Fire Tortorella

So yeah, my motivation to earn TPE has been down the tube the past couple of months, but it's coming back. The VHL has been a part of my life for the past 11 years or so and I don't know if/when it ever won't be, but we all ebb and flow our activity levels, and there's nothing wrong with that. My player is actually having a good season - higher save percentage, lower GAA, and more shut outs than last season, all while not maximizing on TPE. Not bad. Warsaw is doing well as well - 3rd in the league and 2nd in the conference. I re-signed with Warsaw for 2 more seasons - should be fun! Random, but does anyone play the game Hattrick? This is another browser game I've played off and on since like...2008, but I currently have the best team I've ever had, which isn't really saying that much. What are some other fun games you used to play back in the day? The game sounds dumb and is pretty dead now, but Puzzle Pirates may be the game I wish I played more, but the time commitment needed in a single sitting made that hard.

Jamie was a blast and didn't take shit from anyone - had the pleasure of being on her team when she had her best player, Brennan McQueen, and GMing her on Riga and in the VHLM with Ottawa. Just naming other "noteable" female members....Meg, Cailean, and I'm sure I'm missing more. Also yes, @Squidward used to not always troll and used to be a VHL GM, VHLM GM, VHLM Commissioner, and BoG member.

1.) It's going well! Higher save percentage, lower GAA, more shut outs, on pace for more wins...what more could I ask for? 2.) Whatever player @Squidwardhad, but unfortunately he's a bum now and doesn't even do welfare players. 3.) Honestly, no one in particular. I don't have any strong feelings against these teams right now. 4.) Yeah, that's a tough one. Sometimes you win games you don't deserve, and sometimes you lose games you do deserve. In this case, we deserved this game, but it is what it is. 5.) Yeah....I don't want to talk about it. See my user name. 6.) It's always been Sunday for my entire sim league career! Why do today what I can do tomorrow? Due tomorrow, do tomorrow!

Claim 8/1-8/7

1,500 words Claim 7/25-7/31 Also if I have this correct, I can claim the doubles week from Theme Week on the 7/18-7/24 claim and then the triples week on the 7/25-7/31 claim, correct?

The VHL is 15! For a variety of reasons, if you would have told me in 2010 that the VHL would still be going strong (and in reality, stronger) 15 years later, I wouldn't have believed you. This league, the sim league community, and the internet in general was in a such different place than it is now. In this article, I'm going to ramble through some of the major and minor changes I've seen during my time here. WARNING: There is going to be a lot of "old man yells at cloud" going on in here. The Portal The portal is hands down the biggest change the VHL has seen in the past 10 years, and sadly, I'll freely admit that it was something I was wrong on. I was 100% against the idea of moving any type of traffic off the forum (which to my slight credit, I've always been consistent with, but that battle was lost against the internet as a whole) and I believe one of the original purposes of the portal was to also host media spots, but this is easily the best improvement the league has made. Most of these will have their own topic, but we're now able to automate updating in the sim and greatly improve the time it takes to update your player. So how did this work 10 years ago? Say you're me and always wait until Sunday night to do your point task. You'd write your media spot/graphic, wait for it to be graded (which is a topic that will be covered next), then add it to your update page, and then wait for the updater to approve your update (which was only done once a week). THEN you'd have to wait for the sim to be updated. This was an extremely manual process originally done by the simmer (who simmed both the VHL and VHLM in the same file) until eventually someone was hired to do this specifically on a more regular basis. Usually the sim would be updated twice a year (trade deadline and beginning of the playoffs) and maybe one additional time if we were lucky. This would be unheard of in today's world. Grading That's right, your point tasks used to be graded, and you weren't guaranteed 6 TPE! As someone who was Head Grader for a number of years, grading was always near and dear to my heart. At the beginning, your point task needed two grades to be finalized, and you would earn the average of the two scores. Media spots were graded on Content (3 possible TPE), Grammar (2 possible TPE) and Creativity (1 possible TPE). That's right, we graded on grammar, and the grader would list every single mistake you made, from misspellings and incorrect punctuation to actual grammar mistakes like using the wrong their, there, or they're! Creativity just meant throwing some color and a picture on there. Graphics were also graded in 3 categories that I don't remember since I haven't ever done a graphic on this site, but I think it was something like content, creativity, and something else. I don't really, remember, but what I DO remember is it was common for people to only earn 4 or 5 TPE on their graphics. We used to have extremely high standards on our graphics to the point that I think many graphics today would only earn 3 TPE on this scale. Eventually, the "one grade" rule was instituted which said that if the grade you get was a 6, you didn't need another grade, but at some point, grading was just did away with entirely and every point task was given 6 points. I'm also going to tie in here that a media spot was only worth 6 TPE for 1 week regardless of how long it was, so there was no incentive to do a good @Gustav type 2,000 word article, but that didn't stop many of our members from doing so. Welfare While the portal is the best thing the league as a whole has ever seen, I'm going to say the introduction of welfare is the single biggest change that has kept me around. Before welfare, if you didn't do a point task, too bad! This started to lead to extreme burnout, especially since the multi-week point task claim wasn't around either. Therefore, the idea of welfare was introduced! At first, this only provided 3 capped TPE per week. Eventually, the pension system was introduced, meaning you can earn an extra TPE (up to 5 total capped TPE) for every player you had that reached 400 TPE, which was a decent amount back then since the weekly cap was 9 TPE and most people didn't cap every week since you needed a job to do so. Eventually this was changed to 4 TPE for welfare and only 1 player needed to get to 5 TPE. TPE Earning That's right, I mentioned above that the cap was 9 TPE and most people didn't get it every week. Back then, there were no press conferences, trivia, or other ways to earn capped TPE. Essentially, you did your point task (hopefully 6 TPE), did a fan590 article or small graphic (for 1 TPE) then you needed a job of some sort to get 2 more capped TPE. For example, originally you needed to grade 8 point tasks in order to earn 1 TPE. Back in my day, we had to actually work for our TPE, and to be honest, it sucked! VHLM/The Minors If people think the VHLM or VHLE sucks now, they should have seen the VHLM back in the day. There was even a proposal on the table at one point to delete the league in it's entirety. At this point, I don't remember on how rookies/new players would have been handled, but the league would have looked very different and not in a good way. I mentioned before that the VHL and VHLM simming was not split at this point, so everything was done in one large file. That meant if a VHL team was making changes and it overwrote your VHLM changes, too bad! The way new players were added to teams was also different. Instead of a GM pitching to a new member why they should play for their team, new players were put on waivers (I believe for at least 48 hours) and teams had 24 hours to put in a claim on a player to add them to their team. If multiple teams put in an offer on a player, then whichever team was higher on the "waiver priority" was given the player. Once you claimed a player, you were placed on the bottom of the priority. Before "new players" and "re-creates" were given separate waiver priorities, this meant that new members would often sit unclaimed for days at a time while GMs held onto their waiver priority to get the deadline re-creates. With no portal automation, new players had to be created manually and added to the sim, which often took days because again, if there was a VHL change that took priority, you may be SOL. Chat/Discord/Mobile This is the single change that is more so about the internet as a whole rather than the league itself, but imagine a time without Discord, without the ability to access websites on your phone, and without the ability to chat even a single member. That was the league back in 2010 (or at least I don't think chat was here when I first started, but came very soon after). In order to communicate with your team or the league as a whole, that meant you had to make a forum post! Teams would have their own locker rooms on the forum (and there was a HUGE debate on if locker rooms belonged at the top of the site or the bottom, and the correct answer is bottom) and all general communication took place in general discussion, point tasks, or the thunderdome. This meant that communication wasn't instantaneous! I could go to school or work and then come back and check on the posts that I missed in the past 7 hours or whatever and still keep up with the league! Nowadays, with everything going on in Discord, if you're not there when it happens, you basically don't see it and aren't able to participate. This is such a huge, fundamental change to the league and the internet as a whole that I don't think newer members or younger people in general can appreciate. Eventually we made a mobile site and then the portal and then Discord blah blah blah...RIP the forum The Toxicity I'm not really going to go into detail on this one since I'm coming up on 1,500 words and I think this has been covered enough in general, but if you think something like GenChat is toxic or being a GM today is toxic, you should have seen the site back in the day. I don't even mean the specific language that was used, but just the fact that not only did individual people go after each other, but actual teams used to have actual rivalries and go after each other.

Happy Birthday VHL!

1.) Man, it feels like such a blur, like I wasn't even here! 6-3 is pretty good, but 7-2 would be better, and 9-0 would be best! Still a good start to the season though. 2.) Not good, not great. Save percentage decent, GAA decent, but the team has been winning and that's what's important to me. 3.) Not sure I'm the best to answer that question since I'm the goaler, but I just feel like we've been unlucky so far. With a few more bounces the pucks will start going in more. 4.) Pre-game meal is honestly usually pizza - not trash pizza like pineapple pizza or frozen pizza, but an actual, homemade pizza. Pretty good. 5.) Spend a lot of time relaxing at my place and just keeping my mind off of hockey. I'll turn on a game every once in a while but I enjoy watching other sports just so I can sit back and relax and just be a fan again. 6.) My favorite NHL team is the Philadelphia Flyers and my least favorite NHL team is the Philadelphia Flyers. Things have been bad the past 10 years and there's no hope of them turning it around any time soon.

Well, tomorrow is the trade deadline (I think? Maybe it's trade deadline week?) and we all know what that means - theme week! Not sure what the theme week is this season, but it means it's the one time a season I'll do a point task. I go through phases with different players and this current player is definitely a "do welfare and round it out with what you can" type of player. The NHL playoffs are going on and there's a ton of game 7s! As I'm writing this the Penguins lost in OT to the Rangers. I really really dislike the forced divisional rivalry in round 1 - it should just be 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, etc... with no re-seeding during playoffs. I need about 30 more words...I'm always surprised about the level of difficulty of the trivia questions. A couple of them I've been able to answer without looking up but then there's been a couple that I have no idea on after researching for 10 minutes or so so I just give up and guess since I have at least a 25% chance, if not better since sometimes you can eliminate at least one answer.

1.) Well, we started to score more goals than the other team in more games! I guess we're getting pucks in deep, playing heavy along the boards, not turning over the puck and playing a 200 foot game. 2.) We're all doing pretty well but both Nalwa and Kisslinger have probably been our most valuable players so far - we'd be in a much worse spot without them. 3.) Apparently it would be Prague! I think we just want to avoid Riga as a round 1 matchup. 4.) My picks (and 4 way parlay!) was CAR, TBL, LAK, and NYR. I didn't hit on LAK and NYR looks like it could go either way right now. 5.) Nah, nothing large plan for travel, just a kitchen remodel which is where the travel budget is going this year. We also have weddings this upcoming weekend and the following weekend. 6.) Cherry coke, AINEC

@Squidward and I play 6s in the ITHL and TLX on PS4 - anyone else play in 6s leagues?

While tiding up my claims this week for my past couple of weeks, I realized that this is Part 3 but we're in week 4 of the regular season - I think I missed a week either right before or right after I had a trip for work that kept me away - whoops! Don't have the statistics to necessarily back this up but it seems like Warsaw is moving in the right direction - we've had a lot of winning sims recently and are making up for some "not winning" sims at the beginning of the season. From an individual perspective, I'm somewhere around a .920 sv %, which sounds pretty good, but I don't even think it's top 10 this season. I have a feeling we're going to have to re-evaluate goalie attributes/update scale at the end of this season - might not have to do anything drastic, but a slight tweak or so. From a personal perspective, have some busy weekends coming up - had mothers day today for my wife and my's 2 mothers and 2 step-mothers, which is always busy, then we have a bunch of weddings coming up in the next couple of weeks and we're in 1 of them. All good things, but busy things.

1.) My nickname is my name - Wumbo! It's hard to have a shorter name than that. 2.) I want Florida to win it for Giroux and think they CAN do it, but if I have to put money down I would put it down on the Avalanche - just think they're the most complete team out there. 3.) Not really. I actually read the forum primarily through "View New Content" and don't just go to specific forums themselves. Over the past 20 seasons, I've probably spent most of my time in the BoG forum. 4.) I'm hoping it's the Flyers for obvious reasons but I'm just gonna go with the Canadiens for who will actually get it. I'm sure whoever gets the first pick will pick Wright. 5.) Warsaw Predators feels pretty good - only downside I think is that there's an NHL team with the name Predators. If we had to change them...maybe the Warthogs. 6.) Not binging, but I'm (finally) going through Sopranos for the first time. For a variety of reasons (none of which have to do with the show itself) I've never gotten past S3 but am currently on the first half of S4 - very good show.

:anderson:

So, the season is going on. To be completely honest I've barely paid attention to the league over the past week. I was in Scottsdale on business and barely had time to get actual work done, let alone any free internet browsing time. I mentioned this in the other "what's going on in life" thread or something like that but Scottsdale is way too hot during the day. In the shade during the day it was OK and at night it was fine, but in the sun was brutal. Keeping it VHL related enough, it seems like the Predators had a rough start to the season but we're slowly turning it around. We've had some winning sims recently so we just have to keep that momentum going and slowly get back into things. I think if we're able to make the playoffs this year it would be a successful season. I'm not currently in the top 10 of save percentage with a .925ish - that seems kind of surprising but of course this is going to be a weird season in terms of different stats across the league than what's expected.

1.) Get down to the locker room and kick some ass! Apparently the coach can't get it done so now the GM has to step in. At least, that's what the Flyers used to do, and they're a well run organization........right? 2.) I think we all could be playing better. I had a couple of stinkers early on that could have at least gotten us the loser point in overtime. 3.) I'm not going to comment on players outside of Warsaw, but I saw there's a couple players pretty high up there in terms of total points scored. 4.) Yes, I do. We had a pretty tough start to the season from a scheduling standpoint and we definitely have enough talent to turn this season around. 5.) Always nice to have an addition to the locker room, especially someone who is seemingly connected to supplying some good juice! 6.) I would go back to S1. I joined around S27ish so I'd like to go back to see the true beginning of the league - shit was bonkers in S27 compared to now so I'd really like to see it back in 2007.

Ah, a new season, meaning everyone is still theoretically in contention to make the playoffs. For Warsaw, I think we have a good shot at making them but it also wouldn't be completely unexpected if we don't. At the very least it'll be a fun season since it's not a situation where we know we're out of it on day 1. From an individual performance standpoint, I'm hoping to finish around middle of the pack in save percentage - I think that would be a pretty good season for a rookie goalie on an average team. The funny thing is I can't speak about what that "middle of the pack" save percentage will be since we're moving to the hybrid attributes. Goalie save percentage seems to be slightly higher at this point but we're still pretty early. Traveling to Scottsdale this week for work - not looking forward to it. It's hot, I think it's going to be a relative waste of time, and it means work is gonna be awful Friday and next week since I won't be able to get a ton done on my desk while I'm out there.

2.) We'll all be fighting for the Continental Cup - that's the only award that matters to us anyway. 3.) For starters, for anyone seriously thinking of applying, be aware that this job probably has the second highest league burnout rate other than VHL Commissioner. Honest answer is at this point I'm all out of ideas for recruitment (which was never my strong point in the first place). Continued cross sim league advertisement might be our best bet at this point. 4.) Fighting - the league would be more fun if we turned it into the WWE on top of a hockey sim league. Could make some interesting story lines with that as well. 5.) Knowing nothing about the Western Conference this year, I'm going to say Vancouver and LA. Vancouver has Benning as their GM so I'm sure the team isn't actually that good and LA seems like they haven't really been good in a while and are still in an awkward phase of having good very young players and good very old playeres. 6.) Haven't watched a ton of movies lately, but a couple weeks ago (maybe longer at this point) I saw Margin Call, which I thought was a pretty good movie. 7.) I would not rebrand Seattle. I'm a huge proponent of keeping the old team names at this point. A new logo would be one thing, but the Bears are a historic franchise and should not get a new name, similar to the Wranglers.

I was there a couple years ago in August and the high one of the days was 110.....just looking outside made me sweat.

It's 99 on Tuesday. That's 25 degrees too hot. National sales conference for work (insurance)....nothing exciting.

I have to travel to Scottsdale, AZ for 4 days next week for a 2 day conference - Monday and Thursday are essentially washes for travel days. These things are always a giant waste of time - 75% of it could be done virtually or just isn't important. It's exacerbated by the fact that one of my colleagues is on vacation until the beginning of May and I'm they're primary back up - it was going to be hard enough to not fall too far behind for losing essentially 4 days next week, but I'm going to have to basically just ignore this person's work except for the absolute emergencies, which won't be fun for them to come back to. I've already spoken to management about this and they understand and agree with my assessment/plan. I've been getting into play competitive 6v6 EASHL leagues for about a year now and it's still very fun - easily the most fun I've had playing this game mode since it came out in NHL 09. I'm relatively certain the house across the street from me is selling for at least $75k higher than I paid for mine in Jan 2021, which is nice.

Back in my day, we had to manually post a topic for each individual game!

Well, pre-season is here! It's nice to have some games that actually (kind of) matter, especially given we as a league need to test out the new attributes. We had two pre-season games and went 2-0. The first game was kind of interesting in that we had 60 something shots. I don't know if Malmo is supposed to be good or not, but I was a little worried seeing that many shots in a single game. The second game was 30ish-20ish shots, which is much more of what we're used to. Goalies should be interesting this season. @CowboyinAmericadid a nice fan590 about how few high TPE goalies there are this season and how few there will be in the next couple of seasons. The funny thing is I remember back in the 30s or 40s or so there was a theory by some teams/GMs that cap space/assets were better allocated elsewhere and you only needed a roughly 500 TPE goalie to be a contender. Granted, this was under a different salary cap and a different TPE scale, so you can't make an apples to apples comparison to today, but it's just interesting to see the ebbs and flows of the league "metas" across the years.

1.) I think it's gotta be Warsaw, right? We always have to go into the season thinking we're the favorite. 2.) It's been long but it had to be given all of the changes this off-season. It especially sucks if you were on a team that didn't make the playoffs, but it is what it is - just excited the season is starting soon. 3.) I don't know enough about the Leafs to comment, but Matthews is a very very good player. 4.) That's a good question - I'm going to say the league leader will be lower in points...probably somewhere around 95-100, but I think there will be a lot of players in that area. 5.) 76-0-0 1.000 SV % 0.00 GAA 72 SO - always have to strive towards perfection. 6.) Yes I do, but no idea who they're going to take. For the longest time it seemed like it would be that Thibideaux guy or something from Oregon, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Most recent I heard was some other DE, but I don't know. I think they should just take the most talented player regardless of position (except QB).