Gustav

Taro hit 1500 this week

No get back in the basement

For sure--but the possibility of things escalating to that point should deter some amount of direct action. If we go back 100 years, and things like nukes don't exist...well, I wouldn't be entirely unprepared to be forced into the military. With the situation as it is, I doubt the US (officially) joins. And--at least for the moment--I think Putin threatening that is a bluff. But we almost reached full-on nuclear warfare more than once without even going to war--and we can thank Stanislav Petrov for the "almost" bit. Things are already messy and avoiding escalation is going to be a diplomatic nightmare. Now more than arguably any other time in recent history, we need the right people making the decisions.

I genuinely wonder how this is seen in Russia. Not in the Russian media or among the Russian government, but among the people themselves. Surely there are many, many Russians who see that this isn't right. With the threat of retaliation from a more technologically advanced (read: has nukes, a lot of them) country, I think the world will try to take a more measured approach to this. We've never seen two major nuclear powers go to war with each other, and that happening would be terrible news for everyone. But that said, it's got to weigh on a lot of consciences if no one does anything and we all just let it happen. We're screwed either way. TL;DR: Putin can fuck off.

I debated doing a S75 article but you beat me to it. I find it amusing that Taro still gets classified as underrated, but I guess I get it. I'm good at being good and have been just about this whole time but generally haven't been top-tier.

2 with 3's text is the best of both worlds I think. 3 does it best overall.

As someone who's very anti-meta (in the sense that I think an entire team who openly aims to be as meta as possible is horrible for the league) I think this is a good point. If you build your player as meta as you can, I do not hate you and I do not think you, yourself, are doing anything wrong. This isn't an individual thing, more so a collective one. And I think that's missed by some people--one person going meta is not the problem, nor is that one person even necessarily part of it if they genuinely want to build that way. The second part is also a good point, though. I have more league experience than a majority of people here, even a good handful of GMs, and I think I'm past the point where anyone is going to demand that I build a certain way (or at least I'm past the point where anyone should expect me to listen if they do). But what about newer players? I've seen builds be dictated by other people, and it isn't fun. If it becomes the general mindset that a player who is not full meta is not pulling their weight, and needs to change to fit the status quo, then things have gone too far. And I think we've reached that point in some, not all, league circles. I'd also like to make an important distinction, which I'm sure you'll agree with--in much the same way that an individual who chooses to pursue a meta build is not a bad person for doing so, someone who chooses not too is not worth any less as a member of the league. I've always felt that we're a community first and a set of sim results second, and I'd like to keep it that way. All in all, good thoughts!

What's cooking, VHL? I'm in school project mode, where I don't check in as much as usual, but I suppose I write fast enough that 500 words isn't an issue. And I'd like to put out a bit of a life update on my end, as well as to talk about my (potential) plans to recreate. I had this song pop into my head recently, which just about sums up what's going on with me. As non-negatively as possible (because I don't want this to be negative), I'm a little bit intimidated by the thought of college being over (for those of you who have noticed my status on Discord, I have 83 days left and counting). I'm going to end up in a grad program--where, I don't know yet, but I have a few acceptances to consider--so I guess that one part of my life is decided, but I don't want to basically start over my life again. See, I left high school and watched most people I knew move all over the place, and now I'm about to leave college and see my current friend group (which I took three whole years to find) do the exact same thing. People I genuinely care about are going to end up pretty distant. And I'm going to end up somewhere where chances are I don't know a single person. There are going to be a lot of positive experiences, of course, and I look forward to those, but there's a lot that's going to be left behind no matter what--and lately a day doesn't go by where I don't realize that. Time moves fast--and for everything there is a season, I guess. What I don't want to happen is going to happen, and the best I can do is to make the most out of it. Speaking of big changes, Taro is in his last season and I've heard (though not cared enough to verify myself) that the deadline is coming up in a non-infinite amount of time. I do plan on recreating, and it should be cool to experience the draft from the perspective of a player rather than a GM again. I'm a little bit hung up on what I want to create, though. I slightly lean towards goaler, because it's the only position I've never played--and also because it eliminates any "should I make a meta build"/"how meta do I want my player"/"what will happen to my player when the BoG Hammer of Meta Justice is swung" questions on my end. So I guess I really lean towards goaler. But there's also the question of "how good will I be?", which is a bit tough to answer. After the last draft, I don't necessarily see the first half of my career or so going great, and if all the actives stay active, the league could end up with an elite group of 4 or 5 for almost all of my career--and that's not even counting anyone else in the S84 class (or any others). The position is going to be really competitive, somewhat like what S75 gave us with the likes of Rasputin, Tretiak, and Sales (and even UnGuri) all in the mix. So what's a S84 player to do when the S82 players get good? I won't be setting any records. Plus, I had a lot of fun playing defense back in the day, and I wouldn't mind doing it again--especially since the league has a big need for it at the moment (and that opens the door for someone to be the face of the next era). So we'll see. I think I'm done being a forward for the time being, though--it's my 11th straight season as one, and I don't care to make it 21. And as for how my recreate lines up with my life--I guarantee nothing. I don't see myself going inactive, but I also have no idea what I'll be up to in...well, heck, 6 months now. I wouldn't consider this a huge red flag or anything from a scouting perspective, but purely hypothetically, if I miss out on 12 for the first time since February 2019, here and there, don't say I didn't warn you. Speaking of February 2019, actually, I just now realized that I've been in the VHL for three whole years! Happy sim league birthday to me.

Jeff Skinner. If you think the sim engine is terrible now, watch him pop off one season and be the worst player on the ice in the next. We've picked it up lately! A head-scratcher here and there, but we're no longer dropping tons of games in a row. -Severe lack of defensemen -Severe lack of (experienced) goalies -VHLE thinning out rosters and making the VHL more polarized (a la high-scoring VHLM) -Meta It's a combination of a ton of things and I don't like any of them. ...I didn't even know this; I've been too busy looking at 700 points. Realistically--it's possible! I'll earn what I can before the deadline. Statistically speaking, 392 GP is more likely...but I think I'm obligated to make the homer call here. Assists first. #FreeHogan 3 times.

This should have been more obvious because I was on the right track in my head for a long time but for some reason it wasn't. VHL Wordle https://vhl-wordle.herokuapp.com 15 6/6

VHL Wordle https://vhl-wordle.herokuapp.com 12 4/6 I didn't look at other results smh

Timothy lost 80 GAMES in ONE MONTH

Which are the ones I adjusted in this case. Also Simon says that a lot of stuff works that actually doesn't work, and that a lot doesn't work that actually does. If GMs do try this, I'm interested to see if it changes things at all.

Hello GMs! And hello VHL! I see that Vancouver is 22-3-1 this season. Which I'm sure quite a few of us aren't incredibly happy about. We know the meta story, and I'm not interested in getting into who's right and who's wrong or any of that. But I am here to share a suggestion for you to consider (or not consider) as you wish. Normally I would keep things like this to myself, but I'm no longer a GM and I think sharing this is the best thing for the league right now. When you face someone running a hyper-offensive meta team, set your sliders to 0-4-1. Or 0-5-0. Or anything hyper-defensive. I have no idea whether or not this actually works, but I can tell you that it has worked for me at some times in the past. Those who were around in S69 in the VHLM will know that Saskatoon was a powerhouse, going about the first 50 or so games without a loss (if I remember right--I do remember a crazy long win streak at least). Everyone played around with their sliders and their lines to try to find something that worked...and then I was able to take them to a shootout running 0-4-1. We lost, but it ended the regulation win streak listed on the portal. And then, guess what--we beat them in our next matchup, also running 0-4-1. We would beat them at least once more before the season ended, even outshooting them in one game. Mexico City caught onto this as well, did the same thing, and also managed to beat Saskatoon. The Wild would eventually win the cup, but the Hounds managed to take a game away from them in the finals. Fast forward to last season. Since S80, Davos had been unable to win against Vancouver, and the first two matchups of the season certainly illustrated this with two big losses. But then I remembered S69, and figured that instead of trying to out-offense a team that was clearly better at offense than we were, maybe we should just out-defense. And we managed to get a win and an overtime loss in our next (and last) two games of the season. I am not saying that this is the magic bullet to the meta. It is not. I'm also not saying that I have anywhere near a large enough sample size to draw a conclusion from it. But what I am saying is that running my overall sliders at 0-4-1 (at least when the score was even) has given me a few wins that I shouldn't have gotten. Give it a try if you're so inclined, or don't. Whatever you'd like.

VHL Wordle https://vhl-wordle.herokuapp.com 10 4/6

A couple reasons: -On the back end, the portal is set up to work with STHS. No other sim engine exists that lets us transfer files from a site to the engine like this one, and it's a huge reason why the league can run as smoothly as it does today. Simming, posting results, keeping rosters current, and UPDATING--which is incredibly painful in other leagues--all go really nicely here because STHS is able to accommodate it. We nuke STHS, and we probably lose a good portion of the league because everything immediately becomes more difficult. -We have to make sure whichever new engine there would be (the first point means by itself that we aren't switching anytime soon) wouldn't just give us some other problems that make the switch meaningless. For example, the SHL switched their sims to FHM a while back. It works, and I've talked to a number of people who like it. But there are also many who think there's just no parity--the better team on paper wins all the time, with few exceptions, and standings are just about exactly what you'd expect at the start of each season. That's a legitimate complaint too! Some people here (not necessarily you) complain about STHS because it doesn't do that and will scream that the engine is broken if their team loses even one game to a worse team. Think about how boring it would be if every single stat, every single game, went exactly how you predicted. I'm not saying STHS results are perfect (obviously, Davos should have won more games lol) but some level of randomness is good.

Imagine

I didn't care who won going in but started rooting for the Rams after Higgins face-masked Ramsey on his touchdown and got away with it. But then I went back to not caring who won on the Rams' last drive because that one was extended by some questionable calls at the end. It mostly evened out I think. This is the first one in a while where I didn't hate at least one of the teams involved, so that was nice. Happy for guys like Stafford/Donald/Whitworth who were waiting for their ring.

(written solely because no one has ever done a bio under the "new" guidelines established 12 seasons ago) Taro, pre-time warp. The year was 1974, and Taro Tsujimoto had been drafted by the Buffalo Sabres. Rumors buzzed around the NHL, and the media waited for the player from Japan to make his way to the United States. And waited. In a grand twist of fate, Taro never showed up. And even further, no one knew where--or even who--he was. With hockey being virtually unfollowed in Asia, he was hardly a famous face, and with NHL scouting being virtually nonexistent in Asia, he went virtually unknown in the West as well. He just never existed--at least, according to those with the knowledge to say so one way or another. So, imagine the surprise of hockey historians upon learning that a still-young Taro Tsujimoto had popped up in Ottawa and signed with the VHLM's Lynx near the trade deadline in S73. No one knew how it happened, including Taro, who woke up one day decades after he had been written off as nonexistent. Still a young player due to some sort of mystic forces beyond anyone's knowledge, he had skipped nearly 50 years of his life and was ready to play some hockey. Side note: I came up with this storyline myself in my Junior Review, which I wrote before I knew the show Manifest existed but which is somewhat similar to the show's initial storyline. A few people I talked to a few days ago know that I thought Manifest was stupid, and that has not changed. Maybe I think my Junior Review was stupid, too, but I'll stick to it. From then on, the level of hype that was generated way back in the '70s was reached and quickly surpassed by Taro in the VHL. From the start, he was viewed as a hot prospect, and while he has never finished right on top of the league (save for an MVP campaign in S80), he has always been able to earn a mention among the league's best over a long career best characterized by his status of the face of the HC Davos Dynamo from his rookie season in S75 to his departure in a trade to Seattle after the end of S81. But, how did he learn about hockey in Japan? And how did he manage to draw the attention of NHL scouts? Anyone who is even a little bit geopolitically inclined will know that Japan is one of the more "Westernized" countries located outside of the West. Though this notable shift in policy and attitude had begun as early as the late 1880s, and even as early as 1609, a massive overhaul occurred after World War II when the country was occupied by the United States. For seven years, American politics made their way into Japanese life, with soldiers and government officials working to create an exact carbon copy of the USA. Taro's parents, a cook and a factory worker living near a military base in Osaka, were able to develop a friendship with a group of American soldiers, often providing food and hospitality in exchange for some neighborhood improvement projects. The American occupation would end in 1952, and the soldiers in question would leave with it, but one remained in contact with the Tsujimoto family and sent letters on occasion. Taro was eventually born in 1954, and it was in the same year that his father, Akemi, would receive a photograph from the USA showing two college hockey teams mid-match. With the sport being as unfamiliar as it was, questions were asked, one letter led to another, and soon enough, Akemi Tsujimoto had developed an avid interest in the sport of hockey. Taro was taught the rules of the game from a young age, and would often be taken out during the winters to play with whatever equipment could be made at home. He and his family reached out to all those they knew, and soon enough, the sport became a neighborhood pastime. There was no ice rink, and there was no training facility, but Taro became quite good at the sport nonetheless--good enough that he chose to attempt to play professionally after his high school graduation. Now, military service is required in many countries around the world, including many countries in Asia, but not Japan, where mandatory conscription was lifted in 1947. While a high school graduate from Korea would still, to this day, be forced to enlist, Taro was free to do as he wished and entered the practice facility of the Tokyo Katanas the day after he left high school. Initially mocked for his makeshift equipment, he was given an upgrade and an opportunity after some amount of persuasion (no doubt helped by the lack of professional hockey talent in Japan in 1972). Though it would take some time to adjust to the new equipment, Taro was able to skate and shoot well. And though he didn't make the roster, he was told to come back the next year. And the next year, 1973, was exactly what he had been waiting for, when he finally made the Katanas' roster. Word would reach the USA through his family, and as word spread, scouts soon became aware of his existence--conveniently, at a time when the NHL was just starting to branch out beyond North America in its search for talent. Though not performing overly impressively, putting up 15 goals and 25 points in his first professional season, the NHL was open to experimentation and he was able to get the call for an opportunity he meant to take, but never could. And you know the rest. One time warp here, one time warp there, some unexplainable events dismissively explained away, and hockey has been given Taro Tsujimoto, present-day VHL superstar and one of the best players to come out of the monster S75 draft class.

Sharing answers was never seen as a problem before so I don't know why it would be seen as a problem now. It's not one worth policing IMO. Especially since there's nothing stopping anyone from just hitting up someone else in private for their answers. We have more important things to think about than how to stop the trivia cartel.

VHL Wordle https://vhl-wordle.herokuapp.com 9 4/6

Oh look I have that NFT too! Also the fact that the website takes HALF of the money you're paid for it is ridiculous.