Fire Tortorella

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.

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.

Hi, I remembered the VHL and i wanted to come here and say hi again. Its been a year or so and its definitely been bad to not be able to be in the discord although I'm certain many of you guys love not seeing the kid that annoyed you 24/7. Idk whos still here I assume like 99% of you guys and have a good day I guess

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.

Yes.

Look at this fuckin’ guy with his LOGIC! Phfft.
 
Okay you dick wieners, I’ll recreate with Bobert at the deadline. A full welfare case should be the ceiling of expectation though!

https://vhlforum.com/forum/125-create-a-player/

For me to get this article to 500 words I would have had to write "the people" 250 times.

Sorry to see this. I'll get a mod to move it here https://vhlforum.com/forum/79-retirements/ so it's official. Good luck in the future. 

helluva rig you got there

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

It may be wayyy late but we performed a team vote this last week in order to select our leadership team for the year.
 
Im proud to announce that Thomas Landry II @Doomsdaywill continue on as our team captain after receiving a vote from every single voter.
 
He will be assisted this year by John Leclair II @Fire Vigneaultand Dominic Gobeil @Domg5. Congratulations
 
Go get em boys! 
 
Go Phantoms Go!
 
 

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.

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.

I missed the ol fresco jebaited VHL.com articles

Gucci, Los Angeles Start Hot
Anaheim, CA
 
After a mildly disappointing rookie season, center and second-year forward Its Gucci entered season 77 with higher hopes and goals (literally and figuratively).  "Playing center, there are a lot of responsibilities, a lot to work on and practice on the ice.  I clearly had to play catch up in my first year.  Checking, faceoffs, puck handling, shooting, you really have to cover all of your bases in order to excel.  I'm much more comfortable now spending more time getting stronger, working on my checking and blocking shots, among other things," Gucci explained.
 
The center, while not a leader by any means, has been a great supporting role on a Los Angeles team that is currently first in the VHL's North American conference, sporting 24 points over its first 17 games.  With the league's second highest goal differential they have played strong complimentary hockey to date.
 
Gucci has excelled greatly in the early period of this season, on pace to double his season 76 point total.  Additionally, after bouncing up and down the individual leader boards, Its settled after the first month with the 3rd highest shooting percentage in the league.  "I'd like to get more hits and blocked shots, support our defense better as we are going to certainly face tougher teams later this season.  The scoring boon has been great, but I would equally appreciate being a strong two-way forward."

Wawa is better than Sheetz.

Wawa is better than Sheetz.

Wawa is better than Sheetz.

The Toronto Maple Leafs suck
 
😃

I've never heard of half the names in this media spot.

is...this a joke I'm unaware of or a forum change thing?
 
BOG? BoG? bog?

^ I know I agree 👍 and im all for that. That part makes sense.  
 
We should be allowed to paste things from the site to use the info. Just not claim that portion of the article or media spot.  
 
But like you said I got the word count now without the pasted trades, after I added to this.
Counting the total 2300 words or whatever was more for dramatic effect after this garnered attention. 

With the first week of the season almost in the books let's take a quick look at the Prague Phantoms prospect and San Diego Marlins first line winger, Nicholas Mariani. Coming into the league after being drafted 32nd overall by the San Diego Marlins Nicholas Mariani was a pick that most would say was a risk and a reach, especially with all the talent that was still on the board. The week prior we saw Nicholas settling in to his new home in San Diego, getting comfortable with his new environment and teammates. In that last week of the off-season we also saw Nicholas put in a tremendous amount of work to get himself game ready for the Marlins and with all that hard work he put in we easily saw the return in the first week of the VHLM season. 
 
Nicholas has put 11 points in 11 games with 5 of those being goals and 6 as assists. Although it isn't as impressive as some of the young superstars in the league, averaging a point per game still proves to be a great feat and provides consistent production in that first line grouping. It seems as if he can only get better with time if he continues to put in this kind of effort and can hopefully lead to an great season for the young rookie. Soon enough we will get an idea if the kid is the real deal or not, but for now let us enjoy the show as Nicholas is proving all his doubters wrong.