Corco

It’s been a long 70 seasons in the Victory Hockey League; around 2,000 individual players have skated on VHL ice in those 70 seasons. Something I’ve always loved was how meticulous the league is at maintaining its storied history, and how well we take care of our record books. In this article I’ll take a look at every mainstream individual player stat record and attempt to determine its ability to be broken, so without further ado, lets begin.
 
 
Games Played
Record: 648
Record Holder(s): Sterling Labatte & Markus Lidstrom
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%)
 
Hall of Famer defenseman Sterling Labatte and Markus Lidstrom will forever hold the Games Played record so long as the league doesn’t make any rule changes that increase career length. Thanks to a technicality in the early days of the league, Labatte and Lidstrom were able to play a record-nine VHL seasons, culminating for a total of 648 games. To my knowledge, the league has no intention of increasing the maximum career length, so Labatte and Lidstrom’s record is likely one of the safest on this list.

 
Goals
Record: 599
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%)
 
Expect to see Scotty Campbell’s name a lot on this list; I even considered omitting him from this list because most of his records will never even be close to broken, but I digress. Campbell’s record of 599 Goals (really wish he scored just one more, but oh well) will never even come close to being eclipsed, especially with the amount of league parity that exists now; no other player in league history even has 450 goals, let alone 500. The highest goal scorer in recent memory is @Beketov's Matt Thompson, who scored a total of 422 in the S60s;  it’s very safe to say that Campbell will forever be the VHL’s goal-scoring king.

 
Assists
Record: 639
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%)
 
I told you that we would be seeing Campbell’s name a lot on this list; his 639 career assists are 59 more than 2nd place defender Japinder Singh. While I would still consider this record untouchable, I would say that it’s not AS untouchable as the goals record. If the league expands again and parity decreases to the levels it was in the S20s/30s, I could see someone somehow approaching this record, but the chances of that are one in a million. @Quik’s Mats Johnsson is the highest assist compiler in recent memory, reaching a career total of 469 in 8 seasons between Stockholm, Calgary, Seattle, and Helsinki.

 
Points
Record: 1,239
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell
Likelihood of Being Broken:  (0%)
 
Shocker. I’ve heard that there were rumors of rigging when Scotty Campbell played (as he was the simmer back then I believe), and while people are always making claims like that when a player does well, I can’t blame people for accusing him. The guy scored over one THOUSAND points; no other player has, or ever will, do that again. If scotty was indeed rigging (which I don’t believe, because to rig that hard for 8 seasons would be a pain in the ass and extremely pathetic), I can only imagine that he would go into the sim, boost all of his ratings to the max, sim, and then return them to their original levels before exporting the updated index. With the current parity in the league it will be tough for a player to ever even break 900 points; Cast was the closest recently, scoring 846.

 
+/-
Record: +643 & -345
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell (+) & Sam Pouza (-)
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%) [+] & Extremely Unlikely (10%) [-]
 
Once again, nobody will likely come close to Campbell’s record; @STZ’s Unassisted is the closest behind Scotty, and he is over 100 short (+530) of the record. Interestingly enough, the top 10 isn’t filled with players from the VHL’s early days; only Campbell and fellow HoFer Josh Vestiquan have played in the VHL pre-S10 from that group. On the other end of the spectrum is Sam Pouza; Pouza is an interesting player, he finished his career in the relatively exclusive 2,000 Hit club, and scored over half a point per game. Unfortunately, he won’t be remembered for his positive accolades; Pouza is the unfortunate record holder for the worst career +/- rating in history, at a whopping minus-345. Pouza has none other than the S19-S21 New York Americans to thank for this, as he compiled a mind-blowing -204 rating in those seasons combined.

 
Penalty Minutes
Record: 1858
Record Holder(s): Peter Payne
Likelihood of Being Broken: Likely (70%)
 
Finally we come across our 1st record that will likely be broken! Noted enforcer Peter Payne spent over 1,800 minutes in the sin bin during his career spanning S8-S15. The next closest to Payne record is @Tagger’s Edwin Encarnacion, who retired only 53 penalty minutes shy of Payne’s record. More recently, Luc-Pierre Lespineau-Lebrunette finished his career 292 PIM short of Payne’s record in S66, but he only played 7 seasons; I have no doubt in my mind that if Lespineau-Lebrunette played a full 8 seasons, he would have surpassed Payne’s mark.

 
Hits
Record: 2769
Record Holder(s): Zach Parechkin
Likelihood of Being Broken: Unlikely (25%)
 
@DollarAndADream’s Zach Parechkin set the current Hits record during his final season in S53, and it looks like nobody will be coming close anytime soon! There are currently no active players within 700 hits of Parechkin’s record, but I feel that if a player made a build solely chasing hits, then they might be able to overtake the Hall of Fame winger.

 
Shots Blocked
Record: 1407
Record Holder(s): Markus Lidstrom
Likelihood of Being Broken: Plausible (50%)
 
Lidstrom makes his 2nd appearance on this list, having been a human sandbag in his 9 season career. You could also make the argument that this record should belong to Edwin Encarnacion, as 99% of the VHL has only played 8 seasons, and Encarnacion is the true career leader, with 1,388. I could definitely see this record being eventually broken though, as the VHL seems to be entering another low-scoring era; @McWolf’s Joseph McWolf, @tfong’s Tzuyu, and Sidney Crosby are all recent players who have eclipsed the 1,000 Shot Block plateau.
 
 
1,000+ Words

We can use google cache for recent trades though.

I don’t intend this article to be a “woe is me” story or something similar, I intend this to be more of an airing of grievances/explanation of why I did the things I did in my time as GM of Vasteras (S31-S39). By the time I stepped down at the end of S39, I was so burnt out from the constant negativity surrounding the franchise for so many seasons that I had no desire to even remain active, but I’ll get more into that later; I have been meaning to write an article like this for awhile, and I kept putting it off and off for whatever reason, but regardless, here it is.
 
Author’s Note
I guess I should start from the beginning of my entire sim league experience; my first ever foray into sim leagues was in the SHL, as I joined the site in ~September of 2011 at the ripe old age of 14. I created a goaltender in S5, Tom Corcoran, who actually ended up in the SHL Hall of Fame. The SHL was my only league for a few months, before I heard some members talking about the VHL; still being in high school and having all the time in the world to do anything, I joined the VHL in late January of 2012 (S26), also creating a goaltender named Tom Corcoran. And I HATED the VHL at first; I had no idea of how the PT structure worked, and I felt that the members were much more standoffish and snooty compared to the SHL (funny how perspectives work). I only earned 26 TPE with Tom Corcoran in the VHL before going inactive and fully focusing on the SHL again. I wouldn’t return to the VHL until June of 2012, creating a forward, Thomas Corcoran, who would end up being selected 2nd overall by the Vasteras Iron Eagles in one of the worst VHL drafts of all-time, Season 29; and that, is where my VHL story truly begins.
 
Prologue 
When I was drafted, Vasteras was amidst a stagnating rebuild. Despite being only 3 seasons removed from breaking the curse in S26, the team was a shell of its former self; the Iron Eagles had missed the playoffs in the 3 seasons following their S26 championship. Tyler Owens (@Tyler), the GM responsible for bringing the Continental Cup back to Vasteras, stepped down following the S26 season and handed the reigns of the organization over to Damien Walec (@.sniffuM and his star player, Tukka Reikkinen. Walec wasn’t left with much to work with in his early days as GM, as the only returning players for the Iron Eagles in S27 from the S26 squad were Walec’s own player Reikkinen and Lasse Milo, a player from the agency that founded the entire franchise itself (@PensFan101 - Lucas Tannehill). The cup run had broken the 25 season curse, but at what cost? 
Before the start of S26, then-GM Tyler Owens [rightfully] traded away Vasteras’ S28 1st pick in a deal with Toronto to acquire key members of the S26 run, Phil Gerrard and Clint Guite; in an interesting piece of trivia, that pick would eventually turn out to be Owens’ own player, Connor Evans. You make that deal 10 times out of 10 if you’re Owens, as you’re getting two star players for a few throw-in players and a 1st round pick that’s two drafts away. Owens also traded away Vasteras’ S28 2nd round pick in a rental deal that brought another impact player, Kevyn Hesje, on board for the S26 run; once again, another deal that’s an easy no-brainer for Owens, as that pick turned into Pekka Svenson, who only ever reached 1B goalie status at his peak, and without even checking I’m pretty sure he didn’t even eclipse 400 TPE. That would be Owens’ last move as GM of Vasteras, as he would step down after the cup win, promoting 1st-time GM Walec to his old position. Walec was handed a pretty decent situation in my opinion; coming off a championship victory needing to rebuild, and you still have your 1st round pick (8th overall) in the draft, not too shabby. But alas, Damien decided to delay his rebuild, and in his 1st big move as Vasteras GM, sent the S27 VAS 1st to Davos in exchange for Davos’ S28 1st round pick and winger Jesse McGahn. I can only guess that this was a deal to acquire a depth piece for S27, should Vasteras somehow be able to contend that year (they did not), while basically getting a draft pick at the same spot or better in the next draft. If I had to guess, I would say that this move was likely thought of as a good trade for Vasteras at the time, as they really didn’t seem to lose much in this deal, although that S27 8th overall pick did end up being Ying Qin, a member of the esteemed tfong agency, and a player of his pedigree certainly would have helped Vasteras’ image and coming rebuild. But again, not a bad trade at the time. Damien’s next trade is where I begin to wonder what happened to cause him to make said move; towards the end of that offseason, Walec shipped off four members from the championship team to the Riga Reign (Kevyn Hesje, RJ Stafford, Clint Guite, and Andreas Bjorkman) in exchange for Riga’s S29 1st & 2nd round picks as well as two prospects, JaMarcus Simmons and Jesper Jakobsen. Since the forum where this trade occurred is gone, I have no idea what the public perception of this trade was, but personally I don’t think I agree with it (there are likely reasons it happened that I’m just unaware of). The four of those players had a combined 8 seasons left in the league before auto-retirement and still had some gas in their tanks; given that Vasteras only finished 20 points behind New York for the last playoff spot in S27, I don’t think it’s crazy to assume that had they kept those 4 players, they could have made the postseason despite the retirements of Gerrard/Guite and the departure of Jenstrom. In terms of value though, I don’t think the deal was bad at the time, as in return Vasteras received the JaMarcus Simmons, a S26 draftee who had been drafted 3rd overall the season before, and an eventual lottery pick (which eventually turned out to be the 1st overall pick) in Riga’s S29 1st. At the time Simmons’ agent, Spangle, was coming off the retirement of his 1st (and to-date best) player of his career, Hall-of-Famer Mathias Chouinard, so really this trade seemed to be setting up Vasteras quite nicely for the future. But boy, if you thought that the trade would actually work out for the Iron Eagles, you could not be more wrong.
 
Simmons would turn into the 1st bust in what would end up being a long line of draft/prospect failures for Walec; Simmons would play two seasons for Vasteras before leaving via Free Agency, never really becoming more than a 2nd-liner in his VHL career, and thus did nothing to improve the rebuilding situation in Vasteras. Walec would make no more trades during S27, as the Iron Eagles would miss the playoffs; thankfully for Vasteras,their S28 1st round pick that was property of the Toronto Legion as part of the aforementioned Gerrard/Guite trade, did NOT win the lottery, instead ending up being the 4th overall pick. Despite not having their own 1st rd pick in S28, Vasteras did have Davos’ 1st round pick via the aforementioned Jesse McGahn trade, and said pick would turn out to be 3rd overall! With a draft class that included Volodymyr Rybak (Slobo), Alexander Labatte (@sterling), Ryan Sullivan (@Advantage), Miles Larsson (@sherifflobo), Theseus Athera (@DGFX.), Brody Hodgson (@Tylar) and more, surely Vasteras would connect on that pick right? Wrong. Walec decided to continue to push the rebuild back another season, as Vasteras would send the S28 3rd overall pick (the pick that turned out to be Hall-of-Famer Ryan Sullivan) to the Calgary Wranglers in exchange for NYA’s S29 1st round pick and Calgary’s S28 2nd round pick (10th overall). It really hurts to see what Vasteras ended up doing with those picks, drafting goaltender Vincent Vega (@Maxy) with the 10th overall pick from Calgary and packaging the S29 NYA 1st in another deal I’ll get to later; Vega was a promising young goalie, and was expected to be the starter in Vasteras for a long time, but Maxy flamed out at around 300 TPE a few seasons later, basically leaving Walec chained down with an inactive goalie of the future while Ryan Sullivan began to put together his Hall of Fame career in Calgary. I’m not really sure why Damien kept pushing the rebuild back, but I can only guess that it was to have a plethora of picks and prospects in the S29 draft, and he obviously didn’t know it at the time, but he could not have picked a worse draft to stockpile picks in. After not making any moves during the S28 season, Damien had the following assets available to him going into the S29 Entry Draft: RIG 1st (1st OV), VAS 1st (2nd OV), NYA 1st (7th OV), VAS 2nd (9th OV), & RIG 2nd (11th OV). At the draft, Walec made a trade, sending the S29 NYA 1st (7th OV) as well as Vasteras’ S30 1st rounder (4th OV) to the Seattle Bears in exchange for Toronto’s S29 1st (4th OV) and Seattle’s S29 2nd (16th OV). I’m not sure if Damien intended to compete in S29, making the S30 1st a non-lottery pick (Hint: They didn’t), but regardless, he overpaid slightly to move up 3 spots in the draft. Of his 6 picks in the first 16 spots of the S29 draft, only three ever made it to the VHL, and of those three, only one ever made it past 400 TPE (me). At the time, I recall it not being too bad of a haul though, as 1st overall pick Al Wilson (mutigers) was coming off a successful career with Keon Henderson, and 4th overall pick Brandon Merritt (Brandon Holmes) also had a few successful players before Merritt. Walec’s final move as Vasteras GM would come in S29, as he traded his own player to the New York Americans in exchange for New York’s 1st round pick in S31 and his replacement at GM, Troy Athera (@8Ovechkin8). I still have a great amount of respect for Damien as a member, but I don’t think I would be very wrong to say that his attempted rebuild of Vasteras was a failure; obviously hindsight is 20/20, but of all of the picks/trades he made, the only one who ever made an arguable impact at the VHL level statistically for Vasteras was myself. To review, during his tenure as GM Damien:
  It doesn’t look horrible at 1st glance, but it gets worse the deeper you dig, especially when you consider how much success Qin, Sullivan, and Reikkinen would go on to have in their careers. Like I said, hindsight is 20/20 and there’s not a doubt in my mind Damien would undo most of those trades if given the chance with the information he has now, but at the end of the day, the franchise wasn’t really in that much better of a position when he left versus when he was handed the GM job. 
 
Before GMing

Thomas Corcoran was my 1st real VHL player, drafted 2nd overall in S29 by Vasteras
 
I rejoined the VHL in late May of 2012 after getting tired of SHL drama. Although I wasn’t technically a 1st-gen player, I felt like I was, since I really only stayed on the VHL for about a week in my 1st go around with my player in S26. I felt like the SHL was more about community, while VHL was more about the actual sim/statistics, which I preferred, and I was as active as someone can be in their draft season, earning my max TPE, posting on the forums, etc. 
I remember how excited I was when Damien messaged me before the draft asking about my feelings towards joining Vasteras; I was still getting to know all the teams/members in the league, so I  didn’t really have any idea of what team I wanted to go to in the draft. I recall hearing murmurings that Vasteras was a bad franchise, but I thought nothing of it at the time; I was just happy to be considered a top prospect. I stayed in the VHLM the season after the draft (S29), but Vasteras was still unable to find success with new GM Japinder Singh (8Ovechkin8), missing the playoffs again. 
In his 1st season as GM, Singh shipped off homegrown hero Lasse Milo to the Seattle Bears in exchange for Toronto’s S30 1st Rd pick & Seattle’s S31 2nd & 3rd round picks; at the deadline Singh also acquired two depth pieces in (S22) Dan Jones and (S23) Nick Fisher in exchange for Vasteras’ S31 3rd. Even in hindsight, these were not terrible deals; Milo was Vasteras’ best player at the time, but he was aging and didn’t have a place on a team that needed younger talent, and the S31 3rd Singh traded away for depth/cap floor reaching predictably ended up being a nothing-pick. Singh would continue to wheel & deal in the offseason, making three trades in the S29 offseason. The 1st trade he made was a bit of a head-scratcher, as he sent the 1st overall pick from a season before, Al Wilson, to Riga in exchange for Seattle’s S30 1st (6th overall) and Calgary’s S30 2nd (12th overall); I can’t recall how I felt about this trade, or even why 8O8 did it. Maybe Wilson requested a trade or something of the like, but regardless, Vasteras would eventually lose this trade (surprise surprise). The player selected, Roberto Martucci (Otrebor13), would go inactive for a few seasons after the draft, only to come back to the league at full activity for the Quebec City Meute, after I traded him there prior to S31 for Calgary’s S32 2nd. Singh’s 2nd deal of the S29 offseason was re-acquiring Lasse Milo from the New York Americans in exchange for Seattle’s S31 2nd round pick; when you factor in the trade that sent Milo out of Vasteras and this one, Vasteras had a net gain of a 1st round pick and a 3rd round pick basically for free, not bad. In his last move of the offseason, Singh sent Seattle’s S31 3rd round pick to the Toronto Legion in exchange for Toronto’s 3rd rounder in S31 and depth defenseman, (S26) Lars Strundman.
 In his relatively short stint as Vasteras GM, 8O8 only really made one questionable deal (the Al Wilson trade), but even then, in hindsight the deal was basically a wash as Wilson would never reach the expectations of a 1st overall pick, earning less than 400 TPE in his career. Outside of that deal, Singh actually did a pretty decent job in my opinion, given the situation he stepped into; I think he just didn’t feel like dealing with the negative attitudes towards the team from members outside the organization. 8O8 would made no trades during S30, and would eventually step down at the conclusion of the S30 playoffs (Early December 2012) due to disinterest, naming me as his successor.
 
Rookie GM-ing
If I remember correctly, the reason I was chosen as the next GM was because nobody else really wanted to do it, and I was one of the few members who actually enjoyed playing for Vasteras. I believe the league asked PensFan about taking the job, but he declined, as his activity level was already fading. Outside of myself, there was really no other option in-house; all other roster players were inactive, and I was the most qualified of our “prospects”. Even saying I was the most qualified is a stretch, considering that my management experience in all sim-leagues up to that point was one season as GM of the VHLM’s Oslo Storm during S30. I was a 16-year old kid with minimal experience who was just thrown into one of the worst possible situations a seasoned VHL GM could be thrown into, let alone one with basically no experience. I don’t want to point fingers and put the blame on anybody else, since I did want the position and was excited to get it, but it probably wasn’t the smartest decision by league management to allow a 2nd season member to become a GM after only one season of VHLM GM experience, especially considering the franchise I was taking over.
This media spot would be tens of thousands of words long if I went over every trade I ever made, so I’ll try to only go over the most notable ones. I made quite a few small trades in my first offseason as GM, with the most major being a trade with Ryan Power’s (@Devise) Americans that sent former GM player (S28) Troy Athera and disgruntled recent Vasteras draftee (S31) Samu Heiskanen to New York in exchange for NYA’s S33 1st rounder, two 3rd round picks, aging forward (S24) Gunnar Axelson and the 6th overall pick a season removed, (S30) Jeff Phinney. I felt like this was pretty fair value at the time, as Athera had requested to move on from Vasteras and there was a miscommunication between myself and Heiskanen’s agent regarding his desire to play for Vasteras, so really, Devise gave me pretty fair value knowing that my hands were tied. There would be a few smaller trades made during that offseason (the Martucci trade being the next-most notable), but my first big notorious trade wouldn’t happen until the trade deadline of S31.
At the deadline, Vasteras was where they had been for the last 5 seasons - out of the playoff race and in the doldrums of VHL mediocrity. At this point I was starting to take note of how many prominent VHL members seemed to just shit on Vasteras, the sole reason being “lol/fuck vasteras”. In the four seasons since the Continental Cup, the Iron Eagles had went a combined 88-175-26, and I desperately wanted to shift that trend. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place though; I was the only prospect that had panned out for the team in the past 5 seasons, and very very few free agents wanted to join what seemed to be a ship that was sinking and on fire at the same time. I saw there being no end in sight if I maintained what had been the status quo for the previous half-decade, so I decided that my best course of action would be to make a trade. The trade that follows is what would turn out to be the 1st of many huge gambles that I took as GM, none of them ever panning out. My only real good player on the team was my own, so I basically needed to acquire an entire team if I wanted to compete; luckily for me, Seattle was in the business of selling off most of their aging core. I jumped at the opportunity, acquiring future Hall-of-Famers (S25) CAL G (@JardyB10), (S26) Jarvis Baldwin (@CoachReilly), and 2nd-pairing defenseman (S24) Genghis Khan (@Shyft) in an attempt to go all-in for S32. In return, I practically gave up the farm, trading away Vasteras’ 1sts in both the S32+S33 drafts, Calgary’s S32 2nd round pick, and some depth players. At the time, the trade was met with mostly apprehension, as the team would certainly be better, but the roster only had two good forwards, one defenseman, and a top-tier goalie; I still needed to make more moves to put the team in a position to contend, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make people respect Vasteras again. 
My first order of business in the offseason was to acquire fan-favorite defender Vladimir Boomchenko (@BOOM™) from the Express in exchange for Vasteras’ S34 2nd round pick and (S27) Luukas Laaksonen. Continuing to add to the roster, I acquired journeyman depth defender (S26) Lars Strundman for Brandon Merritt, now nearly a complete draft bust. I believe Quebec City GM Koradek intended on getting Merritt to return to the league, but that never panned out. That same offseason, I made perhaps one of my biggest free agent signings of my entire GM career, signing under-the-radar defenseman Klaus Muller (@solas) to join my ragtag team of contenders. This would be the beginning of what I would consider to be a long partnership between lightning25 and the franchise, as it seemed like he enjoyed playing for Vasteras just as much as I did, with his next player, Willem Janssen, being the face of the franchise starting a few seasons later. I don’t recall us ever talking about it much in depth, but I think he enjoyed being part of the franchise for the same reason I did, in that he wanted to be part of a team that would prove people wrong, having a soft spot for the eternal underdog. 
If I can remember correctly, the most prevalent league-wide opinion of my attempts to bring Vasteras in contention was one of wary scepticism. I can recall a few members who applauded my efforts to make VHL hockey in Vasteras exciting again, whilst some others giddily anticipated the likely-negative results of my acquisitions *cough* @Kyle *cough*. I never understood why he hated Vasteras so much, and if he did ever say why, I don’t recall what it was. Regardless, I acquired a few other depth pieces during the season to round out the roster, most notably Nikolai Chershenko (@Munk), and went into the S32 postseason campaign with a state of nervous excitement; this would be my 1st time in the VHL on a competitive team, and the stakes were higher than ever. There was only one problem; the rest of the European Conference was a bloodbath that year; four teams had winning records, the top 3 all having over 100 points. Even the last-place Cologne Express, who finished with 55 Points, would have made the playoffs if they were in the North American Conference. The Iron Eagles were led by both of their star acquisitions the previous season; Jarvis Baldwin had a 101-point season to lead the offense, whilst CAL G had a Shaw-caliber season, posting a .934 SVPCT, 1.79 GAA, along with 9 SOs. CAL G would ultimate lose out on the Shaw Trophy due to an even more stellar season from his counterpart in Riga, Alexander Labatte, who sported a sparkling .935 SVPCT & 1.64 GAA, as well as 8 SOs. 
Although Vasteras ultimately finished 3rd in the European Conference that season, I wasn’t super nervous about our 1st round opponent, the Helsinki Titans. While they concluded S32 with 10 more points than us, I thought we matched up against them decently well; they certainly had us beat in the Forward department, in depth and skill, as their 2nd line of Qin-Hodgson-Schwarz Esq. had 250+ PTS while ours of Mason-Strundman-Noel only tallied 152 PTS. Defense was a closer, with Helsinki’s top 4 of Nic Riopel, Theseus Athera, Till Lindemann, & Dmitry Baurzahn scoring 243 PTS between them, whilst our defense of Vladimir Boomchenko, Klaus Muller, and Blake Knight tallied 193 PTS; when averaged out per defenseman, Titan defenders scored an average of 61 PTS, while Iron Eagle d-men averaged out to 64 PTS, I’d say it was about a wash. Our biggest advantage in my opinion was at goaltender; I already spoke about CAL G’s fantastic season, but future Hall-of-Famer Tuomas Tukio’s (@Higgins) stats that season were nothing to scoff at either: .927SVPCT/1.80GAA/7SOs. Despite being close statistically to CAL G, Tukio was not nearly as high in TPE at the time, with most of his attributes being in the 80s as opposed to CAL G’s, which were mostly in the 90s. I believed that all we had to do to beat them was to score some timely goals, and get the same goaltending from CAL G that we had been getting all season.
I was wrong. Although we took the Titans to 7 games, it would not be the goaltending that got us there; in fact, both teams had lackluster performances in comparison to the regular season from their netminders in the series, CAL G having a .911SVPCT & 2.72 GAA and Tukio posting a .912SVPCT & 2.14 GAA. The away team would not win a single game the whole series, making our 3rd-place finish in the Euro sting even more. Even if we won, I’m not sure we would have been able to beat 1st place Riga in the next round, as the Titans would go on to be swept by them, but who knows? We finished the regular season 3-3-2 against them, so maybe we would have had a shot. Alas, we were sent home, and I was left with a 1st round exit and no 1st round picks in the next two drafts; time for Vasteras to rebuild...again.
My intend with going all-in on S32 was to bring some legitimacy back to Vasteras’ name, but the end result was far from my intentions; my failure to bring the team deep in the playoffs only continued the stigmata of the franchise. The game thread from Game 7 isn’t available anymore since that site died, but I remember seeing “fuck vasteras”, “typical vasteras”, and comments of the like, and I couldn’t even be mad because they were right! Despite how disappointed I was though, I had to suck it up and attempt to rebuild now, without two of my future 1st round picks. Boomchenko and CAL G were auto-retired, so there was no possible return on them; I sold off depth piece Jack Mason for a 3rd rounder, traded Klaus Muller to Cologne for a 3rd rounder and journeyman goaltender (Rock Star) to fill in whilst the rebuild was going on, retired my S29 player and sent him to Riga for a S34 2nd, shipped Baldwin off to Calgary for arguably the best (of that offseason) return, depth player Andrei Zhirenkov and a S33 2nd, which turned into a loyal Vasteras player in Adam Kylrad. The returns were not great because the market was extremely saturated at the positions I was selling; Muller was the most valuable asset, and I wasn’t able to trade him away before other teams jumped on trades for defenders of similar caliber, such as Radislav Mjers, Troy Athera, Theseus Athera, Cody Inko, and Malcom Spud. My other big trade chip, Jarvis Baldwin, was in his final season and getting hit with depreciation hard, but he ended up having a 138 point season for the Wranglers in S33, so Calgary certainly got the better end of the deal, even if they didn’t win the cup that season. I was disappointed that I had to retire my own player so early in his career; he was going into his prime with 650+ TPE, and there is no doubt in my mind I would have reached the 1,000 TPE plateau with him had he played out his entire career. It was bittersweet that he ended up winning a cup with Riga in S33, as I was excited to have a Continental Cup victory for one of my players so soon in my VHL career, but it felt hollow, as it wasn’t with my team. 
 
The Rebuild

Willem Janssen was one of the few Vasteras success stories during the S30's
 
My hands weren’t completely empty entering the S33 draft that offseason though, as I owned New York’s 1st round pick (10th overall), thanks to the trade that sent Troy Athera to the Americans a few offseasons prior. Despite it being 10th overall, the S33 was stacked, having eventual VHL players all the way until the end of the 2nd round. I selected David Collier with the 10th overall selection, and this pick still annoys me to this day. Collier was a 1st-gen sensation in the SHL at the time, and I still had a player in the SHL at that time so I figured he was a sure-bet to have a similar impact in the VHL. He did not, what I will describe next is to the best of my ability, this happened right before the smf forum broke, so I’m unable to access the PMs/posts from that time; his activity began to drop after being drafted, but Cologne’s GM at the time, Joey Kendrick, remained interested in him. During S33, I traded Collier to Cologne for Cologne’s S35 1st round pick, with the condition that if Collier stayed inactive/didn’t reach a certain TPE threshold (250 or something?), the pick would turn into a future 2nd round pick. Collier’s development stagnated that season, and he did not end up not reaching the TPE threshold Kendrick and I agreed upon, so a deal was made during the S34 offseason that sent Cologne’s S35 1st back to them in exchange for their S36 2nd round pick. At this point the trade was lose/lose for both sides, as Vasteras basically received a S36 2nd rounder for a 1st-round player who was supposed to be a key cog in the rebuild and Cologne traded a semi-valuable pick for a depth player at best… Only Collier didn’t stay inactive for long. As I recall, a few weeks after the trade where I gave Cologne their S35 1st back, Collier returned to the league in full force, earning his TPE and being everything I had hoped he would be, just not for Vasteras (he even became a Co-GM for Cologne a few seasons later); there was nothing I could do except wallow in my own misfortune; here was another case of that typical Vasteras luck. Seasons 33 and 34 were typical VHL rebuilding seasons, with the team losing 50+ games both seasons, but overall, things finally began to turn after S34.
I still owned Vasteras’ 1st in the S34 draft, which I used to select the future face of the franchise, Willem Janssen (solas/lightning25), at 2nd overall. While it wasn’t like there was a another player I wanted as much as Janssen in that draft that would have made my choice tough, I still consider this pick probably my best draft selection of my entire tenure. Janssen was dedicated to Vasteras through and through, and one of his main career goals was to win a cup with Vasteras. The S35 draft would not be nearly as kind to Vasteras, as the player we selected 3rd overall, Leon Leitner (@scotty), would barely pass 200 TPE before disappearing after the smf forum crashed. I attempted to contact him in a variety of ways, but to no avail. It seemed like the perfect marriage; the agent of the greatest VHL player of all time & key cog of both Vasteras cup-winning teams returning to the franchise at a time when they desperately needed one more big name to help them take it to the next level. I’m not sure if scotty just lost interest, couldn’t find the new site, or whatever, but the him not becoming our #1C of the future slowed down our rebuild considerably. Instead of having three powerhouse TPE-whores on the team, we only had two, in my own goaltender (Bagelface) and lightning25/solas’ Janssen. I know it’s kind of pointless to think about now, but I truly believe that things would have turned out different for the Iron Eagles had Collier/Leitner not gone inactive. Take S36 for example, Bagelface and Janssen were entering their primes and leading Vasteras to an unexpected playoff berth at the midway point of the season, 17 points ahead of the supposedly-contending Cologne Express. I didn’t expect to contend that season, so I was pleasantly surprised at how pretty we were sitting at the deadline; I decided to buy at the deadline, acquiring Cody Inko and Lauris Prikulis from Cologne in exchange for a 1st and two low-level prospects. Of course, I can’t talk about that deadline without talking about the one trade I made earlier that season that I was criticized for arguably just as much as the CAL G/Baldwin trade in S32 - the Keiji Toriyama (@street) trade. When you look at who was selected with the 1st rounder I traded for him, Tom Slaughter, it looks like the worst trade of all time. However, Slaughter was only taken 3rd overall to appease a 1st-gen player, Jakub Linholm, who wanted the honor of being drafted high. Had I kept the pick and not traded it, I would have selected Travis Boychuk or Logan Laich. The reason the pick ended up being so high is that somehow the team forgot how to play hockey in the second half of the season, ultimately losing the 17 point lead we had over Cologne and missing the playoffs by three points. Same shit, different day. The harshest trade reaction I think I’ve seen from the general public was indeed the Inko trade. I’ll admit it, I definitely overpaid, but I was the kind of GM who would much rather go for it and overpay, than sit back and just never even attempt to go in at all. People were calling for me to step down because of the trade, even though the 1st I traded ended up turning into a relatively forgettable player in Simon Tremblay (@Megster); if there was ever a trade where both teams lost, this was it. Vasteras would eventually make the playoffs in three straight seasons from S37-39, but we would never make it past the 1st round, losing to the Riga Reign every single time. By S39 I was burnt out; no matter what I did the team couldn’t find meaningful success, and the league was no longer fun for me. Looking back on my messages from that time, I definitely developed a chip on my shoulder early on from what felt like half of the league wanting me to fail; I became a bit ornery about trade negotiations near the end of my tenure (more on that later), but most of all, I just didn’t care anymore. I made my final trade in the S39 offseason, sending Leon Leitner, Devin Sundberg (@gregreg, who ironically actually wanted to be part of Vasteras, but didn’t fit the contention window), and a S41 1st to the Toronto Legion in exchange for star HOF #1C Niklas Lindberg (@boubabi) and #2D Ville Sixten. I acquired Lindberg not only to improve the roster, but to be my replacement as well, since being GM was the only thing tying me to the league at that point, and even then, that tie was hanging on by a thread. I stuck around during S39 to help boubabi out with transactions and showing him the ropes, but that was about it. I created a welfare player after Bagelface retired (Rift Pajodcast), but I didn’t pay too much attention to the league with him, going inactive ~Spring 2015 after a few seasons. 
 
Turning Over a New Leaf
When I stepped down from the GM position, I thought I would have felt sad or upset, but instead I felt nothing; seasons and seasons of having the weight/pressure of trying to succeed with Vasteras wore me down. I wasn’t upset that the franchise was being moved either, I knew that not only was it was inevitable, but that it was mostly my own fault as well. That’s where I actually felt a little sad, knowing that one of the VHL’s most notable (albeit infamous) franchises was going to be relocated because of my failures. I felt kind of dumb for even feeling sad about it, because it’s an online sim hockey league, it’s supposed to be fun; why did I care enough to feel sad that something was happening in an online community? Even if I didn’t want to admit it, the VHL had been something I took pride in and enjoyed for a few years, and while I wasn’t physically upset or anything, I was definitely sort of bummed at how those 9 seasons turned out. It certainly helped that boubabi made a sick logo for the new location, but I still was partial to Vasteras, which is why I asked to be traded when Rift Pajodcast was selected by the now-Stockholm Vikings in the S41 draft. Pajodcast would never play for the Vikings, being traded to the Seattle Bears after the draft; he would win a Continental Cup in one of the biggest finals upsets in S43, but that was pretty much the only highlight of his otherwise boring career. I took the VHL a lot less seriously in my short time of activity with Pajodcast, and it gave me a temporary renewed interest in the league; it wouldn’t last though, as shitposting can only get you so far. I would stay away from the league for around two real-life years, rejoining the league again in S53 with Rudolph Schmeckeldorf in Spring 2017, and stuck around a bit longer than I did with Pajodcast. I lasted for a little over half of Schmeckeldorf’s career, before being a VHLM Commish, VHLM GM, WJC Commish, the extra work of having a Project Player 2 (Boner), and real life led me to burn out again around in early October 2017. Hopefully this time I break the cycle of two-year gaps.
 
Trade Reputation
I would be remiss if I didn’t address my trading reputation in this article. Early on in my GM career I gained a reputation for hoarding late-round picks. This was valid, as I did usually request them in trades. At the time I was still semi-active in the SHL, and I did draft players who had joined from the SHL and went inactive, attempting to convince them to come back to the VHL. I didn’t really see anything wrong with this, as there was nothing stopping other VHL GMs from doing this. I would usually ask for late round picks as add-ins for trades, and most of the other GM’s usually didn’t care, and would throw the picks into the deals. Somewhere along the line me doing that somehow morphed into members thinking I would specifically tell SHL players to not update before the draft so other teams wouldn’t draft them, that I had handshake agreements with draftees who would only update for me, etc., none of which was true. I guess the reputation came from me actively recruiting a bunch of SHL players (as in, they would put me as their recruiter in their Create-A-Player thread) who would come to the VHL and usually stick around for a few weeks before deciding it wasn’t for them, and going inactive. I can see why some other members thought I was purposely telling the recruits to go inactive, but at the end of the day it just wasn’t true. In the latter half of my GM career I recall not even drafting anybody in the later rounds, often whoever was running the draft to give me the BPA, but nevertheless, the reputation persisted.
The other negative reputation I had in terms of trades was my willingness to trade 1st round picks. This criticism is also valid, but you have to understand the position I was in. I know it’s been awhile and my numbers could be off, but I can recall the number of people who actively wanted to play for Vasteras in the S30s on two hands. I doomed myself from the start with the CAL G/Baldwin trade; I think that made a lot of people think that I had no idea what I was doing, and that they would rather sit and watch the dumpster fire than try to help. And honestly, at the beginning, I really didn’t know what I was doing, I had to learn on the fly. I don’t remember a single big FA really giving us that much of a shot in free agency (outside of Muller in S32), but believe me, I tried. I went after Odin Tordahl (BOOM), Chico Salmon (@xDParK), Felix Zamora (@frescoelmo), and more, but the responses were all the same, “Thanks for the offer but…”. Also it certainly didn’t help that many of the older, more influential members of the league would just shit on Vasteras because it was “the cool thing to do”, letting that attitude rub off on younger members; I felt that because of Vasteras’ past reputation, as well as my own, my only real way to actually acquire a decent player was to overpay, and some GM’s knew this and would use it to their advantage. I could have easily sat back and kept all of my draft picks, but would doing that really have helped? I felt that we would have been in the same situation we were in from S28-S31, a perpetual rebuild that seemed like it was just spinning tires in the mud, and that just wasn’t the way I wanted Vasteras to be known. I could certainly write more here, but I think I'm done. I'm also not trying to call anybody out or anything, but I never felt that I was able to truly get my side of the story out.
 

It’s been a long 70 seasons in the Victory Hockey League; around 2,000 individual players have skated on VHL ice in those 70 seasons. Something I’ve always loved was how meticulous the league is at maintaining its storied history, and how well we take care of our record books. In this article I’ll take a look at every mainstream individual player stat record and attempt to determine its ability to be broken, so without further ado, lets begin.
 
 
Games Played
Record: 648
Record Holder(s): Sterling Labatte & Markus Lidstrom
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%)
 
Hall of Famer defenseman Sterling Labatte and Markus Lidstrom will forever hold the Games Played record so long as the league doesn’t make any rule changes that increase career length. Thanks to a technicality in the early days of the league, Labatte and Lidstrom were able to play a record-nine VHL seasons, culminating for a total of 648 games. To my knowledge, the league has no intention of increasing the maximum career length, so Labatte and Lidstrom’s record is likely one of the safest on this list.

 
Goals
Record: 599
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%)
 
Expect to see Scotty Campbell’s name a lot on this list; I even considered omitting him from this list because most of his records will never even be close to broken, but I digress. Campbell’s record of 599 Goals (really wish he scored just one more, but oh well) will never even come close to being eclipsed, especially with the amount of league parity that exists now; no other player in league history even has 450 goals, let alone 500. The highest goal scorer in recent memory is @Beketov's Matt Thompson, who scored a total of 422 in the S60s;  it’s very safe to say that Campbell will forever be the VHL’s goal-scoring king.

 
Assists
Record: 639
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%)
 
I told you that we would be seeing Campbell’s name a lot on this list; his 639 career assists are 59 more than 2nd place defender Japinder Singh. While I would still consider this record untouchable, I would say that it’s not AS untouchable as the goals record. If the league expands again and parity decreases to the levels it was in the S20s/30s, I could see someone somehow approaching this record, but the chances of that are one in a million. @Quik’s Mats Johnsson is the highest assist compiler in recent memory, reaching a career total of 469 in 8 seasons between Stockholm, Calgary, Seattle, and Helsinki.

 
Points
Record: 1,239
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell
Likelihood of Being Broken:  (0%)
 
Shocker. I’ve heard that there were rumors of rigging when Scotty Campbell played (as he was the simmer back then I believe), and while people are always making claims like that when a player does well, I can’t blame people for accusing him. The guy scored over one THOUSAND points; no other player has, or ever will, do that again. If scotty was indeed rigging (which I don’t believe, because to rig that hard for 8 seasons would be a pain in the ass and extremely pathetic), I can only imagine that he would go into the sim, boost all of his ratings to the max, sim, and then return them to their original levels before exporting the updated index. With the current parity in the league it will be tough for a player to ever even break 900 points; Cast was the closest recently, scoring 846.

 
+/-
Record: +643 & -345
Record Holder(s): Scotty Campbell (+) & Sam Pouza (-)
Likelihood of Being Broken: Never (0%) [+] & Extremely Unlikely (10%) [-]
 
Once again, nobody will likely come close to Campbell’s record; @STZ’s Unassisted is the closest behind Scotty, and he is over 100 short (+530) of the record. Interestingly enough, the top 10 isn’t filled with players from the VHL’s early days; only Campbell and fellow HoFer Josh Vestiquan have played in the VHL pre-S10 from that group. On the other end of the spectrum is Sam Pouza; Pouza is an interesting player, he finished his career in the relatively exclusive 2,000 Hit club, and scored over half a point per game. Unfortunately, he won’t be remembered for his positive accolades; Pouza is the unfortunate record holder for the worst career +/- rating in history, at a whopping minus-345. Pouza has none other than the S19-S21 New York Americans to thank for this, as he compiled a mind-blowing -204 rating in those seasons combined.

 
Penalty Minutes
Record: 1858
Record Holder(s): Peter Payne
Likelihood of Being Broken: Likely (70%)
 
Finally we come across our 1st record that will likely be broken! Noted enforcer Peter Payne spent over 1,800 minutes in the sin bin during his career spanning S8-S15. The next closest to Payne record is @Tagger’s Edwin Encarnacion, who retired only 53 penalty minutes shy of Payne’s record. More recently, Luc-Pierre Lespineau-Lebrunette finished his career 292 PIM short of Payne’s record in S66, but he only played 7 seasons; I have no doubt in my mind that if Lespineau-Lebrunette played a full 8 seasons, he would have surpassed Payne’s mark.

 
Hits
Record: 2769
Record Holder(s): Zach Parechkin
Likelihood of Being Broken: Unlikely (25%)
 
@DollarAndADream’s Zach Parechkin set the current Hits record during his final season in S53, and it looks like nobody will be coming close anytime soon! There are currently no active players within 700 hits of Parechkin’s record, but I feel that if a player made a build solely chasing hits, then they might be able to overtake the Hall of Fame winger.

 
Shots Blocked
Record: 1407
Record Holder(s): Markus Lidstrom
Likelihood of Being Broken: Plausible (50%)
 
Lidstrom makes his 2nd appearance on this list, having been a human sandbag in his 9 season career. You could also make the argument that this record should belong to Edwin Encarnacion, as 99% of the VHL has only played 8 seasons, and Encarnacion is the true career leader, with 1,388. I could definitely see this record being eventually broken though, as the VHL seems to be entering another low-scoring era; @McWolf’s Joseph McWolf, @tfong’s Tzuyu, and Sidney Crosby are all recent players who have eclipsed the 1,000 Shot Block plateau.
 
 
1,000+ Words

TEAM WESTERN EUROPE
 
Forwards
(S70) C - Chad Magnum - @Corco
(S67) C - Phil Marleau - @Phil
(S71) RW - Uhtred - @leafsman
(S68) RW - Owen Nolan - @studentized
(S70) LW - Jared Spaz - @Spaz
(S72) LW - Chris Hylands - @Hylands(C)
 
Defense
(S71) Roque Davis - @Josh (A)
(S68) Lance Flowers - @CowboyinAmerica(A)
(S70) Odin Omdahl - @zepheter
(S69) Erik Summers - @Erik Summers
 
Goalies
(S69) Nicolas Fomba - @efiug
(S74) Piero Angela - @Minermonkey
 
Congratulations everyone on making Team Europe! I'm thankful for the opportunity to GM this squad and I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do in the tournament! I am going to release an article tomorrow to give more on each selection but I wanted to get this announcement out to not hold things back.

I'd love if you all would join WCoH Discord server (https://discord.gg/QHysbvcb) so we can discuss the tourney! Let's do this!

Been a long few days of negotiations, but it's been a stress-free environment @McWolf (it won't let me tag you.) and I appreciate the continued talks while we worked out a deal that benefitted both teams. 

@Corco (also won't let me tag you): It was an honor being your GM, I have the utmost respect for you and your willingness to lead a rebuilding team to two playoff appearances as a user. You sat through some tough seasons and gave me a window to work with, and you were a gentlemen throughout it all. Quiet, but lead by example, something our young guys hopefully learned from. Your understanding in this process was a god-send, even though I feel like a terrible GM I couldn't find you success in Toronto. 

I send you to London with Killinger because I believe they have an opportunity to contend... and certainly had a better opportunity than Toronto heading into season seventy five. 

It'll be tough without Magnum anchoring the top line, and I wish you everything including a cup ring. 

Players
Added WC/WCJ statistics and separated stats into new tabs Slight display modifications   
Stats
Expanded the Portal's stats databases to include: World Juniors player, goalie and team statistics from inception to now  World Cup player, goalie and team statistics from S60 to now  VHL player and goalie statistics from S1 to S48 I'd like to thank and give a shoutout to @Corco  for compiling the S1-48 VHL stats (and apologies it took so long to add)   
HOF
Career Statistics and Single Season Records now have additional filtering options that enable both custom season ranges and switching between all four leagues (VHL/VHLM/WC/WCJ)  General cleanup of all HOF areas Improvements to the admin side of Award's   
Fixes
Fixed an issue where the player search list was barely visible 
View full release

Right on guys. Huge contribution, @Corco ! 

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON -- Toronto came into this series knowing they were the underdogs against a strong Seattle roster, and they were willing to fight as hard as they could in what was predicted to be a short five or six game series for the Bears before they advanced to the conference finals, and while it was a fairly quick series... it wasn't at all what people were predicting, defied nearly all of the estimated fans had given, and even came to a surprise to the team that skated away with a 4-1 series victory. 

In game one -- a 5-2 Seattle win -- the Bears were able to quickly establish their dominance over Toronto, eventually climbing above and away from anything the Legion could muster. This game was over 3:52 into the second period, when Seattle went up 4-2, and any momentum Toronto had evaporated just as quickly as it arrived following Killinger clawing into a 3-1 deficit just eight seconds into the frame. Seattle was on cruise mode, and easily controlled the rest of the game from that point on. 
 
Toronto would respond in game two with a 4-3 victory over the Bears, and owned the second and third periods, but costly mistakes turned the Legions' 3-1 lead into a dangerous 3-3 tie against a potent Seattle offense. Despite outshooting the Bears 16-4 in the third period, Seattle converted on two of their shots just over a minute apart from one another, completely halting the momentum Toronto had picked up throughout the three goal second period after Seattle opened the scoring; they were stunned, the sudden pressure seemed unrelenting, but they endured the small flurry and got back to work. With Hulk Hogan in the box for roughing, Ritchie would score his third goal of the game to give Toronto a 4-3 lead they'd ride to the final buzzer.
 
Tied up at one, and back in Canada for game three, Toronto and Seattle riddled each other with picks in the first frame of game three. Toronto had a 2-0 lead, had registered an impressive twenty four shots on goal, but couldn't keep up with Seattle's pressure. The Bears effortlessly took control of the game in the second period, tying the score at 2-2. If it weren't for Hextall between the pipes for Toronto who knows what would have happened in the third period of the game, but onto overtime the two clubs went. John Merrick would score a powerplay goal just one second before Hulk Hogan would leave the sin bin, the Seattle Bear defender was penalized once again for roughing in the third period. 

We have to assume GM Bana wasn't pleased with Hogan's lack of discipline that actually lead to Toronto winning two games. 
 
With Toronto leading the series 2-1, and through some slight lineup adjustments, the Legion stunned themselves and management with a dominating 7-2 victory over Seattle in game four; Chad Magnum scored four goals and registered an assist; Erik Killinger recorded four assists; John Merrick contributed three applies; and Oh Sens put the puck in the back of the net twice. Oh, and of course Jaxx Hextall stopped 35 of 37 shots he faced for a convincing victory. 

The final game of the series... game five. Seattle's on the brink of elimination, Toronto leads the series 3-1, and the strategies have been adjusted again. For Toronto the outcome was beyond favorable, as they advanced to the Conference Finals on a 20 save shutout by Jaxx Hextall, but for Seattle the results were far less than desirable. Last season the Bears were able to come back from a similar deficit against Calgary, eventually winning the championship for the forth time in six seasons, but it wasn't meant to be.     

Virgin Bears vs the Chad Legion

TORONTO, CANADA -- The regular season has concluded today, and the North American brackets have been officially determined; the DC Dragons will face off against the Calgary Wranglers in a best of five qualifying series, where the winner will move forward to challenge the Vancouver Wolves; meanwhile, in a separate environment off-set by Vancouver getting a by and DC and Calgary playing each other in the qualifiers, the defending Seattle Bears engage the Toronto Legion in a best of seven series. Personally, I'm quite excited this time around, even though Toronto made the playoffs in S72 and pushed Calgary to the brink. 

Now I want to take a partial deep dive into both teams. Tear them apart, sorta, and see what we're working with from both ends of the ice. On the surface you already know Seattle has the advantage, but how much of an advantage do they actually have in TPA? I dunno, we'll find out.  


SEATTLE: 

FOWARDS:
 
(S71) J. BOB
| LW - 935 |
 
(S69) K. RICE 
| C - 930 TPA | 

(S71) UHTRED 
| RW - 770 TPA |

(S72) T. BROWN
| RW - 653 TPA |

(S74) I. CAMPBELL
| C - 383 TPA |

(S73) ROCKET
| LW - 320 TPA | 

TOTAL F TPA: 3991

PROJECTED LINEUP: 
BOB - RICE - UHTRED
ROCKET - CAMPBELL - BROWN
 
DEFENSE: 

(S67) H. HOGAN
| D - 919 TPA |

(S67) B. SUNDQVIST
| D - 867 TPA |

(S70) O. OMDAHL
| D - 835 TPA | 

(S72) R. MARSH
| D - 560 TPA |

(S73) H. KUK
| D - 340 TPA |
 
TOTAL D TPA: 3521

Projected Pairings:
HOGAN - OMDAHL
SUNDQVIST - MARSH
x3 - KUK
 
GOALIES: 

(S73) J. TONN
| G - 580 TPA | 

(S69) N. FOMBA
| G - 345 TPA |

STARTER: TONN
 
Seattle's roster is honestly intimidating, and they've gotten younger compared to their past championship teams and will remain competitive despite some of their defenders being forced to retire at the beginning of the off season. The Bears are bristling with offensive firepower, similarly to the iconic WWII battleships from an era not so long ago, and you'll see why I make that comparison soon. You look at the forward group GM Blake Campbell has put together and you can see the sheer caliber of their top players, both Rice and Bob, who would represent the massive cannons those warships had. They're also supported with quality players in Uhtred and Brown, and although the guns get smaller with Campbell and Rocket, a battleship only needs to strike once to sink another ship. That is the firepower the Bears have, and when they're engaged, it's extremely difficult to escape the lethal barrages they'll unleash. 

Defensively though, like the sturdy armor of those iron giants, Seattle has a rock solid foundation from top to bottom throughout their own zone. Hogan leads the charge, but both Sundqvist and Omdhal help form a neigh impenetrable citadel, but there are always gaps in any defense. I don't mean to shame, or talk down on anyone here, but Seattle's weakness is in goal. In WWII battleships were almost always escorted by cruisers, destroyers, escort carriers and some navies that employed frigates. 

Seattle's a battleship, but they have no escort. The gap in the armor is in rookie netminder Tonn, and that's a target Toronto is hoping to expose. Tonn isn't a bad goaltender, going 37-22-7 with a .911 save percentage and a 2.77 goals against average. However, if you had Funk in net going into this series, you could comfortably predict Seattle would walk away with it. 

Tactical strikes against Tonn might be what sinks the ship, but we'll have to wait and see.    
 
TORONTO:  
 
FOWARD
 
(S70) C. MAGNUM
| C - 932 TPA |

(S69) K. MCDAGG
| LW - 521 TPA |

(S73) J. MERRICK
| C - 510 TPA |

(S68) R. RITCHIE
| RW - 501 TPA |

(S73) O. SENS 
| RW - 413 TPA |

(S72) J. GAINER
| LW - 361 TPA |

(S71) J. BLAZE
| RW - 282 TPA |
 
TOTAL F TPA: 3520
 
PROJECTED LINEUP: 
MCDAGG - MAGNUM - RITCHIE
SENS - MERRICK - GAINER
(BLAZE)
 
DEFENSE:
 
(S71) E. KILLINGER
| D - 980 TPA |

(S70) G. GUTZWILER
| D - 447 TPA |

(S69) DALDO 
| D - 437 TPA |

(S68) F. ELMEBECK
| D - 409 TPA | 

(S72) Z. ANIGBOGU 
| D - 380 TPA |

(S70) L. GUTZWILER
| D - 329 TPA | 
 
TOTAL D TPA: 2982

PROJECTED PAIRINGS: 
KILLINGER - ELMEBECK
G. GUTZWILER - DALDO
ANIGOBGU - L. GUTZWILER

GOALIE: 

(S70) J. HEXTALL
| G - 978 TPA |

STARTER: HEXTALL

During World War Two -- if you spotted a distant battleship steaming your way -- it often meant that you were about to engage in fleet warfare, so if Seattle is the battleship looming on the horizon for the Toronto Legion, you have to wonder what kind of warship the Legion are. Toronto is almost certainly an aircraft carrier, for numerous reasons, given they lack any serious strengths but omit any glaring weaknesses. You see... a carrier isn't well armored, they're often woefully under armed, and they're assets that need to be protected by larger heavier surface warships or risk sinking under enemy fire.

Toronto's offensive tools aren't the cannons Seattle has, but rather the hit and run attacks from a carriers dive bomber and torpedo attack squadrons. The Legion will be outshot, likely out chanced, and outplayed for the majority of the series... but they'll fight, and they'll fight, and they'll fight. You can predict that Seattle will have the upper hand, as displayed during the regular season series between the two clubs, but Toronto has the ability to exploit the opportunities they get and they're persistent enough to recognize when those opportunities arise. Chad Magnum, Raleigh Ritchie, John Merrick, Kristopher McDagg, Oh Sens and Joseph Gainer are all skilled enough to make Seattle regret a mistake, and they're skilled enough to force those mistakes upon Seattle.
 
The aircraft carrier has a role to play, but they're not themselves surface combatants in any strategy, they're long range floating airstrips that deliver firepower from ranges beyond cannons, anti aircraft armaments and flak barrages. That's where Killinger comes in, that's where he hopes to play, as he'll be replied upon as the guy who will be making plays from the blue-line. Setting up those opportunities to for the forwards to slam a puck behind Tonn, and maybe win four games to move onto the next series. 

In net, though, is where Toronto has the serious advantage. Hextall is a superb goaltender, the highest rated goalie in the league as far as I can tell, and may just show up with Rayz Funk level of play against... ironically... Funk's former team. Hextall's playoff performance has already been noted as 'strong', as he essentially backstopped the Legion to a seven game series against Calgary, and he'll be a key piece in any victory Toronto achieves. 


    

Solas x
 
Some strong selections here
 
Is this a challenge 

I’ll be honest, I’ve blatantly procrastinated on doing something for the theme week, and I’ll admit that this article probably isn’t going as interesting or as well-written as I would ideally like.  But I’ve had this idea for an article ever since I saw what the theme was for this season.  This dream team is going to consist of my favorite teammates throughout my entire history in the VHL.  The idea for this is based on another idea for a media spot that I’d had in the past, where I look at who I’ve been teammates with the longest.  I might still revisit this idea if I have the time/interest.  But for now, this is going to be looking at who I enjoyed being teammates with the most.  What exactly does that mean?  Time to find out.
 
Forward: Alexander Chershenko @Victor (Calgary S28-S31) 
I didn’t truly become active in the VHL until I made my second player, German defenseman Klaus Müller.  And a big part of that activity and interest was the Calgary Wranglers team that Müller was on.  The locker room was filled with a bunch of great teammates, and the cup runs in S30 and S31 were very fun to be a part of.  And probably the most important player on that team was Alexander Chershenko, the third player of Victor (alfie_forever at the time).  
Chershenko was a fantastic player, as evidenced by the hall of fame induction.  Victor, meanwhile, is one of the most important members in the VHL’s history as well as someone that I enjoyed being teammates with and still get along with today.  Somehow, we haven’t been teammates that often.  The only other time was when I briefly returned to sign with Riga as a free agent and then go inactive again sometime in the early S60s.  Either way, this is someone that I knew I had to put in my dream team.
 
Forward: Travis Gowecny @eaglesfan0366 (Calgary S50-S52) 
It’s kind of ironic that I’m following up a fantastic hall of fame player with a fairly average player like Gowecny (sorry Austin).  But there is a reason for this.  Almost twenty seasons after my stint with Müller, I found myself back in Calgary as Theo Axelsson was selected second overall.  During the pre-draft process, I had spoken to eaglesfan a bit since he was the GM of Calgary and we’d end up talking more in the locker room (and in chat, which should be brought back).  Considering what was in place, I was excited for the future.
Things went into the next gear as Axelsson and Gowecny finished their rookie seasons and a historically great free agent class came up in Season 51.  Somehow, Calgary recruited the top four players available (more on these four later) and quickly changed from a rebuilding team with a very bright future into the de facto #1 contender for the Continental Cup.  Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out as planned.  We were quite dominant in the S51 regular season, winning a Victory Cup and putting up a historic points tally, but it just wasn’t to be.  Eaglesfan ended up stepping down as GM, then Kesler took over and decided to rebuild (more on this later, too).  But during those three seasons, eaglesfan would become one of my favorite teammates.
 
Forward: Pierre Gaudette @Frank (Quebec City S53-S57) 
This one has a fairly similar beginning to Gowecny.  Another player of mine, Lukas Müller (that’s different from the other Müller) was entering the draft, and after discussions with Quebec’s GM Frank, the Meute ended up trading down from 1 to 2 to draft me rather than Franchise Cornerstone.  This ended up being a perfect fit.  Frank had a clear plan for the team’s rebuild, and a big part of that plan would be the duo of Müller and Frank’s recreate Pierre Gaudette.  This plan would end up in success.  Quebec would make three straight finals appearances, winning one of them in Season 56.  
During this time, Lukas Müller and Pierre Gaudette would form a historically great duo - so in a purely statistical sense, it’s undeniable that Gaudette would be one of my best teammates.  But additionally, Frank was a great member that I enjoyed being teammates with and that I wish was still active.
 
Defenseman: Black Velvet @Higgins (Calgary S51-S52, Helsinki S53-S55)  
Velvet, one of the greatest defensemen of all time as well as one of the aforementioned free agents, would first join up with Theo Axelsson in Calgary.  But while Velvet would be a great player, the main reason for his inclusion on this list is what would come in Helsinki.  Remember when I mentioned the rebuild in Calgary and how that ended Axelsson’s time with the Wranglers?  Well that rebuild included one of the most lopsided trades ever, in which Calgary traded two future hall of farmers and a lottery pick to Helsinki in exchange for Higgins’ second player, a goalie who would finish his career in the 400-500 TPE range.  
Yes, I partially chose Black Velvet just because I wanted to mention that trade.  But there’s more important stuff.  Higgins ended up building a dynasty in Helsinki that won back-to-back cups (which were ironically won in the first two of the previously-mentioned finals appearances by Quebec).  Most importantly, though, that Helsinki team had a great, active locker room, and Higgins played a big part in creating that.
 
Defenseman: Clark Marcellin @diamond_ace (Calgary S28-S31) 
Okay, so this one technically isn’t accurate.  Marcellin wasn’t a defenseman while I was in Calgary.  In fact, by the point that he’d switched positions, Müller was already retired.  I could’ve included players that I was teammates with when I was actually a defenseman, too!  Ryan Sullivan and Vladimir Boomchenko were very nearly in this position.  But at the end of the day I felt like I had to include diamond_ace on this team.  
As the GM of that Calgary team, d_a is similar to the other GMs that I’ve included on this list in that they built great teams and that I got along well with them.  But additionally, he’s someone that I’ve crossed paths with many times across different sim leagues.  Ever since I first started doing sim leagues ten years ago (oh man why am I still here), I feel like I’ve been teammates or at least acquaintances with him a bunch of times.  Hence, Marcellin makes the team in this spot.
 
Goaltender: Eggly Bagelface @Corco (Vasteras S34-S39, Helsinki S40) 
As I’ve mentioned before, being a part of the Vasteras Iron Eagles was a great time in the VHL for me.  Just like with Gaudette and Gowecny before, my player (in this case Willem Janssen) was drafted second overall by a rebuilding team and became a part of the team’s core alongside the GM’s recreate (in this case Corco with Eggly Bagelface) who was in the same draft class.  This time was a little different.  Although we weren’t necessarily successful, it was incredibly enjoyable being a part of a constantly underestimated team trying to beat the odds.  
There would be other key players and good members who came into the team, but Corco and I were the two key parts of the team. We’d talk about key trades and how to make the team into a contender, and the possibility was even brought up of me taking over as GM when it became clear that he was going to be stepping down from the position.  But even though I’ve picked Bagelface for this list, Corco and I have been teammates many different times.  I mentioned the media spot I was looking at writing in the beginning - Corco is the person who tops the list, as our players have been teammates for 16 seasons.  I don’t know how that compares with other duos of members but it certainly seems like a hell of a long time.  So it couldn’t have really been anyone else in goal.
 
(1,318 words, good for two weeks - will be claiming this for the bonus week this week before using it as a PT for the next two weeks)
 

A prestigious award given to the top two-way forward, the Scott Boulet Trophy has been long sought-after by the power forwards of the VHL. Primarily a three horse race, this one came down to Hunter Hearst Helmsley @Beaviss, Brock Louth @Beaviss, and Chad Magnum @Corco. All three were mainstays in the hit column, and were also equally adept in the attacking zone. There was, however, a clear choice by the Awards Committee on who best fit the bill, and that player is…
 
 
 

With the S73 VHL Awards set to be awarded tomorrow night, it’s only appropriate to take a rundown of each award to see who might win each award. 
 
 
Make sure to check out other series VSN has to offer, such as our weekly reviews, award trackers, podcasts, and upcoming offseason coverage
VSN Radio | Weekly Review | S74 Draft Coverage | Under 250 
 
 
Mike Szatkowski Trophy
This trophy goes to the player with the most points. This year, Sigard Gunnar’s otherworldly performance brought him to the top of the point list, with 119 points for the Los Angeles Stars. Hunter Hearst Helmsley finished second place with 113 for Warsaw, but it wasn’t enough to win the award.
 
Kevin Brooks Trophy
The Brooks Trophy goes to the player with the most goals, and Gunnar picks up another piece of hardware. Gunnar had a jaw-dropping 60 goals in S73, by far the most in the league. No other player was able to reach the 50 goal mark, as Brock Louth and Guy Lesieur both had the second-most goals with 46.
 
Alexander Beketov Trophy
The Beketov Trophy belongs to the assists leader in the VHL, and this year it’s none other than Lincoln Tate. Tate had the most assists in the league in S73 with an incredible 85 helpers. When Tate was drafted first overall in the S67 draft, many people thought it wasn’t a great pick, but he has proved the doubters very wrong. With multiple awards over the past few seasons, Tate adds to his collection with his second consecutive Beketov Trophy.
 
Christian Stolzchweiger Trophy 
The top rookie each year earns the Stolzchweiger Trophy, and this year has some fierce competition. Last year no rookie eclipsed the 50 point marker, but this year's rookie class saw two players make it past 72 points, averaging over a point per game. Chicago saw two rookies headline their roster, with winger Adam Syreck having 73 points and fellow winger Squirrely Dan dropping 68 points. Second overall pick Tyler Walker had an impressive rookie campaign for Malmo, with 60 points and 172 blocked shots, but only four hits all year. London also saw numerous rookie sensations take the spotlight, with Jay Jones, James Rose, and The Terrible Trivium scoring 63,63, and 62 points respectively. James Rose especially was fantastic, putting up 63 points as a defenseman alongside 186 hits and 162 blocked shots. Despite all these very strong performances, Chris Hylands finished first among all rookies with 76 points this season. Hylands will be the likely favorite, but Syreck is likely his toughest competition. Syreck had only one less goal despite taking 100 less shots, and had more hits and blocked shots. However, Hylands was -1 on the year, while Syreck was -66 and his hit totals were undoubtedly inflated due to being on an expansion team. It’s a tough call to make, but Chris Hylands is the favorite heading into awards night.
 
Nominees: Adam Syreck, Chris Hylands, James Rose
Favorite: Chris Hylands

 
Dustin Funk Trophy
This trophy goes out to the player who showed the most improvement from the previous season, and every year there is usually a ton of competition for this award. Last year there were plenty of great candidates to choose from, and this year is no different. Top scorer Sigard Gunnar improved by 39 points this year, going from your typical all-star to a superstar in the blink of an eye. Jeff Downey also had a huge breakout season, with 106 points, surpassing his previous career high of 67, while also topping his hit and blocked shots career highs. Guy Lesieur of the Dragons a @lso had a big year, with 99 points, over 40 points higher than his previous career high. Wranglers defenseman General Zod also had a breakout year, going from 14 points to 66 while also having 100 more hits than the season prior. Despite all these names, it’s best to not overthink this award and go with the man who has been the favorite since the first week of S73; Ray Sheilds. After his pedestrian rookie season where he scored only 19 points, Sheilds burst onto the scene in S73. Sheilds was one of the top point scorers in the VHL after two weeks, and even though he didn’t keep up his pace, he still finished with 85 points, a whopping 66 point increase from his rookie year. Sheilds should be the favorite to earn the Funk.
Nominees: Ray Sheilds, Jeff Downey, Guy Lesieur
Favorite: Ray Sheilds
 
Scott Boulet Trophy
The Boulet is handed out to the forward that plays the best two-way game. Generally, the same handful of players are in contention for this award year after year, and this year seems to follow that trend. Phil Marleau led the league in hits with 373, and Chad Magnum finished second with 371, while Markus Nygren was third with 360 hits. All three of these players finished top ten in hits the season prior. Julius Freeman, last season's Boulet winner, had 260 hits and didn’t finish in the top ten for hits this year. Hits aren’t the only metric that are taken into account, as points also play a role, and plus minus can also be a small factor. Many people dislike using plus minus as a player stat because it doesn’t really tell the true story of how well a player plays, but it can be useful sometimes, and this is one of those situations. Nygren, Magnum and Marleau all have very similar hit totals and point totals, but Nygren has a plus 8, better than both Magnum and Marleau by 5 and 6 respectively. This isn’t a big enough margin to give Nygren the edge, but Nygren played for Los Angeles, an expansion team that finished in twelfth place in S73. Nygren even being a plus player is pretty incredible, and the fact that his line all finished as plus players could win over some voters. The Boulet is always a tough award to give out, but Nygren may have the slightest of edges headed into the awards show.
 
Nominees: Chad Magnum, Phil Marleau, Markus Nygren
Favorite: Markus Nygren
 
Alexander Valiq Trophy
The league's top offensive defenseman is awarded the Valiq Trophy. Despite Condor Adrienne and Luciano Valentine's efforts this season with a stunning 90 points, as well as teammates Hulk Hogan and Berocka Sundqvist putting up 93 points each, this award is centered around two players; Jeff Downey and Lincoln Tate. Downey has had solid seasons leading up to S73, but this year he truly became a star on the blue line, with 74 assists and 32 goals for 106 points. Lincoln Tate won the Beketov Trophy with 85 assists, but he also put in 20 goals for 105 points. Only one point separates the two players, so we need to look a little deeper to try to give someone the edge. Riga was much better than Vancouver this season, which could swing the odds towards Tate. However, Tate also had Guy Sasakamoose on the blue line, who had 88 points, while Downeys best defensive partner had only 68 points, which could give Downey an edge in some voters' eyes. Tate had 10 power play goals, while Downey had 18, which led the league. These two players are practically dead even. This is most likely the hardest award to pick a favorite on, but I think the power play production and lack of another high production defenseman gives Downey a very slight edge over Tate.
 
Nominees: Jeff Downey, Lincoln Tate, Hulk Hogan
Favorite: Jeff Downey
 
Jake Wylde Trophy
The Wylde Trophy is for the league's top defensive defenseman. Warsaw defenseman Alex Bridges led the league in blocked shots with 194, and also put up 259 hits in what was an incredible year for him. The only knock for Bridges is that he played for Warsaw, which put him in a situation where he could pad those stats, which could deter potential voters. Condor Adrienne of the Nighthawks also had a great year, with 273 hits and 171 blocked shots. He also played for a better team than Bridges, and since their stats are relatively close, the fact that Bridges played for a very weak team could really hurt his chances. Erik Killinger also could get some consideration, with 250 hits and 166 blocked shots in S73. You also have the incredible seasons of Jeff Downey and Lincoln Tate. Downey had 149 hits and 138 blocked shots, while Tate had 250 hits and 130 blocked shots. This award is another tough one to give out, but it all depends on how the voters view Bridges' success; is it a result of his skill, or were his numbers heavily inflated from playing on a poor team?
 
Nominees: Alex Bridges, Lincoln Tate, Condor Adrienne
Favorite: Lincoln Tate
 
Sterling Labatte Trophy
The league's top overall defenseman takes home the Labatte, one of the most prestigious awards the league has to offer. Jeff Downey and Lincoln Tate are obvious favorites due to their offensive productions, but there are plenty of other players who deserve some consideration. Hulk Hogan and Berocka Sundqvist both had 93 points this year while also putting up good defensive numbers. Condor Adrienne had 90 points as well as defensive stats that put him in the Wylde Trophy debate, and the same can be said for Alex Bridges. Despite all these great performances by defenseman, they are overshadowed by Downey and Tate. Downey may take home the Valiq, but Tate can also take home the Wylde. The difference between Tate and Downey’s offensive totals are very slim, but the difference in their defensive numbers are much greater, which is why Lincoln Tate may have the edge.
 
Nominees: Alex Bridges, Lincoln Tate, Jeff Downey
Favorite: Lincoln Tate
 
Greg Clegane Trophy
The Clegane goes to the goaltender with the lowest goals against average, which belongs to Jacques Lafontaine for the second consecutive year. His GAA of 2.46 just barely edged out Rayz Funk and A Red Guy.
 
Aidan Shaw Trophy
The Shaw Trophy is for the league's top goaltender. Jacques Lafontaine and Greg Eagles both had great seasons, but not good enough to earn serious consideration most likely. Lafontaine won the Clegane, but his .917 save percentage is too low to get votes, and while Eagles had a .920 save percentage and 2.54 GAA, it’s just a little behind the two frontrunners for the Shaw, which are Rayz Funk and A Red Guy. Funk has surprisingly never won the Shaw, but has put up some great seasons, and this year was one of his best. With a 2.48 GAA and a .921 GAA, as well as six shutouts, Funk was one of the top two goalies this year. The other goalie in question is the Americans netminder A Red Guy, who got a lot of votes for most outstanding player. He had a 2.51 GAA and a .928 save percentage in what was a career year for him. He also had eight shutouts, the most in the league in S73 and the most he’s had in a single season. A Red Guy likely has the edge over Funk but it certainly isn’t an easy decision.
 
Nominees: Greg Eagles, Rayz Funk, A Red Guy
Favorite: A Red Guy
 
Daisuke Kanou Trophy
The Kanou goes to the playoff MVP, and this year it couldn’t be an easier choice. Hats off to Scott Greene’s 22 points in 19 games, as well as Berocka Sundqvists 20 points, but Rayz Funk is without a doubt the Kanou winner this season. That brings his Kanou total to four, which is the record for most all time, beating out the one and only Daisuke Kanou, who won three in his career. Funk also broke the record for most playoff wins in a career this postseason, as he guided the Bears to a 3-1 comeback over the Wranglers in the conference finals before taking down the Titans in six. Funk’s .936 save percentage is nearly the best mark of his playoff career, while his goals against average of 2.04 is the second lowest through all of his postseason runs. The argument can be made that no player or goalie in VHL history raises their game more than Rayz Funk does in the playoffs. Perhaps in the future, this award will be named the Rayz Funk Trophy, although that is a bit unlikely. Funk should easily win his fourth Kanou of his career on awards night.
 
Nominees: Rayz Funk, Berocka Sundqvist, Scott Greene
Favorite: Rayz Funk
 
Scotty Campbell Trophy
Nicknamed after the league's greatest player, the Scotty Campbell Trophy goes out to the league's MVP. It is always difficult to pick favorites for this award. A Red Guy is the first player that jumps off the page, as his league best eight shutouts and .928 save percentage helped guide the Americans to 43 wins and fifth place in the league, despite not having a top 15 scorer this season. RJ Jubis for Calgary also can get some recognition with 99 points, which helped Calgary secure the second seed in the North American Conference. Perhaps Scott Greene gets some consideration as the top scorer on Seattle with 105 points this year with 75 assists. Lincoln Tate could also get some recognition for Riga, as their top scorer and one of the best defenseman in the league. Picking players as nominees for this award is really difficult, but I think the lack of a real stand out candidate really boosts A Red Guys chances. 
 
Nominees: Scott Greene, A Red Guy, Lincoln Tate
Favorite: A Red Guy
 
Thank you to those who read VSN’s S73 VHL Award Preview! Good luck to all players that are in the running for an award!
 
 

VHFL Members Rankings
SEASON 73 EDITION
 
 
 
 
 
Hi everyone, welcome to this first edition of VHFL Members Ranking. Basically, I will be ranking members based on how many TPE they have won from the VHFL in the last 5 seasons. This won't be a subjective ranking at all; I won't determine if someone is better at drafting than another. We're only going to look at the TPE gained over the last 5 seasons and assign every past season a multiplication factor, just like the IIHF does with their own World Ranking. The way the IIHF does it is that every season that pass, previous seasons ranking values are docked 25%. So in 2020, points earned in the 2020 World Championship are worth their full value, points earned in 2019 World Championship are worth 75% of the full value, and so on until 2016; points awarded in 2016 World Championship are not impacting the ranking anymore. Translate that to the VHFL, I'm going to do virtually the same thing, but with 5 seasons instead of 4. Why 5? I don't know. I was compiling the data and took a break after backtracking 5 seasons. Never got back into it so now I have 5-season worth of data lying around and figured I would work with that. My initial idea was to backtrack until the first VHFL seasons and see who were the all-time best VHFL players, but I don't think that'll be as interesting as this. I might get back into it at some point, but for now I'm going all-in with this Members Ranking.
 
Now, I don't know exactly where I'm going with that. I figured it would be something that's fun to do, but I also thought it could be interesting to maybe use the rankings when forming the groups in future season. I don't know. Instead of going randoms and having some strong groups, some worse groups, maybe force it so they all have top tier and bottom tier players in an equal ratio. Or purposefully make stronger groups where some of the best VHFL members face each other in an attempt to see which members come out on top when they are forced to draft against the best the league has to offer. It's just an idea, though. It can also simply be a ranking for the sake of ranking things, doesn't have to be used in any way.
 
 
 
 
 
The Formula
 
Since we are going with 5 seasons instead of 4 like the IIHF does, we are going to drop the value of past seasons by 20% for every season that past instead of 25%. The points we are awarding every season are the TPE their final position is giving them. So, 6 TPE for finishing 1st, 5 TPE for finishing 2nd, and so on, up to 1 TPE for finishing 6th and 0 TPE for not participating or getting disqualified. Since we are really only looking at the final VHFL results, I'm not considering the 1 TPE bonus awarded for members that managed their own groups. For this season's ranking, this gives us the following formula to calculate our point totals:
 
Points = (S72 TPE) + (S71 TPE * 0.8) + (S70 TPE * 0.6) + (S69 TPE * 0.4) + (S68 TPE * 0.2)  
Just to put the formula in context, if someone was to win his group every season from Season 68 to Season 72, they would be awarded 6.0 points in S72, 4.8 points in S71, 3.6 points in S70, 2.4 points in S69 and 1.2 points in S68, for a grand total of 18.0 points. No one can ever go over that. On the other side of the spectrum, someone who finished 6th every season would get a final score of 3.0. Now, members could score less than that if they haven't participated every season. The real minimum points someone could score by participating at least once would be 0.2, with a 6th-place finish 5 years ago and no other participation since, but this is not really interesting for our ranking.
 
The reason I have decided to go that way with the ranking instead of simply going with an average of the last couple of seasons is to avoid punishing newer members for their mistakes in their first couple of VHFL participations. We see this situation happen fairly often, new members are on their first player who's still in the VHLM, so they don't know too much about what's going on in the VHL. They draft based on what they know and, more often than not, they pick players that looked like they did well last season or, worse, they pick rookies that just got drafted early in the offseason. "I played with Groovy Dood last season and he did well, and he was justed drafted first overall; he'll probably do well next season in D.C., right?" But these same members could go on to become great at drafting and could become one of these members that you hate to have in your group, so it would be unfair to punish their ranking for their inexperience from many seasons ago.
 
 
 
 
 
The Ranking
 
So, the way I want to approach this is, I'll be segmenting the full 167-member list into tiers for every 2 points, and I will discuss some members in every tier. We're already around 1,000 words in, so let's just dive right in.
 
 
 
 
 
Tier I: 14.0+
 
RK MEMBER PTS S72 S71 S70 S69 S68 1 @gorlab 16.2 6 4 6 6 5 2 @GustavMattias 16.0 5 5 6 6 5 2 @OrbitingDeath 16.0 6 6 6 2 4 4 @McWolf 15.8 5 6 6 4 4 5 @Tagger 15.4 6 6 5 4   6 @Victor 15.2 6 6 4 4 2 6 @rjfryman
15.2 6 4 5 6 3 6 @STZ 15.2 6 5 5 3 5 9 @Velevra 14.4 3 6 5 6 6 10 @Mr_Hatter 14.2 4 5 5 6 4  
I'll say it once so he'll be proud of me: gorlab was gifted with the mad VHFL skills. OrbitingDeath isn't too bad either, fresh off 3 straight group wins. First thing you'll notice by examining this part of the table is the sheer abundance of 6s and 5s. You don't end up in this top tier without winning or coming close to win most of the time. These 10 members combine for 21 wins and 13 2nd-place finishes in the last 5 seasons. 34 top 2 finishes over 49 participations (looking at you Tagger, and your DNP in S68.) But how are these members consistently so good? Is there a way to draft that these ten follow mindlessly? We'll take a look at the position breakdown of this most recent S73 VHFL Draft and see if we can find any correlation.
 

 
A tendency is easy to decypher here. In the first two rounds, our 10 top drafters have selected a total of 15 forwards and 5 defensemen, with everyone picking at least one forward. Then, in the third round, our members went with forwards only 3 times and with defensemen the 7 remaining times. Halfway through the draft, 6 of our experts had 2 forwards and 1 defenseman, 3 had the opposite, 1 forward and 2 defenemen and only 1, Velevra, went all-in with forwards, filling his 3 spots in as many rounds. Rounds 4 and 5 were mostly used to round out the rest of the team, with 4 members going for goaltenders in these rounds, while most of them opted to keep them for the ultimate round. There's not one secret recipe that makes you win everytime. I guess the best strategy is in finding value in the later rounds. I personally like to draft forwards early, because the big names usually score big, and I draft defensemen later because I find it easy to find some steals. If some others like gorlab and STZ are finding success by selecting defensemen early but getting good value with late forward selections, good for them. But then, what makes for a good value pick? How can these members determine which players are due to take a step up before the other members catch up on it? The answer is magic. Honestly though, I'm not going to give up my own way of picking late-round defensemen, but we'll take a look at the players these 10 members have selected the most often, just for fun. #1 might surprise you.
 
PLAYER # Alex Bridges 4 A Red Guy 3 Cinnamon Block 3 Lance Flowers 3 Julius Freeman 3 Benny Graves 3 Jaxx Hextall 3 Thomas Landry II 3 Phil Marleau 3 Ray Sheilds 3  
Alex Bridges comes at first, with 4 selections in 10 rounds. He's not the guy we usually think about when we talk about the VHFL and which players should be selected the most often. The rest of table is mostly populated by players you'd expect to see here: A Red Guy, Cinnamon Block, Lance Flowers, Julius Freeman, Benny Graves, Jaxx Hextall, Ray Sheilds. Ok, maybe you wouldn't have expected Sheilds to make the list in the offseason, but he had an insane season start and people started selecting him way early in their respective groups. The three that got him did so later than earlier, so they did find value with this pick. The other two that were selected 3 times, Thomas Landry II and Phil Marleau are not players that ever really scored a lot. Their career highs in goals and points are respectively 34 and 66 for Landry and 22 and 54 for Marleau. So why are they being selected so much? Because they hit. Simply saying they hit is a massive understatement; they hit a lot, and that ties in with the one tendency that might be easy to overlook, but possibly the most important of all. These 10 members' VHFL rosters are filled with players that are going to hit a lot. On average, their skaters have 79.1 Checking and 46.2 Discipline. All in all, there wer only two skaters selected by one of our elite VHFL drafters who has less than 60 Checking: Guy Lesieur, selected by Victor, and Jerry Wang, selected by gorlab. Alternatively, only one player selected by the same drafters has more than 60 Discipline, but Freeman's 80 Discipline is vastly overshadowed by his 90 Checking. Every skater taken by these 10 members had at least as much TPE invested in their Checking stat than in their Discipline stat; no one had a higher Discipline; Lesieur, Wang, Freeman and Hulk Hogan were the only four players with a gap of less than 20 between the two attributes. Hitting is vastly underrated when it comes to the VHFL, and this is something these 10 Tier I members understood literally years ago.
 
 
 
 
 
Tier II: 12.0-13.8
 
RK MEMBER PTS S72 S71 S70 S69 S68 11 @DollarAndADream 13.8 6 3 3 6 6 12 @chillzone 13.6 2 6 6 6 4 12 @DMaximus 13.6 4 5 6 4 2 14 @Jayrad28 13.4 6 3 5 4 2 15 @Jubis 13.2 5 5 5 3   16 @Acydburn 13.0 5 6 3 1 5 16 @Dil 13.0 5 3 4 5 6 16 @enigmatic 13.0 6 2 3 6 6 19 @omgitshim 12.8 4 5 2 6 6 20 @GRZ 12.6 4 6 4 2 3 20 @studentized 12.6 5 4 4 4 2 20 @leafsman 12.6 6 4 4 1 3 23 @Jbeezy76 12.0 5 3 4 3 5 23 @hedgehog337 12.0 3 5 6 3 1 23 @jRuutu 12.0 5 1 6 6 1  
In this second tier, we start seeing a bit less wins and a bit more bad performances. Still, there are only 3 members in this group of 15 without a group win in the last 5 seasons: Jubis, studentized and Jbeezy76. Most members here got a pattern of showing greatness one season, only to fall back down the next season. One good example of that would be our friend chillzone, who won his group three straight seasons from S69 to S71, but his ranking tanked because of the recency bias of my method. His 2 TPE last season really hurt him here. Maybe analyzing the positional breakdown of members in this tier, along with their own favourite players this season might give us an idea why they are slightly overshadowed by their rivals of Tier I.
 
Quick parenthesis before we get into it: I said earlier that I'd love for this ranking to be used to form the groups, but in the meantime, it's a good tool to evaluate group strength. Upon seeing these first two tiers, I feel super bad for Group 4's newcomer @Crstats23, who had to faceoff against Victor (6), Velevra (9), DollarAndADream (11), hedgehog337 (24) and - we'll see him in the next tier - Patrik Tallinder (31). And with all odds against him, I look at his team and he did well. I wouldn't be surprised if he sneaked in the 3rd or 4th position.
 

 
Once again, we can see the same kind of tendency that we saw from the 10 members from Tier I: no goalies were taken in the first three rounds, with a big focus on forwards in these same rounds. In fact, four members selected their three forwards with their top three picks and five others went with two forwards and a defenseman. The last three rounds were a mixed bag, with about as many players from every position being selected overall, as our 12 teams slowly filled their remaining roster slots. Nothing out of the ordinary here, compared to Tier I. Let's take a look at this tier's favourite players.
 
PLAYER # Brock Louth 4 Lincoln Tate 4 Greg Eagles 3 Julius Freeman 3 Sigard Gunnar 3 Hunter Hearst Helmsley 3 Hulk Hogan 3 Jet Jaguar 3 Mikko Lahtinen 3 Erik Summers 3  
Most selected players here are Brock Louth and Lincoln Tate, which makes sense. They are both high TPE stars on their respective teams. The rest of the list is composed of similarly high TPE players. Much less surprising results than for Tier I, where we saw guys like Alex Bridges and Thomas Landry II be selected so often. The most surprising common pick in tier II is probably Sigard Gunnar, but it's mostly surprising how well he's been playing this season. No one expected him to be the league leader in goals and points from literally day one, but truth is, he's been a reliable power hitting forward in VHFL for 2 seasons now, so it's not surprising to see 3 members trust him in their respective drafts. And that part about power hitting kind of ties in with my next point: CK and DI. The average skater drafted by a Tier I member had 79.1 Checking and 46.2 Discipline and, while the tendency towards drafting high-CK, low-DI skaters is still present among Tier II members, there's a non-negligeable difference in the results. In fact, the average Checking among these players is 72.8 and the average Discipline is 49.7 - a difference of -6.3 in CK and +3.5 in DI.  Moreover, more players with low CK were drafted, as 7 different players with less 60 CK were selected, and 5 players even had a higher or equal Discipline: Guy Lesieur and Owen Nolan are both 40-40 in both attributes respectively, while Acyd Burn is 56-60, Micheal Gary Scott is 86-90 and Gabriel Gutzwiler is 40-60. I won't start saying these players are 100% bad picks because of their low hitting potential, but they're bound to end up with least points than their rivals with high hitting potential, just because of that sweet 0.2 point added per hit. The raw difference of -6.3 in CK and +3.5 in DI might not seem like a whole lot, but it means the gap is 9.8 lesser and, with 5 skaters on every team, that can start making a big difference in the end.
 
 
 
 
 
Tier III: 10.0-11.8
 
RK MEMBER PTS S72 S71 S70 S69 S68 26 @.sniffuM 11.8 1 6 6 3 6 26 @MexicanCow123 11.8 5 5 3 1 3 26 @Ricer13 11.8 6 4 1 5   29 @CowboyinAmerica 11.6 6 2 1 6 5 30 @diamond_ace 11.2 4 6 4     31 @Patrik Tallinder 11.0 5 3 3 4 1 32 @Tape-to-Tape 10.8 6 6       32 @BladeMaiden 10.8   6 6 3 6 32 @bluesfan55 10.8 6 1 5   5 32 @Midnite 10.8 2 4 6 2 6 32 @Enorama 10.8 4 4 3 2 5 37 @Jubo07 10.6 1 6 3 5 5 38 @Advantage 10.4 6   2 6 4 39 @FrostBeard 10.0 5 3 1 3 4  
And this is where we started to seeing a mixbag of patterns, I guess. Some people who draft really well most of the time, but missed their shot in one or two occasions. Some others who pretty much always finish near the middle, but participate steadily and get the low-hanging fruit that is the free TPE from participating and finishing low in the standings. In my opinion, there are three outliers in this group; three members with fun scoring patterns. .sniffuM, BladeMaiden, Tape-to-Tape. Two of them are extremely similar, .sniffuM and BladeMaiden won their respective group thrice in 4 seasons from S68 to S71, but then proceeded to score 1 or 0 last season. Their resume up to last year would have easily put them in the top tier, but one underwhelming performance last season single-handedly killed their ranking, which I feel is one of the issue with setting up the formula that way. It's a bit too late to go back though, maybe I'll adjust it before next season though. The third player in my shortlist, Tape-to-Tape, is the absolute opposite. He didn't participate in 3 of the 5 seasons used in the rankings, but straight victories in S71 and S72 gives him a total of 10.8 points, good for 32nd overall... tied with BladeMaiden.
 
From now on, I won't do an advanced analysis on every member's S73 VHFL draft, like the positional breakdown and most common players per tier. They're very time consuming, and I feel like the results would get more random, as later tiers appear to be a mix of people being average on a yearly basis and people showing glimpses of greatness some seasons, then drafting a bit worse the next. The first two tiers were enough to tell the story I wanted to tell anyway and with 62 games played per team now, I think it's more than time to just finish this article and move on to some other things (like nothing, I'll be claiming that for 4 weeks, see you later!)
 
 
 
 
 
Tier IV: 8.0-9.8
 
RK MEMBER PTS S72 S71 S70 S69 S68 40 Proto 9.8 5 6       40 @MMFLEX 9.8 3 4 2 5 2 42 @JeffD 9.6 5   4 4 3 42 @Big Mac 9.6 2 4 4 5   42 @oilmandan 9.6 3 4 2 5 1 45 @Greg_Di 9.4 4 1 2 6 5 45 @TXC 9.4 4 3 4 1 1 45 @ColeMrtz 9.4 4 2 1 5 6 48 @dasboot 9.2 6 4       48 @Mike 9.2 6 4       48 @Spartan 9.2 6 4       48 @zepheter 9.2 3 2 5 4   48 @Tate 9.2 1 4 6 2 3 53 @TTtheT 9.0 5 5       53 @Josh 9.0 3 1 5 3 5 53 @Phil 9.0 4 4 2 1 1 56 @a_Ferk 8.8 4 6       57 @Quik 8.6 5 3     6 57 @TheLastOlympian07 8.6 3   6 5   59 @Renomitsu 8.4 2 2 3 5 5 59 @Matt_O 8.4 6 1   3 2 59 @Corco 8.4 5 2 3     62 @TheFlash 8.2 1 6 4     62 @Seabass 8.2 2 3 2 5 3 62 @Bushito 8.2 3 1 3 4 5 65 @Erik Summers 8.0 1 6 2 1 3 65 @Cxsquared 8.0 1 3 4 4 3 65 @wcats 8.0 4 2 1 2 5  
Our average tier, as finishing with 3 TPE every season for 5 straight season would net you a score of 9.0. Like in the last two tiers, we see some members getting average results year after year, others getting good results some years, bad results other years and, finally, some potential future VHFL greats, as we have 5 members with 10 total TPE gained over the last two seasons, their only two participations. In fact, dasboot, Mike, Spartan, TTtheT and a_Ferk are ranging from scores of 9.2 and 8.8 after playing only 2 seasons because they all got back-to-back top 3 finishes. I expect at least a couple of them will feature in a higher tier as soon as next season.
 
 
 
 
 
Tier V: 6.0-7.8
 
RK MEMBER PTS S72 S71 S70 S69 S68 68 Jtv123 7.8 3 2 3 2 3 69 Nykonax 7.6 2 2 2 5 4 70 Beaviss 7.4 1 1 5 4 5 70 Rayzor_7 7.4 3 2 1 4 3 72 Anthony Matthews 7.2 1   5 6 4 72 fonziGG 7.2 1 5   4 3 74 Doomsday 7.0 3 5       74 solas 7.0 3 5       74 Sonnet 7.0 4 3 1     74 Esso2294 7.0 2 3 1 3 4 78 fever95 6.8   3 6 2   78 animal74 6.8 4 1 2 2   80 Kekzkrieg 6.6 1 2 4 3 2 81 BigTittySmitty 6.4 4 3       81 Philliefan 6.4   3 3 4 3 81 Beketov 6.4 1 2 1 5 6 81 Poptart 6.4 1 4 1 1 6 85 DoktorFunk 6.2 1   5 5 1 85 Matmenzinger 6.2   4 3 2 2 85 Motzaburger 6.2 2 3 1 2 2 85 DarkSpyro 6.2 4 1 1 2   89 ahockeyguy 6.0 6         89 twists 6.0 6         89 Sharkstrong 6.0 5       5  
And this is where I stop tagging people. Except maybe a couple of them. @Beketov, how are you guys bad at VHFL? You've been here for literally a decade. Same goes to you @Beaviss. I remember being scared of having you in my groups when I started back in S62, but it seems like you're the one that should have been scared. Honestly, there's more players here that participated all seasons and just did bad everytime. The more I look at it, the more I think I will limit the ranking to maybe 50 names next season. There are too many people here who visually don't care as much about VHFL as I do.
 
 
 
 
 
Tier VI: 5.8-
 
RK MEMBER PTS S72 S71 S70 S69 S68 92 HearnNation67 5.8 5 1       92 McLovin 5.8 2 2 2 2 1 94 Berocka 5.4 2 1 2 1 5 95 Dalton Wilcox 5.2     3 6 5 95 BarzalGoat 5.2 4 1     2 97 Ahma 5.0 5         97 rory 5.0 5         97 Spence King 5.0 5         100 ng1291 4.8 4 1       100 VinCal 4.8 4 1       102 Alex Bridges 4.4 2 3       102 Z16 4.4 3     3 1 104 Ferda 4.0   5       104 flatl99 4.0 4         106 Zyrok 3.8 3 1       107 Banackock 3.6   4   1   107 pennypenny 3.6 2 2       107 NyQuil 3.6     6     110 Cornholio 3.4 1 2     4 110 Frank 3.4     5   2 110 LittleRiDog 3.4     5   2 110 Peace 3.4 2 1 1     110 HenrikZoiderberg 3.4     3 2 4 115 VanCanWin 3.2       5 6 115 KC15 3.2     1 5 3 117 Boragina 3.0 3         117 der meister 3.0 3         117 Elmebeck 3.0     3 3   117 Pengu 3.0 3         117 Sharkie 3.0 3         122 Walter Fizz 2.4   3       122 Nothing but goals 2.4     4     124 NumberJ5 2.0       2 6 124 Da_Berr 2.0 2         124 GrittyIsKing09 2.0 2         124 KnightRiley 2.0 2         124 ROOKIE74 2.0 2         124 SweatyBeaver 2.0 2         124 Zetterberg 2.0 2         131 Snussu 1.8 1       4 131 jacobaa19 1.8 1 1       133 SDCore 1.6       1 6 134 Sade 1.2         6 134 Elhandon 1.2         6 134 HughJas_ 1.2         6 134 Patpou22 1.2       3   134 BigBallerFromDownUnder 1.2       1 4 134 Grant 1.2     2     134 Kendrick 1.2     2     141 Kylrad 1.0         5 141 Aye my name jeff 1.0 1         141 Bacon 1.0 1         141 bigAL 1.0 1         141 eaglesfan036 1.0 1         141 Hylands 1.0 1         147 Smarch 0.8         4 147 Brrisbrr 0.8         4 147 Bruins10 0.8         4 147 MetalToday 0.8         4 147 FBR 0.8         4 147 StamkosFan 0.8         4 147 scoop 0.8   1       154 DizzyWithLogic 0.6         3 154 Thatguy91 0.6         3 154 Gaudette 0.6       1 1 154 JDGraves 0.6     1     158 majesiu 0.4         2 158 TukTukTheGreat 0.4         2 158 jack 0.4         2 158 Joubo 0.4         2 162 SidTheKid87 0.2         1 162 Steve 0.2         1 162 Sullvino 0.2         1 162 MacH 0.2         1 162 Juddy 0.2         1 162 Bucky___lastard 0.2         1  
And this is where it ends. I'll literally only tag 2 members here: the only 2 who scored so low despite participating in all 5 seasons of VHFL. Keep it up @McLovin, @Berocka. Nowhere to go but up! I don't know why I'm still doing this. I could lie and say I'm word padding now, but truth is I went above 2,000 words somewhere while I was talking about Tier II I think. I'll just stop now. This will be better next season, I swear.

I was doing something at some point in the past year and noted some of the weirdly winningest players in VHL history. The non Hall of Famers who just kept winning. Kinda like Will Clarke except he's obviously gonna get inducted after winning 7 Continental Cups in 7 seasons. @Will
 
One is Marcel Faux, one of jus 9 players ever to win 4 or more Continental Cups. He was there for Helsinki's repeat in S45 and S46 and caught the back end of the Toronto threepeat before retiring, only playing 6 VHL seasons in total. But before that he won 2 Founder's Cups in the VHLM meaning he won a championship in 6 of 8 seasons in the big or minor leagues. @Tylar
 
Another player who has 4 Continental Cups is Doug Schneider from way back. He made the finals in each of his 7 seasons from S2 to S8. But less famously, his son Danny Schneider is one of 28 players to win 3 Founder's Cups, claiming a hattrick from S40 to S42. The Schneiders have winning in their genes. @Da Bearfan
 
There were a couple other examples. Hudson Abbott, the original Will Clarke really, played 3 VHL seasons and won cups in each one (S54 to S56). He also got a Founder's Cup in S53. Shane Mars, the inactive god, won in the VHLM in S65, in the VHL in S67, got top rookie in S66 and despite retiring years ago was clearly better than HHH. And finally, Biggie Shakur, a rare example of a double winner both in the VHLM and VHL. @Bushito @Spade18
 
None of these players made the Hall of Fame but had arguably more enjoyable careers than some who did.

@Corco would like a word with you

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- Toronto's backup goalie, TOR G, has played in five starts for Toronto's VHL team. Unfortunately for the Legion, and himself we're sure, his record of 1-3-1 hasn't been exactly what the club was looking for. While TOR G does possess a respectable save percentage at .925, he's let in nearly three goals every game he's started. His most recent victory aside, a 3-1 win over the Moscow Menace, dropped his GAA to 2.97 and earned the backup his first victory of the season. 
 
Being tossed under the bus though? Well that's something to be expected for what is essentially a robot at this point, really. 

"We had higher hopes," Erik Killinger admitted. "We could have played better, but there were games where there was nothing we could do and soft goals were still allowed." 

Toronto is 12-10-3 now, two points above expansion team LA for the fourth position in the conference.  

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- The season is less than twenty four hours away, and people are steadily making their predictions. One player, however, seems to be lacking from the majority of the votes -- in fact I don't think I saw him once as a prediction for top rookie for season seventy three. The chance for Mr. Gainer to take the top rookie award is actually pretty strong, although he does have some serious competition with the top picks of the most recent VHL Entry Draft. 

Gainer will be slotted on the top line to start the season, a trial period if you will, but will likely keep his position at the 1LW position primarily due to his quick development that'll inevitably outpace Lehtinen Jr after his natural regression. While no one is predicting him to have a point-per-game rookie season, as those are long in the past and nearly an absent memory, it is possible for Gainer to produce offensively off the talents of Magnum and McDagg. 

I'm predicting he wins top rookie. 

I decided to go ahead and sim a pre-season this year, 48 games of action each team played their division twice for a total of 6 games for every team. Lines were auto'd. I'm going to go ahead and post all the game links in this thread as opposed to create one for every game, given the total number. Enjoy!
 
Game 1: London vs Helsinki
Game 2: LA vs Vancouver
Game 3: Warsaw vs Prague
Game 4: Seattle vs Calgary
Game 5: Moscow vs Riga
Game 6: Chicago vs Toronto
Game 7: Malmo vs Davos
Game 8: New York vs DC
Game 9: Helsinki vs London
Game 10: Chicago vs New York
Game 11: Davos vs Malmo
Game 12: Prague vs Moscow
Game 13: Riga vs Warsaw
Game 14: LA vs Seattle
Game 15: Vancouver vs Calgary
Game 16: Calgary vs LA
Game 17: DC vs Chicago
Game 18: New York vs Toronto
Game 19: Prague vs Warsaw
Game 20: Seattle vs Vancouver
Game 21: Davos vs Helsinki
Game 22: Riga vs Moscow
Game 23: Toronto vs DC
Game 24: London vs Malmo
Game 25: Toronto vs Chicago
Game 26: DC vs New York
Game 27: Warsaw vs Riga
Game 28: Malmo vs London
Game 29: Vancouver vs Seattle
Game 30: Helsinki vs Davos
Game 31: Moscow vs Prague
Game 32: Seattle vs LA
Game 33: LA vs Calgary
Game 34: Malmo vs Helsinki
Game 35: Davos vs London
Game 36: Riga vs Prague
Game 37: DC vs Toronto
Game 38: New York vs Chicago
Game 39: Warsaw vs Moscow
Game 40: Calgary vs Vancouver
Game 41: Chicago vs DC
Game 42: Calgary vs Seattle
Game 43: Vancouver vs LA
Game 44: Moscow vs Warsaw
Game 45: Prague vs Riga
Game 46: Toronto vs New York
Game 47: London vs Davos
Game 48: Helsinki vs Malmo