NotAVHLM-GM

Whoa, oh, oh, oh!
 

Whoa, oh, oh, oh!
 

I keep confusing myself with that name lol

Boston, MA
 
I am also @OrbitingDeath brother. 

Player Information
Username: stevo
Player Name: Ron World Peace III
Recruited From: Returning
Age: 18
Position: D
Height: 80 in.
Weight: 250 lbs.
Birthplace: Germany

Player Page
@VHLM GM

Well that's mighty stupid. At leat it gives me a thing to complain about for my first article

Recruited him back, could you confirm this please RED? 

RED!!!

He has been long away enough, you sure as hell can

Robin Nilsson - @RomanesEuntDomus
 
Assuming I can claim a lapsed member, of course.
 
Lapsed member? Damn refractory period....

Hehe even though i pushed you over the line today lol.
 
@der meister go claim this joint effort recruit

I see where you coming from, but I must say the bot actually has gotten me more involved with the league/team, but yeah, I keep the talks in our own lockerroom.
Everytime the notification pops up for our game results most of us actually have a look and comment on our own performances.
 
This is something that for me rarely happened before.

I'll weigh in as someone who's done both.
 
 
Benefits to being a VHLM GM:
You are THE ONE PERSON making a huge impact on the league careers of a lot of people--and that feels really good. Want to become the sole favorite member of the league for a small group of people? There is no better way to do that than to be an active, caring VHLM GM. I got so much credit for my time in Mississauga just because I happened to be active enough to answer questions and would do what I could to start conversations with the players here and there--and I'm antisocial as all hell. If I can do it, anyone can. It's easier. Doesn't really matter how good you are at running a team and winning theoretically shouldn't even be your goal. VHLM locker rooms are, in general, more active. If you want a solid team environment, that's much easier to achieve as a GM in the minors. Drawbacks to being a VHLM GM:
There is so much drama among the VHLM GM community. I'm not blaming this on anyone, and it's clear that fingers shouldn't even be pointed even if there are, at any one point or another, any repeat offenders. No matter who the GMs are (I saw a fair amount of turnover in my 4 seasons), there will be drama. I'd chalk that up to inexperience and a certain drive that a lot of newer GMs have to want to prove themselves worthy. Again, nobody's fault in particular, but it exists, has always existed, and probably will always exist. You need to maintain a high level of activity. I'm less active than I was in my time with the Hounds (still pretty active, but not spending every waking minute here and writing huge multi-claimable articles for the hell of it every week anymore) and I'm confident that if I were to be running a VHLM team with my preferred current level of activity, I'd never build up quite the same the reputation I had, nor would I have been as successful retention-wise. Granted, you don't need to spend every waking minute here--but being among the first to offer to new signups and being consistently around to answer questions from new members is paramount to success. There's no real team-building aspect other than a boring "alternately tank and compete" meta. There really shouldn't be any team-building aspect apart from "how active can you keep your players," for reasons I've complained about in earlier articles, but actual strategy, beyond what's obvious, really isn't a thing.  
Benefits to being a VHL GM:
You're generally much more respected in the league as a whole. Maybe not for your own team--everyone's been through at least one season, so you can't be the grand master teacher for many people, but more people who have never played for you will look up to you and recognize your name and player if you're a VHL GM than if you're in the minors. The GM community as a whole is easier to deal with. Again, this is not meant to point fingers at any VHLM GMs. At the big level, there's no need to prove yourself worthy of promotion because you've already proven yourself worthy. VHL GMs are also generally more experienced, and maturity is often a defining factor in deciding who gets a job. In general, everyone understands that everyone else is just trying to act in the best interest of their own team, and that's that. People are more willing to consider accommodating your goals if you're willing to do the same for them. It's a lot more fun to make moves and building a team to win is actually the goal. Long-term strategy exists! Nobody comes out of a season with exactly the same goals they thought they'd have coming into it. Things change with time and the job is dynamic. Drafting a player doesn't impact your team for that season; in some cases, it can impact your team for its entire foreseeable future, one way or another. You don't need to be as active as in the VHLM. You should be--and, in fact, shame on any GM who doesn't make an effort to connect with their players on a personal level--but you don't need to be there literally all the time to have a good team and be proud of your community. I'm busier than I was a year ago, and can say that being a VHL GM, in contrast to VHLM, puts me in a much better place. I don't need to feel weird about not being online if I'm caught up in a project or something for a day or two, because everyone knows what they're doing and something like that won't make people lose interest and go inactive on me.  Drawbacks to being a VHL GM:
It's a lot harder to build a community, and locker rooms in general are less active in the VHL. That's just how it is. There's a lot less turnover, you're not welcoming a full roster every season, and there's no constant stream of waiver signings throughout the season making things consistently new and interesting. Davos is active by VHL standards and it's still nowhere near where Mississauga was. Much like you can't be THE ONE PERSON for anyone in the VHL, I'd also like to add that it's a lot easier to make people dislike you as a GM. It's very difficult to manage a team in a way that makes every player happy--people want to be first line, people want to play with this one teammate, people don't like how the sims have been treating either their player or the team. There's a lot of "grass is greener elsewhere" mentality, and it's not like that isn't warranted--most members aren't GMs, and the entire definition of success for a lot of people is the performance of their own player. THAT'S OKAY AND I DON'T BLAME ANYONE FOR IT. It's just a fact of life as a VHL GM that everyone will want you to do what's best for their own player, all the time, and doing that for everyone is impossible.  STHS do really be like that sometimes. There's a lot more of a "more TPE = more wins" correlation in the VHLM, as teams are either good or they're not. This is a lot less evident in the VHL, where there isn't as much parity between teams at a proportional level. Think about this--in the VHLM, a 200-TPA player has a huge advantage over a 100-TPA player. Double the TPA and (probably) almost double the upgrade points. A 700-TPA player compared to a 1000-TPA player isn't quite the same--sure, one would expect someone at 1000 to consistently outperform someone at 700, but the update scale is much harsher when you get higher up and things can get muddled. Someone with Scoring at 99 already has a 48-TPA advantage over someone with it just five points lower. So things are much closer than they appear--sure, there are general trends, and there should be general trends, but there's more randomness. A team can be inexplicably bad or inexplicably good, and the sims are much more aggravating to deal with because it's often incredibly unclear what the problem is (or even if there's a problem, or you're just having bad luck). smh I really should have written this as a media spot

Hey there everyone who cares to read what I write. 

So, at the time of writing this sentence, it is 1.55 AM and I am having another sleepless night so what a better way to spend it then to write a Media piece for your favourite Sim experience. Not going to lie, I have thought about many things to write about but this is the thing I have wanted to touch upon for about 2.5 months now. The question for today is: What was more fun to GM - VHLM or VHL?

For those who are fairly new to the league, I was the GM of Houston Bulls from S66 to S70. I would say that I was an okay GM. Not a great one for VHLM as my real life location did not help with engagement with new recruits and people who needed help. Sometimes it took over 8 hours to answer a simple question that would have taken me 20 seconds to answer. There were some amazing players to go through my Houston Bulls at some point in their career - guys like Frederick Elmebeck, Soren Jensen and Erik Summers. I did my best to keep everybody happy and active that said, I do know that my LR was never on the top list for the activity. It might have been because I did not have an AGM at that time.

In S71, when ADV decided to step down as GM of Malmo Nighthawks, position opened up and a friend of mind suggested me for this position and well, here we are. I think I have done fairly well as GM of Nighthawks. In 4 seasons I have tried and done my best to turn this team around and help it get to be as dominant as it can possibly be. It surely helps when you have amazing loyal guys like Kendrick and OD on the squad, guys who have been here since my first season at the helm of this team. Surely, help from ADV and other, more recently acquired and drafted players make as huge of difference. Everybody here is ready to be there for their teams and their buddies. 

So, I spent 5 seasons in VHLM, now in my fourth in VHL. I guess the question of "fun" depends. I really enjoyed having to teach people about the league, help them on their way. I think it was really cool to be named GM of the year in VHLM but really, it was more about people and helping them to be better and be there for them. I think for me, VHL is different kind of fun. While VHLM was fun in terms of having new conversations, learning new things about people around me, VHL is about making wins and loses fun for everyone. VHL for me is a place to prove myself that I can GM a long term team rather than make a team that can compete for 2 seasons and then change it up with another set of new guys as it usually happened in VHLM. 

I guess VHL makes me enjoy the GMing part more. VHLM made me enjoy friendships I had with people around. Calls from Elme at 2 AM with him showing his house around and the job he put up, chats with SweetMike about our Latvian things that could have gone forever and more, more discussions with my Bulls. Eh, in the end, I think it is a lot less time consuming to be a VHL GM and currently it is better for me, in the long run - being VHLM GM is still going to be the most important thing I have done in VHL. 

This off season which is a couple weeks away. Until then you might get an offer as a free agent player from a @VHLM GMGeneral Manager.

Let me know if you need any help getting your player started.

Watch this become your HoF player lol

Hulk Hogan Jr is what you wound up having to go with?
 

4 players down, 2 more self sentred egocentric maniacs to go for a starting line-up ❤️ 
 
Thanks for putting LeBeau in net though @der meister

I was updating the VHL records section yesterday which is quite an easy task in these low-scoring days – in the vast majority of spreadsheets, all I had to do was change “Updated to S70” to “Updated to S73”.
 
However, there were a couple new additions to the top 25 lists that I thought I'd flag.
 
S72 – Condor Adrienne @OrbitingDeath
Playing Season 72 on a paper-thin Malmo squad, Adrienne announced himself to the league as more than just a former first overall pick but also a serious HOF contender. The second ever defenceman to lead the league in scoring and first since S14, Adrienne didn't quite hit the heights of the spreadsheet I created specifically for him, slowing down to a 100-point finish (still the highest mark in four seasons), but did score 23 powerplay goals in a single season.
 
That wasn't quite up there with the great Alexander Valiq (record holder with 30 PPG in S31), but did put Adrienne in a tie for eighth place and the highest mark in this category in nearly 40 seasons. It's good to see a more modern name on a list that became a bit of a closed club in recent years.
 
Full ranking: https://vhlforum.com/topic/254-powerplay-goals-in-a-regular-season/
 
 
S72 – Phil Marleau @Phil
Phil is one of the few modern players striving to be a hard-hitting two-way forward. The two-way bit hasn't massively worked out but he has become a feared hitter and I will miss drafting him in the VHFL like a cheat code. At a frankly ridiculous 6-hit-per-game pace in S74, Marleau will actually place even better soon (he's currently on pace for 443 hits this season, good for second all-time) but already has 13th place on the list thanks to 404 hits in S72, the first player to crack the 400 mark in 10 seasons.
 
Full ranking: https://vhlforum.com/topic/257-hits-in-one-regular-season/
 

Couldn't imagine that people are this self-centered right?

4 players down, 2 more self sentred egocentric maniacs to go for a starting line-up ❤️ 
 
Thanks for putting LeBeau in net though @der meister

#GuiltyAsCharged But glad I didn't had to cheat to achieve a team lol

Adrienne and Malmo slowing down.
 
After again having a blast off at the beginning of the season, Condor Adrienne has landed back on earth again. After just a single point in his last two games, he is now equal in points again with Lincoln Tate, one of his biggest rivals (in a friendly way) of the last seasons.

With 40 games played, both of them have scored 66 points, while Adrienne scores more goals, Tate is the assist master with Riga. But where Tate is trending upwards, Adrienne trends downwards again and seems to already lose his chance for the scoring title. 
 
It is not only Adrienne who is slowing down, but with him the Malmo Nighthawks who are on the verge of losing grip of their first position in the European Conference as Moscow who are on a four game winning streak have two points less with one game in hand. 
 
Hopefully both Malmo and Adrienne will be able to pick themselves up again for the last half of the season, the team made a nice jump forward this year and they hope this could be their season. But it is still a long way ahead for them...

Couldn't imagine that people are this self-centered right?