Fire Tortorella

1.) Hopefully 4 - us sweeping our opponent 4 times. Since I'm writing this after we were eliminated...obvoiusly this didn't happen. 2.) I use a right handed stick and put my dominant (right) hand on the bottom. Apparently you're supposed to put your dominant hand on top, but oh well. 3.) Yes, although it still wouldn't have been full in Philly. With how the team has been (both this year and in the past decade) they're not even selling out the 2,000 or so tickets available. 4.) Hm....I think Helsinki could maybe use an upgrade, and in the VHLM...maybe the Wild or Lynx, but those logos are also getting into "historical" territory for me. 5.) Outside of the Flyers, I like the Kings home jersey and the Sabres logo/jerseys for current, and for past, I like the Whalers and the yellow Nashville ones. 6.) Worst current jersey is the Senators and all time is probably the weird "V" Vancouver ones.

I'm anti-Discord and I'm proud.

Good job Phantoms!

End of the season and Prague is in the playoffs again. We started off strong as one of the top teams in the standings, but we've slowed down since then, probably not unexpectedly. We finished 4th in the conference and tied for 7th in the league with 84 points. Oddly enough, we would have also finished 4th in the North American Conference as well. All in all, we're only 6 and 9 points respectively behind the 3rd and 2nd place teams in the conference, so we're not severely outclassed. On an individual note, I finished just at PPG again with 73 points in 72 games, but this time with much more assists than goals. I was hoping for closer to 80 points, but PPG ain't bad. Next season will be (or at least should be) my "prime" season, as it'll be my last season without depreciation. Next year, I'd really like to be at 80 points. On a personal note, the stupid Flyers are bad, but somehow the Devils are even worse, so I've lost $5 on a moneyline bet in favor of the Devils since they allowed us to tie it up in the last 2:30 and then win in a shoot out. I'm still up about $20-$25 betting on or against the Flyers the past couple of games.

1.) Whoever STHS blesses, and that can be anyone's guess. On a somewhat more serious answer, it's really hard to tell, since your stats are also a product of the team environment that you're on....unless you've been blessed by STHS. 2.) Defensive depth is always nice for the playoffs. We don't necessarily have the star power to carry games, so we'll have to win with our depth. 3.) We need to score more goals than our opponents. Thanks John (Madden). 4.) Nah, no vacation for us this year. Bought a house in January and are getting married in July (hopefully having the wedding in July, we'll see) so money is going there. With the travel situation, probably not doing a honeymoon this year either. 5.) So this is a very interesting question that I'm going to answer two different ways. As a player, Crosby is the better overall player, and I don't really think that's debatable. HOWEVER, in terms of who's overall game is harder to replicate, I think it's Ovechkin. Consistent goal scoring like Ovechkin is so hard to find. I'd rather have a "lesser" Crosby type player on my team and Ovechkin than a lesser Ovechkin type player and Crosby. 6.) Not a huge comedy guy and don't really find adult/crude humor terribly funny in movies, so my pick is Shrek or Shrek 2.

You're probably thinking of the old EASHL league also called the VHL.

A dirt engineer? Are you the guy who writes geotechnical reports about soil conditions and if they can support whatever project is going on?

It appears I misread everything last night and you are not in fact a Penguins fan.

This is not meant to be pro-super league, but I can't help but chuckle that fans are OK with clubs owned by billionaires, Russian oligarchs, oil states, etc.. and are fine with the close to unlimited money that comes with that, but this is the straw that broke the camel's back.

1.) It started off hotter than it is currently, but it seems like there's some discussion in there every day, if not almost every day. So overall, maybe a 7/10. 2.) Ha, no way. I barely know who is on my team, let alone who is on other teams! 3.) I think all the talk about how Hall specifically is a "loser" because of the teams he's been on is insanely dumb. Yes, you can hold it against him for only scoring 2 goals with Buffalo this year, but Hall is a talented offensive player who will put up points (as we've seen) on good teams. You know who else was a loser before he won? Ovechkin. I'm not saying they're on the same level of player obviously, but the whole notion of a player being a "loser" is just dumb, IMO. 4.) Obviously the Philadelphia Flyers - get two low round draft picks for expiring contracts AND re-sign a bottom 6 winger for FIVE years? BEAT THAT. 5.) Tiger, Simba, Tiger King, Claws, who knows. Cats barely respond to you anyway, so does it really matter what you call them? 6.) So fighting is actually banned - it results in a 5 minute major penalty. But I know what you actually mean. If fighting was truly "banned" I wouldn't blink an eye. You're telling me that somehow hockey is the only physical sport that needs some sort of fighting to police the game? How about the league actually calls penalties that are penalties and doesn't engage in "game management" and actually suspends players for dirty hits. Having to fight after a clean hit is dumb, having to fight after you get knocked into the opposing goalie is dumb, fighting just to fight the big guy (aka watching Sam Morin play) is dumb. 9/10 times, a fight happens for a dumb reason, and for the 1/10 times it was actually "needed", if the refs/league did it's job, it wouldn't be.

I just wrote 1,000+ words on a media spot, now I have to write something else? UGH. So, it's the trade deadline. We just traded for a defenseman. That seems good, as I believe defense, especially defensive depth, is where we were weakest. Now, admittedly, I know nothing about the member added EXCEPT for the fact that they're a Penguins fans, so they're already starting at a -1. But in all honesty, one of the things I miss about team hopping is meeting the newer members (or at this point, non Best people here but socially distanced members, since that's who is "new" to me) since even one team has low year to year roster turnover. The theme week this season is really good and seems to have had a lot of engagement. It may have been harder if you're new or newer to the league, but I think there's at least SOMETHING you could write about VHL related and how it could have been changed. As I've been writing all my VHL stuff today, news about a possible European Super League (soccer) has been spreading, which makes me think - what if we had some sort of Super League between the VHL and SHL? Funnily enough, this was something that was very, very briefly discussed between the two leagues WAY back in the day (and maybe was something I should have added to my media spot), but we both basically determined that the TPE differences and roster structures between the two leagues at the time resulted in players and rosters that couldn't really be compared or play against each other.

Pens fan? PRAGUE FLYERS FAN ASSEMBLE

It's theme week, meaning it's time for my annual (seasonal?) media spot, since I can't give up extra TPE THAT easily. This year, the theme is "what if" where we're essentially supposed to talk about something or somethings VHL related and how the league or those situations would be changed if a different situation happened. I'm not entirely motivated enough to do a long media spot on one specific instance, so in true @Fire Vigneault fashion, I'm going to talk about a couple of different things and the "what if" scenario that goes with them. "What If @WentzKneeFan036Doesn't Join The League?" So the first situation we're going to talk about is also the most subjective, since this is almost entirely feelings based and subjective. I'm sure everyone knows that this fine gentleman is my brother. When we first joined the league, I was a junior or senior in high school and he was whatever is four years younger than that. We lived at home together and have a good number of VHL memories, from "What if Riga Wins?", the very bad podcasts we did that always took longer from a technical standpoint than they did to actually record, playing and winning in Riga, GMing Riga and Calgary, joining Calgary with Bernie, and most recently, MOSCOW MOSCOW MOSCOW. What I'm getting at is a lot of my early to mid VHL related memories involve @WentzKneeFan036. If he decides that "this league is stupid - I don't want extra homework" and never joins, do I stick around? Now granted, I still got myself involved in the league (grader, Head Grader, BoG, Commissioner, etc...) even when his activity waned, but do I stay as interested? Who knows. What if I'm never in the BoG? (SEGWAAAAAAAY) "What If We Deleted The VHLM?" I have no idea how public this ever got, but it was a very long time ago (S40s? S50s?) so I feel OK sharing BOG secrets, but there was a time where there was serious thought to the idea of deleting the VHLM and having all players join the VHL at creation. I don't remember the specifics of the proposals at this point, but the root issue was that the VHLM was causing the league issues in the non-automated world because it involved a metric ton of manual work, both on the forum and in the sim file. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm the reason the VHLM is still around, because I'm not, but there was a not-insignificant amount of support for this idea, which I always thought was dumb. It can sometimes be hard to talk about the VHLM because most members today only know the well functioning version of the VHLM. For a long time, being VHLM Commissioner meant making the league less shitty than it was before, even if the results were still below average. If the VHLM was deleted, I'm sure the VHL looks entirely different. Do we have double the teams now? Do we have promotion/relegation? Do we realize this was a mistake (a la Project Player 2) and add the VHLM back at some point? Who knows. "What If We Didn't Add The Portal?" Ah, the portal - another thing that most members today don't remember not having. The portal has been the single biggest change to the league in it's entire existence, in my opinion of course. And, admittedly (ashamedly?) I was negative on this potential change at first, or at best, just non-supportive. If I remember correctly, it was @Devise who mentioned the idea first? I know @Willdid most of the building, but for some reason, I have @Devisein my head as the person who first floated some sort of "portal" idea. But anyway, my fear was that it would drive activity and eyes away from the forum and on to alternative sites (which I was right! And that has it's own pros and cons), but it's 100% turned out that the positives of the portal have far outweighed any negatives. The ability to have your updates done in essentially 24-48 hours, and most importantly, having those updates actually put into the sim engine instantaneously has been the best thing to ever happen to the league (except maybe for whenever it was that @Victordecided to join the league of course). So yeah, portal good, portal updating good, you 3 people who still prefer forum updating are weird. "What If Davos Didn't Implode With Smitty?" So this is actually the topic I originally thought of when this theme week first came out, but then I realized that in order to write a good article I'd have to do a bunch of research, and ain't nobody got time for that, so this is just going to get shotgunned from memory. So what do I remember? I remember joining Davos and originally being excited for having a young core that seemed like it was going to be a European contender for my entire career. Then after the first season (maybe my second?) there were multiple people who wanted out for locker room issues. I don't remember who they were or what the issues were (and I didn't know of any issues, because I've never exactly been a huge locker room presence, and Discord has made that even worse), but at the end of the day, we lost 2 or 3 players/prospects and I don't know if we ever replaced them. Then there were the...multiple...Shawn Glade trades. Again, I don't remember the specifics, but especially after the 2nd one, I struggled to see how those trades improved the team now or put us in a better position going forward. Were the trades made solely for the player's gain (for those who don't know, this was the GM's player), or were they made in the best interest of the team? I don't know, but at the end of the day, I decided on a first - I was going to go "me first", as I knew this was my last shot at a Hall of Fame career, and went to free agency as an actual sought after player. Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen had just won his first Labatte, but I decided to go to free agency and ended up signing with Moscow, where I won 2 additional Labattes and a Continental Cup and eventually made the Hall of Fame, first ballot. Do I have the same individual success if I stay in Davos? If Glade doesn't get traded? Who knows, but actually, probably not, so in hindsight, from an individual award/HoF perspective, going to free agency and signing with Moscow is one of the best VHL decisions I ever made. If Glade stays in Davos and I do too, maybe Glade continues to take the 1D minutes and points, as Glade was no slouch of a player either.

There are no days off from simming!!!

Double sim???

What have you been up to and why did it take you so long to return???

My recommendation is not to go 100% all out for every player. You just can't. Like you said, it results in burnout. There is nothing wrong with doing welfare and getting 10 or 11 capped TPE a week. Of the 7 players I've had, I've gone all out on 3 or 4 of them, and of those 4, I didn't last all 8 seasons of top TPE earning. Being a goalie comes with its own sets of challenges, and I can't comment on it, because I made 1 and it was bad.

Grills are one of those things that are most likely to start a fire that tenants have control over. The technical guideline we have is "grills must be at least 10 ft from any structure" (which, by the way, is 100% recommended. DO NOT put the back of your grill close to your house/apartment), but in a typical apartment, how often do you actually have 10 ft of space? Add on the fact that tenant occupied property is much more likely to have a property claim than owner occupied property and not allowing grills is one of the easiest way to reduce property claims. And I've never understood the propane tank thing. Obviously storing the tanks inside is a no no, but just walking it through? It's not like the tank is going to spontaneously combust.

I'm only on Part 2 of this for S77....did I miss two weeks? I know I missed last week because I was more exhausted from Easter dinners than I thought I would be, but I didn't think I missed any other weeks. That would put us in week 3...which sounds right? Prague has been slipping recently. Still playing pretty well, but we're down to 4th in the VHL standings and I believe 3rd in the European Conference. From a points perspective we're right up there with everyone except 1st place, as there isn't too much separation between the rest of the teams. Looking like a good competitive season. From an individual perspective, I'm at about a point per game again, with slightly more assists than last season. I also have a lot more hits. For non-VHL talk, I moved into my house in January and got a grill last weekend. Been very excited to cook up hot dogs, burgers, and veggies on the grill. My last apartment was supposed to be able to have a grill on the patio (which, working in the insurance world, I was very surprised this was allowed), but the lease/bylaws were updated to no longer allow grills of any type.

1.) In a normal year, I'd say yes, but with all the salary cap constraints and even straight dollar salary issues, he might not. 2.) Nah, I did pretty good this year not eating sweets. Had some good ham though! 3.) Hm.....that's a good question. Shoestring licorice is pretty good, sweetarts are pretty good, dark chocolate is pretty good. 4.) Not sure I'm following, but I wouldn't say I have any hobbies that aren't popular...unless going way too indepth about the Flyers counts. 5.) Schnauzer (miniature or full size) and we'll name it Kevin. 6.) The NHL 21 series as an EASHL defenseman - @WentzKneeFan036can vouch for me. In my prime, I played for a routine top 50 club.

So you mean on our player pages, someone would hover over "SK" and it would say "Skating - the stat that does this." ? No idea how feasible it is, but it sounds like a good idea. @Josh @Will

I prefer the "L" shape TBH.

And FWIW, this is not something that "the BoG" is in uniform agreement on.

The very short response is that allowing maximum stats is a way to minimize the effectiveness of a true "super star" driven league. By that, I mean the top TPE whores are basically the ones who determine which team is good and which league is bad. That's a gross simplification to a complex topic, but from my point of view, I'd rather have the current league/TPE set up (or something similar to it) than a league that came down to who had the most TPE whores.

Maybe before Flyers - eating soon.