BladeMaiden

@Spartan❤️

I think it’s not a secret that we’re all going to miss @Victor being a VHLE Commissioner. The person who will be taking over his position will have some pretty big shoes to fill. Victor really helped flesh out the E and was a strong force to get it where it is today. I personally can not thank Victor enough for his contributions to the E, the league and just as a person. He listened to me go off on a tangent quite a few times and just let me get it out.  
 
So now that I got all the mushy out, lets get to why I really made this announcement. Knowing that Victor was going to step down this season, we needed to find a replacement. The person that we had in mind to fill the position would have to be a good fit not only to work alongside me, they also would have to be passionate about the league and have experience in many different roles within the league. This person has been a great contributing member of the league for a few years and has worked alongside me since I joined the league. We’ve worked together in many different roles, one of which being co-commissioners together for a few seasons. All of these reasons are how I know that they’ll be able to jump on board and we’ll be able to give the VHLE the best that they have. 
 
So without me rambling any further the new VHLE Commissioner is 
 
 
Lets all congratulate said person on their new role!

Bana's & Beav's S82 Quick Q's 
Press Conference Rules
Seattle Bears Team Page
S82 Draft
S81 VHL Index
S81 VHLE Index
S81 VHLM Index
 
 
*Follow PC Rules. Each time PC is posted, there enough questions for you to answer for multiple weeks if there isn't for the following week. You have to answer or ask 6 questions, in any combination. ANYONE is more than welcome to ask and answer questions. ENJOY!  
 
1. Who should the Bears target in the draft tonight with their picks?
2. If the draft is over, how do you think the Bears did?
3. Who should the Bears target in Free Agency?
4. What are your overall thoughts on your players performance last season?
5. Thoughts on Vancouver winning the Continental Cup?
6. What's one move you'd make to improve the Bears this season?
7. Can you think of ways to improve the experience in Seattle?
8. What are your individual expectations for this upcoming season?
9. What are your build plans for this season?
10. How do you think Seattle will do this season?
11. @FrostBeard @Hogan @Beaviss have all been called up. How did the team "welcome" them?
12. @oilmandan is going to turn things up this season. How will he spend the off-season training?
13. @youloser1337 cleaned up awards this season. A cleaning brand wants to use him as an ambassador. Who was it and what was their offer to him?
14. @Jubis was a huge part to the team last season and like many, had a career season. He credited the success to a new herbal substance his made up in the Bears potion lab. What is it?? how does it work?
15. The team has acquired some PURPLE @GustavMattias How did they welcome him to the Seattle Bears? 
16. What is something you're looking forward to in life?
17. What's something positive that has happened to you lately?
 
 

Just want to go out and say I’ve been asking for representation in the bod for years. I have personally been affected by these issues for years. When I joined I wanted to GM and be a member of the Admins one day because I knew that strong compassionate voices were needed in the VHL so that ALL our members can feel safe.
 
shout out to @Josh and @fishy who were supportive last night when i finally decided to come forward with an issue after years of ignoring things because I didn’t want to make a scene after being told for years i just attract drama.
 
but we need more, because we should have more female members but the end up leaving because of things like this. This is not our culture we are better than this!

Thanks for the ping, was happy to see more D in the mix, the key is keeping them engaged! Treat this one well, looks like he is a keeper

I've been a d man my whole life, just seemed suiting for my first player.  The role play I think is one of the coolest parts about the forum too, it really is fun coming up with the stories! Thanks for the feed back, love to see it!

@youloser1337

Vhl drunk history, who wouldn’t want to host that podcast?

Claiming Week 2

I’m always so excited to hear new voices in podcasts!
 
Y’all are a cute couple of besties. I really like the dynamic between the calm and logical RJ with all his nerd tools and the more bombastic BladeMaiden, who at one point comically felt the need to apologize for saying “fucking.”
 
I’m now glad I opted to take my second first crack at a defenceman, apparently they’re even more unpopular than I realized! And it’s one of the first things I noticed when returning and signing with RJ’s Bulls team.
 
I agree that defence aren’t being helped with their “sexiness” enough. Even something as simple as relative +/- is ignored by most people, even though I think it tells a good two-way story. Yes, everyone on Toronto is going to have a negative rating, but you can still see the defensive effort of a player if they’re maybe a -15 while the rest of their team is -30. Especially if they get lots of minutes.
 
Anyway, great job, please make more, and enter the podcast tournament.  

Also, Bana is a dman! I REALLY enjoy the position! 

Way way way at the end, haha. Interesting listen. Thanks to you both. 

edit:
lmao at RJ stating it’s a fun little Easter egg for those who “wasted”/ been around this long lmaoooo

@Ricer13
 
The Backups
More Colour
 

 
Darker

Talking About What The VHL Needs with RJ: Demographics and Defenders
https://anchor.fm/huddlehussy/episodes/Talking-About-What-The-VHL-Needs-with-RJ--Demographics-and-Defenders-e1b7d50
 
-#s and what they mean
- what we should do 
 
I will not be collecting on this podcast, Rj will be collecting for this whole podcast and I would like to thank him for talking with me about this topic @rjfryman this is 4 weeks for you. @Josh @Beketov this is an honest suggestion of some things the league needs to look at.  @Acydburn @Jubo @Banackock you get mentioned  as well as @Peace
 
D Spaces
16  VHL : 4 = 64 min / 8= 128 max    35 Current active (within a month 400+)
8 VHLE : 4 = 32 min / 8= 64  max      22 Current active (within a month 200-400)
10 VHLM : 4 = 40 min / 8= 80 max    40 Current active (within a month -200)
Total  min  =  136 / max = 272          97 total updated last month
 
Forward Spaces (Wing and C)
16 VHL: 6 = 96 min/ 12= 192 max        75 total  (LW: 22 RW: 22 C; 31) Current active within a month 400+
8 VHLE:  6 = 48 min/ 12= 96 max         53 total  (LW: 21 RW: 17 C; 15) Current active within a month 200-400
10 VHLM:  6 = 60 min/ 12= 120 max    95 total  (LW: 34 RW: 34 C; 27) Current active within a month -200
Total  min  =  204 / max = 408             223 total updated last month
 
G Spaces
16 VHL: Min 16/ Max 32                 14 Current active (within a month 400+)
8 VHLE: Min 8/ Max 16                    8 Current active (within a month 200-400)
10 VHLM: Min 10/ Max 20              29 Current active (within a month -200)
Total  min  =  34 / max = 68           51 total updated last month

->the logic of these are if the TPA not TPE of the following
    if tpa < 201 for under 200
    else if tpa < 401 for 200-400
    else for 400+
 
Not Retired : D 303 LW: 282 RW: 279 C ;288 G: 130
Last Month Updated : D 97 LW: 77 RW: 73 C ; 73 G: 51
Acitve Under 200 : D 40 LW: 34 RW: 34 C ;27 G: 29
Acitve 200-400  : D 22 LW: 21 RW: 17 C ; 15 G: 8
Acitve 400+  : D 35 LW: 22 RW: 22 C ; 31 G: 14

The VHL’s big Defensive problems
 
1.) Over all creation of active d-men is under the league minimum, assuming that each team would want 4 active D Men. 2.) We have an issue if only needing so many goalies but we have an abundance of people in the positions that will be sitting on the bench and could go inactive due to having an unfulfilling experience. Especially when you consider that vhl vets ate more trusted in important positions like goalies where you are expected to be a max earner. 3.) Defensive positions are under appreciated, even though there are technically more d-men awards glory awards like mvp rarely go to defensive players. It’s clear the vhl has a bias to how they value offensive stats over defensive ones. 4.)The numbers show some possible retention issues even from our biggest drafts, it’s clear that something is missing and we are not hooking people.  
So what do we do?
1.) Have more accurate representations of what positions have been created when members are signing up or in the recreation process. We should see active #s not just the overall. I think being a d man gets way more tempting when you know you are going to be in high demand!
 
2.)I know this isn’t realistic but goalie position swaps need to be a thing.. we have too many good earning users sitting as second string goalies and they deserve an out after they finish in the vhlm or vhle… also i will say this before position swaps are too damn expensive and you need to consider for the sake of league balance they may be a necessary  evil.  Honestly i know i would have hated to be stuck behind someone when i had brick and that kind of experience would be enough to make anyone rage quit. Think of this as a user retention initiative of sorts. It’s hard restarting on your first player or even just a player that us 3-4 seasons in. Cut young players a break and let them swap.
 
3.) RECOGNITION! We focus on making the defensive positions and play-style valued ( hopefully getting ambitious users wanting to make really competitive defensive players). Let’s honor defensive forwards and track defensive stats. Honestly as long as there is continuity it won’t affect anything year to year and with a team of people looking at the sims I’m sure things could be tweaked optimally. This also may give more info so we can award defensive mvps and share the glory. 
 
4.) retention is always a fun thing to talk about but in general I think it comes down on how to get people hooked. And atm we have not much for ppl who want to be gritty defensive players and that is a huge failure on our part because it is a colossal part of hockey. I think if we make an effort to add more to what we offer we will see more user interest and enjoyment.
 
This goes hand in hand with having great enthusiastic GMs in the vhlm through to the vhl to keep people excited about what we have to offer. I’ve said this before ppl come for the hockey but stay for all the other little things. So let’s give them more to be excited about and let’s spice things up. The vhl is ever changing and that is part of the hook.  My advice is to look at the defensive side and see if you can add more for those people. As far as actual recruiting goes may I suggest looking into reaching out to nhl discords and seeing if they will let you post.  Retention becomes twice as critical with small draft classes, so let’s reach out and maybe double our chances! 
 
I would be more than happy to talk on all of this more literally 40 min of my hour podcast with RJ talked about this, you can also consult with him because I’m sure I probably forgot something!
 
@Beketov your tldr 

I LOVE NUMBERS

My Data
 
D Spaces
16  VHL : 4 = 64 min / 8= 128 max    35 Current active (within a month 400+)
8 VHLE : 4 = 32 min / 8= 64  max      22 Current active (within a month 200-400)
10 VHLM : 4 = 40 min / 8= 80 max    40 Current active (within a month -200)
Total  min  =  136 / max = 272          97 total updated last month
 
Forward Spaces (Wing and C)
16 VHL: 6 = 96 min/ 12= 192 max        75 total  (LW: 22 RW: 22 C; 31) Current active within a month 400+
8 VHLE:  6 = 48 min/ 12= 96 max         53 total  (LW: 21 RW: 17 C; 15) Current active within a month 200-400
10 VHLM:  6 = 60 min/ 12= 120 max    95 total  (LW: 34 RW: 34 C; 27) Current active within a month -200
Total  min  =  204 / max = 408             223 total updated last month
 
G Spaces
16 VHL: Min 16/ Max 32                 14 Current active (within a month 400+)
8 VHLE: Min 8/ Max 16                    8 Current active (within a month 200-400)
10 VHLM: Min 10/ Max 20              29 Current active (within a month -200)
Total  min  =  34 / max = 68           51 total updated last month

->the logic of these are if the TPA not TPE of the following
    if tpa < 201 for under 200
    else if tpa < 401 for 200-400
    else for 400+
 
Not Retired : D 303 LW: 282 RW: 279 C ;288 G: 130
Last Month Updated : D 97 LW: 77 RW: 73 C ; 73 G: 51
Acitve Under 200 : D 40 LW: 34 RW: 34 C ;27 G: 29
Acitve 200-400  : D 22 LW: 21 RW: 17 C ; 15 G: 8
Acitve 400+  : D 35 LW: 22 RW: 22 C ; 31 G: 14

The VHL’s big Defensive problems
 
1.) Over all creation of active d-men is under the league minimum, assuming that each team would want 4 active D Men. 2.) We have an issue if only needing so many goalies but we have an abundance of people in the positions that will be sitting on the bench and could go inactive due to having an unfulfilling experience. Especially when you consider that vhl vets ate more trusted in important positions like goalies where you are expected to be a max earner. 3.) Defensive positions are under appreciated, even though there are technically more d-men awards glory awards like mvp rarely go to defensive players. It’s clear the vhl has a bias to how they value offensive stats over defensive ones. 4.)The numbers show some possible retention issues even from our biggest drafts, it’s clear that something is missing and we are not hooking people.  
So what do we do?
1.) Have more accurate representations of what positions have been created when members are signing up or in the recreation process. We should see active #s not just the overall. I think being a d man gets way more tempting when you know you are going to be in high demand!
 
2.)I know this isn’t realistic but goalie position swaps need to be a thing.. we have too many good earning users sitting as second string goalies and they deserve an out after they finish in the vhlm or vhle… also i will say this before position swaps are too damn expensive and you need to consider for the sake of league balance they may be a necessary  evil.  Honestly i know i would have hated to be stuck behind someone when i had brick and that kind of experience would be enough to make anyone rage quit. Think of this as a user retention initiative of sorts. It’s hard restarting on your first player or even just a player that us 3-4 seasons in. Cut young players a break and let them swap.
 
3.) RECOGNITION! We focus on making the defensive positions and play-style valued ( hopefully getting ambitious users wanting to make really competitive defensive players). Let’s honor defensive forwards and track defensive stats. Honestly as long as there is continuity it won’t affect anything year to year and with a team of people looking at the sims I’m sure things could be tweaked optimally. This also may give more info so we can award defensive mvps and share the glory. 
 
4.) retention is always a fun thing to talk about but in general I think it comes down on how to get people hooked. And atm we have not much for ppl who want to be gritty defensive players and that is a huge failure on our part because it is a colossal part of hockey. I think if we make an effort to add more to what we offer we will see more user interest and enjoyment.
 
This goes hand in hand with having great enthusiastic GMs in the vhlm through to the vhl to keep people excited about what we have to offer. I’ve said this before ppl come for the hockey but stay for all the other little things. So let’s give them more to be excited about and let’s spice things up. The vhl is ever changing and that is part of the hook.  My advice is to look at the defensive side and see if you can add more for those people. As far as actual recruiting goes may I suggest looking into reaching out to nhl discords and seeing if they will let you post.  Retention becomes twice as critical with small draft classes, so let’s reach out and maybe double our chances! 
 
I would be more than happy to talk on all of this more literally 40 min of my hour podcast with RJ talked about this, you can also consult with him because I’m sure I probably forgot something!
 
@Beketov your tldr 

The VHL’s big Defensive problems
 
1.) Over all creation of active d-men is under the league minimum, assuming that each team would want 4 active D Men. 2.) We have an issue if only needing so many goalies but we have an abundance of people in the positions that will be sitting on the bench and could go inactive due to having an unfulfilling experience. Especially when you consider that vhl vets ate more trusted in important positions like goalies where you are expected to be a max earner. 3.) Defensive positions are under appreciated, even though there are technically more d-men awards glory awards like mvp rarely go to defensive players. It’s clear the vhl has a bias to how they value offensive stats over defensive ones. 4.)The numbers show some possible retention issues even from our biggest drafts, it’s clear that something is missing and we are not hooking people.  
So what do we do?
1.) Have more accurate representations of what positions have been created when members are signing up or in the recreation process. We should see active #s not just the overall. I think being a d man gets way more tempting when you know you are going to be in high demand!
 
2.)I know this isn’t realistic but goalie position swaps need to be a thing.. we have too many good earning users sitting as second string goalies and they deserve an out after they finish in the vhlm or vhle… also i will say this before position swaps are too damn expensive and you need to consider for the sake of league balance they may be a necessary  evil.  Honestly i know i would have hated to be stuck behind someone when i had brick and that kind of experience would be enough to make anyone rage quit. Think of this as a user retention initiative of sorts. It’s hard restarting on your first player or even just a player that us 3-4 seasons in. Cut young players a break and let them swap.
 
3.) RECOGNITION! We focus on making the defensive positions and play-style valued ( hopefully getting ambitious users wanting to make really competitive defensive players). Let’s honor defensive forwards and track defensive stats. Honestly as long as there is continuity it won’t affect anything year to year and with a team of people looking at the sims I’m sure things could be tweaked optimally. This also may give more info so we can award defensive mvps and share the glory. 
 
4.) retention is always a fun thing to talk about but in general I think it comes down on how to get people hooked. And atm we have not much for ppl who want to be gritty defensive players and that is a huge failure on our part because it is a colossal part of hockey. I think if we make an effort to add more to what we offer we will see more user interest and enjoyment.
 
This goes hand in hand with having great enthusiastic GMs in the vhlm through to the vhl to keep people excited about what we have to offer. I’ve said this before ppl come for the hockey but stay for all the other little things. So let’s give them more to be excited about and let’s spice things up. The vhl is ever changing and that is part of the hook.  My advice is to look at the defensive side and see if you can add more for those people. As far as actual recruiting goes may I suggest looking into reaching out to nhl discords and seeing if they will let you post.  Retention becomes twice as critical with small draft classes, so let’s reach out and maybe double our chances! 
 
I would be more than happy to talk on all of this more literally 40 min of my hour podcast with RJ talked about this, you can also consult with him because I’m sure I probably forgot something!
 
@Beketov your tldr 

I agree, and i feel for you

The VHL’s big Defensive problems
 
1.) Over all creation of active d-men is under the league minimum, assuming that each team would want 4 active D Men. 2.) We have an issue if only needing so many goalies but we have an abundance of people in the positions that will be sitting on the bench and could go inactive due to having an unfulfilling experience. Especially when you consider that vhl vets ate more trusted in important positions like goalies where you are expected to be a max earner. 3.) Defensive positions are under appreciated, even though there are technically more d-men awards glory awards like mvp rarely go to defensive players. It’s clear the vhl has a bias to how they value offensive stats over defensive ones. 4.)The numbers show some possible retention issues even from our biggest drafts, it’s clear that something is missing and we are not hooking people.  
So what do we do?
1.) Have more accurate representations of what positions have been created when members are signing up or in the recreation process. We should see active #s not just the overall. I think being a d man gets way more tempting when you know you are going to be in high demand!
 
2.)I know this isn’t realistic but goalie position swaps need to be a thing.. we have too many good earning users sitting as second string goalies and they deserve an out after they finish in the vhlm or vhle… also i will say this before position swaps are too damn expensive and you need to consider for the sake of league balance they may be a necessary  evil.  Honestly i know i would have hated to be stuck behind someone when i had brick and that kind of experience would be enough to make anyone rage quit. Think of this as a user retention initiative of sorts. It’s hard restarting on your first player or even just a player that us 3-4 seasons in. Cut young players a break and let them swap.
 
3.) RECOGNITION! We focus on making the defensive positions and play-style valued ( hopefully getting ambitious users wanting to make really competitive defensive players). Let’s honor defensive forwards and track defensive stats. Honestly as long as there is continuity it won’t affect anything year to year and with a team of people looking at the sims I’m sure things could be tweaked optimally. This also may give more info so we can award defensive mvps and share the glory. 
 
4.) retention is always a fun thing to talk about but in general I think it comes down on how to get people hooked. And atm we have not much for ppl who want to be gritty defensive players and that is a huge failure on our part because it is a colossal part of hockey. I think if we make an effort to add more to what we offer we will see more user interest and enjoyment.
 
This goes hand in hand with having great enthusiastic GMs in the vhlm through to the vhl to keep people excited about what we have to offer. I’ve said this before ppl come for the hockey but stay for all the other little things. So let’s give them more to be excited about and let’s spice things up. The vhl is ever changing and that is part of the hook.  My advice is to look at the defensive side and see if you can add more for those people. As far as actual recruiting goes may I suggest looking into reaching out to nhl discords and seeing if they will let you post.  Retention becomes twice as critical with small draft classes, so let’s reach out and maybe double our chances! 
 
I would be more than happy to talk on all of this more literally 40 min of my hour podcast with RJ talked about this, you can also consult with him because I’m sure I probably forgot something!
 
@Beketov your tldr 

Yeah, as someone who manually tracks it for my own player/choice teammates I can say that there is certainly some wiggle room in what you might actually count. For example, a hit that leads to a loss of the puck. Is that a takeaway? Some will say yes across the board. My personal way of tracking it in the PbP is to check if the next entry isn't from a player on the same team that lost the puck. Because then it's actually a takeaway. But due to the formatting of the PbP you sometimes have to go to the next tick to find it. Sometimes the hit is the last thing to happen in a period so there's literally nothing after. Sometimes the hit leads to a penalty and a face-off. I'm assuming whatever he wrote takes all those cases into account. But it does leave quite a bit of wiggle room. Same with the low puck handling "Bo Johansson loses the puck". If your player/team mate gets to it first it's not really a giveaway. I've already had to redo all my stats because in the first few games there simply were 0 cases of some of the more "fringe" ways to lose the puck. So I didn't include it in my search criteria. The saddest part of that was losing Bo's +69 possession on the season. Upside being, that he can now reach it again!
 
Edit: Expanding on this with takeaways from hits rather than giveaways. Because that is where it gets real muddy. If Bo hits a player, and they lose the puck. IF Miami gets it, it's almost never going to be Bo that got it, as he is still recovering from throwing the hit. So then the question becomes, whose takeaway is is? Bo for throwing the hit that lead to the loss of the puck, or whichever Miami player skated onto the puck to make it an actual takeaway? There isn't a right answer to that question (I picked the player throwing the hit for my personal stats). Which then leads to the followup question: Should takeaways from hits simply not count? But if so then giveaways shouldn't either, or the entire league will have net negative possession instead of +/- 0. But at that point so many actual giveaways and takeaways aren't represented, simply because you don't know who to credit statistically, that the stat no longer really represents what it was meant to in the first place.
 
But if there IS a way to make it work, even with some inherent margin for error (most stats have that anyways*, as long as it isn't biased it's not a massive issue). I do feel it would go a long way to make judging defensive prowess more approachable. Right now you have to be dedicated to finding out if someone is/isn't good defensively. And unless you know how to program/have access to some of these tools. It's a very time consuming process. It's very easy to look at two players and say "Oh they both have 70 def, so they are equal defensively!". Meanwhile on Miami we have a forward and a Dman with (basically) identical def. The forward is -95 the dman is +42 (which just happens to be the meaning of life, the universe and everything). You wouldn't really have guessed that without having access to information that is anything but readily available.
 
I know I just glanced at shots blocked and picked the top guy when asked to predict who I think will be VHL defensive defenseman of the year. Because anything else would simply have required hours upon hours of work to even be able to look at.
 
*The way +/- is tracked IRL and presumably in-game opens up for what I like to refer to as "the douche shift". Where a player gets caught up ice. Knows they have no way in hell of actually making it back in time to affect the play. So they just go change, and dodge the -. They caused the odd man situation that is currently happening, because they got caught up ice. But whoever they change with will take the - from the probable goal, which they had literally nothing to do with. This inherently makes +/- have a massive margin for error. But since it's grandfathered in we're kinda just letting it slide. So would it be the end of the world if we had a similar issues with possession?

As a new defensive defenseman. Having to manually track possession, as the league doesn't. Isn't exactly helping with the glory.