MexicanCow123

Hello, and welcome to the first edition of a new season of Under 250: The VHLM Report. In these series, we will be taking a look at the trends and topics from the past week in the VHLM. What twists and turns will our minor league hold? Stay tuned to find out!

The Review
 
Eighteen games into the season and we have already found a hierarchy of teams to make up the standings. The Western Conference is leading the way with high performing teams, while the Eastern Conference is more balanced throughout, as even its worst two teams have found some small successes. 
 


The Saskatoon Wild lead the league with 35 points, two ahead of their conference rivals, the Yukon Rush. The Las Vegas Aces follow closely behind, as this trio forms a juggernaut top three for the Western Conference. Filling the fourth position is the Mexico City Kings who, while not having quite the same record as the aforementioned teams, stand with a positive goal difference and a respectable 22 points, 15 more than the fifth placed San Diego Marlins. Filling out the West is the last-placed Houston Bulls, whose 4 points is worst across both conferences. 
 
Going now to the Eastern Conference we have perhaps the pre-season favorites in the Halifax 21st given their nine picks in the first three rounds of the draft. They are living up to the hype, and lead the East with 34 points, just one behind the Wild for overall first place. Next come the Mississauga Hounds with 28 points, but this is where things get a little muddy. No other team in the conference has a positive goal difference, but both the third place Ottawa Lynx and the fourth place Philadelphia Reapers have 20 points or greater. While the Minnesota Storm and Miami Marauders, who met in last season’s Founder’s Cup Finals, may have more points than their counterparts in the West, neither look likely to catch the Reapers and make the playoffs. You never know, but it does seem like all of our eight playoff teams are more or less set just a quarter of the way into the season. 
 
This rounds out our review of the standings. Let’s take a look at our ELO charts to see who has been our highest performers as of late, points notwithstanding. 
 


The Teams
 
The Halifax 21st lead the ELO charts, as they have for the whole season, but in a somewhat curious fashion. The 21st has just one player in the top ten for points, Michael Hall, whose 37 points through 20 games places him fifth overall. They do it through a combination of depth scoring and killer defense/goaltending. 11 of their players have already reached the 10 point mark, and six of them are scoring at a point per game. On the other side of the ice, the 21st has allowed just 30 goals against, the lowest in the league by 16 goals, giving them the best goal differential despite scoring 17 less than Saskatoon. This is in a large part thanks to the fabulous goaltending thus far of Kevin Malone, whose .923 SV% is a league best for a starter, and whose 1.5 GAA puts VHL teams to shame. With a quarter of his games coming in the form of shutouts, the American goaltender is looking like a prime goaltender of the year contender. 
 
Following the 21st is Las Vegas, who lead their Western conference rivals Saskatoon and Yukon in ELO despite trailing both in the standings. Led by star right winger Gary Rush, the Aces also dominate both sides of the ice, and have the next best defensive record after the 21st thanks to their blue line general, Kasper Kankkunen. The London United prospect is vital to the Aces defense, and is proving just what he can do once he makes his move to the big leagues. 
 
The Wild closely follow the Aces in ELO, as they have for most of the season. While the Aces and the 21st may have the most balanced teams, the Wild have the deadliest. With a league leading 105 goals scored in just 20 games for an average of 5.25 goals per game, the Wild have four of the top ten point scorers, the most of any team. This includes current MVP favorite Brian Strong Jr., whose league leading 28 goals and league leading 33 assists (tied with teammate Florent Vericel) combine for a league high 61 points. The center is currently scoring at a 3 PPG pace, and has just been an absolute revelation thus far.  
 
Next we have the Yukon Rush in the charts. They are about where you would expect from their standings bar them sitting behind the Aces. They are a very deep team, with top, top, quality across the board. They have a well balanced squad with a plethora of options at all positions;  their only current weakness is goaltending. Both Kloxified and Artem Tretiak are young goaltenders, and while both are rapidly improving, they need to do better if the Rush want to contest for the cup. Yukon’s strength definitely lies in their blue line, which has some very big names represented, and look to be strong come playoffs. 
 
Rounding out the teams sitting above 1100 in the charts is the Mississauga Hounds. The Hounds certainly have some strong players, including young defensive studs of L and R, but they have a lot of growth to do if they want to compete with the likes of Halifax or Saskatoon. Their goaltender Vsevolod Askarov is a great player, whose talent outweighs his poor statistical performances thus far in the season. It has been Taro Tsujimoto, however, who has impressed the most, sitting at fourth overall for points scored and really is the one star player on the team. 
 
This is where the talent starts to drop off somewhat. The Kings are certainly a good squad, but lack the depth to compete with the big dogs this season. Following them and rounding out our playoff teams is Ottawa and Philadelphia, each of whom have strong teams but have been unable to string together the kind of performances we have become accustomed to seeing from the top four or five teams. Really these two teams have been slightly underperforming; expect them to possibly improve in the coming games. 
 
Our next two teams were very evenly matched last season, but this season both Miami and Minnesota are in their cup run hangovers. We think that out of the two, Miami probably has more potential, with the likes of Rara Rasputin, of the famous Alfredsson agency, in net, as well as a reasonably solid blue line. Minnesota has a solid goaltender as well in Michael Olson, but lacks the depth in their other positions to mount a serious playoff challenge. Next comes the Marlins, who are struggling to find points. One brightside is they have a young team, with players like Lauri Korpikoski who can grow into the league in future seasons. Finally we have the worst team in the league by ELO and standings, the Houston Bulls. They are also a project team, with some very exciting prospects such as Vladimir Mlinksi, Ryan Ryker, and Kunibuni UnGuri, but have little to look forward to this season, as their 2-18-0 record can attest. 

That’s all for this edition of Under 250: The VHLM Review. Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned next week for the inside scoop on all that’s going on in the league. Until next time!
 
Players Mentioned:  @Hops, @eaglesfan0366, @G_Rush, @ZP16, @Wheaties, @dart, @Kloxified, @Molholt, @gorlab, @Kylrad, @Gooningitup, @GustavMattias, @Victor, @MSO94, @Jansgasm, @Brrbisbrr, @Jayrad28, @Berocka
 
@VHLM GM
 
 
VSN Writer Mr_Hatter
 

Lucifer Olivier Leveque was born in Gatineau, Quebec into quite a large family. His mother and father in total have 6 kids, all of them ranging from 6 years old (his youngest sister) to his older brother who is 25. Lucifer was actually given the name by his mother specifically who felt he would be the devil, but that's for another story down the road. The Leveque family was a hockey family, similar to most in the Quebec area and all surrounding cities, however Lucifer never really fit in, in the beginning. It was a really rough start to say the least. It was like he had two left feet, he just couldn't grasp the concept of skating at all. While he watched all of his brothers and sisters just having fun and enjoying themselves, Lucifer really actually hated it. They would not really help him, he was the runt of the family, all of them were giants and they just weren't interested in helping him. 
 
It wasn't until middle school that one of his hockey coaches finally decided to take him under his wing. Lucifer finally began to get the help he needed to learn all of the tactics and the skills. While he was the "runt" of the family, he was still quite large and grew at a faster pace then most of his peers. By the time he had made it to a certain size, he was outweighing the kids around him by almost 40lbs, which is just absolutely gross. Despite wanting to score, and be a big offensive player, his coach pleaded with him to play defense just due to his sheer strength and size. Lucifer agreed, and on his 12th birthday, he joined the Lac St-Louis Grenadiers. 
 
The Grenadiers were very surprised by Lucifer's play, he was knocking people over left and right, dominating the ice, and then they seen something they thought they'd never see...his offensive skills. When he had expressed his desire to be a forward, there was a reason. Lucifer was able to go end to end with ease, he was scoring at an alarming rate and doing it all. He was able to slap clappers from the blue line, he was able to come in and make a flashy play near the crease, and his dangles were better than most of the forwards in the AAA league. With this exceptional talent came a big responsibility, without a captain for some of the season, he was named the captain and eventually lead the league, and total points (leading players by a margin of 13 goals, and 25 points). He would then help the Grenadiers capture their first ever tournament win in the World Class Hockey Tournament, a feat the franchise had never gotten to do before. 
 
With this came even more responsibility, but before things could intensify further, his parents had hired him an agent at the young age now of 13 years old to ensure he had someone with the knowledge and understanding of the game, someone who would be there for him every single step of the way. This agent is known as InstantRockstar, and his career was only in the midst of it's exciting years, there was plenty more to come...including his journey to the VHL! 

Blazzer yes
 
Rory hard no

HMMMMM

Goodluck in Miami @LatinViking @snackhero
 
Welcome @Lefty_S

Thank you for all the applications. 
 
We have chosen to go with the following members.
 
@Blazzer
and
@rory
 
Both are super active new members that will be an asset to the team!
 
 

S E A T T L E  B E A R S  S 7 4  C A P T A I N S  

4/6
 
A S S I S T A N T  # 1
H U L K  H O G A N @TXC
 
A S S I S T A N T  # 2
O D I N  O M D A H L @zepheter
 
C A P T A I N
B E R O C K A   S U N D Q V I S T @Berocka

Short and sweet. The Bears are always nice again transitioning into a new roster, with a brilliant group of awesome members and players. Also once again, we’re heading into this new season as defending champions. Many strong choices for letters but each member above has shown a high amount of effort and loyalty towards the Bears and bring their own traits to the table to help the Bears continue to be successful. Lets get it!!
 
 
GO BEARS GO!

As some of you know Yukon has been looking for an AGM over the last few days. After days upon days of pros and cons I have finally come up with a decision. Now this was of course not an easy one, so keep at it, work hard and you'll get there soon! Now I am welcoming @Blazzer to Yukon! Congrats Blazzer, you deserve this! 

As some of you know Yukon has been looking for an AGM over the last few days. After days upon days of pros and cons I have finally come up with a decision. Now this was of course not an easy one, so keep at it, work hard and you'll get there soon! Now I am welcoming @Blazzer to Yukon! Congrats Blazzer, you deserve this! 

It should. As I understand the testing it basically just keeps track of which ones have been out in since it was last downloaded and spits them out as a zip. No more emails!

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

Hi, I am applying for AGM. I may not have much experience with STHS, but I know how to spot talent when I see it, since I play in real life. I can make the right moves to make any franchise a contending team, provide a welcoming and nice attitude to any locker room, and create press conferences weekly. Also, I work well with any GM. 
 

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

Beaviss please. I've wanted this ever since I was a little boy and if you don't think the VHL is my life your wrong. Let me prove that to you. Make my dream come true.
 
#MakeCowAnUpdaterBecauseHeWillDoItForFree

T'was a matter of time. I wrote an article a few months ago about my inevitable return but as a goalie this time. I can't stand how the sim works for forwards, so time to try my real life position

Welcome back Zyrok!

Amazing article Krice. Super excited to see where you'll end up!

The History
 
     Calgary Wrangler centre Kris Rice has been a member for his entire VHL career. He started his career playing for the Mississauga Hounds for two seasons and played in a Founders Cup final before moving up to the VHL. When drafted by the Wranglers Kris Rice remembered being disappointed that he had been selected by the Wranglers organization. At the time there was so much negativity across the league about Calgary that anyone who would be selected by them would dread the day they wore that red and white jersey. Rice was no different as he came up through the Mississauga VHLM organization he heard of all the similar rumors that surrounded the Calgary franchise. It had been run at the time by an aging GM who just didn't seem to have the same drive as he once had. The team was in shambles with a GM who showed up once every so often and the players and AGM were left to fend for themselves. Rice stepped into this organization and got to see first hand the chaos that surrounded this organization. First their was the back and forth between the players and the Seattle Bears which is usually a good rivalry but with the aura that surrounded Calgary it only made the players look even worse. Then there was the drama revolving former GM Bushito and AGM Dil that created a rift in the team that was heard across the league. This ended with an AGM who was essentially running the team to get fired. Things only got darker in Calgary as the GM started to become a no show. He would show up in the off season to get his business done and then leave for the season without any indication to the players on the path we were supposed to take. 

When it all Changed
 
         Things in Calgary were grim for a long time and the league wide speculation that Calgary was a terrible place to play wasn't unjustified. Players were ready to sign their rookie contracts and as soon as they ended they were ready to move on. Where things started to change is when Bushito decided to hire @Jubis as the Wranglers AGM which was one of the best moves that Bush ever made. While Bush was off living his normal life Jubis was essentially running this team in Calgary. He began to change the culture in Calgary with his activity, his positivity and his general purpose to make Calgary a better place for players to be. As time went on Bush was eventually let go as the GM of the Calgary Wranglers due to his inactivity in the team and the league. Jubis was moved into the Interim GM position for the remainder of the season and was eventually hired as the full-time GM at the end of the season. Now that Bushito was removed from Calgary and Jubis had taken over that is when the culture of the team began to change the most. He was involved with his players and reassured everyone on a regular basis that he was going to do everything he could to keep this team competitive and that they were. They went to two cup finals which unfortunately they lost but haven't missed the playoffs since he took over. Jubis wasn't the only person to help change the culture of this Calgary team other members and players such as Sigard Gunnar @Big Mac, Mikko Lahtinen @Beketov, Jacques Lafontaine @SlapshotDragon and many other members were pivotal in creating the change in the culture that is now Calgary.
 
The Lasting Impression

    Things are really changing in Calgary. New players are coming in dreading the fact they were drafted by Calgary only to have their thoughts on the team changed as they enter the dressing room and become a part of the new Wrangler family. Former member Mikko Lahtinen had this to say about his time with Calgary, "I won’t pretend that I was happy when the lotto came up with Calgary having the two first picks in S70. At the time Bush had, honestly, ran the team into the ground in my opinion. Drama was high, morale was low, the league looked at us as laughing stock. I figured I would stick out my rookie contract and then bolt. Then I starting talking to the guys. Jubis and Rice and Gunnar and everyone. I saw passion. I saw guys who wanted to be here and deserved better. I truly believe this team got that when Jubis became GM, we picked him for a reason and I believe he can take this team far. I re-signed because I believed that." How incredible is that for someone who plays an important role in this league to have his view changed on a franchise that was once the laughing stock of the league? Next is a statement from a relatively newer member of the team General Zod @Matt_O "When I was first drafted to the wranglers I was not happy, I would of rather been drafted by anyone else, even Seattle, a team I hated. When I was drafted I fully planned on leaving ASAP. Things have really changed since then and this team is actually really good, hopefully other people will begin to understand this as well and Calgary will be a more preferable destination for some players. Perhaps this can be the start of the pro-Calgary movement." Incredible right? Many more players who have been through the Calgary organization recently feel the same way and that is an encouraging thing to see.

Kris Rice
 
        This leads me to where this article started with Kris Rice. He was there through it all and got to experience all of the turmoil and be apart of the change . He played a pivotal role in helping change the way players view this franchise. He ended up resigning with Calgary because he believed that things would turn around and could see that Calgary really wasn't the place everyone else made it out to be. He has been through all the highs playing in multiple finals and experienced all the lows with the turmoil the team went through in his early years but Kris Rice is ready to move on. Kris Rice put a trade request in after Calgary suffered another playoff exit to the hands of the Seattle Bears. He does so with a heavy heart as Calgary has been his home for the past 5 seasons. Don't let the trade request fool you as it has nothing to do with Calgary as a franchise. Rice calls Calgary home now and will forever do so but Kris Rice is hungry for a championship before his career comes to an end and GM Jubis completely understands that. Kris Rice is leaving knowing that he left a positive impact on this team and will continue to do so from the sidelines. He leaves knowing that before to long Calgary will become a destination that players will be excited to call home and hopes to see Calgary lift a trophy in the future. As for now Kris Rice sits in anticipation for the playoffs to end and to find out where he will end up going to chase his dream at a Continental Cup. He wants to personally thank GM Jubis and the Calgary Organization for starting off his career in the VHL and looks forward to battling against them for the next few seasons.  
 
In Closing

     In closing I want to try and change the minds of players who will be drafted by Calgary in the future. There might always be that thought in your mind of "Ugh, why Calgary?" or "Please don't pick me" but try to change the way you feel about the Wranglers.The organization has changed from the way it used to be. It is now a fun and exciting place to play with a great group of players and alumni who have built a strong bond over the seasons competing and getting to know each other. As a matter of fact don't let the fact of being drafted by any team discourage you and don't let the talk surrounded those teams make you regret being drafted by those teams because once you become a part of that franchise your opinion will change. Each team does a good job creating a family within the locker room and once you go through the highs and lows with that team your opinion will be changed on that franchise forever. Trust in your GM's and trust in your commissioners to be able to step in and correct any problems going on within a franchise like they did with Calgary. This league is meant to be a fun pass time for many of us users so lets remember that while we are playing this game to take the time to respect one another as we navigate through our VHL careers. Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this, I apologize for dragging this on and turning into a Calgary appreciation thread but I regret nothing!!!
 
WORD COUNT: 1522

 

Making the Las Vegas Aces logo
 
With the Las Vegas logo being announced and the massive amount of support it’s gotten I figured it would be a cool idea to share the process in making it, and give an insight into some of the challenges we faced as well as some of the original designs.

I was first approached by Spartan about a month ago asking if I would help him create a new logo for Las Vegas. I was always bothered by how the logo at the time looked so I accepted and straight away got to work on coming up with a concept. Spartan had given me two ideas to work with, one he wanted the nighthawk jet incorporated into the design if possible, and two he wanted to keep the ace of spades. My original idea was to take this image

And turn it into the ace of spades using the body and the tail wings but I just couldn’t figure out a good way to do it plus the ace of spades would have had to be upside down. So my next idea was to have a bird-eye view of the plane and put an ace on it similar to the Winnipeg jets logo. The jets logo would be my inspiration moving forward. The original design looked like this,

 
(It's bad I know but it was the basic design that helped shaped the official one)
I wasn’t happy with how simple it looked so I added lines to the triangle and the jet to add some dimension and make it look less basic, that looked like this:
I was pretty happy with how it turned out but felt like it needed something else to be added onto the sides because long vertical logos are a pain to put onto jerseys and make it look good, so I added a design on either side which in hindsight I have to admit was a bit much, I also added an A to make it similar to the original logo. And finally, I removed the club and heart which I’m not sure if that was a good idea but at the time the logo was busy enough already. That design looked like this,

I was happy with it so I sent it to spartan for some feedback. This is when it got a bit crazy, we went through around 40 different designs before nailing the one we wanted, and even more designs that I haven’t shown to anyone. So from this point onward I’ll just show the ones that were the most important ones in the process.


The next step was adding colour to the logo, Before I even started on the project we had to decide a colour scheme, Black was pretty much a given and white is easy to work with and it’s very hard to pull off a logo without it especially one incorporating dead space.
So we had to decide between green or yellow, four colours seemed like too much and would probably not look great on the logo, that’s not to say logos can’t have four colours but for the one we wanted it seemed like three would fit best.
I added a very subtle green that really you couldn’t see then sonnet added green into the diamond which we all agreed looked better.

                    Green            So little green you can’t even notice

Next up was the background or shape in the background. The lines on either side of the diamond just didn’t fit so we had to come up with an alternative It was discussed if we or should just keep it as a diamond and not include a background but I kept pushing for the background and eventually we came up with these two designs:
.

The one on the left looked way too much like a shoulder patch rather than a logo and so we decided to work on the one on the right and improve the stripes. Which lead to this design.
 
Then we got feedback from the people in charge, the lines make it look like a tribal mask, not a plane. Change was needed so I adjusted the lines trying to make it look more like a plane sonnet also pitched in an idea for the lines on the plane.

    Mine                                                             Sonnet’s 

 
Two important changes happened here, sonnet added the line through the middle and I swapped the colour of the spade. Both would make it to the final design. I then added another suggestion, making the plane face upwards. The upward plane made it into the final design over the downward for two reasons. The first, It was easier to tell it was a plane, and second, when a plane is facing down it's considered to be crashing while one going upwards is considered flying.

Again people didn’t like the lines on the plane so after playing around trying a way to implement them we decided against them, Gorlab gave a suggestion to change the green to the felt green used on casino tables which was a great idea that we decided to use. The next step was to put it all together. Sonnet made the diamond that we decided to use and again the idea for just the diamond came up which again using this template sonnet held a vote for some criticism. 
We added minimal detail to a couple of them but it was pretty obvious that no detailing was the way to go. People thought that the casino chip was the way to go so we went into finalizing it I set up a a bunch of options to pick from.

#4 was the one picked and it got accepted almost immediately.
And that is how Las Vegas got it’s new logo.

I would like to give a huge thank you @Spartan for inviting me to work on this project and helped come up with the idea and gave criticism and @Sonnet who helped keep me on track and edit the logo, I doubt it would look even close to as good as it does now without their help. And another thank you to everyone else who helped work on this project.
 
1,037 words 5,349 characters
claiming weeks ending 06 and 13

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