it while I could.
 
My first player, Colton Rayne, was drafted to the Las Vegas Aces and I must have been the luckiest guy in the world because the locker room was poppin, and cruised to a Founders Cup victory my first year.  (There are obviously tons of people I would like to shout out, but that will come at another time). I was hooked, and was super involved in the community.  I posted Media spots every single week, went through serious research for each week (seriously, this is what my early media spots looked like.
 

 
It was obvious that I was hooked, and then Beavis and I began the recruitment team, and I was solidified in the league.  I’ll be honest, there were days that I spent more time doing work for this place than I did at my job, and I loved it.  The rest of the long story short I went through my career as Colton Rayne, and never won a cup.
 
During that time I became the GM for the New York Americans, and never won a cup.
 
Then my second player, Goalie Ismond Kingfisher, and third player Shane Mars, and still I never won a cup.
 
Sure, Kingfisher did win a cup after I went inactive, but I was not here for it, so it was like an NPC.
 
Real life began piling up and I had to step away from this place.  One of the hardest choices I’ve ever made, but I could no longer fulfil the duties that this place required of me to a standard that would be fair to you. So I took some time away, always telling myself I would come back.
 
And I did.
 
I knew it wouldn't be in my old capacity, but I always saw throughout my VHL tenure that teams that won the cup always had consistent depth.  And let me tell you, I wanted that cup.
 
Enter Adam Syreck.
 
From the start my plan with him was to be a welfare player and be that consistent deep scoring threat, and was to chase a cup.  A no loyalty, sale to the highest bidder mercenary.  I made that well known to everyone pre draft, and lo and behold, draft day comes, and I’m taken by one of the newest expansion teams, Chicago.
 
I figure “Hey! On an expansion team I can put up some crazy numbers through my first contract, then pick wherever I want to go!” 
 
But something changed.  I always signed one year deals, but every time my contract came up, I chose to stay in Chicago.  Was it my love for establishing new franchises?  Was it some weird sense of loyalty? Was it my desire to be on their record books? I don’t know.  But every offseason I keep signing on the dotted line to stay in the windy city, and it’s finally paid off.
 
I guess all of this is just a long winded way to explain to some of the newer guys here that, you’re not gonna win a championship every year.  It took me 4 years of real time and 11 seasons to finally reach the ultimate goal.  But it was worth it every step of the way.  If you commit to the VHL you will be rewarded.  The trophies, the championships, the goals, are all great, but you will be rewarded with the people that come along with this place.
 
I thought that finally winning the Cup would feel like a plateau of some sort. Like “Yea, I came into the VHL and did the damn thing”.  But weirdly enough, now that I’ve finally won one.  I’m more excited than ever to look forward to my journey on to my next championship.
 
Every new season is a new opportunity to meet and interact with the people who dedicate their time to this site, and if you stay around long enough, you’ll make some incredible relationships. To everyone along the way who’s helped me or had a laugh with me in the locker room, I cannot thank you enough for the warm embrace I’ve come to expect from the VHL.  And for the one’s I’ve not had the pleasure of lining up next to on the ice, our time will come and I look forward to spending it with you.

We will bounce back in today's sims 💪 🙌 

@chicago wtf like let us win occasionally guys.

THE GIFS DONT STOP TILL WE DO

GO AMERICA GO!

THE GIFS DONT STOP TILL WE DO

GO AMERICA GO!

We got a 
4 
Game

Lets go!!!!!!
 
 

haha funny april fool's. please post the real results now.

Bullshit, Beav isn't commish anymore.
 
Otherwise I'd take this half seriously.

Hello Members,
 
It's no secret that the VHL has been expanding rapidly over the last few seasons and an internal goal has been to eventually beat out the NHL for number of teams, which will sit at 32 once Seattle joins the league. With that goal in mind we have decided to bring forth the largest change to the league in decades, potentially ever.
 
Starting in S78 the VHLM will be disbanded with it's teams all being moved to the VHL, giving us 28 teams in total. This gets us close to our goal but not quite there so we will be also adding 6 new teams to the league, all based out of Europe to counter the 12 North American teams entering. This gives us 34 teams, thus beating the NHL and proving VHL dominance.
 
This would still leave us unbalanced of course with 14 teams in Europe and 20 in North America so we will also be moving Mexico, Houston, and Minnesota to Europe in order to balance the conferences. 
 
A general manager application will be opening shortly so that we can fill the vacant 6 spots and decide on team name and locations and more details will follow in the upcoming weeks. The @BOG and Blue team are very excited to finally hit this milestone with you all and we welcome your ideas regarding where teams should be placed and their logos.
 
Sincerely,
@Commissioner 

Gunnar Odinsson (TOR) for Spearing (Major / Game Misconduct) at 16:42  
OK, who pissed me off?

I know I’m rarely around anymore, but good to see that my 1+ seasons as VHLM GM and subsequent loss of big time interest in the VHL, may not have been just a problem with me lol

As an author of this post I did not expect it to blow up like this: 

I believe I tried to be as sincere and respectful as I could in my original post. The idea behind this post was to show a time in league history that many still remember from the inside perspective. I was there, for the first 2 months of my career in VHL I was mislead, told things that were not true and I wanted to share that experience. If anyone feels that it is too much, well, you just fueled my interest in digging deeper. 

I've never heard of half the names in this media spot.

im at work i cant make lineups, can you guys do drama later at night?

Couple things.
Everybody love everybody. Obviously mods are watching this so BE NICE. That draft stuff that was talked about above is entirely accurate.

After heavy reconsideration, I have decided to RE-OPEN this thread.

As a GM at the time of both of these incidents I will call you on this utter bullshit

Edited away GIF, go ahead and delete this post.

Huh. I'd say I'm surprised but I'm really not.
 
For the rest of this article... I knew 66 was bad, but I didn't realize just how much was still behind closed doors.

Looking forward to the next ones

To start FrostBeard’s Chronicles I should explain what these series are about. In these biweekly articles, I will discuss my experience in the league and touch upon questions relating to forums, GMing, and my player careers. It will not be necessarily bad things or things I didn’t like, it will feature things that still hold meaning to me and have shaped my path in the VHL. 
 
To start this series off, I will be touching upon an important question I have asked myself: What was the first blunder that any of John Frostbeard’s GMs had made? There aren’t many, but there are a few that made me realize how GMing sometimes can make players annoyed. 
 
 
“Worst decision made by GM Blade” 

I already know that this article might ruffle up some feathers but I think that I am entitled to speak my mind. Firstly, I am most thankful to BladeMaiden for being my 1st GM, she helped me take up courage, become a GM, build a successful career and get drafted higher than anyone would have predicted. I loved the way Press conferences were organized by Blade, how questions were asked in a fun format that anyone, even people who have never heard about hockey, could answer then easily. I truly embraced the culture of involvement that we saw in Philadelphia Reapers at the time.
 
When it comes to my time in Philly, I was there in S65 and S66. S65 was my first season, I joined in not long after the start of the season, got updates in and pushed myself to quickly become a player that any team could depend on. To gain some assets considering that I was just a waiver pickup, I got traded to a contending team (Reapers did not do great in S65 and finished the season with 1st Overall pick in S66 Draft). Yukon Rush, at that time, lead by GM Josh, needed some extra on-ice power to help another fellow S66 prospect, Hunter Hearst Helmsley to win a cup. After the end of the S65 and sadly, an undesirable result by Yukon, John Frostbeard entered S66 VHL and VHLM Draft. I did promise to GM Blade that I will stay under 200 TPE Cap (that was at the time the limit for a player to stay in VHLM).
 

 
It felt like the off-season just dragged on and on, I was so excited to see where I will end up as both VHLM and VHL Drafts were important to me, I had told 2 GMs at the time that I would like to be drafted by them. One was the infamous GM of Calgary Wranglers Bushito, the other was GM of Vancouver Wolves Beaviss. I asked exactly those 2 GMs because the Philly team was extremely loyal to their GM, at the time I had only experienced Philly and a bit of Yukon. I relied on GM Blade to tell me which teams are the ones that I want to play for. I thought I was super lucky to get drafted 12 Overall by Calgary Wranglers. I felt honoured as I already shared a Discord LR with Bushito as his player was on Philly Reapers. That changed quite a lot in S67 but we will get to that. 
 
We on the team were told how terrible and dictatorial was commissioner Bana, how bad were people on Houston Bulls, at that time lead by GM Sonnet. (A bit funny that a Philly player, who was taught to hate on Bulls because GM Blade had issues with Sonnet, became GM of Houston), was told that Peace was a douchebag and a bad person. I do hate to say that all these things happened to be false and most of the Philly squad was lied to, manipulated. That said, all those things I completely forgive Blade, I understand that it was her narrative to push the team forward by making Philly a place that felt almost cut from the rest of the VHL community. She tried to make her players become her bodyguards. 
 
So, finally, we are coming to what I truly consider the biggest blunder that GM Blade had ever done. Note that I stayed down for a season, wasted the first season of my VHL career just because I promised to be there for the Reapers when the team will be competitive. S66 was the season when our team was joined by so many amazing players, from the great Condor Adrienne to Matt Tocco and Ben Hafkey. Another management piece was added to Philadelphia Reapers. GM BladeMaiden was joined by her friend Jubo who became the team’s AGM. The focus of the team shifted, people who disagreed with Blade got traded and crossed out from Reapers history (Note the trade of Rhys Chism, Jables, who was my AGM of Houston at the time - his name still is crossed out in Philly LR History chat because he somehow was a traitor). 
 

 
My player dominated VHLM throughout the first 45/50 games, at the time I was 2nd in points in the league, was close to the top 2 by goals and was surely looking to see an award-winning season for John Frostbeard if I kept going on that path. And then it happened, the management group decided to please another player, Kyle Sabertooth who was a controversial player considering his antics and had childish behaviour on forums at the time. Lines were changed and my production fell off and off to the point when John Frostbeard was not even Top 10 in scoring when I asked why are lines being changed if things were going great, I got silenced and said that it was the best decision for the team. I have a simple theory, at the time I was 2nd in the league, Blade’s and Jubo’s sympathiser uphillmoss (Kyle Sabertooth) was doing quite a lot worse, he was struggling and was about 10 points behind my production. Suddenly, when it was apparent that we are going to make playoffs as a team, lines are getting changed and his player just become the main guy in everything, my playing time gets lowered and all those minutes go to him. At the time I felt humiliated, I stayed down for a season, I stayed because I was a man of my word. Why would have I stayed down if I knew that I was needed there only to boost others and then when I was not needed, pushed away? At the end of the S66, I had still not received a proper answer from the management squad, Kyle Sabertooth, a FA signing went to be the leading scorer on Philly that season and even though we won the Founder’s cup, I felt betrayed, I felt like my dedication was thrown to the group because a friend wanted a bigger role on the team. 
 
At the time I agreed that I will not take this up and discuss it with anyone as I had just become a GM of Houston and I felt that my role required me to keep quiet about these issues, I felt like Philly had become a place where a difference of opinion was shut down by a mob of people that didn’t care if they are fighting for the right or the wrong, they just mindlessly fought for whatever BladeMaiden and Jubo wanted them to fight for. 
 
To summarize, the biggest blunder GM Blade made was signing a well-known troublemaker in FA and the addition of Jubo to the management group. Those 2 things transformed a team that was filled with a burst of rivalry into a mindless group of punks. 
 

2 wins . Huuuuuge 
@chikn  a modern Bobby orr ❤❤

New York still clinging to a playoff spot 😛
lets keep the dream alive

LIGHT EM UP BOYS