Matt_O

1. We are pretty close to fifth place in the European Conference right now, it's about time we started playing good. 2. I know nothing about LA, but judging from the way this question is asked I'll say it's a complete fluke. They won't even make the playoffs. 3. Anyone but Zod. The General is notorious for playing like garbage the last 20 games of the season, every single year I am point per game or better until the final 20 games, when I get like 7 points. It happens every year, so I'm not getting my hopes up this year. I think Calvin Harvey will have a strong second half. 4. What perfect timing, since I just wrote a media spot about things in the VHL that make me mad. I hate when people act like hypocrites but play it off like they are just doing what the 'other side' does, as if that makes it suddenly okay now. This mainly happens in politics and I just hate when people do that. 5. Sidney Crosby, Brandon Dubinsky, and an MMA referee. 6. I've whiffed some pretty killer farts before, but the weirdest smell I can think of was when my mom left me a bowl of spaghetti for dinner on my desk in my room, since I was quarantined with covid at that time. I didn't realize, and I thought the smell was my body odor and I was like god damn that stinks. It was just the spaghetti, which smelt kind of weird for whatever reason.

690 Elo I think

I started liking the Islanders just because my dad liked them. I started watching hockey in the 2012 playoffs, and one of the first things I remember about watching hockey that isn't islanders related is when the Kings smoked Vancouver, but I specifically remember the game that the Canucks won in that series. I always liked the Kings because of that, but the Islanders were still my favorite. Kyle Okposo was my favorite player for whatever reason. I still am pissed that Jamie Benn beat out Tavares for the Art Ross in 2015, and I still think Tavares deserved the Hart that year. The Islanders were expected to be mediocre again, but he single handedly led them to the playoffs, and nearly home ice advantage. As an Islanders fan I'm not much of a Tavares fan anymore but this man turned Matt Moulson into a three time 30 goal scorer. He turned Okposo into a 50-60 point scorer, and made absolute bums look good. The most memorable moments I have are all from going to the games at Nassau Coliseum, since Barclays is terrible. My first was game 6 against the Capitals in 2015, which ended up being the last game at the Coliseum at the time. It was so hype when they won, even though they sucked in game 7. The other two memories are the Josh Bailey overtime winner in game one in 2019, and the best was Tavares' return to Long Island that year. That place was insane. Even though I wasn't even mad at him like other fans it still was the greatest game I have ever been too. I still appreciate Tavares though, I was watching some playoff highlights since 2013 and he scored so many big goals for us. I still don't know how to feel now that the Islanders are actually good, and maybe even contenders even though their roster doesn't look amazing.

So, this week I ran out of multi-week medias to claim so unfortunately here I am. There are plenty of reasons to like the VHL; if there wasn't, I would have left a long time ago. However, there are some aspects that I don't really love. Some of these things aren't the actual leagues fault, and by complaining about these things I'm not trying to lobby for change. I just need some stuff to write about and this seemed like a good idea, so here we go. I got the idea for this article because of the expansion post, which I fell for until I read the replies. I was moments away from angrily going into the Riga discord about it until I realized it was a joke. One thing I don't like are the people that complain. This is pretty self explanatory, but some of these people really make me angry. My personal least favorites are the people who complain about Simon. They cry that the sim engine is broken because there team that finished in second place lost to the team that finished fourth. In case you haven't noticed, in the real life NHL the "best team" doesn't win the cup all the time. In the last ten years, the presidents trophy winning team has been eliminated in the first round just as many times as they have reached the conference finals (3 times each). The most winning team in decades got swept in the first round. A 16th overall seed won a Stanley Cup. Just because your team finished in first doesn't guarantee you a championship, or even a playoff series win. In college basketball, a 16 seed upset the top overall seed a couple years ago. Keep in mind that upsets in basketball are much harder to pull off then in hockey because of the way the game is played. Another thing I hate about people complaining is when they complain about not getting jobs. Perhaps even worse is when they complain about other people not getting jobs (I think we know who I am referring too). If you feel like you deserved a job, then apply for the next one and hope you get it. Complaining will just make the commissioners dislike you and hurt your chances at getting the next job. Another thing about jobs I hated were people that would advocate for certain people to get jobs. When I was newer, I would apply for a lot of different jobs. A lot of times I would go into the thread and their would be only be one other application but like seven different people quoting them saying "This guy is amazing!!! They are the greatest person to ever roam this site and they deserve this job more than anyone else on the site!!!!!!!". That just really bothered me. I'm glad that now you aren't allowed to do that because it just made me very angry. I really don't like the new career tasks. I don't know if it's just me, but I just forget about them until it's too late to do them. The only ones I did for Zod were the ones I could do immediately after I created him. The rest of them I forgot about until it was too late. I wish we just went back to the biography and rookie profile for 18 TPE. Not that I really like those, but it just was much easier to do, at least in my opinion. Perhaps one of my least favorite thing about the league is the fact that the top guys somehow seem to get more TPE than everyone else. I'm not saying that these people don't deserve the TPE, because they do. I just don't understand how they get so much. I wrote an article about this a while ago, comparing my old player to HHH. I started with at least 100 more TPE than HHH, but within two seasons he had a 100 TPE lead on me. I capped out nearly every single week, and took advantage of as many uncapped opportunites as I could. I just could not wrap my head around how he gained 200 extra TPE on me in a short period of time, it made absolutely no sense. How did Eno get to 2000 TPE? What did he even do to get that much TPE, how is it possible? This isn't really a league problem, since this is probably just me being angry that I'm not as good as the top members. But it still makes me angry enough to be in this article. I hate the awards. Well, specifically the Scott Boulet. How do you use hits to determine who the top two way forward is? That doesn't even make any sense. I've already written an article about this so I won't go too into detail. But this award just makes me so angry. I think it was designed as an easy way to pad players resumes to get into the hall of fame. A player with no awards doesn't look great, even if they scored tons of points. Throw in a couple Boulets? It helps beef up their trophy case to make a better hall of fame case, but I think the award is bogus. Being a good two way forward is something that can't be reduced down to just hits. A lot of it is the eye test, which is something we don't have. This (hopefully) doesn't apply anymore today, but it used to happen a lot. This was mentioned in gorlabs very famous thunderdome post. If I spent time writing a media spot, only for it to be graded as a 4/6 and be told that it sucks, I would go ballistic. I wasn't around for this era, but I wouldn't be surprised if harsh grading was a reason for people not staying on the site (that could be wrong). People that would be a strict grader remind me of hall monitors from elementary school. I would hate this if it was still around. There might be more things I hate but this is all I got right now. The VHL overall has a lot of good things so these things I'm not really a fan off aren't a huge deal, and a few of them aren't even the leagues fault. 1030 words or something like that

Reading this thread reminds me of the days after school where I would go on discord and have 700+ messages to read from the vhlm gm discord channel

Week 4 final claim

AMONG US 1. I wish I had more points and blocked shots, especially blocked shots. I had 0 after the first four games. Zod is hitting like a maniac though, 7th in the league right now. Unfortunately though, we just suck. We will right the ship I'm sure. 2. I predicted London I think, so maybe them. 3. What????? Damn Zod only has five assists, maybe I shouldn't have complained. I highly doubt Zod still leads the team by the end of the year, in the last twenty games of the year I'll get maybe like 5 points after being point per game the entire year before that point. Happens every year. 4. I like mine (obviously). It never got updated for Zod but for my next player I will probably change it. I really like the sig that was made for my old player with the Seattle thunderbirds Barzal, since I played for Malmo at that time. I don't remember who made it but they did a super job. 5. I use a spoon, but I drink it out of the spoon. If people drink soup with a straw I don't even know what to say to them. 6. The egg, since egg re-production isn't exclusive to chickens.

F- Kyl Oferson @Kylrad

G- Jacob Tonn

1. The worst part is the fact that there is no trivia. I lose out on two easy TPE per week because I refuse to do reviewing. The best part is training camp though, nice and easy 10 TPE. 2. With the time off, Zod likes to return to Krypton and visit his family. Well, at least the remains 3. Riga of course, we are winning it all this year with our new additions. 4. Any word that has to use Y as a vowel is automatically on my bad side. Imagine being such a garbage word you resort to calling Y a vowel. 5. I would ask Jesus if he supports DN. When he says, 'whats DN?', we've got him right where we want him. 6. I say yes, but it doesn't really make a difference because that's when I would do the presser anyways

It just came to my attention that next week is the last week I can claim my four week media spots I posted in December and January, I posted three 2000 word ones in the span of a few weeks and haven't had to write anything in over two months. Now, I will have to write something again and it couldn't have come at a better time. I just tested positive for COVID on friday so what better to do than write an absolutely killer media spot with my free time? I have to think of an idea and then I can get very into it, I have practically unlimited time now and I don't really have to worry about interruptions at all. I think in the spirit of March Madness, I am going to do a comprehensive look into STHS. How does this relate to march madness? Well, it doesn't really, but upsets in March Madness serve as inspiration. A lot of people like to complain about STHS every time their team loses, specifically when they are the favored team. I'm going to go back to season 64, when activity began to increase after the dead era in the S50s and go until now, seeing how many higher seeded teams lost in the playoffs. I will then compare this to the NHL through percentages of how often the higher seed won, and see what happens. Is STHS actually just random, or do people get too angry at it? My opinion is that people just get angry when they lose so they blame it on the sim, but that's just me. We will see the results later this week or next week when I do my research.

D- Micah Adrienne @Kylrad

Week 3 claim

Andrew Su- F @Devise

Thomas Landry -F @Kylrad

Roque Davis- D @Devise

1. Defense was Riga's problem last season but now the future on D is set, pretty good job. 2. I think defense might be a pretty big strength, especially with Harvey backing us up in net. 3. Didn't really follow the draft much, but Nixon Caldwell could be a steal. Kendrick is a big name member and if he stays active that's a second round pick that could be a beast. 4. Definitely not Zod and his goofy bald head, thats for sure. Calvin Harvey seems like he would rock a mullet, just from his name. 5. "I cannot tell you, it's confidential. Anyways, how is your sex life" or "Everybody betray me, I'm fed up with this world". Both are from The Room, I can't pick between them. 6. Rudy Gobert touching all the microphones as a joke about the NBA new covid rules and then getting covid three days later and causing the cancellation of the season. If that didn't happen covid might have actually gotten worse because I think the NBA shutting things down is what caused everyone to realize this thing is for real, so maybe Gobert saved people.

Week 2 claim

Yeeee

1. Load up on banked TPE as much as possible, and also negotiate my contract. I need to secure an extra 750K so I can afford a third Jagr purchase. 2. I can’t remember the name, but it’s an islanders warm up song that goes bum bum badumdum bum bUm BUM bum badumdum bum. Hope that helps. 3. I was hardly following after we were eliminated honestly. I can’t even remember the EU team, but I probably would have rooted for them. 4. Play ‘The ball game’ and the trophy is the ball. 5. Tons of guys are deserving, I think someone like IR is deserving. There are other guys I have in mind but I don’t think they are interested in a GM role. 6. Counting hell is a scary place but pokecord is kind of cool, even though I don’t use it it’s still a fun addition.

Week 4 final claim

I need an article for this week, so why not shoutout my boys at VSN. These guys do such a tremendous job week in and week out. I worked with VSN for almost all of 2019, and then for a few months again in 2020. Working there is really draining, at least it was for me. I wasn't even being asked for that much, just a history article every other week, and then help out with extra offseason stuff (usually I did the award show preview). It still was a lot, and VSN deserves a ton of credit. There were so many different points through 2019 where VSN just looked dead but it has come on stronger than ever because of some hard work. I wanted to run VSN when Bana/Frost took over since I had been around a long time, but they did a tremendous job and looking back, I'm glad I didn't get that job. It just would be so much work. Doomsday also did a tremendous job, and now Hatter as well. Even if you don't really care for VSN and the content they produce, you have to acknowledge the effort and hard work it takes. Writing a series week in and week out is a lot harder than it might seem, and the guys at VSN do it with no problem. 226 words

1. Individually, I had a great year. I wish I could have kept my pace up and finished point per game but finishing with 60 points and setting new career high in hits is nice. I wish I could have cracked the top 10 though, I was so close. 2. It's more the offseason for me, I'm a pending free agent and free agency is always exciting to be a part of. 3. Andre the Giant 4. He is just built different. Askarov for MVP 5. I did alright, I finished in 4th place. My defenseman weren't great and neither was my first round pick which hurt me. I thought I was actually going to finish 5th or 6th, so finishing 4th wasn't so bad. Hopefully next year I will do better. 6. I think Riley Couture might have a big year. On an unrelated note, Thornton will lead the league in hits.

Week 4 claim

So, I looked at the standings today since the final sims of the season happened. I saw Calgary sitting fifth place in the North American conference, and we are scheduled to face the Bears in the wild card round, which is pretty exciting. I was confused though; I could have sworn we were way better than 31-33-8. Obviously I was wrong, but I feel like in the locker room over the past week or two we have had maybe one sim where we lost both games. I'm pretty sure we also had a stretch where we won 9 of 10 games. I could be totally wrong about this, but I was just surprised to see us sitting below .500. This matchup with the Bears should be great. We met in the conference finals back in S73 I believe, where they came back down 3-1. I think we met some other time in the playoffs but I can't quite remember. A win over Seattle would be sweet. They have been the main rival for the team I've played for since S68, with Malmo. We met Seattle in the finals that year and got swept after talking loads of shit about how the NA was just a weak conference and that they wouldn't have been good in the EU. In our defense, I think they would have finished 4th or 5th in the EU that year with their point totals (top 4 made playoffs at that time). 245 words