Gustav

F - Mac Atlas F - Jasper Davis @Greg_Di

Already selected; Victor just abbreviated the initials earlier. I actually didn’t know until then that it was supposed to spell CGY. But it’s all good; let me know when you change it.

If you don't recognize this image, you've missed out on quite a bit. It's been a long time since my last installment of this series. Part of that is that I got lazy, part of that is that I got busy, and another part of that is just that I know I'm going to have to jam-pack this article. I took a few of these off of talking about my time as a GM, but anyone who knows me also knows that being a GM meant more to me than that first offseason. I wasn't sure how to break up that information, though, so I hope it makes logical sense that this article deals with my first attempt to compete--a fairly short-lived one that I started building up in S71 and kept going through S74 or so when all the assets I'd stacked up decided to unstack. I suppose the place to start is right where the last one left off. S70 largely consisted of me sitting, waiting, and losing. Which was fine for the most part; I'd gotten myself ready for that and was super excited for the future. If the VHL had a reputable Hockey News-type media outlet, we would have been featured on the cover of their "Introducing Your S75 Continental Cup Champions" issue, and for good reason. We had both the draft picks and the hype on our side, and I hoped I could live up to it. NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S71: Preseason: Roque Davis drafted 2nd overall Joakim Bruden drafted 15th overall Mickey Dickson drafted 25th overall Big Chungus drafted 33rd overall S73 DAV 2nd traded to New York for Joel Ylonen and Walter Clements S71 VAN 2nd traded to DC for Derek Eriksson Joel Ylonen traded to Prague for S73 PRG 2nd Shawn Glade Jr traded to Seattle for S72 SEA 3rd + 4th Aside from @Ahma's Davos-faithful Fernando Jokinen, and @Brrbisbrr's Samuel Ross in net, there weren't many players left on the roster that even I recognized. Some of those whose names I knew were inactive by that point, and the mess that was Davos was up to me to figure out. There really wasn't anything wrong with our S71 draft class--just picking the best player I saw as available got us Davis, bringing @Josh back to the Dynamo (perhaps sooner than he might have hoped), as well as Bruden, a mid-level earner managed by @PadStack who probably projected as a solid backup for most teams. Other features of note in the draft included Dickson--who I'll talk about a bit later--and Chungus, who I almost never saw outside of the portal but who ended up getting a cup of coffee with the team eventually. The offseason was interesting because it was the first time I could make moves with a purpose. In a move that puzzles me to this day, I made a rental deal for the retiring Joel Ylonen (despite never thinking I would be in a spot to compete). But on the funnier end of that deal, I managed to DM every other team's ears off until I'd arranged to move him to Prague for almost exactly what I paid for him to begin with--making it the second time I had @Esso2264 on a roster of mine and he didn't make it to the start of the season. Two other trades went down--one where I gave DC a 2nd-round pick (which I could have used on the pretty-decent Xavier leFlamant) for Eriksson (who just about immediately went inactive) and another where I was contacted by Seattle about acquiring Shawn's player. I felt bad moving Shawn out of Davos (even with permission), but I also felt that there was still a bit of tension in the air between us at that point and hoped that cutting the tie temporarily would help both of us with a fresh start. From that point, it was still sitting and waiting and losing, but at least some of the players I was managing were the result of my own choices. We hit last place in the league (again), but Davis won both the Stolzschweiger and the Valiq and I was looking forward to getting better. NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S72: Preseason: SS Hornet drafted 1st overall Robin Winter drafted 2nd overall Chico Smeb, Andrej Petrovic, and S73 DAV 1st traded to Malmo for S73 RIG 2nd, S73 SEA 3rd, and Jerry Garcia Jack Feriancek and S72 DAV 2nd traded to Riga for rights to Acyd Burn S72 TOR 1st and S73 RIG 2nd traded to Vancouver for S72 RIG 1st and David OQuinn S73 PRG 2nd, S73 DAV 4th, and S74 DAV 4th traded to Vancouver for Jerry Wang Vin Calia, S72 RIG 1st, and S72 DAV 3rd traded to Moscow for S72 MOS 2nd, S73 MOS 1st, and S74 MOS 2nd ACL TEAR signs in free agency In-Season: Milos Slavik, Michael Hall, Derek Eriksson, S73 MOS 1st, and S74 DAV 3rd traded to Moscow for S74 MOS 3rd, Killy Foilen, and Jet Jaguar This insane 3-way deal that essentially involved Acyd Burn being traded for Hunter Hearst Helmsley Davos had just recorded a VHL-record third straight last-place finish, so pardon me for making that the reason why I decided to flip the team on its head. S72 was the first (and biggest) taste of what Ahma would come to call Big Gustav Offseason Moves (BGOMs), and while some had some disagreements as to their value, this was one of my most exciting seasons as GM. First of all, the draft was a personal dream of mine--I loved both @McWolf and @Rin, and seeing both of their players reach hot prospect status with me in position to get them got me very excited for the draft lottery. Guaranteeing that I'd have them around with a double lotto win meant quite a bit, and even though I completely whiffed on both of my second-round picks (both max earners until the second I picked them), I still considered the draft a success. The story of my management in S72, though, was buying, and I had all the resources in the world to make that happen. @FrostBeard had just been hired as GM in Malmo, chose to rebuild, and graciously offered me my own player at a fair price. I took that--and then overpaid a little bit for a rights deal on @Acydburn's first-gen player. Acyd would eventually cave in to the pressure and sign on with us, and he did lots to help poke my brain in that offseason as to where to take things next. With some reshuffling, we brought in David OQuinn to help out on defense (where he would stay for three seasons) and traded for second-line forward Jerry Wang (the only other VHL player ever to be named Jerry at the time, managed by very solid member @ColeMrtz). Add to this the fact that I'd just signed @Quik the commissioner? We were looking dangerous. The roster was reasonably well filled, and I hoped that we could take things to the next level. And I still had resources to spend. A little bit into the season, Moscow's rebuild caught my eye and I pulled the trigger on a deal for Hall-of-Famer Jet Jaguar. I'd just upgraded my roster in a big way--by moving three lower-level forwards out for a mid-level one and a high-level one, I'd not only improved the roster but cleared out one of my forwards, answering some questions some of my hot prospects had about ice time. The thing was--I now had two people, both who were good enough to be a team's first-line center, both of whom wanted to be mine. Both @gorlab and Acyd were upset that I was using their player in ways that didn't match their own goals as I experimented with lines, and eventually Acyd requested a trade. Fair enough. Fair enough that I cooked up a massive three-way deal with myself, New York, and Vancouver, where Acyd would get a new home and I'd keep a top-level forward. In just one season, Davos had gone from last place to swinging a deal for all-time great Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Here's the issue, though--HHH was also a legitimate 1C and this did nothing to help with gorlab's objections to Jaguar's status remaining a question. Arguably, I'd made the situation worse, as he and @Beaviss had feuded in the past. It was my first lesson learned in that every VHLer wants the best for their player, and that one's goals as a GM should take this into account. The following offseason would begin with a strongly-worded Jaguar trade request before we talked it out a bit. But anyway, this would be the last season for Samuel Ross in Davos. He wouldn't make it far in the playoffs, but we made it there for my first time ever as a VHL GM. I'd be nominated for the Knight after the season (and narrowly lose), and I felt good about my ability as a GM. As it turns out, I also felt pretty good about making huge deals. NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S73: Preseason: Mickey Dickson traded to Malmo for S74 HSK 2nd and S75 MAL 4th Rights to ACL TEAR traded to Calgary for S74 CGY 4th and John Poremba Samuel Ross traded to Helsinki for S74 PRG 4th and Owen May Jerry Wang, S74 DAV 1st, and S74 MOS 3rd traded to New York for S74 NYA 4th and Soren Jensen S74 HSK 2nd and S74 NYA 4th traded to Calgary for Charlie Paddywagon The season started with a few small wins--I'll always bring up that I got rid of @samx right before she went inactive, and even though I was losing Quik to free agency, he'd at least communicated that to me. Davis was by now a solid offensive defenseman build, and I still had Jaguar and Garcia on the roster for a final season. It would be tough to deal with my S66 players retiring, but I would just figure that out later, wouldn't I? The first step I took in figuring that out later was by turning around and trading Wang just a season after I'd brought him in. This, along with yet another first-round draft pick burned, gave me Soren Jensen, @Velevra's player who I practically never heard from but who would give me a solid 900-some TPA on my top line for almost 4 whole seasons. The second step I took in figuring things out later was to...give me more things to figure out later by getting rid of even more S74 picks for a rental of @DMaximus ' retiring Charlie Paddywagon. And while it was sad, Bruden had finally earned well enough that he was our #1 goaltender, so I moved Ross out to a place where he could still start. As it turned out, Jensen and Paddywagon historically underperforming in STHS output wasn't something that would be magically fixed by their moving to Davos. Nor did essentially forfeiting my entire S74 draft class seem like a very good idea when we (yet again) got knocked out of the playoffs almost immediately. I headed into the offseason with three high-profile retirements on my hands and a lot of space to fill. Luckily, I had Hornet and Winter developing, but would that be enough? Between Paddywagon retiring and Josh letting me know that he wasn't convinced he wanted to re-sign, I had work to do for S74. NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S74: Preseason: Rayz Funk signs in free agency Roque Davis re-signs for S74 Shawty Nananana drafted 31st overall S74 VAN 3rd traded to Calgary for Joe Proto John Poremba traded to Prague for S75 PRG 4th In-Season: S75 DAV 2nd, Joe Proto, and Big Chungus traded to New York for Owen Nolan My primary goal in the offseason was to stop Davis from walking out the door, and it just so happened that the greatest playoff goaltender in VHL history was hitting free agency before his final season. Bruden's activity had hit marginal levels by this point, so even though I liked his agent, I committed to a completely free BGOM and pulled the trigger on signing Funk. Davos, for the first time in my GM tenure, had a legitimate #1 goaler by any team's standard, and this was enough to convince Davis to stick with us (albeit on a one-season contract). We also managed to grab @Grape in the draft despite getting rid of every other one of our picks, and though I didn't feel quite as confident about this roster as I had in previous seasons, we were still competitive on paper and were ready to let Hornet and Winter take over with Jensen as our top forwards. No one told me, though, that having an entire top line that Simon didn't like wasn't exactly a good thing. We had decent enough TPE levels to do well enough, but things just weren't clicking and Davos found themselves in a big hole halfway through the season thanks to an abysmal offense. Things were bad enough that @Rayzor_7 reached out to me to ask that I trade for more scoring power--and he was right. No one was selling for what I had, though, and I didn't have much of a choice but to continue my trend of buying aging (and in this case inactive, despite decent TPE) players. I grabbed New York's Owen Nolan and hoped that would work. The rest of S74 was an adventure. I spent some time watching us take a nosedive in the standings...and then I watched the greatest stretch of Davos hockey I've ever seen as a GM. I don't have the exact numbers, but with a small handful of games left in the season, we'd just gone something like 18-2-0 over our last 20 and were all tied up with a few other teams for the last playoff spot. Which mattered quite a bit, because we had the best playoff goaler, after all. And then we choked away the very end of the season. Our win streak cut out just in time for us to drop a bunch of games right at the end, and we missed the last playoff spot by one point. Such is life. This would mark the beginning of the end for Davos. Funk retired, Josh told me he was gone for sure this time, and I watched Nolan depreciate while Jensen got a season older. In just three seasons, I'd opened and closed Davos' competitive window by turning draft capital into retirements, and I didn't look like the world's best GM--without checking, I believe Funk was the last free agent signing I ever got. But as much as I took Davos to Hell in a bucket, at least I enjoyed the ride, and I hope some others who played with me during this time did as well. As a side note, I find it worthwhile to mention that before S71 even happened, I found myself taking a shot at a super-active first-gen as my AGM. I took a huge liking to Proto right off the bat and one day shot him a message offering him the job. He was great for the locker room and max-earned the whole time he was in the VHL--but we also had a few disagreements. It was nothing that boiled over into anything bad between us, but it was a short window into what would soon follow when he super abruptly left the league (citing various differences with administration). His forum account seems to have been deleted, and he seems to have moved on from the VHL for good. But he was a big part of the early buildup of Davos and its culture during my time. Right after Proto left Davos (to get hired in the VHLM, thanks to the Gustav Effect), I ended up re-hiring @Berocka, my best friend in the VHL, as my AGM after he quit in Mississauga. This would be a partnership that lasted the entire rest of my tenure, and it's one I was always grateful to have. This was also when most of modern Davos culture--much of which still exists today!--defined itself. The use of "David" to refer to the team, and also as a sort of cheer; the use of McDonald's mascot Grimace as the team's; even the various Discord emotes I made that were just meme variations of my profile picture (and even ones that combined these things, like the picture at the top of this article); all of these things made Davos what it was and I love that somewhere in the world, someone is reading this who remembers these things and looks at them as fondly as I do. The first competitive run I gave Davos might have been a failure on the scoreboard and it might have cemented a negative reputation for myself as a GM, but I wouldn't have changed a thing about how it went off the ice and the memories I made with all the people I have mentioned in this article. So, in spirit of that: DAVID! Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House #11: Go Directly to Jail #12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball

D - YaBoi Oven F - S.nubbed Analfist @Greg_Di

1. @Gustav (GM) F - S.nubbed Analfist F - Mac Atlas F - Jasper Davis D - Mark Calaway D - YaBoi Oven G - Olober Syko 2. @Greg_Di F - Severus Targaryen F - Daryl Dixon F - D - Skor McFleury D - Kronchy Kardashian G - Lachlan Summers 3. @MexicanCow123 F - Leonard Triller F - Raimo Tuominen F - Logan Ninefingers D - Jacob Stone D - Bobby Bob G - Merome Dilson 4. @DarkSpyro F - Viktor Jensen F - Oreo McFleury F - Catia Goncalves D - Reese McFleury D - Fradin McGryer G - Ash Sparks 5. @Victor F - Axle Gunner F - Grimgor Ironhide F - Harry Callahan D - Liv Slater D - Callum Gary Yannick Janser G - Joel Castle 6. @wcats F - Wann Kerr F - Jimi Jaks F - Francesco Mancini D - David Jokinen D - Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage G - Fuukka Rask

I am so stupid. D - Mark Calaway

Because I need a PT, don't want to write, and don't have a sig. It's not quite what I used to make but it's presentable.

Aren’t all VHLM rule changes minor ones?

I haven't forgotten about my 30 in 30 series, I promise--it's just 1 AM on Monday and I haven't written a media spot. Thankfully, this week gives me lots and lots of things to talk about. I wrote up what was meant to be a highly sarcastic joke thread in the thunderdome the other day, but judging by the fact that no one liked it or said anything in response, I think I may have gone a bit too sarcastic and just made everyone grimace. So, to clear the air a bit, here are my honest thoughts on my biggest VHL development of the week--Lazlo Holmes becoming the latest hot prospect in Prague. I don't actually feel seriously negatively about this, but I was mildly disappointed to see that I fell to 10th overall. It's the lowest I've ever been drafted into the VHL (even in S75 when I could still auto-pick my own player and tried my hardest to trade down as far as I possibly could). I know I was a good bit behind in TPE for reasons not entirely clear to me (leaving a couple career tasks undone so far and not donating accounts for some of the difference, but not all), but I was still a max earner and have been for over 5 years straight at this point. It makes me wonder what more I have to do to prove that I'm the right one for the job in lots and lots of places I could be right now had those teams had a bit more faith in Lazlo. That said, I've found Prague very chill so far. I've been in the server since @diamond_ace brought me in when the team was founded, and digging it out of my "everyone I'm not currently playing for" folder has felt nice. At one point, I was one of the more active members of the server despite not being on the team. Two things I love so far: Our activity has mostly been in the public channel, something I was always hugely in favor of as a GM. I will forever stand by my opinion that this is THE number one way to have an active locker room. I have always thought (and since confirmed) that @Tetricide is a very cool and very real person to talk to, and I'm excited to be part of his rebuild. An honorable locker room mention (and a very nice point in favor of what I just said about public channels) is @samx, who I've always gotten along well with and who I'm glad is still active in Prague. I'm assuming that it's been assumed that I'm going to play in the E this season, and I've decided that I'm just going to suck it up and go along with it. I'm apparently not the monster earner that the top end of my draft class is, Prague isn't in a spot where I'd be contributing to their ability to compete at all, and I am actively hurting my player's future if I decide that maybe whatever marginally active teammates I end up with could benefit from playing alongside a recognizable name this season (the absolute horror!). I think I can still reasonably hold all my E-related opinions without it becoming hypocritical that I stayed down, though, because I did it despite not wanting to but because I don't really have a reasonable choice when you think about it. I'll stop there for now, but consider that the next time you bring up the "oh you can enjoy it either way" argument. Being part of a rebuild is going to be exciting, I think, because I'm one of the first pieces that the roster will be built around. As a player, I have the (underrated) ability to influence my teammates, and I like to think that the right sort of person might be able to be charmed into really loving it in Prague as well. In the past, I've faded out of activity in some of my team servers, but I see the chance to help reform Prague into a super active place to be and I'm excited that I get to be part of defining what that looks like. I hope it's a lot of fun for as long as I'm there.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about lots of things, and I'm a little bit salty today because I thought I had early weekend plans and found out that everyone I had those plans with not only went and forgot about those plans but also went and made other ones that have nothing to do with me. Which, I think, can trigger a few fair thoughts at once: I was told this was an accident, apologized to, and asked if I want to do things next week. Unfortunate things can happen, I value my friends, and I still believe that I am valued too. Though I'll stick to thinking about this myself, I have the right to be disappointed tonight. My early weekend plans are now to have some beer and watch some baseball, and I'm annoyed that that isn't as fun as it is normally. Why am I such a despicable human being? To plumb that last point to its deepest possible extent, I thought that I should think of some things that I have been at fault for recently, so I can take some accountability and move forward as not only a better person but also probably one that people won't forget about. If I were to pick from a hypothetical group of people who I would want around, could I confidently say that I would be picking myself? My experience tonight has shown me that lots of people might not. And as exciting as some of those other plans may have been, I do feel that I am capable of bringing lots of good things to many different environments. So, to those who may not have thought about me tonight, I'd like to present a handful of things I've done wrong. I have made about nine or so mistakes that I can think of pretty recently. Most of these nine mistakes have happened while I am at work at the job that I am paid to do by a higher authority. And perhaps the VHL might be able to think of nine (or so) mistakes that they have made in recent memory as well, perhaps also at some of the jobs that they are paid to do. Sometimes, rinsing out a piece of lab glassware with soap and water doesn't get everything off of it. Anything that's touched a chemical that likes to stick to glass gets put in a solution called a base bath to sort of chemically force it off--but things aren't supposed to stay in there for too long. I forgot to take things out of the base bath this morning--silly me! I want to get trained on how to use one of the instruments owned by my department, but I screwed up the paperwork and got a confused email from our HR-equivalent. I guess I'll have to do better next time! One of my coworkers left for good this week, so we had a going-away party with some funny pictures loaded up on a slideshow. One of my contributions was a Photoshopped picture of a painting of the Last Supper with my coworker as Jesus and the rest of us as some of the Apostles. It turns out that I wasn't paying much attention to who was who and accidentally made one of us Judas! Perhaps I should read up on these things. I was supposed to call up the resource center so we could rent something fun for an event we're planning next month--but forgot. I still have some time, but I hope I didn't let people down! I'm trying to find ways to make a chemical that would be very helpful to what I'm doing, and the only places I've been able to find anything on this have been in a collection of patents from Japan. I spent most of yesterday complaining that I didn't know how to read any of these, before I ended up saving myself lots of time by just finding them in English. I sure wish I had that time back! The circumstances of this week have led me to have not many days where I'm responsible for my own lunch at work, so I decided that I didn't need to cook this week. That's led to me eating like garbage on the days where I should be taking a little responsibility for what I eat, too. So even though I've been good at exercising anyway, I don't really feel like it. Maybe I should learn some balance. I got roped into taking some dance classes. It's been more fun than I thought it would be and I've learned lots of things that I never would have otherwise. But with no experience with these things whatsoever, I wasn't very good at it this week and felt bad for the people whose steps I mixed up. I suppose some practice would be nice! I've been to bed too late every night this week and spent all of every next day tired at work. There's never been a reason why I couldn't have gone to bed on time, meaning that this is my fault. I suppose I could be working on this. Today I parked in a space that I didn't know would charge me for the whole day rather than giving me options for time spent in that space (like just about anything else in the area does). I chose to just accept this when I saw the charge rather than getting back in the car and moving, just because I'm lazy. But some of that money is money that I wish I didn't spend. Maybe I should be more responsible! There are nine mistakes I've made this week! It took me a while to think of all of those, so maybe it's really difficult to make nine mistakes. I'm not sure if, or how, the VHL might be able to relate to this. But perhaps the VHL can see why I'm such a piece of shit that no one wants, and perhaps some who find themselves in the position of ignoring others might be able to reflect on that and imagine that perhaps they may have made mistakes in their own lives as well, whether at the jobs that they are paid to do or just in general. Maybe, if one were to make nine (or so) mistakes, that could be taken as an opportunity for self-improvement.

Various GMs gathered to try to win the Art Vandelay sweepstakes in S84. Is the agency's next player in similar demand? Lazlo Holmes burst onto the VHLM scene late last season, putting up very respectable numbers in a brief stint with the Halifax 21st. It wouldn't be long before he went 3rd overall in S93's draft, recording 59 points and respectable defensive numbers on his way to the Gustav agency's first-ever championship on any level of the VHL. With the S93 draft looming large (and this scouting report making me late for work), what are Holmes' secrets, and does he have what it takes to bring a team to success on the next level? Holmes has largely focused his game on the fundamentals, training in balanced ways but prioritizing the principles of playing defense first--it is his position after all. There were defensemen who played a better game in the offensive zone this season (the Jinns in Philadelphia were a very good example of this), but Holmes' game doesn't leave much to worry about. It's true that he didn't put up as many numbers, but he could generally be counted upon to be in the right place at the right time and make moving the puck difficult for the opposition. Staying out of the physical game for the most part, Holmes' play may be encouraging to analytics people above all else, and time will tell whether a team sees something in him that most people taking quick glances at the stat sheets might not. Despite being a solid player overall, Holmes' 59 points (and 14 goals) were a bit of a step back from his super-hot start in Halifax. Scoring over a point per game and putting 6 goals in the net over just 14 games was a big reason why he was targeted as early as he was by Saskatoon, and though his numbers were good, there's some top-tier potential that may need to be reopened in the VHL. Holmes has publicly stated that he wishes to train for more of an offensive edge to his game, and we will wait and see how he does in that regard. Somewhat undersized for defense, he shows a propensity to move up in the offensive zone and take some chances closer to where forwards tend to take theirs--a mark of an offensive defenseman if he's able to shape his skills the same way. Holmes is on record in every team's scouting books as having defined his goals just about the same way--he would like to spend the bulk of his career playing for reasonably competitive teams. The Gustav agency has been known for years for its loyalty to whichever team pays the bills, so it will be interesting to see how this shakes out down the road. For Holmes, this is a mark of confidence if he's able to handle it the right way--playing for a competitive team requires one to be a competitive player, and he is motivated to put in the time to make that happen.

Board of Gustav* I talked to someone at one point who told me they were actually confused by that one. Honestly I just take it as a compliment that it seemed like it could have been a thing.

Gonna Week 2 this one

I think there's something in the water up there that makes this a thing in general. I know that Taro's S82 MVP win was based on the argument that practically no one else on the team had a good point total, and I know we've had other seasons where we look through the index and don't find Seattle players up on top. This season I put Targaryen on my awards ballot for an all-VHL team spot, mostly because I had to scroll down the points list a bit more than I would have expected to find another Seattle player. But I guess it works.

I’m kinda mindblown that some people are almost 100 ahead of me. Granted, I could make up a bit of that by doing the career tasks I haven’t done yet (and I’m broke so I haven’t donated in a bit either). But I swear I’m earning the same as always and I’ll have to make sure there’s no hidden secret I’m missing. It’s really interesting because I have no clue where I’m going to end up. I think I have a track record that could back up a reach, but others also have the TPE where being a mid-even later 1st is completely reasonable. Free Gustav hug for anyone who drafts me

I don’t know how I missed this going up initially but out of everything in here I really like this one (as well as the cap of 6 in pay). I don’t like it when people stop posting because they no longer have to post. That’s part of the reason why I still do media spots—I like them, first of all. But I also feel like if I can’t still pull the weight of earning mostly as normal, I shouldn’t have the job that assumes I can.

I have been a member of the VHL since February of 2019. I have played 29 seasons as a player, with three full careers behind me, and spent (I think) 14 or so as a GM. That's 43-ish seasons in total. Before today, I could have said that I have never won a championship on any level of the VHL. Not as a GM, not as a player, not at all in general. I don't even think I've won stuff like the World Cup and WJC. But I can't say that anymore--thanks in large part to the management team of @Dadam30 and @dstevensonjr, Lazlo Holmes and the Saskatoon Wild are your S93 Founders' Cup Champions. It's a bit fitting that my first championship came in the M. I think my VHLM tenure as a GM was much more special than my VHL one, and some of my most exciting Cup chases on both the player and GM end have come in the minors. But I'll still have to point out that I've never won a championship in the VHL. Could Holmes be the one to break the curse, and might GMs be less hesitant to pick him now that he's shaken off said curse on some level so far? We'll have to find out when the draft comes up.

Pictured: my experience trying to talk to @gorlab about graphics as a beginner. Anyone who's joined the VHL over the past couple years knows of my tendency to write some big articles. Heck, I'm putting everything I've got into making Gustav 30 in 30 what I want it to be by the end of next season, and we're heading full speed for my halfway mark. In Gustav history, we're right around S71. I'm trying to do these mostly chronologically, and that's pretty convenient right around this point because my first Town of Salem game started in March of 2020. That's also when I made this: That might not look all that impressive--and it isn't; that was just me swapping out a logo, putting in a blank dark background, and abusing the Color Dodge tool--but I still remember everything about making it even though it was over 4 years ago. It was late at night, everyone else in my house was asleep, I was by myself on the floor of my bedroom in the very same spot I was when I first clicked the link to the VHL, and I had just purchased a subscription to Photoshop after hearing all about how I wouldn't be a real graphics person until I did that. I remember being a little disappointed by how much nicer Photoshop felt, because I'd previously sworn by just using Gimp for free, but considering that this was just a few graphics ago... ...one could say that I was pretty happy with the output. I'd been doing my best to get into the wonderful world of graphics for a while, starting out in Mississauga when I tried to crank some out for my players, and the wonderful month that was March of 2020 also gave me lots of nervous energy that I used on things like...oh, I don't know, being the founder of VHL Town of Salem. As well as a lot more graphics. Before that point, I knew a couple things and could work my way around some basic commands. I could cut out a player's picture from a background (I didn't yet know what remove.bg was), I knew what opacity meant and what a layer mask was, I'd learned how to color swap and jersey swap and all that stuff (which is surprisingly not difficult to get on a basic level). I'd used the graphics channel on Discord as a resource, and at the time, it was a great resource to get extensive advice given mostly by @gorlab. Taking things and applying them and mostly just spending lots of time clicking buttons to see what worked made me feel proud of everything I made, even if it didn't look all that great. I'd made more and more for the VHL and was starting to explore affiliate leagues more closely too. For the most part, I found that I really only wanted to do VHL graphics when I had nothing to say that week. I've always been more of a writer in sim leagues (and a "takes a long time to explain things" type in real life; I'm sure that's no surprise) because I feel that I always have lots to say about things that matter to me. So, especially with the understanding that I could just direct people to better sig-makers, I'd really only make something occasionally and my progress was slow. Something that took off for me, though, was shamelessly doing my weekly (or in some cases, monthly) Player Brand in the EFL for affiliate checks here. In the EFL, it was almost the opposite of the reason why I didn't really catch on with my graphics here. I didn't follow the EFL all that closely and really had nothing at all to say--so weren't graphics the perfect thing to do? I got to work and was pretty happy with some of the output. Here's my favorite out of the ones I made of my own player when I was still a beginner: Which isn't perfect, but it's better than either of those I've shown you so far. It was only a few graphics into my time out there and I started making real improvements just about every time I opened Photoshop. I won't harp on my time in affiliate leagues too much (especially because that's a story for another installment), but most of my best work happened outside the VHL. I made a graphic here and there, and lost a league contest or two... Made for a "make a recruitment graphic" contest. I was really proud of this, posted it on Discord, and was immediately told that everyone looks super yellow--fair point. ...but that's mostly it as far as the VHL is concerned. Digging through my old folder, I'm finding that a really surprising amount of my best work was made for the IHL, a now-defunct GM league created by @enigmatic at some point in the late S60s that I was invited to at some point in the S70s. We were only 8 or so members at any one time, but people really seemed to love it when I made them a graphic and I got more positive feedback than I did on most of my stuff in larger communities. I've got a big lineup of images that I'll dump in a future article, but (in my opinion) the best graphic I ever made was this one for the IHL: Clearly better than the Justin Graves one that probably led to Justin Graves almost immediately going inactive on me. I bring up my history with graphics here because it's a huge example of a real-life skill that the VHL can give someone. I have certainly improved as a writer in my time here, but why bring up a list of my favorite articles? I've also built up lots of spreadsheet skills, but why bring up my favorite spreadsheets? Graphics are convenient. They're visually appealing. I've got all of them in a folder in chronological order. And it's easy to see improvement. I never touched the top tier of sig-making, but what I have in my folder (140 sigs, maybe 40 of which are duplicates before and after lighting adjustments) is about the equivalent of making one thing a week for two years. I'd imagine that more would have been reachable had I not burned myself out of affiliate leagues at one point, but I'm glad what I've done. Because, honestly, you would not believe where basic Photoshop can take you in the real world. I'm Vice President of my student organization off the back of a campaign poster I made myself, I design flyers for that same organization for events, I helped my lab get recognized in a photo contest, and I've developed a reputation for making memes that would not be possible without ever having opened that software. Graphics, somehow, have made me a little bit more popular. Ironically, disappearing into the Internet to escape real life has taught me lots of things about real life. If I'd never joined the VHL, there's absolutely no way that I'd have ever learned how to edit a photo. I'd also never have learned how to organize data until school forced me to. But being a nerd led me to learn nerd things for sim league purposes, which just made me a better nerd. And I'm not sure whether I'll ever consistently make graphics again (and I know for a fact my skill has dropped off a bit), but it's something I put lots and lots of time into that fundamentally affected my perspective on both sim leagues and real life over that time. I think that deserves to be talked about somewhere at least, and I'd encourage you to reflect on the ways what you've done here has carried over into your life as well if you haven't. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House #11: Go Directly to Jail

I promise this image made perfect sense in context. The game of Mafia was invented in 1987 by a student at Moscow State University who has definitely never heard of the VHL. That student probably never envisioned Among Us the lengths to which the world would go to study the game, from profitable spin-offs to home-brew versions to even real mathematical research devoted to its analysis. Playing a game like Mafia requires intuition, wit, and lots of knowledge of game mechanics. And running one takes even more. My first exposure to Mafia came much earlier than I thought it was, when @Nykonax floated the idea of a game way back in May of 2019--this would have been S66. He ended up getting a decent-sized player list and making a game happen. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Not much that was being said in the game thread made much sense to me, and I walked away from the experience considering it largely forgettable. But, I was now aware that this was a thing that could be done on forums. I must have retained that knowledge pretty soon after that, because I remember playing a game in the SBA right around the time of our affiliation fallout. That changed not much of anything about what I knew about the game, but I had retained the basic idea of talking during the day and doing things at night. I'd also joined the EFL (which I will openly admit was fueled by wanting affiliate checks), and in one of those affiliate leagues, I had my first exposure to Town of Salem--a game that you can find on Steam (although I've never played it) that is essentially just a fancy version of Mafia. It turns out that, as a fancy version of Mafia, Town of Salem (or ToS) is readily adapted to a forum game. I still didn't really know what I was talking about in the EFL, but they had a long rule thread and I was more comfortable hanging around there with it being a league that I knew had nothing against me being VHL-first. By this point, it was clear to me that--even though I was clueless--the Mafia concept had managed to stick around for more than just a one-off in our affiliate leagues, and I'd also watched lots of people in those leagues play the games and like them a lot. It was something the VHL was missing, and I was bored--so I figured I should take matters into my own incompetent hands. For those of you who are unfamiliar by this point, Mafia (in general) is a two-sided game consisting of an "informed minority," or an "evil" group of players who plot with each other behind the scenes to kill the others, and an "uninformed majority," or a "good" group who must use their own skills and find out who the bad ones are by talking out in the open (where the bad ones try to blend in and mess with their plans). There are lots of variations on this, many with more unique roles than others. I wasn't confident, so I eventually found myself digging through rule sets on some mafia game forum and settling on a game called Cult in the Jungle Republic where 12 of the 19 people who would end up playing were just residents of the town with no special abilities. We played the game, but most people didn't really like it for that reason--why would you want to play the game where you really couldn't do much aside from following votes? So, it was clear to me that to keep this thing going, we would need to go full Town of Salem--where every single player has a job to do and there are lots of layers to the game beyond just Town and Mafia. Did I establish by this point that I had no clue what I was doing? Whatever. In any case, I relied on two things in equal measure to learn the game, without either of which the game would not be possible. The first was the Town of Salem Wiki, which has every possible role extensively documented with enough information that a game can be run if you read closely enough. The second was @omgitshim, who has every possible role also extensively documented in his head, as well as enough patience that a game can be run even if you're stupid. I spent lots of hours over lots of days dealing with both of those until I felt that I got the point, and then I finally put up the sign-up thread for the VHL's first-ever game of Town of Salem, just over a year after I joined the league and about four months after Cult in the Jungle Republic flopped. Check out the date on that one--is it really a surprise to anyone that we all had the time in our lives to get the game off the ground? ToS #1 was a success, all in all. It took forever--no other game we've played has even started to approach Day 13--but it was a big learning experience for lots of people (myself included) and I had an absolute blast every time I started the night phase and got to see in real time who was taking shots at who. I stuck with asking OMG everything for the most part, but made it through my first game ever without a major crisis. I knew I'd run lots of games at the start, but I had no idea just how frequently I was doing it and I could never pull that type of thing off today. Within a week, I was signing people up for Game 2, and we'd run up 10 games between the end of March and the end of August--that's one game (which itself took just over a week on average between sign-up and last kill) about every two weeks over that time. I'm honestly shocked that we were able to maintain our player base that constantly, but I suppose that's all we had going on over the summer of 2020. In a way, I wouldn't doubt it if COVID was what gave us the amount of interested people to begin with, or if it was the reason why ToS caught on. Regardless, lots of those interested people deserve my mentions. My handy-dandy stat tracking sheets give me all the info I need to tag those who have been involved the most--obviously OMG, but he and @eaglesfan036 have been considered our nastiest, most competent players from the very start. @Doomsday, @Ricer13, @jhatty8, and @Berocka can also all claim to have played just about every single game we've run (with Eagles, Berocka, and @Devise both running their own spin-off versions of ToS at one point or another). Some others who have stuck around consistently for a long time and are still active in our threads today are @Spartan , @Advantage, @N0HBDY, @rory, @Alex, and even @Ptyrell, who has never had a VHL player but has posted over 1,000 times on our forum for ToS and related games (including his own creative project, Town of Pallet). All of these and much, much more have made Town of Salem what it is, which is an awesome way for the community to really feel like a community. I've had so much fun watching everyone go at each other over the past four years (!) and I'm looking forward to a lot more. To bring it back to being a point in the series about my own personal history, this wasn't the first time I decided to just do something fun for the community rather than waiting for it, but it was the most work I'd ever put into that. I think the league would be a much better place if it had more "just doing" in it, and Town of Salem is something I'll always be able to point to as an example of that. Even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the sim hockey part of the league (and therefore is just one of the "intangibles" on my record), I consider it one of my biggest VHL accomplishments and really feel that it deserves a solid place in this series. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House

Well there's an old name. Welcome back to the league @xsjack! Hope you're doing well.

Who's someone you've never played with but would like to? Do you ever find yourself having to explain hockey to people who know nothing about it? How does it usually go? Have you ever gotten anyone into it? Who are some big names in cricket today that I should know about, and why are they special?

Oh, for sure. I think most of what I've written here so far can be read from the standpoint of "there are real people on the other end of the screen." That can be positive (as in, "you wouldn't believe the difference you can make it some people's lives here") or negative (as in, "stop being assholes to each other"), and I think you caught a lot of the negative. You're not the first person I've seen saying that a lot of what went down in the S60s did not make you want to stick around too closely, and I understand that. I think that isn't something I picked up on as a new player, but I hope I didn't contribute to it too much. Looking back, it was definitely more normal to go after specific teams or people--not even to be mean, but just because that's how it was and that was how you could be seen as funny. I definitely think you had it worse than I did in this regard, but it did hurt to really try to make things work and then open Discord to find people talking about how I sucked as a GM. It's also really hard to lose a negative label as a GM once you get it. I remember lots of people wanting to play for me at first, even wanting to sign with me in FA, and that's something that disappeared as I kept losing. Well, that's fine and people get to do whatever they want--but then isn't that another obstacle when no one wants to sign with you? That's just a practical aspect of it, too. It isn't fun to watch people not even take your moves seriously because "there he goes again" or whatever. I'm not convinced I'll ever want to GM again, and that's a big part of why.

I could have been DC's GM if it weren't for you meddling kids--who knows what would have happened? I also would have had way, way less to say about my time in the VHLM if I ended up being promoted in S68 with the addition of a couple new teams. The BoG toyed with the idea, but eventually they'd decided that they hated me some others were better fits at the time. But I was pretty darn good, after all... ...and my time was going to come eventually. Cue @ShawnGlade fucking up. I mostly joke because I think I would have been moved up sometime not far from S70 anyway. At one point, I was the one @Advantage wanted to take over Malmo eventually, and had the league known that he'd be giving up the team right after S70, they definitely would have waited a little bit on hiring me and done that instead. I almost could have flushed Malmo's hopes and dreams down the toilet too--could you imagine? At least two franchises should be glad I was unlucky. But anyway, back to what I said earlier. When I joined the league, I knew Shawn as the builder of a solid player and a passionate GM in Davos who made a lot of moves that people questioned. Davos got made fun of a lot, even when they were good on paper. So did Shawn, by extension. Even when the team was good on paper, they just couldn't seem to piece it together. Which, by itself, wasn't a negative reflection on his management. With that being said, it certainly meant that when there was an actual shortcoming, the league picked up on it and ran with it. After pinging Shawn, I hope I can keep it clear that I like him a lot while also fairly saying that I don't blame league leadership for considering it a red flag when he missed a couple drafts in a row without notice. Which is essentially all that presented a serious issue to the league. Things happen, and sometimes things matter a little more than this website--so when that runs to enough of an extent that the league has to BPA your picks and your players start leaving in free agency (future HoFer Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen was a big loss), it's enough for the league to also consider that maybe your team could use a bigger loser with more time and energy to devote. I came across the BoG thread on the matter a couple seasons later when they let me in, and it actually started out as a discussion about (deservedly) removing Bushito as Calgary's GM after the Wranglers were functionally run by Dil and/or Blade for a few seasons on end. But S70's draft came and went with that thread up, and with Davos discourse becoming very public afterward, the topic quickly shifted. To be honest, things went into "who should we hire" pretty soon after that, and it was @Rin who pretty soon after that managed to avoid a lot of debate and lists and whatnot by recommending me specifically for the job. Really, the only bump in the road was Advantage bringing up that maybe I could run Malmo at some point--which he walked back later on saying that he wasn't sure what his plans were yet. So it was settled--I'd known myself that I was the heir to the Nighthawks and was a little bit disappointed to find out that it wouldn't be working out that way, but I've also mentioned before that S70 wasn't very happening in Mississauga and I was really excited when Beav contacted me to offer the big-league job. It was also cool to watch my then-both-former-and-future AGM @Berocka, who had just been hired in Halifax and made a questionable trade there, be moved over to run the Hounds because the personal connection we'd both built with the franchise was strong enough to warrant it. With all the hype around me moving up, I was also a bit conflicted because I really didn't want it to happen the way it did. I'd seen Shawn's resignation post (the league asked him to quit instead of announcing it officially, but it was no secret) and subsequent discussion thread, and really did feel a bit bad. I also wasn't really sure how to approach the situation from my end. Here was someone I really had no issue with, whose team I'd inherited and would have to work with, who was a rostered player on that team, and who also probably was not a fan of me in that moment. I did reach out and we talked briefly, but we mostly gave each other some space at the start. Something that was really important to me was the buildup of team culture. Davos was not in any position to win games in S70, and I'd heard a lot about how the team's community needed work. I didn't really want to deal with figuring out what that meant or how true that was, so I almost immediately created a new team server altogether. I followed the same exact strategy I had in building a locker room in Mississauga (which was mostly a carryover from my first season in Houston), which was to try to focus discussion into publicly accessible channels as much as possible and try to create a mutually beneficial environment for the team and the rest of the community. With the Hounds, I'd never had the need to bring in people who weren't affiliated with the team (and there were some cases where people would join the team for this reason!), but with a gutted and mostly demoralized roster, and no alumni network in my newly-created server, I decided to invite a handful of people who had been particularly good to me up to that point. I especially remember people like @Doomsday, @GlowyGoat, @McWolf, and @Esso2264 at the start, some of which would stay active in that server through my entire tenure even if they never made it onto my roster. On the roster itself was...really not much. We had the ever-reliable @Ahma on defense, and right around the time I was hired was when @Brrbisbrr (one of the nicest people I've ever met on this website) decided to make a comeback. Samuel Ross was my first Davos goaler, and he faced the absolute barrage of pucks faithfully in S70. As you might guess, the biggest event of S70 was my hiring. I won't act like we won much of anything (we finished last, of course). My GM tenure had gotten off to a rocky start. I could have just thrown lines together and checked out until I finally got to draft in S71. But I felt that it was worth putting the time and effort into making a team run, at least a little bit, and I felt that our server benefited from that. I was really proud of some of the ways I felt appreciated by my new team, and haven't quite forgotten this article that's over 4 years old at this point. My first year with Davos reinforced a lot of what I already knew--that running your VHL team like a VHLM team and actually trying to see that your players have a positive experience instead of zoning them out and doing your lines when you have to is something that pays off. I'd much rather have the record I did in S70, and know that my team had a good time getting there, than have no connection with them and win a bit more. And while it's unfortunate that I couldn't do both of those things at once, you'll see as I cover the rest of my GM tenure that I don't regret it. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

My favorite VHL first name fact is that Jerry Garcia and Jerry Wang were (when they played) the only players ever to be named Jerry and were also briefly teammates.

Can we have more than a handful of hours to fill these out