Grape

All that just to lose in Round 2

Solution: All graphics are banned

I feel like I've read this before...

Idk only really took 30 minutes out of my day so not really that much time.

Could be because of a certain situation that has recently occurred involving plagiarism

To be fair, it has been a while since the last YouTube ad iirc. Feels like there has not been a large recruitment drive in general. As the YouTube channels grow, so to does the percent of their audience that has no idea what a sim league is or does. It's something that can always be done and will always garner new people.

The Season 91 VHLM draft was the weakest in recent memory. In drafts before, teams were able to get active roster players through the 5th round. This go-around, however, there weren’t even enough players for a 5th round. The 4th round was a complete crapshoot as well, with inactives taking up half the picks. Looking at the waivers and the upcoming draft so far, it’s not looking very promising for the future. If recruitment can’t kick it into high gear and get some new blood in the league, it may be time to look at some alternatives. There are really two solutions I can foresee, both involving the removal of some teams. The two solutions are as follows: Shrink the M or Delete the E. Reducing the M by at least 2 teams concentrates the talent amongst the rosters, improving parity as well as making the impact of less players not feel as heavy. Deleting the E and increasing the M cap to 300-350 or so and the VHL coming down to close the gap vastly increases the player pool for the M and creates a much better environment for first gens and recreates alike. From what it appears, many E GMs aren’t doing their jobs anyways so booting them and letting players actually be with an active GM and locker room would definitely improve overall morale. I guess with my distaste for the VHLE, you can assume which side I’d be leaning towards, if such an issue arises. But I hope it doesn’t come to this. I’d much rather see a large recruitment drive and a bunch of new blood flood in than the league be reduced once again.

It's kind of just the curse of the TPE range. that 200-400 area is where a lot of first-gens burn out, so a lot of E teams suffer from just being filled with IAs. There was somewhat of a reduction of it, but now it's just filled with clickers. It's pretty painful for actual dedicated players. I guess we just never felt it because when the M and VHL ate up that range, there were plenty of actives surrounding it to make it feel not as barren. It's better to try and skip it I suppose.

The E being shit as per usual. People might stop shitting on the league if the people running it actually did their jobs.

Grape. “Stealing Other People’s Work.” Victory Hockey League, 6 Nov. 2023, vhlforum.com/topic/142170-stealing-other-peoples-work/.

yes and yes

Whoever's the principal I suppose

I remember way back in my youth, probably like 2nd or 3rd grade, my teacher assigned us a project. We were to make a children’s book on a topic that interested us. I decided to make a book about betta fish. When introducing the project, the teacher gave us a cute little talk about plagiarism, and some basic dos and don’ts on researching and using sources in your own work. It was a brief discussion, as we were kids and were pretty much just reciting basic factoids and whatnot about our topic, but it was done to introduce us to research itself. This was expanded upon and gone in a bit more depth upon entering middle school. As research projects became more popular and utilized in pretty much every class, teachers began stressing the importance of proper citations and paraphrasing, avoiding plagiarizing, and interpreting sources, as well as grading harsher and harsher based on errors pertaining to those. It’s been basically drilled into all our heads at one point or another of our lives and it’s been made very clear that stealing other people’s work is wrong, and should be punished. Ever since I’ve joined the VHL, I’ve always been a fan of the VHLM. The vast majority of my articles, podcasts, and other TPE related activities has been focused on the M. My giant spreadsheet that breaks down every team started out as purely being for the VHLM, and I only expanded it to the other two leagues out of boredom. I update the M portion practically daily, while the VHL gets looked at maybe once a week and the E maybe a few times a season. I’ve dedicated a lot of time learning about the M and how it works, eventually getting a GM gig in the league and I really have little desire to move on from that, at least for now. I would wager that, out of the active members at least, I put out arguably the most M content. Likewise, I love reading articles about the M, as I really enjoy seeing other people showing the same enjoyment as I have for the league. Because of my passion for the league, I pretty much read every single article that gets put out regarding the league. So, when it comes to making content about the M, it probably is not the smartest idea to plagiarize from me. A few days after posting my Season 91 VHLM Rankings, I was sitting around in class, bored as hell, and decided to take a bit of a gander at some of the media spots that have been put out, and I notice this nice little article by @LastOneUp also looking at the VHLM for this season . As I started reading, I thought to myself, “huh, this looks really similar to my article”. I shared both his and mine with a handful of people, and they also agreed that these articles were a bit too similar to be a simple coincidence. Later on, I went to his profile and saw that he also made a smaller article, going over the same thing, and I thought, “wow, this looks really similar to my article”. And props to him for pulling out a couple tried-and-true methods, like changing the wording slightly, and swapping the order for a couple of the teams, just to make it look original. It’s one thing to agree on a handful of points, but it’s another to basically repeat every single point I made. The second, shorter article was much more blatant. I’ll point out a couple key indicators of plagiarism for y’all in case you don’t feel like looking for them yourselves: - In both articles, he finds it important to mention the peculiarity of Houston’s three defenseman system, something that I brought up and is only supported by my own anecdotal evidence. Is having three defensemen actually bad for a team, I don’t really know. - For Vegas, he mentions the “dylan” curse, a term that I made up in my article and, from my knowledge, has never been used by anyone except for me in this singular instance. - In his small article, he copies the order in which I ranked the teams. In his larger article, however, he swaps the order for a couple teams. You would think, especially based on how closely both his articles were made, that he would have the same ordering for both. - Probably the most damning one. In my article I compared Mexico City and San Diego. In his small article, he attempts to do the same, but he has “similarly” on San Diego, which he ranked below Mexico City. There is nothing similar between San Diego and Halifax bud. Look, I don’t have a monopoly on VHLM rankings. If you want to do them, feel free to do so. I would love to see more M content. The majority of content made is about the VHL, and I feel that the lower leagues need a little more appreciation (although the E can stay barren cuz bad league). If you’re gonna do it, however, make it original. I take a lot of pride in my work and it’s very upsetting to see it be blatantly stolen and pawned off as someone else's. I mean, that short article wasn’t even trying to hide it. If you really really really can’t think of stuff on your own and want to use someone else’s work, at the very least throw in some citations. Every lil tidbit you took from my article and slammed into yours, slap a “(Grape, 2023)” at the end of it. Once you reach the end of your article, be sure to include your sources like so: Grape. (2023, November 1). S91 VHLM Team Rankings. Victory Hockey League. https://vhlforum.com/topic/142056-s91-vhlm-team-rankings/ APA format is also acceptable since this is somewhat research oriented, but I feel like MLA fits this the best. Whichever you feel like using is fine by me, so long as you give proper credit. (1007 words, all my own)

Atlas must demand a trade to a true contender, like Chicago

Claiming for week 2

@Spartan

1. @UnkemptCL4PTP F - Jason F - Larry Abass Jr F - Alfred Champagne D - Bobby Bob D - David Jokinen G - Geoff Bezos 2. @SlapshotWrangler F - Leandro Goncalves F - Randy Bobandy F - Scotty Sundin D - Jake Thunder D - Mark Calaway G - Merome Dilson 3. @Grape (GM) F - Wann Kerr F - Yaroslav Bogatyrev F - Landon Wolanin D - Skor McFleury D - Pierre Emile Bouchard G - Lachlan Summers 4. @Gaming Ringleader F - AK92 Wit da Hoodie F - Mac Atlas F - Legacy Gaming D - Brian Kowalski D - Elias Lampi G - Matt Murdock 5. @Renomitsu F - John Jameson F - Vincent Laroche-Gagnier F - Sadie St-Louis D - Ryuji Sakamoto D - Jimmy MacElroy G - Joel Castle 6. @samx F - Todd Cooke F - Tomas Sogaard F - Molly the Cat D - James Marino D - Phil Strasmore G - Art Vandelay

Blud forreal just plagiarized a shit-ton from my rankings

19 is still doable. Gotta do better than that bud.

Fulfilling condition of previous trade

5 shots is my usual Wednesday anyways so I'll take you up on that

10. Halifax 21st FD Ranking: 10th (0.131) Goaltender Ranking: 4th (168 TPA) Halifax comes into the season with the weakest roster in the league. As of last check, they have one forward, no defensemen, and one goalie. Granted, the two players on their roster are relatively high in TPA, they likely will not be able to carry Halifax to relevance. This is also a team that has had some bad luck with waiver players in the past, so it is unlikely that they will get much more support this season. Expect this team to go the Season 85 Mississauga method and get rid of their entire team to lose out and secure some high draft picks. 9. San Diego Marlins FD Ranking: 9th (0.200) Goaltender Ranking: T-9th (No goalie) San Diego did a decent job filling out their roster, having the minimum forwards and defensemen to keep the bots out of the main roster, but they lack a real goaltender. We have all seen how much even having a goalie impacts a team. Sure, their defensemen are good and sure, their forwards will get better, but this team simply cannot compete without someone between the pipes, no matter their TPA. Unless they shore up that weakness, expect this team to be a seller. 8. Mexico City Kings FD Ranking: 4th (0.636) Goaltender Ranking: T-9th (No goalie) This team is pretty similar to San Diego structure-wise, minus one forward. Their skaters are all relatively high TPE for the start of a season, but they are in the same boat as San Diego in terms of the goaltender department. They simply will be unable to compete without a goalie. Based on their roster, this is a team that would likely buy instead of sell. I can foresee that if they are unable to get a goaltender through waivers, that they would look to make a trade to acquire one (cough cough Halifax). If they decide to stand pat, however, they are going to stay near the bottom of the standings and, if they make the playoffs, be bounced pretty much immediately. 7. Las Vegas Aces FD Ranking: 5th (0.430) Goaltender Ranking: 8th (61 TPA) The Las Vegas Aces have built up a solid roster, with all their needs filled out. While goaltending and forward is a bit of a question mark, that should be easily enough resolved with time. So long as they can keep their players active, they should be competitive enough. A weakness of this team is that they have what I call the “dylan” curse, in which you bring dylan on your roster and they simply just do not claim really any TPE whatsoever and take up a roster spot, making your team worse, but who knows, maybe he will actually follow through with this player. 6. Mississauga Hounds FD Ranking: 8th (0.208) Goaltender Ranking: 3rd (180 TPA) Mississauga is not primed for a comeback, sorry to say. Sure, they have some decent forwards. Sure, they got Dutil to come back, giving them a legit starting goaltender. However, they have no defensemen. We have seen a one defenseman system work somewhat before, but a zero defenseman system is just asking for failure. They could likely stay afloat until the recreates come in and shore up that weakness, but they likely would want to fix that issue sooner or later. If they do not, then plan for a short title defense. 5. Miami Marauders FD Ranking: 7th (0.241) Goaltender Ranking: 6th (110 TPA) While relatively weak TPE wise in each category, they do fulfill all their needs (as of now). A pretty average team, all things considered. Does not wow me in any aspects, and likely will not impress many. They should sit near the middle of the league and likely will not do much damage come playoff time. 4. Saskatoon Wild FD Ranking: 6th (0.395) Goaltender Ranking: 5th (130 TPA) Saskatoon has continued to do the slow burn, building off draft after draft and consistently having the largest roster in the league. Whilst they do have the deepest forward core and a good goaltender, they lack really any support on the blue line, with only one defenseman on the roster and they have yet to apply any of their TPE. This team does have the resources to make a move to size up their defensemen, if they do not wish to wait for recreates or waivers. Expect this team to be in the conversation for contention, as they have been in the past few seasons. 3. Ottawa Lynx FD Ranking: 1st (0.929) Goaltender Ranking: 7th (81 TPA) Ottawa is poised to make a strong push this season, sporting a roster of high TPA skaters right out of the draft, having the best overall skaters. Their achilles heel, so to speak, is goaltending. While it should be suitable for the start of the season, they will need their tender to apply their banked TPE to really help push them over the age. On paper, that is the only thing holding them back from being at the top of the league, as well as some additional depth to flesh out the roster. 2. Philadelphia Reapers FD Ranking: 3rd (0.796) Goaltender Ranking: 2nd (197 TPA) Philadelphia showcases a strong, albeit thin, roster and a top goaltender, which should keep them near the top of the league. By the end of the season, expect all but one of their players to be completely capped and ready to do some damage in the postseason. The biggest concern would obviously be depth, as we have seen the lack of that hurt teams before. 1. Houston Bulls FD Ranking: 2nd (0.887) Goaltender Ranking: 1st (200 TPA) Houston bolsters a strong roster, with pretty much all their players estimated to cap out by the end of the season, as well as an already capped goaltender. An interesting note is that they have three defensemen on the roster, which has had some limited success in the past. It could be possible that they look to move one of these to increase their forward core and strengthen their roster, but as of now, they will likely just let it ride. After all, why not? They should be the best team in the league and would not make much sense to alter that for now. Rosters were last updated Monday, October 30th, so there are likely some minor changes that have occurred (1082 words)

Ah, my bad. Portal said he was a free agent

Can't wait for every Fantasy Zone question to be based on San Diego, Cologne, and Warsaw