Corco

Borrowing a concept from MLB The Show

This is very likely due to the smaller player pool at the time, especially in the very early seasons (pre-S15). Petr Shirokov is the most egregious example I can think of off the top of my head.

1. Did you expect the team to make a trade? Yes, I did. We started off very hot to begin the season, but have cooled off immensely and are sort of floundering in the standings right now. We absolutely needed scoring help. 2. How do you think the acquisition of Sarkanis will affect the team? I think Sarkanis will drastically improve our offense, which has gone very cold in the 2nd half of the season. It felt like we went through a stretch where we were getting shut out every other game. 3. How did your player welcome Sarkanis to the team? Neutron welcomed him to the team by showing Sarkanis his vintage duck figurine collection. 4. Should the Ottawa Lynx get a mascot? What would we name it? Yes, and it should be a massive, 30-foot tall animatronic Mallard. 5. Whats a rule you wish you could add to the VHL? Not necessarily a rule, but I wish that the VHL was stricter/more stringent on what content automatically gets 6 TPE. In a league that is already very luck-based with the sim, having an auto-6 sort of de-incentivizes people to put out quality content. 6. How excited are you for us to get to playoffs in a few weeks? Decently excited, but I am more excited for the draft tbh.

I check my Player Page before I even breathe in the morning. I try to limit my time on the VHL to only while driving or operating heavy machinery.

OTTAWA, Ontario - As the S96 campaign draws to a close, S97 draftee Hugh Neutron has largely been a disappointment offensively for the 2nd-place Ottawa Lynx. Despite consistently holding the top spot in practice hours for the S97 draft class for weeks, his time in the practice facility has not led to on-ice success for the Retroville native. In 56 games played so far this season, Neutron has only managed to accumulate a measly 19 points, which is quite a far cry from the 21 points (in 18 games!) he put up with the Halifax 21st last season. To give Neutron credit though, he was playing top line minutes on the 21st last season, whilst this season he is playing on the 2nd pairing with journeyman defenseman Masa Akimoto. Instead of relying on Neutron to anchor their blueline like Halifax did last season, the Lynx are instead led by S96 2nd overall pick, River Harrington, who is putting up an MVP-caliber season so far.

I always appreciated that you went against the leaguewide stigma at the time of being anti-Vasteras to sign an extension there with Toriyama, especially since you had bounced from team to team with him quite a bit already, if I recall correctly.

1. Fiancée and I dressed up as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. 2. I would love to have played with Pan Daffleck, as I don't think I've played with any of Green/OrbitingDeath's players yet. 3. Tend to his Duck Figurine collection and read magazines about Pie. 1. What, in your opinion, is the team with the worst current prospect pool in the VHL? 2. Can you think of the time that you were the most proud of your VHL player? 3. If you could add an expansion franchise to the VHL, where would you put it?

I was in the midst of claiming a multi-week PT before Theme Week was announced, so the capped TPE for this is for the Week ending November 17.

S31 Davos Dynamo - The notoriously infamous [but successful] GM Tyler Barabash @Bushito went inactive early in the season, leaving the players on the team to pick up the pieces. Thankfully for Davos, their roster included five players whose agents are Hall-of-Fame builders: Phil Rafter @Phil, Felix Peters @gregreg, Ying Qin @Baozi, David Smalling @Knight, Emerson Byer @frescoelmo. With the veteran leadership at the helm, the Davos locker-room was able to submit lines and set strategies, culminating in a playoff run that saw the Dynamo dispatch the Riga Reign in 6 games and the New York Americans in 7, with HoF forward Phil Rafter scoring the cup-clinching goal at 12:44 of the 3rd period. “Am I eligible to like dicks this?” - VHL Admins & Commissioners used to have a lot of fun; @JardyB10, then a commish, changed the word-filter from “claim” to “I like dicks!”. Before the portal, members had to post whenever they “claimed” a special Point Task with a post in the thread saying such. Then a new member, @Devise, asked in a PT Giveaway thread, “Am i eligible to claim this? If so, claim!”, which ergo posted as “Am i eligible to I like dicks this!? If so, I like dicks!”, which doesn’t seem extremely hilarious in hindsight, but I do remember it being much funnier back then, and I think Jardy even had a screenshot of the post in his forum signature for a while. DDOS Attack - The VHL’s first forum was an invisionfree forum (which can still actually be viewed on the Internet Wayback Machine HERE), but before the switch to our current forum hosting site, there was another, the name of which is currently escaping me. Regardless, the forum switched from invisionfree to the site that I am talking about in the early S30’s, but was actually DDoS’d by an unhappy member (I believe their player’s name was either Edward Eldred or Edward Eldritch, something along those lines). I recall attempting to log in, only to be met with a 404 error; thankfully there was a large population of the VHL on the SHL, and it was there that I was able to learn what had happened. Rebuilding the old site was tough, as we basically had to rely on Google Caches and the Wayback Machine to get Player Pages, Trade Threads, Signings, etc. It was a lot of tough work that was indeed pretty stressful at times and we lost a good chunk of members, but somehow we managed to pull it off. I’m pretty sure nowadays the forum is backed up monthly or so to prevent this from happening again; for a minute there it really did feel like the VHL might have gone belly-up. ~455 Words

Claiming Week 3 of 3

my god. we suck now

The VHL exists in our universe in our timeline. The players age 8x as fast as humans

Have you ever ventured outside the VHL to sim leagues other than hockey? If so, which? What position is more enjoyable for you in the VHL, Offense or Defense? Do you think that the VHL should find a way to use the updated version of the sim in order to have Giveaways and Takeaways as a stat? Is there any accolade/achievement in the VHL that you haven't achieved yet? If so, what is it? Over the course of your VHL career, who would you say has been your biggest rival (member and/or playerwise)? Have you ever demanded a trade? If so, why, and if not, what was the closest you were to demanding one?

Whoops, I genuinely thought Rift and Brookside were in. Perhaps a part two may be in order.

Hall of Fame Builders without HoF Players Some of you may recall that I sent out a league-wide survey a few weeks ago about what you think makes a player worthy of a plaque in the VHL Player Hall of Fame. Thank you all for your responses, and worry not, as I do intend to make a media spot elaborating on the results of said survey in the future. Although there are no official prerequisites for induction into the VHL Builder Hall of Fame, one metric does seem to stick out above the rest: having a player from your agency reach the HoF. Of the 53 currently inducted Builders in the HoF, only nine have not had a player inducted into the Hall of Fame. Obviously that isn’t to say these members haven’t tried, as many of them have indeed had great VHL players come from their agencies, but rather to point towards the fact that hard work in the VHL does not always guarantee statistical success or accolades. You can set TPE records (like someone on this list) and finish your career without winning a single individual award, it is an unfortunate reality of the VHL. Lucas Tannahill @PensFan101 (S1) D - Thor Ljunggren, TPE: ??? (S5) G - Anton Nygard, TPE: ??? (S11) D - Jorgen Aqvist, TPE: 515+ (S23) C - Lasse Milo, TPE: 800+ (S32) D - Mattis Trumbauer , TPE: 361 As time goes on and members come and go in the VHL, the number of people who remember Lucas Tannahill dwindles smaller and smaller. For those who don’t know, he was the mastermind behind likely the VHL’s most infamous franchise, the Vasteras Iron Eagles. Tannahill’s obsession with the franchise ran deep, with most of his players always finding their way back to the franchise in some form or another. His players were rarely pushovers either, but none aside from Lasse Milo had great cases for the Hall of Fame (Milo has decent case for the HoF that I will likely dive into in separate article). PensFan’s players were often built as team-first players, with the goal of doing whatever they could to push Vasteras to success at the cost of their own individual achievements. After the franchise was relocated and rebranded as the Stockholm Vikings in the early S40’s, perhaps fittingly, PensFan went inactive and never returned. Sandro Desaulniers @Sandro (S4) LW - Fabian Brunnstrom, TPE: 530 (S11) RW - Sandro Desaulniers, TPE: 545 (S18) D - Dante Terragni, TPE: 511 (S25) RW - Gaz , TPE: 538 (S32) C - Jakub Kjellberg, TPE: 770 (S45) LW - Lucas Zhukenov, TPE: 245 The next builder on the list is former Toronto Legion GM, Sandro Desaulniers; I admittedly remember less about Sandro’s players than I do about PensFans’, as I had much more interaction with the latter due to my own experience with the Vasteras franchise. From what I do remember, Sandro, while not being a TPE whore, did make very solid players who sacrificed individual accolades for team success (as GM players often do). On statistics alone, the only players that you could even attempt to make a case for are Brunnstrom, Kjellberg, and perhaps Terragini, who did make the All-VHL 1st team twice. Tyler Owens @Tyler (S6) RW - Pavel Dubnikov, TPE: 465 (S14) LW - Nicholas Evans, TPE: 545 (S21) G - Andreas Bjorkman, TPE: 733 (S28) C - Connor Evans, TPE: 609 (S35) D - Tyler Owens, TPE: 180 (S39) RW - Milos Denis, TPE: 594 (S48) C - Rene Bergeron, TPE: 30 (S54) D - Slava Aleksei, TPE: 677 (S57) D - Thomas Sankara, TPE: 79 (S59) C - The Charm, TPE: 848 (S64) G - Milan Baros, TPE: 70 (S68) D - Andrej Petrovic, TPE: 563 (S78) LW - Gregory Bates, TPE: 651 (S87) D - Admir Bala, TPE: 860 (S97) RW - Raoul Cyr, TPE: 109+ One of the VHL’s longest tenured members, Tyler Owens has seen his fair share of team success across the 90+ seasons he has been in the league. Owens was the architect behind the curse-breaking S26 Vasteras Iron Eagles, as well as ending a 22-season cup drought for the Davos Dynamo in S61. Perhaps the New York Americans should look to hire Owens in an attempt to break their current 42-season drought? While Owens knows how to build a cup-winning team, he likely also knows that as a GM you are often required to make sacrifices to your own player’s individual success. A HoF case could [and should] certainly be made for his 1st goaltender, Andreas Bjorkman. The Swedish netminder backstopped the aforementioned Iron Eagles to their S26 Continental Cup, won the Scotty Campbell Trophy in S27, won two Shaw Trophies in S26 & S27, made the All-VHL 1st team in S26 & S27, and won three World Cup Gold medals in S22, S24, and S26. Austin Gow @eaglesfan036 (S29) D - Austin Gow, TPE: 401 (S36) RW - Robert Gow III, TPE: 802 (S44) C - Tim TebowGow, TPE: 683 (S50) C - Travis Gowecny, TPE: 555 (S54) RW - JourneyMan, TPE: 195 (S56) RW - The Process, TPE: 204 (S61) D - Chat, TPE: 90 (S63) LW - King Gow, TPE: 70 (S65) C - Gritty, TPE: 1039 (S74) G - Kevin Malone, TPE: 724 (S82) D - Trade Me, TPE: 73 (S89) D - Free Gorlab, TPE: 196 (S93) D - Blaze Thunderstrike, TPE: 313+ When I first thought of the idea about this article, the member that first came to mind wasn’t eaglesfan, but rather his brother, @Fire Tortorella. Upon researching, I discovered that flyersfan did indeed have a HoF player in Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen; I then figured to check eaglesfan, and here we are (both of them used to always have Philadelphia-centric player names and I would constantly get them mixed up). Eaglesfan and I joined the league around the same time in S29, and I always recall him consistently having solid, but never superstar, players (Austin Gow, Robert Gow III, Tim TebowGow, Travis Gowecny) who were often part of successful teams, but never very individually successful. Since the S50’s eaglesfan has been very hit or miss with his players, as Journeyman, Chat, King Gow, Trade Me, and Free Gorlab all being arguable busts for a member of eaglesfans’ caliber. His current player, Blaze Thunderstrike, looks to have the best chance out of his three most recent players to be successful, albeit likely not HoF-worthy. Nowadays I feel that eaglesfan sticks around more for the community rather than the actual sim results, and for those VHL veterans who remember, he was the biggest fan of the long-defunct VHL chat feature. Thomas Landry @Doomsday (S33) RW - Thomas Landry, TPE: 794 (S41) RW - Jack Kowalski, TPE: 572 (S56) C - Charles Murphy, TPE: 41 (S71) LW - Thomas Landry II, TPE: 1527 (S80) G - Oskar Lindbergh, TPE: 1646 (S90) D - YaBoi Oven, TPE: 1477+ Doomsday first broke onto the VHL scene with Thomas Landry in the relatively top-heavy S33 draft as a 2nd-round pick. Landry was known more for his time in football sim-leagues than hockey sims at that time, which is why I presume he was taken so low in the draft at 16th overall. From what I recall, Landry was a fan-favorite around the league at the time, and was eventually traded from the New York Americans to the Davos Dynamo for a 1st round pick and three 2nd round picks; I was the GM of the Vasteras Iron Eagles at the time and tried desperately to acquire him in order to improve Vasteras’ public image, but wasn’t able to put together a package better than the one that Davos offered. Landry would go on to be an integral part of Davos winning two cups in S36 & S38, while also winning the [now-retired] Grimm Jonsson Trophy twice as the VHL’s Top Leader (S36-37) and make the All-VHL 2nd Team in S38. While Landry may not have had the statistics and accolades to make the Hall of Fame as a player, he remains one of the most liked members in league history. I admittedly don’t know much about his three most recent players (all of whom have eclipsed the 1000 TPE mark), but based on their lack of awards their HoF chances unfortunately don’t seem too great either. Eno Rama @Enorama (S63) C - Ryan Kastelic, TPE: 2000 (S69) D - George Washington, TPE: 947 (S74) LW - Ryan Schwarz, TPE: 841 (S80) C - Ryan Vidot, TPE: 1469 (S90) G - Ryan Artyomov, TPE: 1238+ Enorama is the member who was named dropped in the beginning of this article; his 1st player, Ryan Kastelic, became not only the 1st player in VHL history to reach the 2,000 TPE mark, but also the first 1st-gen player to reach that mark as well (Leandro Goncalves would end up surpassing Kastelic’s total 20 seasons later). There is a case to be made that no member in VHL history has been treated more unfairly by STHS than Enorama, with over 6,000+ career TPE(!!!) and not a SINGLE individual award to show for it! I don’t know if there is any easy way to calculate this, but eno’s average TPE between all of his players (1,300) must be the highest in league history for a member with at least five players. I haven’t been super active during enorama’s time in the league, so I don’t know how he feels about his own lack of individual accolades vs the time and effort he has put into the league, but I know it would drive me mad if I was him. Honorable Mentions That I Forgot to Include: @diamond_ace @Devise @Dil 1,600+ Words Claiming for weeks ending: October 27 November 3 November 10

Of all the official league jobs that you have held, which has been your favorite and why? If you had to pick, what would you say is your biggest gripe regarding the STHS sim engine? Do you think you'll ever create a goalie? If you were commissioner for a day, what change(s) would you make? What currently inactive member do you miss the most? Have you ever considered making a "gimmick" (putting all points into Fighting/Leadership/Faceoffs/etc.) player, and if so, how serious were you about it?

G - Ryan Artyomov @rory

Game 37…