Gustav

Are you signing up or not Mr. I Can't Run the Draft Over the Weekend

List of players: N0HBDY omgitshim Ricer13 SleepyPlayz

I had turned off the lights and was getting ready to go to bed, and then I realized that some of you would probably start voting for me if I didn't get on this. It's been long enough. So, one of the lights is back on, and I promise to give you ungrateful little pigs the slop you've been clamoring for over the past few weeks or so. It's hard to believe that we're now on Game #33--not even counting the games that didn't fall into the official numbering system, that means the VHL now averages a Town of Salem game every three seasons over its entire history, and I've only been here for the last third of it. What that means is that I'm averaging about a game per season, which you wouldn't know from this being our first this calendar year. I used to have so much time in my life--don't ever get old. Anyway. Rules are here The wiki is here CLICK THIS LINK IF YOU'RE NOT IN THE DISCORD SERVER JOINING THE SERVER IS REQUIRED FOR ALL PLAYERS! Non-players are welcome as well. Remember that ALL game-related notifications will be given on Discord! Make sure you join the server, and check it BEFORE speaking in the game thread each day. Also, do your best to be there at the start of each night phase! If you're new to the game, read up on some roles on the wiki and go through some old game threads in this subforum. TRIVIA TIME: HERE IS THE LINK TO TRIVIA! -If you won the last game, you have an automatic 30% chance to receive a role of your choosing, if you'd like to request one. The winners of last game are listed below: @Advantage @rory @Da Trifecta @Adrest245 @Ricer13 -If you didn't win the last game, you can still request a role! Play trivia, and for each correct answer, you'll earn a cumulative 5% chance toward a role of your choosing, for a maximum chance of 20%. -If you won the last game, you can still play! This possible 20% chance will be added to your 30% chance for a maximum of 50%. -No, you do not need to do this if you don't want to. -If you'd like to play without requesting a role, simply write "Random" in the role request box. Vote for your preferred format up top and sign up down below, as always. Target start date: Thursday night as I promised Adrest and GLU--except that's probably the most inconvenient night this week for me to do it. I may or may not do Wednesday if spots fill up quickly, and I also may or may not do Friday if I have too much to do Thursday. If you're coming across this for the first time, we welcome any and all noobs to our game! It may take a time or two through the process to learn it well, but I promise we don't bite (except for the Vampires and Werewolves).

And week 4

Week 3

Yeah this is a thing in some other leagues. I don’t personally care who’s used as my render, but I’m aware that graphics people don’t tend to like that. Honestly, it might help a casual NHL fan like me pick up some names by just absorbing info from people’s profiles around the forum. I advocated for the “favorite NHL team” user flair (or whatever you want to call it) a while back and I don’t see why this would be any worse of an idea.

The student government president at my undergrad school got formally impeached and removed for essentially funneling school funds to himself by hiring his own company to DJ at events. THAT one was at least really funny to see go down. I know people who have been involved with other student governments at other places and it is always messy, even if they had a good time and did cool things. Like it or not, college students are still pretty immature and the possibility of power and name recognition is enough to drive some people to want to join student government completely irrespective of anything to do with serving the community. It should come as no surprise that the same people who think that way also have no problem with stepping on others to get there. But yeah, that sucks. Keep in mind that the second you get out of school, no one will care even a little bit about who was in student government

I'm honestly shocked this name wasn't taken.

What's dying

I have a few snarky things to say, so I'll get something out of the way right up top: this is a really good article and your analysis is valid. I'll forever regret not flipping around the attribute names in the title of my old article and making it "Gustav's Big Fat DI/CK Manifesto," but everyone makes mistakes. I think that was the biggest mistake about it, though, because I'd disagree that I was necessarily wrong about any of it. This is just a better version. I think that essentially the same conclusions are here as have always been there: that DI reduces hits and CK increases them. If I remember correctly, my original article only looked at 4-ish players who had both upgraded substantially. All of those players had unimpressive hit totals and weren't throwing any "cleaner" hits than anyone else (the PIM rate wasn't any lower than league average). It's obvious to anyone who cares to think about it that that isn't enough of a sample size, but something I concluded that I think is backed up here is that if you want to put up hits, it's pretty much useless to also try to upgrade DI with CK. You also seem to back this up with the analysis stating that DI works about half as well as CK both ways. If you wanted to target specific totals for either hits or PIM, then it would be smart to upgrade one of those only. I really like this part because it illustrates basically what I said here--visually speaking, it doesn't appear that there's much difference when upgrading both attributes. But something I don't remember concluding (likely because of small sample size) is that upgrading DI only does appear to be mildly helpful if your objective is to avoid PIM. I'm also going to inject this comment with a bit of a traditionalist opinion. We've basically always known that upgrading CK and putting up hits is heavily correlated to PIM, which is bad for the team (though I appreciate that you took the extra step of quantifying this and looking at when upgrading DI might be helpful; that part was cool too). Adding PIM can also cut into your ice time, and it's going to be an opportunity to build more efficiently with respect to TPE if you ignore CK entirely. Pretty objectively, it's not a smart build. That said, my traditionalist opinion is that hits are fun and I like seeing my player record them. I don't think I've ever noticed a single-game PIM total of mine unless it's in the double digits (at which point, I scroll to look for fights, which I also think are fun), but I check how many hits I had in every single sim and I'm happy when I have a lot of them. If your goal is to have a TPE-efficient build and be your GM's best friend, then this isn't the first time that it's been clear that you probably shouldn't try to build a physical player. I've known this across multiple player careers, but I upgrade CK anyway simply because I personally enjoy it. That above all else should be the strongest factor in determining how one's player build should progress. I hope I can say that while still making it clear that I really liked reading this. I'm looking forward to more!

I'm pretty sure I understand your question because I've seen similar confusion from PBE users--no, GMing a team does not mean your player will play for that team (nor does it have any bearing on what happens to your player, unless you as the GM specifically choose to trade for yourself). So feel free to apply without worry regarding your player. As someone who GMed for close to 15 seasons on a Mac, it's an issue but I found ways to make it work. I made it barely work for free 6 years ago (although I've tried helping other people through the same process and it didn't work), and I also made it work better later on using some software I had to pay for. If you have any interest in giving it a shot, send me a message and I'll see what I can do to help you out. The long story short is that you'll need to be able to make lines using the STHS client to be a GM. I hope you can if you want to, but it's true that it's a challenge with your setup.

Week 2

Teams can call you up before that point if you want and they agree, but yes. Almost everyone stays down for at least their draft season (even if they're good enough to go up) because depreciation starts earlier if you move up right away. I should note that I've never personally liked this, but I can accept it with it all at least being in one development league instead of two because that development path isn't interrupted by having to jump to the weird little third environment that was the E. I believe I understand that the forum is much less customizable than the portal and that we kind of have to work with the options we're given. This would be awesome if it were possible though. I've missed these articles, by the way! Always fun topics in them.

It's the final iteration of VHL March Madness, in which I asked the league to fill out a spreadsheet for me that I would then run through on my own and cross-reference submissions to my own picks to score them. We left off last week at the Sweet 16, and I'm fortunate enough that the rest of the bracket contains fewer matchups that I was able to run through all the rest for you today. Those being: SWEET 16: (5) Jarmo Ruutu defeats (16) Leif Reingaard: I’ve taken long enough to write this that there’s now no reason not to consider this season’s (now complete) stats, something that I don’t think changes the outcome here but certainly helps it. Regression is hitting Reingaard hard enough to translate to a step back on the score sheet, while Ruutu just put up a fourth straight 100-point season aided by somewhat of a divestment from a checking build to deal with the same depreciation. In past rounds, Reingaard mostly succeeded by facing players with short careers, but Ruutu has been around just as long and has performed fairly decisively better as well. (3) Guntis Gavilrovs defeats (2) Riley Martin: This one was closer than I thought it would be. Martin has the edge in points, but there’s a positional difference and the reasons why otherwise aren’t drastic (Martin did better as a young player before either one hit their prime). Plus, Gavilrovs has won a few individual awards, and the one 100-point season that both of these players have is more impressive in Gavilrovs’ case. This season, Gavilrovs was second among defensemen in goals, just behind MY player, Lazlo Holmes. (5) Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage defeats (8) Joshua Schwarzer: Questions about Bocage’s position switch were answered with a pretty-OK season that equaled Schwarzer’s point total. Schwarzer somehow managed to make 48 goals part of that 90-point total, but it’s pretty evident that Bocage, having essentially matched Schwarzer’s offensive production up to this point despite a positional difference, deserves the edge here. That’s especially evident when we consider awards, where Bocage wins decisively. (3) Axle Gunner defeats (7) Kimi Raikkonen: It would be hard to convince me that 777 points doesn’t beat 451, and you could point out that Gunner has two more seasons to work with, but it’s also not like Raikkonen will break 160 twice in a row out of nowhere. The totals put Gunner ahead easily, but Gunner also blows Raikkonen away in awards. Gunner hasn’t had a close matchup yet, and where that statement goes in future rounds remains to be seen. (1) Logan Ninefingers defeats (13) Martin Kemp: A cool little run for a 13-seed comes to an end here as Ninefingers takes out one of the bracket’s more interesting underdogs. Kemp just wrapped up a career, but Ninefingers has a higher point total in fewer seasons and just broke 200 hits for the second season in a row to re-establish a reputation as a physical player. Ninefingers is also the only 1-seed left, and thus the only one to make the Elite Eight. (6) Grimgor Ironhide defeats (7) WWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWW: This one was a tough one to gauge because I’m comparing skaters to goaltenders, and even though I’m almost positive that no one else in the pool had W past this round, I wouldn’t fault someone for continuing to weigh W’s MVP season (arguably) heavily enough to be cause for advancement on its own. Ironhide has actually never broken 100 points, something that won’t be said for many forwards up to this point, That said, he’s a huge presence as a two-way player, has in fact broken 95 for 4 seasons in a row, and hasn’t won a Cup yet but has generally taken multiple teams deeper into the playoffs than W has tended to take New York. Plus, with at least 42 goals in every season since S94, Ironhide boasts an oddly high goal-scoring rate for someone whose individual point totals aren’t top of the line. It’s also possible that current season bias plays into this a bit—W’s down performance this season was a factor in New York’s competitive roster leaving themselves with wild card games to play. (12) Spanish Moon Moth defeats (9) Raimo Tuominen: Current season bias doesn’t point in Moon Moth’s favor after a late-career regression played into a 74-point season. There’s enough to justify overlooking that in some of the other obvious differences—a Szatkowski and a Brooks on Moon Moth’s end outweigh the Funk on Tuominen’s, and Moon Moth needs just 44 points next season to beat Tuominen’s career total. (15) Dalkr Vidarsson defeats (6) Thor Reingaard: This wasn’t a call that I envisioned myself making at the start of the bracket, and there is admittedly some current season bias in play since Vidarsson MIGHT have a shot at the MVP ballot this season after tying for the league lead in SV% with no Wolves inside the top 10 in points. Vidarsson has already won MVP once, and if it continues to be a goalie award, then who knows? Reingaard is solid but has no awards and no specific seasons I’d identify as standouts. Vidarsson is solid and has both of those. Real-life March Madness would never have a 12 vs. 15 matchup, but such is life in the VHL. ELITE EIGHT: (5) Jarmo Ruutu defeats (3) Guntis Gavilrovs: Now we’re getting into the real heavyweight matchups. Gavilrovs has one of the best individual seasons of the whole bracket with a S97 that featured a clean sweep of all of the defensive awards, and as mentioned, fell behind only the one and only Lazlo Holmes in goals this season at his position. That said, Gavilrovs has a few lesser seasons that I’ve de-emphasized in previous rounds, and that’s something that becomes relevant here because Ruutu has put up a whole career without ever falling into that territory. Ruutu finishes with as impressive a 4-season run as is present in the league, and even though that’s only included one individual award (Beketov in S95), he’s going to be a fairly tough Final Four opponent. (3) Axle Gunner defeats (5) Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage: I’d wondered earlier on if Bocage would have what it takes to make a deep run, and it’s true that a couple 100-point seasons on defense are probably more impressive than any of Gunner’s regular seasons as a forward. Bocage even has a couple cool awards and a Cup to speak of, but Gunner’s award cabinet features Playoff MVP twice, which necessitates a look into his record-breaking playoff numbers as well. It’s also worth pointing out that Bocage, while elite for four seasons, doesn’t stack up over a full career to Gunner, who’s been a household name since the two were teammates in S92. (6) Grimgor Ironhide defeats (1) Logan Ninefingers: It’s a bit of a shame that this far into the bracket, we’re seeing players who beat other players for reasons of longevity, but these two have similar build types and Ironhide has all the same numbers, just more of them. Hunting around for more reasons, Ironhide does happen to be noticeably better at throwing hits and so far has put up more consistent offensive production than Ninefingers, who has the best single-season point total of the two but loses spots 2-5 on that list to Ironhide. (12) Spanish Moon Moth defeats (15) Dalkr Vidarsson: I’m not sure how much I like this one, and it’s once again super difficult to figure out who’s better when one of the players is a goaltender. Both of these players have around three great seasons to speak of, and the recognition that Moon Moth has garnered hasn’t quite equaled that of an MVP, but one could argue that more credit was deserved for seasons like the 58 goals we saw in S97. I feel like every time I try to find a shortcoming for one of these players, the basic equivalent is there for the other one as well—there are the 25-win seasons and the net minus ratings and (in both cases!) the dropoff in performance after playing for Toronto. Some level of subjectivity is added here in that I just feel like I’ve seen Moon Moth talked about a lot more, which could be a reason for giving credit on the basis that it means there’s a larger impact. Taking this season out of the equation, which was Moon Moth’s worst and arguably Vidarsson’s best, the scales tip more in favor of Moon Moth, and I think it’s also good to move on the player who likely would have made it with the information available at the start of the tournament. FINAL FOUR: (3) Axle Gunner defeats (5) Jarmo Ruutu: It might be a weird pick for those who hunt for individual seasons, because Ruutu’s top four either match or exceed Gunner’s best. That said, Gunner has spread a higher overall total across a whole career, which includes over 40 more goals. That also includes over 500 more hits, 59 shots blocked, and those record-breaking playoff numbers that I’ve mentioned earlier. If Ruutu had put up more awards in those super impressive offensive seasons, we may have a different conversation here. But as of now, I would imagine that Gunner would have an easier time being mentioned around the forum in 10 seasons. (6) Grimgor Ironhide defeats (12) Spanish Moon Moth: This one uses much of the same logic as my selection of Gunner. If we’re talking about overall totals, Ironhide has a marginally higher point total that includes a marginally higher goal total, but what really stands out is a difference of almost 800 hits. To me, Moon Moth has been one of the league’s best on offense for about two seasons, but being one of the league’s best physical players for six seasons running while also being pretty darn good on offense is tough to beat. So, because of a long track record of consistency, Ironhide hits the championship. CHAMPIONSHIP: (3) Axle Gunner defeats (6) Grimgor Ironhide: I hope it’s luck and not my bias that put two forwards who are lacking in mind-blowing individual regular seasons but have been remarkably consistent in both scoring and playing physically in the championship. Fortunately for me, that makes it a pretty easy comparison. Gunner has one more season on record than Ironhide, but I think it would be pretty lame if I made that the deciding factor. Looking ahead, Ironhide isn’t going to catch Gunner’s point total next season. While Ironhide already has more hits, Gunner has almost 1,700, which is at least enough to prevent that side of Ironhide’s game from playing a major role. I also don’t want to say “record-breaking playoff numbers” again, but much of Gunner’s awards and recognition are connected to those and that’s something that makes it impossible to fairly evaluate Gunner without taking a look beyond the regular season stats. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gunner ended up in the Hall of Fame next season, and in that sense, I’m pretty sure the bracket has served its purpose. I'm going to drop the standings here, which contain a very decisive winner: @sadie - 1430, containing the same champion as I had and featuring only one different pick in the entire left half of the bracket. LINK @Corco - 590, featuring a late-bracket point surge including placement of Ironhide in the finals. LINK @jacobcarson877 - 520 - LINK My own bracket can be found HERE. Congrats to @Steve on winning a tournament that you may not have even known about, and best of luck with Gunner's Hall of Fame chances! Looking back on this, I'm not sure I'd do it again--it was really fun to set up, and the first round went OK enough, but I got super burned out with it after that point and really ended up having to slug my way through the rest of it. I wouldn't recommend it, and I'm glad that the multiclaim I'll have from this will give me a few weeks off from writing. If I do this again, I'd probably adjust the criteria a little bit even though I'm pleased with the diversity of perspectives we have had so far. I'd probably do seeding by TPE (depreciation knocks a lot of players down if I do it by TPA and none of the 1-seeds had very developed careers). Other than that, would I keep the judgment by total contribution? I'm not sure. I think it went OK and I think it's one of the more objective ways to do it. I understand the criticism that it skews things toward older players and I don't disagree with it, but do I really want to go with "who is the best player" when that could just devolve into staring at builds? I think stats are more fun, and I'm not sure I would want to move away from it (it would make much more sense if I did this by TPE anyway; many more of the winners would correlate to their seeding). All in all, if you followed me through this, I'm glad that you did. Let me know what you think, and also let me know what you think of my picks. 2,216 words; I am good for a month if I want to be and thank GOD I don't have to write another one of these. Pumping the last two of these out when I didn't really want to is good enough for me.

Warsaw gets ripped on too much. Maybe some of it is deserved but I think it would be easy for that to turn into piling on. Personally I’d love to see something investigating the best way out of LA’s situation—obviously, we know that everyone retired with no tank phase to give the team assets, and thin classes haven’t helped them be mobile. I don’t need to read a media spot to find out why it happened, but how should they climb back up? I wrote one of these about Chicago a while ago and it was a lot of fun, plus they ended up exceeding my expectations afterward.

The social distancing one happens when you space out all the letters; it doesn’t specify that when you write it normally. I’ve been calling to get that one rolled back for a while, honestly—you want to make fun of BoG, you should get to do that.

I mean, if we're self-promoting...easily my biggest endeavor and my longest project was Gustav 30 in 30--my thesis on my first 30 seasons. My last one has links to all the others at the bottom. It's hard to think of standalone articles I've written that I'd identify specifically. That said, you always remember what you did when you were new the best. One of my first mega-long articles was my first mock draft, which ended up being surprisingly accurate for a deep and heavily first-gen draft class. I've done much more technically impressive things, but I remember how rewarding it felt to write that one and follow it. I even remember coming home the night of the draft being hardly able to wait to check where I was picked and what was up with my article, and it was a rare type of VHL magic that I'm not quite sure it's possible for me to feel anymore after this much time through the process.

Welcome back to VHL March Madness, the game where I have three of you answer in the format of a March Madness bracket which players you think I personally feel have made the biggest impact on the league, and then I run through the list, make my picks, tell you why, and score your work accordingly. For those of you wondering, my real-life bracket correctly picked Florida as the champion (the first time I've ever managed that!) but ended up 3rd in my work pool behind one other Florida bracket and one that picked Auburn but followed the rankings pretty strongly and absolutely destroyed most of what led up to the finals. Theme week got in the way of this last week, and I intended to do the next two rounds in this article, but only got to the second. The rest will come in good time, but for now, here's the current state of affairs. (16) Leif Reingaard defeats (9) Lazlo Holmes: I knew I’d have to do this to myself at some point, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d have to do it as part of a Cinderella run. Reingaard has been playing for longer and that is a factor, but he’s also recorded more points per game than Lazlo. If I might talk about my own player a bit before I can’t anymore, though, Lazlo is on pace to shatter his career-best goal total—he’s not putting up enough points to realistically win the Valiq, because apparently I can’t win awards that aren’t MVP, but progress is progress. (5) Jarmo Ruutu defeats (4) Phillip Rave: Ruutu has only won one individual award (Beketov in S95), but he’s also scored more points at a higher rate than Rave and has had a few moderately good checking seasons that Rave never built for. All in all, it puts the Moscow lifer above the Malmo almost-lifer and sets up a matchup with Reingaard in the Sweet 16. (3) Guntis Gavilrovs defeats (11) Red Panda: From memory alone, I believe our panel likes Panda a lot in this pool, and I actually do too. I’m consistently impressed by Gavilrovs, whose name has come up quite a bit in BoG voting, and I just haven’t seen that level of excellence relative to the position from Panda over time. It’s true that Panda has won lots of games with a pretty solid SV% (and also taken a championship), but Gavilrovs swept all three defensive awards last season and has always been pretty impressive defensively regardless of what anyone might want to say about some limited early-career offense. I think that’s just a little more impressive because those things are more individually focused, and I don’t see quite enough to make me sway away from that from Panda. So, even though I may be wrecking some brackets here, Gavilrovs it is for me. (2) Riley Martin defeats (7) Mina: Mina has fewer points in more seasons, but there’s a positional difference here that shouldn’t make that the only factor. As for the rest, both of these players have won one Cup and no individual awards, so we’re even off the stat sheet. Going back on it, Mina has had a couple seasons with decent SB totals, but really nothing else that would suggest exceptional performance on defense. Meanwhile, Martin just recorded a career high in points and has been strongly physical for each of the past two seasons. Plus, even considering the different positions, I would call Martin’s offensive play as a forward a bit stronger than Mina’s as a defender. -- (8) Joshua Schwarzer defeats (1) Antonia Bucatini: The bracket’s format perhaps skews things away from 1 seeds since it’s unlikely that someone who’s played a whole career is leading the league in points still applied—maybe in the future I’ll start seeding by TPE if I keep the same criteria for winners. In any case, that’s basically the reason why Schwarzer takes the win here. Bucatini looks like she’s on track to have a better career, but that’s unproven for the moment and Schwarzer has played well enough that I can’t justify the “better over shorter time” line of reasoning for Bucatini. It is what it is, and March Madness wouldn’t be what it is without upsets. (5) Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage defeats (4) Callum Gary Yannick Janser: This was one of the matchups I was most looking forward to evaluating in this round, and both of these players are very strong choices as two of the league’s best defenders over the past few seasons. A few things stand out: Bocage has played one more season and has a slightly higher point rate, which isn’t enough to matter at all except that it includes more goals than Janser’s. The main thing Janser has going for himself is significantly more hits, which happens to be something I like a lot and also happens to have been reflected in winning last season’s Wylde. That said, Bocage won both the Labatte and the Valiq in S95 and also took home a Playoff MVP in Moscow’s S94 championship win. Overall, I think there are many more points in favor of Bocage here, and it’s the choice I’ll make even though I’m pretty sure it wrecks at least one bracket pretty substantially. (3) Axle Gunner defeats (6) YaBoi Oven: Another solid player gets eliminated here with Oven, who’s put up a career reminiscent of fellow former Chicago defender Matty Socks in consistently playing great but never winning an award. It was enough to get Socks into the Hall of Fame eventually, and time will tell if the same holds for Oven, but Gunner has a huge award cabinet and the numbers to back it up. All in all, I consider this a pretty decisive win for Gunner, who hasn’t been held up to much of a significant extent yet. (7) Kimi Raikkonen defeats (2) Felicia Hardy: I like Hardy, who will have a great career when all is said and done, a lot, but I don’t think there’s quite enough for me to override higher totals and a Cup on Raikkonen’s end with Hardy’s strong early career. So, Raikkonen moves on to a tough third-round matchup with Gunner. -- (1) Logan Ninefingers defeats (9) Forum Content: Our first 1-seed to survive the second round, Ninefingers brings one more season, better offense, and more physicality to the table than Forum Content, who’s done well and consistently improved point totals up to this season but hasn’t built up as much of a body of work as the league’s highest-TPA player. We’ll see if Ninefingers can break through and use that to win some awards at some point, but for now it’s still good enough to move on. (13) Martin Kemp defeats (5) Soju: I could see this flipping the other way, especially since Kemp doesn’t have too many standout seasons. That said, Kemp has a respectable point pace and respectable physical numbers over most of a career, and Soju mostly just rides on winning a bunch of games last season. So, I don’t find it unreasonable to advance Kemp here. (6) Grimgor Ironhide defeats (14) Jebediah Big Ol Doinks in Amish: On first glance, Ironhide looks like the easy winner based on recording more points (and more hits!) in fewer games. That said, Jeb only switched to forward two seasons ago. Overall, I think I still like Ironhide better. He’s played with remarkable consistency since at least S94, and I would say that Jeb just took longer to reach similar production even when considering the position switch. That means Ironhide moves on to the next round to face… (7) WWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWW defeats (2) Jillian Woods: I don’t intend to make “has won MVP” the absolute decider here, but W has also been around longer and played pretty well apart from it. Woods’ career is off to a great start and will probably eclipse W’s time in good time, but it’s not quite enough yet. Some credit has to be given for playing in New York anyway, where the championship drought has lasted longer than my time in the league. -- (9) Raimo Tuominen defeats (1) Maverick Goncalves: This is a case of “the winner has been around longer,” but it’s worth noting that Goncalves is a very good player with an easy Round 1 win. So, Tuominen can live knowing that this win required some level of achievement. If we want to cherry-pick a bit, Tuominen has just as many 110-point seasons as Goncalves, as well as the highest single-season total between the two (120). Plus, he won the Funk in S94. Tuominen’s seeding is affected a little by being on the welfare-and-practice-facility diet as of late, but that doesn’t change anything about the stats already on the score sheet. (12) Spanish Moon Moth defeats (4) George Richmond: Richmond has as many points as Moon Moth has played games, which would be a pretty solid mark if not for the fact that Moon Moth far exceeds it. Winning a Brooks and a Szatkowski over the last couple seasons has cemented Moon Moth among the league’s elite of recent memory despite having somewhat lower TPE than would be expected for that tier. The rest of the bracket will tell whether that’s enough to propel Moon Moth to a win, but I’d venture a guess that it’s one of the possibilities. (6) Thor Reingaard defeats (3) Adi Dassler: Dassler just retired early, which doesn’t come as a surprise to those who have been around long enough to understand that his agent has a penchant for doing so. It’s part of the reason why Reingaard definitely wins this, which is a bit funny since these two are essentially the same player with different career lengths. Both have consistently put up 90-some points and a moderate amount of hits each season, neither has significant awards to consider, and Reingaard isn’t retired but already had done this for more time. Thankfully, that makes the choice easy. (15) Dalkr Vidarsson defeats (7) Wayne Gretzky: I wasn’t too sure about this one because I consider Vidarsson somewhat of a less impressive version of W, a goaltender who has won MVP (which—let’s be conscious of this—has swung in goaltenders’ favor in recent seasons) but hasn’t stood out too greatly otherwise. In my opinion, the best goaler in the bracket was Lovstrom, who’s already been knocked out, but some have easier paths than others and Gretzky doesn’t put up an incredible fight as a forward who’s started to break into 90-point territory but can’t claim anything apart from that. Vidarsson has one season of being the best the league had to offer—and yes, has been around longer. This makes our standings as follows: @sadie - 490. I noticed that the first round should have been 270 rather than 280 and adjusted for it as well. LINK @jacobcarson877 - 420 - LINK @Corco - 270 - LINK You can also see the current state of the bracket HERE. Join me next week, or (realistically) whenever I write the next one!

This is completely false and it's just people spouting off stuff to look knowledgeable. Exactly this popped up in BoG last season, so I went and looked over every team and found that almost all of the league's top goaltenders were playing for reasonably competitive teams. If anything, the reason why someone might have to play for a team that isn't top-tier would be that there are just limited spots available for starters in the first place and there are more good goalies than there are good teams. A big part of the argument was that it doesn't appear that having the highest TPE as a goaltender is absolutely necessary to have numbers that are up there with the league's best. But that has always been true--the example I brought up in there was when Ajay Krishna had something like 550 TPE and led Warsaw to a Cup in the S70s. Some people thought the sky was falling and there was no longer a future for good earners in net, and guess what changed as a result: absolutely nothing. The sim engine didn't magically change the way it works, and the best performances are still generally put up by players with TPE levels that are at least competitive. At the end of the day, this is just why you should never trust random VHL conjecture. Everyone thinks they know everything and that somehow no one else has figured any of it out in the last 18 years here.

Challenge accepted; at some point I'll find the champion

Could you clarify part of this? Does “defend” mean you win another fight, or is getting in another fight and ending it in a draw good enough? I also didn’t know what you meant by the game 50 part at first but I think I get it now.

50 TPE to Garh

Oh cool! That actually means I'm the champion. Jerry Garcia got in exactly one fight in his entire career and it was to take the championship in S70. I just checked to confirm this, and it's true--go through every index from S70 through S73, and you see exactly one fight won in S70 and no more, ever. He said what needed to be said and then shut up. Perhaps you have rules about the belt going back into circulation if someone retires with it? It's good to know that Beav deciding to take it away from me wasn't valid.