Gustav

Well, Berocka did the Davos press conference so I figured I'd go and help out the VHLM a bit with this one. 1. The draft has come and gone. If you were drafted, are you happy with the team that selected you? If you were a waiver signing, why did you choose the team you did? 2. If you could sign with any VHLM team based purely upon their logo, where would you go? 3. Who's winning the cup this season? Take a look at the teams here if you're unfamiliar with them. 4. Are there any VHL teams that look interesting to you? Where do you hope you'll be drafted? If you've already been drafted by a VHL team, what's it like? 5. Describe your player in ten words or fewer. 6. What's something that the league would be interested to know about you as a person?

Week deux

I can get in on this; put my name in the "perpetually interested enough" category. Am an updater in EFL and am was an updater in SBL as well. For jobs like these I'll always encourage those making the decisions to go for newer members or those currently without a job over me, but I'll apply anyway because I wouldn't mind doing it and would do solid work.

Everyone's favorite fourth-round steal is here to stay for the next while ? Good stuff @turkey2349, great to see things happening already this season!

According to whomst

...and I need two more TPE this week. This is what happens when the AGM does the press conference. Last season, before I created Tsujimoto (and also before I even knew for sure that I was going to create him, even though the idea had been in the back of my mind since S65), I wasn't sure where I'd end up signing upon recreating. What I told myself was that I'd try to make a fair decision based on team success and needs, but I was slightly inclined to go to Houston (my first-ever team) and even more so inclined to go to Mississauga (of which I was the founding manager, a run that I still won't shut up about). Well, it turns out that Houston never offered, as they didn't really have a spot for me, and though the Hounds did offer, they weren't going anywhere. So, off to Ottawa I went, feeling good about my choice from a player perspective but with a tiny shred of guilt in my mind for not going to the Hounds. Imagine my surprise (or lack thereof) to find out that I'd been drafted by Mississauga tonight at 4th overall. I guess things like these really do come full circle--the Hounds look great and should be making a cup run this season, and I'm proud to represent them officially again for the first time since January. Oh, and fun fact: not counting @DoktorFunk, @Berocka, or @ColeMrtz, I am now the first member ever to both play for and manage the Hounds.

@Ferda @BlueMaple @Jer_Lefebvre @Sonnet @McWolf @Velevra @turkey2349 @David O'Quinn @Ahma @Josh @PadStack @Rayzor_7 See above for questions! As always, if you're a player who would not like to be tagged in our press conference thread, or a prospect who would, please let me know.

Pinging @Beketov out of context

I agreed with Rose for the defensive steal but went Socks for the sake of variety. Both should be great options later on.

Hawt

smh I win this season and get moved down 2 spots This is racist

Put me in coach! Been a group manager every season since group managers became a thing; would certainly do it again if you'd like.

I'm not going to formally apply, but if you ever need any freelance-type help with projects and stuff like that feel free to let me know.

This could be good to look at as well; thanks for the article ideas ?

Looks like @stevo and @Steve both have some competition with this guy.

smh there's no smh reaction Maybe that will be what I do in three weeks.

I did; the charts looked just about identical to the CK/DI ones so I didn't bother mentioning it.

Looks at media spot claims Sees I have nothing for the coming week(s) Pounds on this stupid E key which occasionally gives me two Es when I don't want them and makes writing a pain in the neck no matter how much I try to clean it out or fix it All right! Enough of that nonsense; let's get into it. The greatest first-gen resource ever known to the VHL community and the font of all holy knowledge, Gustav's Guide to Building, contains this bit of wisdom: ...but how true is this, really? Is it actually worth your time to upgrade both? Will taking it to an extreme give you a physical-but-clean player? I'm going to attempt to quantify this as accurately as I possibly can, using data taken from real VHL seasons, with real VHL teams, real VHL players, and real VHL sim settings that don't leave the tester wondering "well, this is all well and good, but is it at all accurate the way the league does it?" (Legal disclaimer: I did not steal a league file, as much as I wish I had one to work with.) Instead, I'm using data from real seasons--S72, to be exact, because I did the research for this article a long time ago and I've just been too lazy to put it in the form of actual words claimable for some sweet hot TPE. First of all, let's take a look at the two attributes in question, and what I've always thought they've done: Checking: Increases the number of hits a player records. There also tends to be a fair amount of positive correlation between checking, hits, and penalty minutes, making this a bit of a double-edged sword. Discipline: Decreases the number of penalty minutes a player records. Upgrading discipline also tends to reduce hits. Ideally, a player skilled in both should be able to record relatively high numbers of hits with relatively low numbers of penalty minutes. At least, one would think. I am coming into this article with my own biased hypothesis based on what I believe my own personal experience with building to have been: high Checking and high Discipline does nothing but look cool on your player page. Let's quantify. yes, the title of this should be PIM vs. HIT. I deeply apologize and hope @McWolf doesn't go full nerd on me and beat me to death with a slide rule. Positive correlation, you say? Positive correlation! It's a well-known fact in today's VHL that the more hits one records, the more penalty minutes they'll rack up (in general). As this has nothing to do with attributes, I'm merely using it to establish something nice early on--what effect does Discipline have on this chart? What effect does Checking have on this chart? Let's take a look at that second bit here: Does anyone notice that both of these charts look very similar? Of course, they're not the same--it's worth noting that, looking at the equations of these charts, checking seems to increase hits at a greater rate than it increases penalty minutes. But there's still a nice upward trend for both, and the fact that we've got a lot of players with CK at 40, 70, and 80 (see those vertical columns?) provides us a nice and convenient opportunity to extract data from only those groups--which I'll get into later. Read the subtitle here--this chart doesn't do anything; I'm just throwing it out there. In fact, the points were so spread-out that Google Sheets couldn't even draw a trendline for it. Same thing goes here. One might be inclined to say that, based on how scattered everything is, Discipline doesn't do anything. Let's not rule that out yet--keep in mind, players with DI at 40 could have CK at 40, or they could have it at 99. If Checking really does bring penalty minutes up, is Discipline really doing anything to bring them down? Enough of looking at the attributes themselves; let's have a look at ratios. I'm taking a ratio between Checking and Discipline here because, let's face it, we're talking about Checking and Discipline. Just looking at one or the other isn't really going to show us anything, as evidenced by the disaster that is those Discipline charts. Here's one that makes things look a bit off, though--in theory, if Checking increases penalty minutes and Discipline decreases them, one would expect a chart showing the ratio between those two to spit out data that's more consistent and closer in general to the trendline. The R-squared value for this chart, though, is lower than that of the value of the PIM vs. CK chart, meaning that the numbers it put out correlate less with the trendline. We've again got a big vertical column at 1.00, though--are people on the lower end of that column players with high Checking and high Discipline? Let's take a look at hits: At this point, it's worth bringing up something interesting: in this population, no player with equal CK and DI recorded 150 hits, and most fell below 100. As might be expected, there's again a positive trend here--and, as exhibited above with the CK charts, hits increase at a rate greater than penalty minutes. What's interesting here is that, as we move from Checking itself to the relative position of Checking as it relates to Discipline, this difference gets even more pronounced: 148/86.2 = 1.72 (slope of HIT vs. CK/DI divided by slope of PIM vs. CK/DI) 3.35/2.11 = 1.59 (slope of HIT vs. CK divided by slope of PIM vs. CK) What this at the very least suggests is that factoring in Discipline actually makes Checking look better--having Checking a good deal above Discipline still gets you a better hits:penalty minutes ratio, and having it a good deal above Discipline seems to actually have this effect more strongly than just having decent Checking and having Discipline wherever. Now for the big one... In theory, high Checking and high Discipline should, again, give a player lots of hits, with not a lot of penalties. And a look at this chart is actually fairly encouraging--minus one outlier around the 1.125 mark that I didn't bother to check and whatever the hell Dean Clarke did (44 hits and 4 penalty minutes with 61 CK / 40 DI, a fairly small sample size leading to a bad point on this chart; dammit @Kyle!). Now, in general, it appears that hits are more or less just as clean across the board--but what about that vertical line at a CK/DI ratio of 1? Could it be that upgrading both more or less evenly to a significant extent will give you more hits and cleaner hits? I decided it was time to look into that, and found that out of all the players with equal CK and DI in S72 (37 in total), only four had anything other than 40/40: -Micheal Gary Scott (@Motzaburger) - 90 CK / 90 DI -Charles Drumm (@frescoelmo) - 75 CK / 75 DI -Luciano Valentino (@Kekzkrieg) - 75 CK / 75 DI -Ricky Johnson (@Midnite) - 70 CK / 70 DI There were more players with similar ratios (in fact, I got the idea for this article in the midst of making fun of @Berocka for fairly unimpressive checking numbers with his 78/70), but for the sake of consistency I'm choosing to take a look at those who have both attributes upgraded exactly equally. The data may be found here, and, let me tell you, it's not the greatest news if you've gone and maxed out your player in both: The "high" group (that is, Scott, Drumm, Valentino, and Johnson) did manage to put up more hits than the 40/40 gang, but that is the only advantage they've got here. They took more penalties, and their HIT/PIM ratio is much lower--meaning that the hits they gave out were less clean than those given out by players with not a single point in Discipline. This is basically like getting 50 games into the schedule and having a statline looking like the one on the right--and then from that point on to the end of the season, having every other hit you record put you in the penalty box. That's not good. It's also worth noting that I took the average HIT/PIM ratio for all players with a CK/DI ratio below 1 (that is, Discipline is higher than Checking), and got...this. That gives you just as many hits as the group at 40/40, with more penalties and a worse ratio. So, I'll conclude with this: TL;DR: Discipline is entirely worthless. I do not see even a single reason why upgrading Discipline in any capacity is beneficial to the growth of a player. If you want to go and build a two-way player, build a two-way player by upgrading Checking. Upgrading Discipline with Checking will dial you back down to a level equal with--if not worse than--where you started. Want to upgrade Discipline only to avoid penalties? Cool, that also does nothing and may even make you slightly worse. That's enough stats for me; see you in three weeks. Have I hit the word count yet? I think I have... Yes! I have--1,552 words. See you in three weeks indeed.

Pro tip: ctrl + f Is there any way these might be alphabetized? Asking for a friend.

Where's Bridges smh

Couldn't think of a good way to caption this but I'd say it's meme-y enough

MATHIAS CHOUINARD - CLASS OF S68 Position: RW Birthplace: Sweden Height: 6'0" Weight: 180 lbs Drafted: S18 20th overall, Calgary Wranglers Username: @Spangle Daisuke Kanou at #1 overall. Jukka Hakkinen. Anton Brekker. Tarik Saeijs. The one and only Aidan Shaw. The S18 Entry Draft was full of Hall-of-Fame talent, and with many all-time greats up for grabs, one could excuse a team for missing out on a future star player. The excuses continue to amount the later the draft goes, especially when one considers that the subject of this article came into the draft ranked 26th in TPE in his class--having only earned 17 when his name was called by the Wranglers at #20. A steal for the ages, Chouinard spent the next two seasons in the minors, where he showed respectable potential with high point totals, then proceeding to far exceed expectations in the big league, where he put up points at a rate that, had he played a full eight seasons, would place him at #17 on the all-time points list at the time of writing in S73. It was a slower start that kept Chouinard out of the Hall for more than 40 seasons after he retired, but his accomplishments in the VHL proved him more than worthy of an eventual induction. Career Awards S21 - VHL All-Star S22 - VHL All-Star S23 - Continental Cup S23 - Devon Marlow-Marta Trophy (NA Conference Champion) S23 - Howe Trophy (Playoff MVP) S23 - VHL All-Star S24 - Continental Cup S24 - Vladimir Kostka Trophy (EU Conference Champion) S24 - Lemieux Trophy (Most Points) S24 - VHL All-Star S25 - Continental Cup S25 - Vladimir Kostka Trophy (EU Conference Champion) S25 - VHL All-Star S18 (Minot - VHLM) 72 GP / 49 G - 90 A - 119 P / +28 / 94 HIT / 22 SB Out of the draft, Chouinard was understandably assigned to the Minot Gladiators, then the farm club of the Wranglers. Now, 119 points in the VHLM, especially in days of old, doesn't necessarily point to a player with a great future, but the fact that Chouinard existed as an active player out of the third round was certainly enough to please Calgary at the time. It was still improbable at this point that Chouinard would ever put up point totals the likes of these in the VHL, but he was active and updating and had already qualified as a steal. S19 (Minot - VHLM) 72 GP / 82 G - 113 A - 195 P / +53 / 129 HIT / 21 SB Against all odds, this 17-TPE draftee kept chugging along, still playing for Minot but drawing ever closer to greatness. Putting up almost 200 points en route to a season which saw Chouinard win the Oates Trophy for the most assists in the VHLM, he then went on to lead Minot to a Founders' Cup with a playoff performance that saw him take home the Esposito (VHLM Playoff MVP) Trophy along the way. This blistering show made it clear to Calgary--and to the rest of the VHL--that Chouinard was coming, and he was ready for greatness. S20 (CGY) 72 GP / 32 G - 60 A - 92 P / -24 / 23 HIT / 35 SB 92 points is a total which wouldn't be out of place in many Hall-of-Famers' prime seasons, making it all the more impressive that Chouinard managed to burst onto the scene with this much in his rookie season. After a quarter of his career down, he was set on making up for lost time, and though fairly high point totals around the league kept him out of the S20 All-Star lineup, and Calgary was far out of the playoffs, he'd begun to make his mark and gave a sign of what was yet to come. S21 (CGY) 72 GP / 55 G - 63 A - 118 P / -17 / 26 HIT / 60 SB Chouinard took the earlier improbability of recording a point total close to that of his S18 campaign and threw it out the window in S21, recording over 100 points for the first time in his VHL career on an otherwise nondescript Calgary team. This would be good enough to put him on his first all-star roster, though his 60 shots blocked as a forward and -17 rating tell of a few defensive woes on the team side. Though the Wranglers would miss the playoffs again by a wide margin, Chouinard's point totals were consistently top-notch, and his team was set to make a turn for the better. S22 (CGY) 72 GP / 50 G - 47 A - 97 P / +24 / 8 HIT / 39 SB Playoffs: 7 GP / 3 G - 5 A - 8 P / 2 HIT / 5 SB Playoffs! Going into and coming out of a rebuild in a few seasons, Calgary wasn't on top just yet, but managed to give Toronto a run for their money in the first round. Chouinard, as expected, played quite the part in the team's success, once again putting up 50 goals in a regular season which saw him make his second all-star lineup and further establish this third-round pick as an elite player at the big level. As for the team success, well, that was certainly yet to come, but one could not ask for more in Chouinard's last three seasons. S23 (CGY) 72 GP / 43 G - 43 A - 86 P / +14 / 29 HIT / 21 SB Playoffs: 12 GP / 9 G - 10 A - 19 P / +9 / 3 HIT / 1 SB S23 was not great by Chouinard standards, but certainly stood out for reasons beyond regular-season numbers. On paper, during the regular season, he took a step back, putting in his lowest-ever point total with 86. Even if that may have put him at the back of the minds of some during the season, he stepped up and delivered in the playoffs. With 19 points in 12 games (a pace that would equate to 114 points over a regular-season 72), Chouinard led the Wranglers all the way to a championship, winning the Howe trophy as playoff MVP. S24 (CGY/DAV) 74 GP / 57 G - 67 A - 124 P / +63 / 33 HIT / 18 SB Playoffs: 11 GP / 5 G - 8 A - 13 P / +7 / 1 HIT / 8 SB Whatever supposed deficiency might have been signaled in S23 had its legitimacy destroyed by Chouinard's S24 campaign, by far his best ever. 124 points speaks for itself, as does a +63, good enough for a win of the Lemieux Trophy (now the Szatkowski) for the league's most points. With new surroundings coming with a trade during the season came the same result--Davos won the Cup in S24, with Chouinard again putting up respectable numbers in support of the championship run. S25 (DAV) 72 GP / 49 G - 58 A - 107 P / +50 / 38 HIT / 32 SB Playoffs: 11 GP / 6 G - 5 A - 11 P / +6 / 3 HIT / 3 SB S25 had come, and it was time to go out with a bang. Chouinard took the opportunity to break 100 points for the third time in his career, falling just short of the 50-goal mark this time but putting up a +50 and finding himself at the forefront of a Davos team in a season where he would make his fifth straight all-star lineup and, you guessed it, win his third straight championship. Where he went later on in his career, cups followed, and his six goals in the playoffs made sure that his last season would be no exception. Career Totals 434 GP / 286 G - 338 A - 624 P / +110 / 157 HIT / 205 SB Playoffs: 41 GP / 23 G - 28 A - 51 P / +22 / 10 HIT / 17 SB Chouinard is, at the time of writing, only #118 on the all-time points list, but only a handful of players with fewer games played sit ahead of him--and the only two of those who have not yet been inducted (Aiden Alexander and Daric Radmonovic) both played in the early days of the league, when playing at Chouinard's level for less than a full career was nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly no player with such a career outside of that time frame saw their efforts go unnoticed with an induction, a fact which by itself proves his presence in the Hall to be justified. With consistent production and playing a large part in three straight championships to boot, here you have it--a blast from the past that's been long overdue.