Gustav

As someone who doesn't know you (yet), hi! You'll find that the league is very different from how it was whenever you left...and a lot of our member base is newer as well. That said, there are still many leftovers from the old crowd. Surprisingly @Beketov is still alive and there are quite a few others.

/thread

Damn now we can't make slow jokes. Thanks for all your time here, I've always appreciated that you made an effort to connect with me and others and weren't just an oId boy. I still get to call you older than dirt though

I considered making a comeback, but they're going to need better owners and management if they want me to show up. Probably Cleveland. It's a reasonably large northern American city that doesn't have an NHL team, which is enough for me to think it's cool. Whatever the league in Sweden is called. I know nothing about it but those godawful ad-covered uniforms better be bringing in the money to make things interesting. I closely follow the NFL, casually follow the NHL, and super casually follow the MLB. I think I'd like basketball if I ever had a team to root for, but I never have. At home. I'd rather be loved than hated. 74! That was the year I was drafted into the NHL.

Before people start the chain of "sWapPiNg 4tHs iSn'T fUnNy" this one actually serves a purpose. This pick was the only one I had left in the coming draft and I have many more important things to do this weekend than stare at my computer for way longer than making a 4th-round pick should take.

Cap hell is one hot place. Would have loved to keep my lineup but as players get better, things have to be done. Best of luck in DC @Midnite!

This aged well. Also, NUUK NUKES

There was this one time I asked Bek when sims were going to happen and he drove to my house and broke my arm.

That's been there for a long time. I'm not sure what my reason was for putting that there to begin with but here we are.

I'd argue that we got memed a lot harder too. NY needs to feel the pain a bit more before you can be a pity fan for them.

DAVID

Well, this was...a season. I think that's about the fairest way to put it. At the time of writing (pending an investigation on sim-rigging), Davos has been eliminated from playoff contention and is now watching Malmo and Warsaw duke it out for the EU title. Some of the more results-minded among us might be inclined to say that I blew up the team and didn't get very far, and I would find that hard to disagree with. Yes, I said "among us." Deal with it. And yeah, we burned a lot of picks (and had to get rid of a good chunk of our prospect pool to make the roster space we needed for the more developed players). One deal we made of this variety even seemingly made the team worse, as we were the top team in the league upon trading for McLaren and that went out the window immediately afterward. So, from a GM standpoint...yeah, things happened, the team is going in the right direction, but I'd hardly call this season perfect. It's interesting to imagine how we'd look going into this offseason if I'd talked down the Laine deal to something more reasonable (although that was pretty much the only way we could have possibly cleared out the roster, so I was fine with overpaying there) or if I was able to find a good line configuration later on in the season (although I might have way later on; the playoffs went well, all things considered). Next season, we will have no players retiring. On paper, it appears that we'll be a solid team, and I'd argue that we're going to look better now that our players have had a season to develop. Guys like Taro and Laine will hold steady, while up-and-comers in Tessier and Peepants appear ready to break through to the next level. With the right combination of factors, Davos could be a team to fear in S80. So, here's to the future, and here's to finally bringing home a championship for a team that deserves one.

For the week ending 9/12: 1. Well, we've lost to Malmo. There were some good parts of our season and some bad parts--do you think it was a success overall? 2. With the offseason coming up, we're not going to have quite the same cap space we had last season. What are some ideas for cap-friendly upgrades we can make? 3. Out of Malmo, Warsaw, Seattle, and LA, who would you like to see win the cup? 4. Right now, I'm sitting outdoors and enjoying the weather, something I've done maybe three times ever but which I'm starting to enjoy much more over the past couple weeks (before it gets cold and snowy). Is there anything you've started to do differently in your own life lately? 5. You win the lottery--but you cannot buy anything of practical value and you have to spend the money yourself. What do you get? 6. The NFL is starting its schedule this week! Do you follow American football? If so, what's your favorite team? If not, which sports do you like to follow around this time of year? @Grape @Berocka@Ricer13@efiug @weekz @KC15 @TheCHEESE @Ahma @PatrikLaine @FrostBeard@Midnite @JardyB10 @tcookie

And week 3!

We have a cut fruit "department" that's really just one person. It used to be some guy who would show up whenever he felt like it and was always baked out of his mind...

And this is a BIG PROBLEM! /s You may be interested in this article I wrote a while back showing a pretty clear correlation between CK rating and hits, and hits and penalty minutes, and therefore CK and PIM. I'm not necessarily against having a "sportsmanlike" award, but I guess we'd just have quite a few questions coming up about what that means. Would we give it to someone with a good HIT/PIM ratio in general? Someone who hits a lot but has a good ratio? Someone who doesn't hit at all, regardless of ratio? Someone who doesn't hit at all and has a good ratio? Even if there were clear guidelines one way or another we'd have people disagreeing about what the guidelines should be, and those guidelines don't even exist to begin with. I feel like this would be more trouble than it's worth but if a clear solution exists I'm open to hearing it.

If by chance you happen to work for Honeywell please tell someone that Gustav is still waiting for a response about his internship application. So many companies ghosted me on that this summer smh

This spring I'll be graduating with a degree in chemical engineering! I'm planning on going to grad school after that (currently narrowing down the places I'll apply to). After that's over I'd like to work in the industry somewhere--I'm interested in the energy sector and would love to help develop renewables.

There's no reason why I can't put up 40, but I was more of an assist guy this season so I'll say 35. Hot take: no. Ideally, the VHLE shouldn't exist, and I'm not a fan of the fact that it's now harder to make it up to the big league. I do, however, understand why it's necessary. DYLAN COZENS. He had some good moments last year as a rookie and was one of very few Sabres players who actually cared. If anyone is going to step up and be the heart and soul of the team now that Eichel has started being whiny, it's going to be him. 1. What about the league did you find hardest to understand when you started? 2. How do you feel about there being six new VHLM hirings? Will the league be more confusing, or do our new GMs know what's up? 3. Write your three questions before answering this one. Did you prefer participating in this format, or the traditional one?

So I read @Renomitsu's article in this same section of the forum, and I was about to make a long-winded response when I realized...well, I haven't earned my last 2 TPE for this week. And given that I have a few hours to do so, I'm going to do so. My response is mostly just a lot of talking about myself, but I think it's kind of relevant. I know how it feels to be disconnected from a sim league. I lost all interest in the PBE early on this summer (through no fault of theirs) and the EFL came soon after that. That's something I've mentioned a couple times around our forum, and it's something that I have no doubt many of you reading this article already know. But there's something that you probably don't, and it's something that I only told a couple people about--I came very close to being burnt out in our own lovely little league as well. In fact, before this season started, I only didn't step down from my GM job because I forgot to send the message to the commissioners when I intended to. I actually had my resignation letter typed up right here on the forum, and decided to (literally) sleep on it as I had an early shift at work the next morning. I then went to work, got to thinking, and before I could get home I had a plan for what I was going to do this season. So, I decided to follow through on that--I reasoned that perhaps I had stopped caring because Davos had not done well the past few seasons, and had therefore taken away my reason to care. It was time to flip things around, both because it was now realistic to do so and because I knew I couldn't take another consecutive season of being right at the bottom of the league (Davos holds the league record for most consecutive last-place finishes from S70-72, right at the beginning of my tenure, and I would have tied that last season if it weren't for finishing 15th last season). Though I made sure to rarely show it in public, I hated being a laughingstock, even if I believed that my team and I were generally respected. Was that right, and did I do the right thing? Maybe. It's also reasonable to say that I made the selfish move in sticking around when, for a couple weeks at least, I felt completely disconnected from my GM job, if not from the league as a whole. I'd even go so far as to call myself a bit of a hypocrite, as I've always personally believed that the league deserves a high standard of activity and devotion from its GMs and I know there was a short time when I don't believe I lived up to that in the slightest, at least on the inside. And if that offends anyone who considers that a mark against me, I apologize for it. But turning things around and competing was the kick in the pants I needed to be interested again--I could now actually care about sim results, my team had a chance to do things, and my numbers could no longer be chalked up to the "bad team inflation factor" that's the source of quite a few VHFL-related complaints. In this specific case, what worked for me was having something specific happen that made me more interested in what was going on. I get that in general, it's going to be hard to find that something specific. There might not even be a something specific, and I'm not going to tell anyone to go out and find it because not being able to find it could end up being a point of frustration that could just make the problem worse. Speaking in general, I think it's been difficult to feel fully supported by some aspects of the community lately. I've found the league server hit-or-miss for some amount of time now, and I recently pointed out that forum activity has dropped off as a whole. Something I found interesting in the comments was that some of the league's more veteran members noted that activity tends to decline over the summer. That's not something I ever found out myself (until this year), but given what happened this year, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a general trend exists. So, if it does, it's logical to think that anyone's drop-off in interest is, at least partially, due to a lack of engagement with the forum that's driven both ways--dropping off yourself and not engaging is one thing, but there could also be a lack of things to engage with that naturally leads to a lack of engagement by itself. But, if we continue the assumption that there's less to engage with over the summer, it stands to reason that there's going to be more to engage with, and that many of us who have found it difficult to stay interested here over the past few months may find that interest returning as content again begins to be generated on the same level it was before. There's my long-winded Gustav post, I guess. Not sure how much it's relevant or how much it helps, but there it is.

The Gustav-sun rises once again, here to deliver this morning's news... @rory was killed last night by a PIRATE. He was the JANITOR. @NSG88 found himself on the wrong end of an attack from the MAFIA. He was a TRANSPORTER. Which leaves two players left: @Advantage, the PIRATE, and @N0HBDY, the MAFIOSO. And since Pirates can win with any faction... CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS, THE MAFIA AND THE PIRATE! I am once again honored to have all of you here to play this game, and I hope to see our interest kept up in future ones. Thank you for playing! I don't know now when the next game will happen, but in a few weeks I should have a good enough idea of what I have to deal with this fall. So, I'll see you then! @16z - GODFATHER @Advantage - PIRATE @Alex_J32 - NECROMANCER @BarzalGoat - LOOKOUT @Berocka - SPY (yes, I pulled a minor Gustav N1) @ColeMrtz - HEX MASTER @Devise - LOOKOUT @Doomsday - JAILOR @Goliathus - PLAGUEBEARER @Jericho - COVEN LEADER @jhatty8 - SERIAL KILLER @MMFLEX - DOCTOR @Mr_Hatter - ESCORT @N0HBDY - HYPNOTIST @NSG88 - TRANSPORTER @omgitshim - VETERAN @osens - CRUSADER @Ptyrell - MEDIUM @Ricer13 - CRUSADER @rory - JANITOR @Spartan - SHERIFF @WentzKneeFan036 - FRAMER