Gustav

At least three times this week, I've opened up the VHL.com article subforum meaning to write an article, and every time I've found myself staring blankly at my computer screen and doing absolutely nothing, because I went there meaning to earn some TPE rather than to talk about something I find interesting about the league or something that matters to me. And in that I found the thing that matters to me for this week, and that's what I'm going to talk about. I've always expected a certain level of quality from my own work. I like to think that I go far more in-depth and try to make things way more worth reading than I need to. It's perhaps my largest contribution to the league, and it's something I'm proud of, as I know there are some who legitimately enjoy reading what I write and it makes me happy to know that. One of my favorite running examples of writing just to earn is doing a VHL.com article every week that just takes one's own player page and recites the numbers on it up to 150 (or even 500) words every week and claiming it--I don't consider that interesting new content, and I would encourage anyone who just pumps out the minimum amount of words in that setting to experience the satisfaction of putting together a major project and getting some positive feedback from it--but at least those articles are something, and they serve a purpose. Of course, that's much better than having zero thoughts cross my mind as I zone out with the goal of randomly stumbling upon a great idea for this week. But you know what? I think that's OK for this week. I think it's OK to not have ideas, and I don't like the idea of trying to force myself to come up with material--ideas should come naturally, and I should care about what I'm putting in this little text box. Scientifically, burnout happens when something someone wants to do slowly turns into something that person feels they have to do. In general, I don't have that problem because I care about the community and I think I have some ideas worth sharing (as the kids are saying these days). I'm not going to resort to "here's my player page", but I'm also not going to act like I have anything of value to add in this space this week. At least I warned you that this article was about nothing. I learned about a religion called Druzism the other day--it's an Abrahamic faith (in the same realm as Islam/Christianity/Judaism) that's very different from any others you've heard of. One of the defining features of Druzism is that performing religious rituals is seen as (almost) entirely voluntary, and that a Druze who does not participate in these rituals is viewed as no less than one who does. I have zero connection to the Druze faith, but I think that part is a good analogy to our community--if you're doing everything you can to be active and noticed and respected, great, but if you're just getting by and enjoying the league on your own terms, that's cool too. There's a lot of pressure on some members to fit into certain boxes and conform to certain expectations that shouldn't really be there at all. I guess the main point here, so I can point to something that is the point if someone tries to tell me this shouldn't be approved, is that we should be conscious of how we feel about what we're doing. Are you forcing yourself to VHL because you feel you have to? It might be time to evaluate that (or to find the parts of it that you don't like and change them). Let's be a community that wants to be a community! And that's not to say you should sit back and think it's everyone else's thing to do--start with you and make sure you are where you want to be.

Japan! There are hockey teams in Japan, so maybe Taro will end up doing the old "play somewhere overseas when you're old and washed up" thing. We must eradicate the horny I'm not sure, probably someone else in college because living two completely different ways would be a bit strange. Possibly Dil? I'm drawing a blank on who's in that category at the moment. 1. What's your "secret ingredient" when you cook? 2. Why do you use this thread? Is your team unreliable in getting their own questions up, or do you just like the format? 3. If you could bring any member back from inactivity, who would it be?

Taro Tsujimoto - DF

Find someone who loves you the way Horcrux hated @Spartan

Maybe the portal isn't up to date yet? Right now it says TOR-LAS-WAR-DAV; that's what I used. Maybe some tiebreakers need to be put in manually or something. I just took what I was given.

Yeah, Spartan told me what the deal is there like 30 seconds after I posted this. Goes to show that I did well to get out of GMing when I stopped caring about it.

This is cool--you obviously know by now that I've heard "dlamb is threatening every team from 1 to 8," so if there's no truth to that then whoever I heard it from should be careful what they say about others. Good luck in the draft--I did my best to make it clear that I never knew for sure what was true about your situation and I apologize if you think it gives you a bad rep.

One of the things I didn't enjoy giving up when I made the move up to the big league initially was just this--writing up a mock draft every season (or the majority of them, anyway). When I moved up, I knew what my plans were as GM of Davos, and I also knew what other GMs were planning, as talk happens behind the scenes and insider info flies about. This season, I spent absolutely no time preparing for the draft, and I spent absolutely no time paying attention to which teams were doing which things, so I get to come into this offseason fairly clueless. Which is good. Too many mock-draft writers want to ask every team what they're planning, and then (surprise!) get a ton of picks right. Which isn't fun. This draft is really weird to work with, for a couple reasons, and these are big reasons why: -The positional breakdown is strange. We have a ton of goalers, which aren't generally hugely sought after by teams that don't desperately need them...except a lot of teams desperately need them. There's also a relatively low number of forwards, which are usually the big superstars of the draft...except only two of the top 10 in TPE are forwards, and only one of those comes without some level of significant controversy. -Speaking of controversy, at least one GM has publicly taken action that lowers their draft stock, and I have heard (though I have no direct proof) that similar conversations have been held which involve the other two in a more private setting. As these represent high-earning players whose teams (in two out of three cases) are currently in no position to draft them without the player falling very far down in the draft, it raises many questions as to the placement of said players on draft night (as well as, I might add, the ethics of said placement). I have done my best to take my opinion out of the projection, and make guesses based on what I know and what I believe to be realistic. Let's get drafting! ***BIG NOTE THAT SOMEONE IS GOING TO MISS ANYWAY, BECAUSE SOMEONE DOES THIS EVERY TIME I WRITE A MOCK: If your TPE is slightly wrong, it is not because I hate you. If you're projected lower than your TPE ranking, it is not because I have a personal vendetta against you. If I say Team A has Pick X and Team B actually has Pick X at the time of the draft, it's not because I'm stupid. TPE numbers change with time, picks get traded, and drafts don't happen exactly in order of TPE. Exhales Okay, now let's get drafting. ROUND 1 1st Overall Cole Pearce | G | 364 TPE | | @N0HBDY You want desperate for goalers? You got it with the first pick in the draft. New York needs players across the board, but the top two players in the draft come surrounded by GM controversy not worth the risk of a #1 pick. The top skater is (at the time of writing) tied with Pearce in TPE, but in past careers has proven to be somewhat volatile, while Pearce has shown a solid degree of team loyalty. Though potentially less impactful than a #1 pick in a draft saturated with skater talent, New York locks up their future franchise goaltender, who should be expected to enter his prime at a time convenient to them. 2nd Overall Bubbles Utonium | G | 342 TPE | | @fishy Goaler fever strikes yet again, and I'm saying that it's with another team who could use help at every position. Given the Dragons' tendency to draft first-gens in high places, I'm almost tempted to hot-take The Board Game Clue On Skates into this spot, but that's something I'll refrain from doing for a couple reasons. First, Utonium is a very solid prospect--in their first career, fishy stuck with Chicago for 8 seasons, and second, the Dragons' first real competitive run began in much the same way with the selection of Stone Wolski back in (I think) S71--who did the same. Ultimately, a combination of controversy and weird positioning leads to this pick as well, but the Dragons are quite pleased with it. 3rd Overall Miervaldis Arpa | G | 309 TPE | | @Zack Want an idea of how earning has changed over the last 8 seasons? Taro was #1 in his class at the time of the S75 draft, with 309 TPE. Arpa is #6 in this class, and he goes to London here because--you guessed it--GM controversy and a huge need for goalers, goalers everywhere. And what's created by the demand can certainly be supplied at the top. I certainly considered other avenues here, but one defining factor stood out with this one in particular--Arpa's agent was drafted by London in his last career with Kasper Kankkunen (if I'm spelling that right) and signed a career extension. Though Kankkunen didn't end up playing a full career in London, willingness to commit is a major quality GMs look for in the draft, and Arpa just may be able to provide if London is able to turn around skater-wise in good time. 4th Overall Milan Dvorak | D | 283 TPE | | @solas If we're using the logic of loyalty to a franchise being important, there's no better pick at #4 than Dvorak. Solas' last player, Jean Pierre Camus, was one of the premier goalers of the S70s, and spending an entire career with Chicago (as two of our top four players have done) is certainly something that figures to move him up Jeff's list this draft. I've taken the liberty of assuming that Dvorak is selected as a safe option, over still-available Tavish DeGroot and Max Torq, but if the safety plays out in the same way it did with Camus, Chicago will have no regrets for making this pick...and they will have taken the first step to rise from the ashes. 5th Overall Vasile Lamb | RW | 365 TPE | | @dlamb I do not know the extent to which Lamb's draft stock has or has not been manipulated, and quite honestly, I haven't really cared to find out. All I know is that I have heard it has been on some level--which is enough to drop him out of the very top of the draft. It is not, however, enough to make him drop to Warsaw at #9. I do not necessarily believe that every GM thinks the same way I do, and I am not entirely convinced that Helsinki would be the team to pull the trigger on this pick given what I know about Rayzor. That said, I don't want to project every GM's player to their own team because "that's just the way it is" and I also think this spot could make more sense than most others, for a few reasons (with apologies to dlamb--your player is simply the first GM player I have projected and I think most of the same logic applies to all): -Helsinki has an extremely strong prospect pool. I don't want to dismiss the importance of good drafting now, but it's been done in the past. And I'm not going to downplay the effect of a selection not turning out well, but the Titans will be a good team a couple seasons from now whether this pick works out or not. -I find it hard to believe that someone would follow through completely on whatever is being said. Retire immediately? Chances are that you're punished as a GM, or that your team receives punishment of their own in the form of draft pick loss and cap penalties. Try to leave in free agency right away? The only reason why you'd do that while already under contract with a different team is to get yourself on a team willing to trade you to your own team--which the original team will always be more than willing to do at fair market value rather than lose you in free agency. And, by the way, if a GM comes forward saying "hey, this other GM is going to leave if they're not traded to their own team and their own team only", I find it hard to believe that that also wouldn't lead to some form of punishment. In short, I believe that most pre-draft threats are empty, and that players will be at least semi-willing to contribute if selected elsewhere. -On top of me not knowing what exactly is being said behind the scenes, I also have no idea what's being said behind the behind the scenes, if you will--private chats between members and GMs are generally much more civilized and have a much greater degree of mutual understanding than anything you'll see in public. If anyone has reached out to any GM in this draft, I find it hard to believe (yes, I'm using that phrase again) that they were met with immediate threats and a refusal to talk. -If, in the event that something malicious happens that screws over Helsinki, the league does not provide some form of compensation to Helsinki, I would be very surprised. TL;DR: I don't know that this will happen, nor do I necessarily think it, but I think it's more realistic than most might and I wouldn't fault the Titans for doing this. If it works out, they have the draft's second-highest-TPE player at #5 and are well on their way to the top in the EU. 6th Overall Max Torq | D | 364 TPE | | @Steve Torq's draft stock is dropped only somewhat here, for different reasons. There are potential upsides and downsides to selecting a player from Steve as a GM. I personally have a lot of good things to say about Steve, a now-established member with a unique graphics style--his last two players in Guy LeGrande and John Merrick have been solid contributors and top earners, and in the right places, they've been perfect fits for their teams and have been known to stick around. That said, the names of these players have been soured somewhat in the GM community due to the fact that Steve will make his opinion known when he is not happy with his player's performance or use by a team. There is nothing wrong with this, and Steve has nothing to apologize for--but purely objectively speaking as a (former) GM, a player of this type is less valuable as a prospect than one who promises to stick it out with the team as long as they possibly can. I project Torq to Riga here because the Reign need a defender, and a member with experience may gel with a GM with experience, both leaguewide and in terms of running a team and making it work. Should it work well, Riga gets a player who's better than he gets credit for. 7th Overall Bo Johansson | D | 268 TPE | | @Shindigs It's no secret to anyone paying any sort of attention that Shindigs is one of the more active newer members we've seen in a long time, and what better way to welcome a new member to the league than by drafting them in the first round? Johansson doesn't have quite the same TPE as many others still on the board, but what he does have is a near-unparalleled enthusiasm for league goings-on and an extraordinarily bright future. There's no doubt that this pick will work out quite well for Toronto, who satisfies a positional need and makes a smart investment in the future of the team and the league. 8th Overall The Board Game Clue On Skates | C | 295 TPE | | @MubbleFubbles Remember that history of drafting first-gens in DC? Though skipped over with the #2 pick, the Dragons return to their own tradition at #8 by selecting everyone's favorite ambulatory board game not named Ouija. This is my most hot-take-y pick, actually, as I think Clue could be selected as high as 3rd (and I still want to make this a hot-take pick at 2 or even 1, but I find it hard to justify it). Realistically, I see the draft's top non-controversial forward--yes, you read that right--ending up here. If there weren't as many teams in the draft who would cannibalize their head coach for a decent starting goaler, I totally would hot-take it. But DC can't miss with the creator of the draft class TPE visualizers (which I'd use here if I weren't too lazy to get up and find them) who's a VHLM GM already--that's faster than I became one, and I was the new guy when that happened. 9th Overall Tavish DeGroot | D | 375 TPE | | @rory In a flash of irony, I project DeGroot to Warsaw, the team who (allegedly) hopes to pick up Lamb. This is probably the hardest pick in the draft to project, because the article published by rory pertaining to their intended placement in this draft takes away the "allegedly" entirely as far as LA's intent goes. Is DeGroot falling to 24th overall? I genuinely think not, and if they do, some league policies need to be revisited. Again, much like Lamb at #5, I find it impossible to point to any team or GM in particular and say that I believe that they will be the team or GM to select a player who has assigned themself some varying amount of risk. So, again--am I saying that I believe Warsaw will select DeGroot? I am not. But I do find this slightly more realistic--think about what I said earlier for Lamb. I do not believe that rory would follow through on immediately retiring upon selection, I do believe that they (and LA) would be punished for it, and I also believe that Warsaw would be compensated. Further, if Lamb is off the board, and Warsaw selects DeGroot, rory's hand may be forced somewhat--if Lamb earns solidly with Helsinki, maybe signs an extension at some point, the pressure will be on rory to do the same in Warsaw. If it works, the Predators have picked up the top player in the draft. 10th Overall Mikhail Kovalchuk | D | 278 TPE | | @Banackock Much like Lamb, I do not know what has and has not been said to influence Kovalchuk's chances at going to Seattle behind the scenes. Up to this point, I've operated on the assumption that a GM player would be picked somewhat below where they would be picked otherwise, and that makes it impossible for me to project anyone else to Seattle. Kovalchuk is 10th in TPE in the draft class, and up to this point I believed that each other team would want a certain player more (or at the very least represented a semi-realistic landing place for a controversial player). Kovalchuk would still be on my board if he weren't a GM player, and it's for that reason that I can say that he is absolutely ending up with the Bears--in fact, it's more certain than anything else up to this point. 11th Overall Perry Laperriere | C | 269 TPE | | @KaleebtheMighty At last, GM players are done being mentioned, and we can construct our mock draft in a normal manner. And with more normal comes more forwards, of course! With Robert Bouchard gone after this season, Prague will need someone who can play center--and there's no greater connection than a VHLE GM being drafted by a VHLE Commissioner. On top of good earning and solid contributions as a member, Prague also gains the ability to threaten Kaleeb with the loss of his job if he doesn't keep up the earning and the contract signing. I'm just kidding, of course...unless? 12th Overall Kakapo Bushtit | RW | 272 TPE | | @Esso2264 DERPHORSE EMOJI! DERPHORSE EMOJI! Calgary is one of those teams that just doesn't have a super glaring need (at least, they didn't when I spent 20 seconds looking at their team page earlier today). The previous agent of Joel Ylonen, Keven Foreskin (try to get that one past the mods today), and Doug Dimmadome returns to the draft with another installment of Esso-esque "you know what you're getting". Though top-of-the-league superstar potential is relatively low with this pick, Esso's players have a fairly high floor, and Calgary is happy to see that they can pick up a consistent earner who can crack the first line with a presence in seemingly every locker room there is. 13th Overall Ronan Lavelle | LW | 255 TPE | | @Arce Members returning from way back in the good old days usually go one of two ways. They will either quickly fizzle out, or become major contributors to the league once again, with not much in between. Though the jury is still out on anyone after one season, Arce appears to be on the right path, earning well and maintaining an active presence on Discord. It's because of this that I see Seattle as comfortable with reaching down a few spots in the TPE rankings--and it also doesn't hurt that Arce is the top forward on the board at this point. After drafting Kovalchuk at #10, it makes sense for positional balance, and the Bears should be happy to see this pick turn out well. 14th Overall Wumbo | G | 276 TPE | | @Fire Fletcher I Wumbo, you Wumbo, and Warsaw chooses to Wumbo as well with this selection. Assuming the first four picks of the draft aren't all goalers, Wumbo should fall farther down in the draft as not many of the teams between #4 and here have an immediate need for one. It's certainly realistic that Wumbo will fall to Warsaw here, as the Predators are one of the last teams that need someone in net. All in all, it's a smart pick of an established member, and as is the case with Bushtit, Warsaw knows what they're getting with it. A good goaler can be a good goaler without earning every bit of TPE possible, and as shown with this team's longtime use of Ajay Krishna, they're probably pretty cool with the consistent (and altogether still pretty decent) earn rate presented here. 15th Overall Maxwell Mathias | D | 260 TPE | | @Underclass_Hero Before anyone asks, no, I don't know what Davos plans to do in this draft. And that's just the way I like it as a writer. A then-inactive Underclass was once drafted late by Davos, but this was before their recent period of involvement with the VHL, including a hire as a VHLE GM. Certainly more can be expected from Mathias than from Elijah Flynn or Sebastian Satele, and more has been done already. With this pick, Davos attempts to compensate for its recent selling of Poopy Peepants and Reylynn Reinhart, and picks up the player that represents a returning member's breakthrough in the league. 16th Overall DB III | C | 229 TPE | | @wcats Dan Baillie is a name that should at least ring a bell for most who have been active for a while in this league. Though wcats is mostly on the quiet side, his players have generally turned out decent, with Dan Baillie and Dan Baillie Jr both putting up solid numbers without much recognition. Here, DB III goes to Vancouver, who likely continues to look for cap-friendly (and meta-friendly) players in the draft. DB III is both of these things, and should fit in well as a solid role player with the opportunity to put up the best numbers yet. ROUND 2 17th Overall Nagy AL | D | 298 TPE | | @bigAL I'm very unsure what's going to happen with this pick, and it may be one that's even more high-risk, high-reward than the likes of Lamb or DeGroot. Al missed a week of updating last week, which will certainly knock him down a few spots on most draft boards. Further, blues-turned-former-blues usually don't end up staying as active as they once were immediately upon becoming former blues. If Al follows the same trajectory, his player won't be worth a high pick--but it's worth noting that he's a former #1 overall pick and the former face of a franchise, and if he gets back on the earning train after the draft, he could be that in Warsaw. 18th Overall Seymour Butts | D | 216 TPE | | @Squidward2 Everybody look out--fonzi is back! A motivated fonzi is an earning force to be reckoned with, and this is something that might end up propelling Butts even into the late 1st round, above some others with similar or even greater TPE. I did move Butts up the draft rankings somewhat because he's been able to max earn as of late--but I do so cautiously as fonzi has had a player or two drop off in activity. Should this pick work out, it's worth more than its position, but the chance exists that it won't. At the moment, though, things look promising and Butts should be viewed as an exciting prospect with room to contribute. 19th Overall Ben Dahl | G | 243 TPE | | @Nothing but goals Two words come to mind when I think of Chicago: asset management. The roster is depleted, and that happened without a rebuild, too. The Phoenix have a serious lack of players, and not enough draft capital to compensate. Only one thing will get this team out of the hole relatively soon, and that's managing on a budget and making smart decisions. Remember how I said earlier that a team's goaltender doesn't need 1000 TPA to succeed? Chicago recognizes that by going for a previously loyal skater at #4 and drafting Dahl at #19, who's still more than good enough to make a difference despite not being among the draft's top few goalers. Let's not forget this, either--if it weren't for a recent punishment for what seems to have been a relatively innocent mistake, Dahl would be higher in TPE and might have seen late-1st consideration. 20th Overall James Teekirque | D | 250 TPE | | @Mongoose87 Many seasons ago, picking up a 250-TPE player at 20th overall in the draft would have been seen as impossible. But here we are, and here we pick--Teekirque falls below Butts due to a lower level of member recognition, but Kosmo Kramerev, the last player created by Mongoose, managed to break 1000 TPE in a career split between Calgary and--you guessed it--New York. Teekirque is a better earner than most others left at this point in the draft, and promises to be more than usable in the seasons to come. 21st Overall Calix Pearce | D | 228 TPE | | @Laine Pearce is tough to place in the same way that Al is tough to place--his agent has dropped off somewhat. But if there's any place Laine can rebound, it's Helsinki, where he spent the majority of his last player's career. There are some players on the board with better earn rates, but Pearce comes with more establishment in the league and a past connection to the Titans, who would love to get the old Laine back. I think it's reasonable for them to take a chance on Pearce here, and see what happens. 22nd Overall Girts Galvins | LW | 227 TPE | | @Girts With all the complaining we do about the derphorse emoji (I enjoy it), there's another team without one that's up to date, and that's Vegas. Though the draft class has been dominated by Hounds and Marlins and Reapers and Lynx (yes, that's the plural form of Lynx, though "Lynxes" is actually acceptable as well), we had to wait until this point to find an Ace, and Riga certainly draws one with this pick. It's not unreasonable for Galvins to slip this far in the draft, given the TPE rankings and the volume of current and former max earners present in this class, but it's still a GM's dream to find someone max earning at 22nd overall. And I can promise that Galvins will absolutely not go past this pick--what can be more perfect than the draft's second Latvian player going to the league's only Latvian team? This is another pick I'm tempted to hot-take into a way earlier spot, but I'd rather represent what I think will happen than how I might personally draft. 23rd Overall Dabnad Shaw | D | 218 TPE | | @Dabnad I must have paid much less attention to the league than I thought last season, because I've never heard of Shaw. So, imagine my surprise when I found out that he's max earning--and I didn't even know about it! I thought I lived here! Anyway, take the same thing I said for Galvins about being super happy to find anyone earning like this at this stage of the draft and apply it here--with an abundance of defenders in this draft class, expect Shaw to fall to the early-mid second in a draft where such a pick would usually get someone a player in the 8-10 capped range. He'll fit in well in Toronto, who will plan to combine him with first-rounder Johansson to tear up the S80s. 24th Overall Red Gaming | G | 182 TPE | | @Lilpfigher We'll see what happens with this pick. Assuming the Great DeGroot Draft Tumble doesn't work out, LA will be left with options here. Though the Stars will be hit hardest with retirement at forward, they have a couple decent prospects who can fill the gaps, unlike their situation in net where we're forced to draw a huge question mark. After Rasputin is out next season, who takes over? Red Gaming doesn't quite project to be a true franchise goaler, but will at the very least exist at that point and in a few seasons could develop into a mid-level/#1A-type player (which has worked well for many teams before in net). If things work as intended, LA will be able to use their future assets primarily on skaters, and have one less position group to worry about. 25th Overall Phoebe Bridgers | LW | 196 TPE | | @GrittyIsKing Two on D and one in net, and we can't neglect the fact that a team's got to pick up some forwards at some point. Gritty's last player in Cole Newhook ended up a mid-level player with a strong devotion to the Moscow franchise. It's certainly possible that we could see this happen earlier (I was between Bridgers and Red Gaming at #24, though that's not saying much--we could see somewhere around #20 if a GM is feeling adventurous), but for now we put this player in at #25, once again hurt by a strong top end to the draft class. In any case, Warsaw would love to have a strongly enthusiastic member like Gritty around, and the pick will be sure to leave some other teams jealous. 26th Overall Branden Skuin | D | 216 TPE | | @DrunkMonkey23 So apparently I'm only allowed 75 emojis per post, and this one took me to the limit and made me get rid of the team emoji I had to the left of the overall numbers. I thought they looked better bracketed, dammit! Anyway, there's a cluster of players around this TPE level, with varying earn rates and at varying positions. Skuin edges out a few others here, because he can be counted on to do more than just welfare every week, with press conferences and reviews (and the occasional 6-point task and capped week!) making the difference. Though it's at this point that players and members left generally become less recognizable, it's not as though Malmo is disappointed to be here--they get a solid prospect with room to grow. 27th Overall Bob Chicoine | LW | 194 TPE | | @PoignardLeclerc11 Oh, look, another team emoji that hasn't been updated! Anyway...if there's one thing Prague has been able to do throughout their entire history, it's finding good prospects with later picks. Though a 2nd-rounder isn't a late pick by any stretch of the imagination (much less in this draft), it is "later on" among picks that are expected to work out. And Prague can expect Chicoine to work out--they get a player who's consistently earned around 10 capped per week with a lot of 6-point tasks (something GMs love to see when scouting). With this pick, the Phantoms add to their forward prospect pool, as Chicoine can be expected to play with Laperriere in the future. 28th Overall Obi Adesanya | LW | 210 TPE | | @atw2592 Adesanya is yet another player I'd place in the "steal potential" category, right next to Skuin and Chicoine. Though not typically a player with 6-point tasks done every week, everything else, all the little 2-point stuff, is. And that stacks up--A year from now, if Adesanya earns 10 per week consistently, he will have earned 312 more capped TPE than someone who just clicks the welfare button. And if that's not enough to convince you, take a look at some players created by tfong or flyersfan--both have made players in high demand. Even if Adesanya never breaks into true max-earning territory, Chicago still picks up a great player to have at #28. 29th Overall Brian Payne | D | 220 TPE | | @Scurvy Another pick, another underrated player! Payne has some 6-point tasks done, and earns just as well as those immediately above him in most weeks. The only knock is that he's a tad bit inconsistent, with one recent week dropping down to welfare and a total of 8 capped, but it's nothing at all to worry about and the difference between Payne and Skuin, who I have projected three picks higher, should be miniscule. This gives Helsinki some safety in drafting Calix Pearce earlier on in the round, and also opens the door to the team picking the better of two options for themselves if both work out. Expect 26-29 to happen in any order! 30th Overall Eldon Escobar | C | 195 TPE | | @TeeJay11 There's a noticeable drop-off between 29 and 30, though that noticeable drop-off is 10 capped per week to 8 capped per week, which is where Escobar consistently earns. Regardless of Moscow being ever-so-slightly disappointed to not be one pick higher, they're still quite satisfied with the result of picking at #30, as Escobar can still be a mid-level player with consistency (and anyone can be a high-level player with improvement). With Moscow being labeled as one of the league's more meta-friendly teams, too, it's possible that Escobar (whose PA hasn't broken 50 yet) could fit in quite well with a system that happens to be TPE-efficient. 31st Overall Doug Matchett | D | 187 TPE | | @jacobaa19 Though Jacob hasn't quite panned out yet, he's been going around the VHL block since before I was in the league. Riga doesn't make this pick with the highest of expectations, but they do make it with some degree of optimism--the league does not need to be explained to a member who's made a few runs at it, and at this point it's clear that Jacob wants to be a part of it in some capacity. It's possible that Riga could be the place where Matchett catches on and exceeds expectations--might as well try! 32nd Overall Jared Carter the 2st | D | 210 TPE | | @jaredc7 We begin and end our mock with New York, and it ends here because the player pool (generally) drops off a bit after the second round. At #32, the Americans pick up a player who's mostly been on welfare and the occasional player-store free week. However...Carter completed a press conference last week, breaking away from a period of only taking what is given. It's a small uptick in earning, but even the smallest are enough to make a GM notice. Quite like investing, it sometimes pays off to notice the very beginning of a trend and make a move before stocks go up. And it's possible that Carter could go up--he's been active enough to notice uncapped rewards given out for special events, meaning that he's more than just a portal clicker. With the right guidance, New York could end up with something special. And that concludes the mock! Tell me what you think--agree, disagree, worship, throw last week's leftovers, and wait for this to become irrelevant as more trades roll in. For the moment, though, I hope you think I've given a good overview of our prospects and used decent logic in making predictions! Yeah, words. There are 5,346 of them. See you in a month!

YEET

Get rekt nerd DAVID I think we can mostly just go for the best players on the board without worrying too much about position. We'll have needs for everything in the future. This is the first season of my career where I get to care about individual success without it being selfish from a GM standpoint. So, I'd like to put up numbers! I don't think I'm making the HoF, but I'd like to make someone consider it. Get ready to hear a lot of jokes at your expense. It's fun if you're into that kind of thing. Hot dogs are TACOS.

Would it have been nice to get a recreate to Davos? I suppose so. Would my earning change if I went somewhere else? No. Would I threaten to leave as soon as possible or to retire if anyone else drafted me? Also no. Whether or not this article is an honest representation of your thoughts (and I believe it is), it could certainly be viewed as an attempt to manipulate your own draft stock just as others have done. I think something that isn't exactly helping the situation is that threatening and manipulating one's way onto one's own team (again, not that you're doing that in particular here) has become somewhat of a "well, if other people are doing this, then I guess I can too" type of deal. While I think that the league should be open to change and consider it on some level as feedback, I also think there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it and the way much of the GM community has chosen to do so is the wrong one. This should have started with an article like this, followed by a suggestion to change things up somewhat, but instead it ended up being a massive drama-fest that will only get more out-of-hand in the future.

ANOTHER ERA BEGINS DAVID

Review: In general, your writing is clean and coherent, and I like the fact that you organized this in a way that's easy to follow. There are a couple grammatical mistakes that I'd like to point out that could improve your writing in the future, should you choose to continue it. This is an incomplete sentence. Usually, sentences consist of a subject (the thing that's being talked about) and a predicate (the thing that the subject is doing, or being subjected to, or really anything having to do with the subject that isn't a mention of the subject itself). This is just a subject--you're talking about reviews, but you're talking about reviews that are like "Nice work! I like the colours," and you're also talking about "things of that nature". The whole thing is a subject! You can change the structure of your sentence in a few simple ways to make it grammatically correct, an example of which is as follows: Reviews for graphics [your subject, which will be separated from the predicate here by the convenient insertion of a verb] often look like, "Nice work! I like the colours," and things of that nature. This is an improvement from the above in that you give us a complete sentence. However, you don't seem to like commas. Here, there should be a comma after "it" and before "too", as there is a bit of a natural pause in that space if you are to read the sentence out loud. From the standpoint of aesthetics, and easier reading, you may want to forego the "too" in favor of an "also" after your "should", but that's just personal preference. In the future, be sure to include a picture, and maybe some bold headings. Score: 3/10 I'm not actually upset by this; I just want to shitpost

One of the things I appreciate about this is that you can start a serious discussion with "hey there all you dipshits" and it's not at all out of place. I didn't gather much about your talks with Horcrux/Kachur/whoever from the outside, other than that you talked a lot. My own interactions were quite similar to what @fishy described--talked a lot initially, I started to get some red flags eventually, but I never suspected what the reason was for that. I'll also agree with the others above that I think you may have made a positive difference in someone's life, regardless of who it was you were really talking to, by reaching out and doing what you could to help someone who needed it. Something that this league neglects sometimes is that caring about mental health doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're talking about, and in some cases, this can be super (unintentionally) harmful...but even though you admit that you're not qualified to deal with these things yourself, I think you did it quite well.

Don’t discount the power of the latter smh It’s the one thing I can be proud of

I'm going to take this as hard proof that you have an extensive NFT collection.

Andy Warhol called; he wants his art back.

Review: You have some of the basics down, and that's cool! The fact that you're doing things like incorporating multiple images and using filters (like the drop shadow) shows that you can make a good graphic with a bit of work. One of the basic fundamental concepts of making a good graphic is having a good sense of placement. That means knowing where (and how) to put things and having an idea in your head of what you want your graphic to look like. For instance: if I asked you what the subject of your graphic is, you'd obviously tell me that it's the player. The player isn't the first thing I see when I look at this graphic--I see the giant logo in the middle, and the player's name on top of that. Then I see the player. You can make the graphic look a lot better by just making the player bigger and moving him closer to the middle of the canvas (a little to one side or another is perfectly fine, but he's way off in the corner here). That makes the player THE first thing I see when I look at the graphic. I can get all the other info (juniors, Royals, Bob Chicoine) a second or two later. And it's fine if one picture overlaps another, too--that's what more advanced stuff is all about. Also, pro tip: when you right-click on the picture you uploaded to Imgur, click "copy image address" as opposed to "copy link" or something else. That will make the picture appear on the forum automatically. Score: 4/10, but I don't mean that in a negative way--just that you've got a lot to learn and with hard work, you can be right up there with the best of them! I hope you'll make many more in the future. @PoignardLeclerc11

Review: I really like the idea you're going with here, with the vintage look and the film. It's not every day we see something like that, and I appreciate the creativity that went into this. Good job on the logo swaps. You have good attention to detail--I probably wouldn't have thought to put a logo on a player's pants myself. One negative point here is that the main subjects of this graphic (the Lynx players) are a bit hard to focus on. This is because of the blue/yellow colors over them--while that by itself isn't bad at all (and there are places I think it's done well), there are parts where it gets in the way. For example, the player right in the middle has his face obscured quite a bit by the blue part. It would probably work to your advantage to manipulate that layer a bit so the blue is covering a different part of that player, or even no part at all. All in all, I like it--7/10.

WEEK 4

It's hard to believe that I'm one season away from creating my third player. I joined the league as a freshman in college, and my first two careers have taken me almost all the way to graduation. A lot has changed in that time--starting out, I was just told to keep passing and scoring separate by 10-ish points, and that's what I did eventually as a pass-first defender. I asked for a lot of build advice as a new guy, and got a lot of suggestions (most of which I followed), but the general consensus among everyone who was kind enough to tell me anything was that I should build my player however I want to build my player--which I think is the way it should be, and it's what I'll tell anyone who asks me the same things. But things changed soon enough. Matt Thompson had a lot of people going for a larger gap initially, with some copying him and using a gap of 15 and some going further and doing 20 or more. It was around the time I started to see the whole "you should have a big PA-SC gap" idea pushed more frequently that the SHL was blown wide open by their own meta experience. Through test sims, one team figured out that they would benefit from everyone maxing out scoring while keeping passing as low as possible...and off they went, winning all over the place and leading to the SHL shutting down for months while leadership transitioned their league to an entirely new sim engine. Though we knew about this in the VHL, it wasn't actively pursued at the time (and, in fact, the GMs at the time made a verbal agreement not to push it on their own teams). Cut to S80, when the top was similarly blown off of our own league. There had been meta-ish teams throughout the 70s, all with decent results (S70 Moscow is the earliest example I can think of, followed quickly after by Chicago, Warsaw, and Malmo, to name a few, by the middle of the VHL decade), but the general perception around the league and the GM community was that those teams just happened to be that way--nobody was publicly bragging or complaining about the way they were set up. Perceptions changed in S80, in particular when Vancouver gained their own reputation as "the meta team". They were very likely not the first to attempt to copy the SHL's strategy, but until that point nobody had succeeded in doing so as completely as the Wolves. "Vancouver is following the meta" was soon spread around the league, by people both for and against it, and at that point all bets were off. Teams that were trying to do the same thing could now state that they were trying to do the same thing, and 40-99 instantly became the recommended build as GMs changed their advice and experienced players scrambled to reroll to pure meta in the offseason. Today, Vancouver is still on top of the league, certainly thanks in part to the structure of the team, and many other teams are on the same meta train themselves. It's plausible at the moment that Toronto may no longer be the proud owner of the first and only threepeat in league history (I tried to work in "first and only of its kind" but wasn't quite sure how to phrase it; apologies to all of our boomers). I do not blame anybody for doing what is objectively best for their team and their player. I understand why building your player to 40-99 or attempting to make your team go full meta is appealing (though I also consider it a bit selfish and believe that it's effectively killed the "build however you want as long as you're not completely unusable" way of doing things for everyone else). But a question that pops into my head about that is...what if I don't want to do that? I've always been ideologically opposed to making my team as meta as possible (something that will become irrelevant whenever the blues get around to announcing the new GM), so I think it's fair that the same logic should carry over to my player. Even though I've followed a fairly standard build with Taro, there was still a bit of "how do I want to build?" thrown in there as I was doing it, and figuring out exactly what I wanted to do was fun. I don't want to completely determine my player's build ahead of time, and even though doing so might keep me off of certain teams and ensure that I won't make the Hall of Fame, at the moment I'm inclined to drop a few weeks' worth into PA if I build a skater. I am going to build as I'd like to, and I won't be controlled by the new status quo. I'll build a useful player, I'll earn as usual, and if you don't like that, well, that's your loss (or maybe I'll just make a goaler). Yes, we're also working on a solution to the whole meta thing behind the scenes. And I don't think it will affect my entire career at all. Ideally, the meta is addressed while I'm still a prospect (that would be really nice, wouldn't it?), but it does take work and it takes a lot of it. We can't snap our fingers and make the way the league thinks about things go back to S66, as much as I'd like that (in many ways). I do hope that what's done works and presents a fair solution to all, because I don't want "build how you'd like, within reason" to be a downside. But that said...build how you'd like, within reason! There will be changes sometime soon, and you might as well enjoy your time building rather than trying to fit into the spreadsheet war.