Gustav

As we've kept the more important parts of our roster from last season into this one, I'd like to announce that Davos will be retaining its captains from last season... C - Tyler Walker @Advantage A - Reylynn Reinhart @Ricer13 A - Shawty Nananana @Grape Here's to a great '78!

D - Bob Tristan G - Jean Pierre Camus @MattyIce

...which, yes, is a line shamelessly ripped from Janis Joplin, but I figured it's been applicable for me lately in both VHL and in real life. For the VHL side of things: having nothing to worry about after I decided to rebuild about a season and a half ago was almost a relief. Obviously, I did my share of complaining about my situation, and I understand that it was 0% anyone else's responsibility to be nice to me about it, but I still let some trash talk get to me more than it should have and was letting my own thoughts get to me as well. After I sucked it up, admitted that it wasn't going to work, and kicked off the rebuild, I was actually a lot happier with the team than I was before--able to get back to appreciating our locker room and there to make it a more positive place in general. For real life: anyone paying attention to the whiny wall of text that was my poor excuse for a .com article last week, or knows what I'm up to in general, knows that my semester ended last week and I'm now on (potentially my last ever) summer vacation. And now that I have nothing to worry about school-wise...I'm already bored! Even though I've actually been really busy the past few days, not having anything to take care of from a mental standpoint makes it feel like I've done nothing at all. I guess the main takeaway from both of these things is just to see what you can do to identify what exactly is causing the stresses in your life, and what may be affecting you without you realizing it. There's probably some good stuff you've just stopped noticing. I didn't intend for this to be another whiny wall of text, but I guess it turned out that way anyway. Apologies to those of you who came here for something actually interesting...but I guess that's what happens when there's no trivia (because as we all know, league history ceases to exist in the offseason ).

Week 2

For the week ending 5/23: 1. Tax day has come and gone in the US! Hypothetically, if part of your taxes went to the VHL, what would you like to see the league spend its new real-life money on? 2. Time for the usual beginning-of-the-season question: predict your stat line! 3. Which team would you like to see us beat the most this season? 4. You get a personal assistant for a day. What do you have them do? 5. What's something a new league member can do to make a positive first impression? 6. If you've played hockey, what's a piece of advice you have for a first-time player? If you haven't, what position do you think you'd play? @Advantage @Grape @Berocka@jimmyallen93@Azlan @Ricer13@efiug @weekz @KC15 @Rocket @TheCHEESE @Ahma

F - Robin Winter D - Randy Marsh @MattyIce

F - SS Hornet F - Taro Tsujimoto @MattyIce

Going to make a post of my own for easy edits/updates: 1. Team KnightRiley F- Thomas Landry II F- Dominic Gobeil F- Robert Bouchard D- Battre Sandstrom D- Riley Knight Gee G- Grekkark Gyrfalcon 2. Team Frank F- Timothy Brown F- Jeffrey Pines F- Venus Thightrap D- Tyler Walker D- Alex Letang G- Stone Wolski 3. Team v.2 F- Groovy Dood F- Andrew Su F- Dakota Lamb D- Erik Killinger D- Matty Socks G- Rara Rasputin 4. Team Flex F- Christian Mingle F- Valtteri Vaakanainen F- Lee Xin D- Roque Davis D- Latrell Mitchell G- Zamboni Driver 5. Team Matty F- Onde Sandstrom F- Aloe Dear F- Jim Bob D- Spencer Elsby D- General Zod G- Doug Dimmadome 6. Team Gustav F- SS Hornet F- Taro Tsujimoto F- Robin Winter D- Randy Marsh D- Bob Tristan G- Jean Pierre Camus

That's right, for anyone familiar with The Who, I'm free! My semester ended today, as did my third year of college. The realization that I don't really have long to go without needing to care about the real world crept up on me over the course of this semester, so I figured I'd talk about some of those thoughts in here. Warning: depressing Gustav thoughts ahead. If you don't want to read some random stream-of-consciousness ramble that's of very little consequence to anyone other than myself, stop reading. I'm doing fine (and at the moment I'm very happy, in fact), but I've had a lot of weird tangentially-league-related thoughts going through my head recently that I'd like to let go of. I don't want to step down or go inactive prematurely, and chances are I won't have anything to worry about in my life for at least another year (in fact, next year will probably be easier). But next year, I have...literally no idea what my life will look like. Where will I be? What will I be doing? There are a lot of possibilities out there. I'm well aware that we have many, many members who have settled into their "real lives" and continue to be great, active members of the league--and I really respect that and really want that. On the other hand, I know of people who have been very active until they graduated, and then either fallen off hard or disappeared entirely. So I don't want to be that, but I'd also like to be realistic with myself and be prepared for the possibility that I'll have a lot less time in my life. I used to be of the mindset that I can't drop off in activity, because if I ever do end up stepping down (which I'm not planning on doing for at least a good while), the market is competitive enough that I'll either never be let back in, or only be let back in after a long, long time. But why should that be my number one priority in life? Sure, it makes sense to be heavily invested in my online life when I have a lot of time in my life and it's not a smart idea to have a big social life because of...well, you know...but of course that shouldn't be a big deal to me when there's actually a life for me to live by myself. One big positive takeaway from this whole thing is this, though--I'm very glad I've come to terms with this before it actually became an issue. I'm very glad I haven't been sucked into some Internet loser hole (as much of a loser as I am anyway), and knowing the difference between "good, active member" and "internet loser hole sucker", I'm optimistic about my future here.

lmao

Fair perspective and I agree with a lot of it. My reasoning just comes from the standpoint of "it really wasn't all that bad before" because I feel like if it weren't politics the mod response wouldn't be nearly as big as it was. People blow up genchat and scream about awards every season, does that mean we should stop doing awards? Of course not. I personally feel like I'm reasonable enough to talk with someone I disagree with and learn things from it (in fact, I have some very close friends who I disagree with politically in real life), and that there are a lot of other people here who are the same way. It feels kind of insulting to be told that we're not allowed to have a civil, educated conversation because it breaks some rule which (in my opinion) was put down without any sort of due process. At the end of the day though, I'm not here to talk politics and I feel like anyone who wants to use the league as their own personal political soapbox has the wrong idea of what we're supposed to be as a community. I'm still in favor of the right to talk about whatever peacefully, but your post at least makes sense to me and I can understand why some don't want this to happen.

I actually have a lot to say about this, and I'm not even someone who was heavily involved with political talk when it was allowed. I recognize that trying to talk about politics with people will lead to disagreement and such. When political stuff was an allowed subject, I saw a lot that I disagreed with, and I'm sure that when I did choose to contribute, there were people who disagreed with me on things as well. But that's okay--I don't expect anyone's views to 100% match mine and I like to think most people can be realistic the other way as well. And that's how it was for the most part. Mods generally stepped in when things escalated, but that happened much less often than someone newer might think. After one particularly heated argument (the details of which I don't quite remember), someone asked if we could ban all political discussion. It was brought up in BoG and we didn't do that at the time; we moved it to a separate channel. Then things got nasty in there once, fired up in large part by someone who's not even part of the league anymore, the channel was deleted, and we moved to the current "mentioning literally anything slightly political will get you muted" structure...without any discussion (unless there was something in some mod chat or in blue forum I don't know about). That's what I disagree with, the fact that it was more or less decided that we have to ban an entire topic of conversation because of this one time...like a year ago...when a couple people couldn't behave. I don't even care about political talk myself. I supported the idea of moving it to a separate channel--people should have the ability to enjoy the league and our Discord server without getting involved in that. But the notion that nobody can talk about it, ever, anywhere, is just weird to me. Stuff like trolling, spamming, and poking at other members to try to get some sort of reaction is often tolerated in genchat, but comment on a current event and you've committed a crime against humanity? Please. TL;DR: yes, add a channel.

If it's the one I think it is this one at least has more nuance to it. Hit me up if you're curious but the one extra spot up actually makes a difference in this case.

DAVID No spoilers but this means we get our guy Welcome to Davos, [REDACTED]

I have decided to lock this thread

Congrats I guess

What's good, VHL! I'm here with an article that I'm really excited to write...which I'll probably follow up with a much longer sequel eventually...because this week is my exam week and I'd rather earn my points and get the hell out than spend hours on end writing up a few thousand words for all of you (as much as I'd like to). For those of you who don't know, I'm currently an engineering student. While I don't claim to be a scientific expert, I at least have exposure to some interesting concepts that can be applied to the sport of hockey if I think about them hard enough. And sitting here simultaneously thinking about something I can easily write about and stressing out over exams led me to wonder--why haven't I made that an article yet? That's what I'm going to do here, where I talk about stick design in a way that also allows me to boil down some key concepts that would be useful for me to know in the coming week. Before we begin, some key terms: Elastic Deformation: a material changing its shape in a way which can be easily reversed (like stretching a rubber band, it just pops right back to where it was). Plastic Deformation: a material changing its shape in a way which cannot be easily reversed (like bending a fork--it doesn't bend back when you let go of it and even if you try to bend it back it won't be exactly where it was before). That's all I'll mention for now for the sake of making this article digestible. There are some other words to talk about, but that's all we need to know for now. Hockey sticks, as most here will know, originally started out as pieces of wood. Wood was the standard in many pieces of sporting equipment back in the day, from hockey sticks to golf clubs (as well as baseball bats, which are still wood today unless you're a cheater and you fill yours with cork). For quite some time, wooden sticks were what they were, and until Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita popularized curved blades, they were the most basic sticks imaginable. But then the '80s rolled around, and Wayne Gretzky brought about a new era of aluminum-shafted sticks. Fifteen years later, materials scientists had started making sticks out of composite materials (or, in other words, "throw tiny fibers of one thing inside another thing"--which can actually drastically improve the properties of the main material if done right). Composites continue to be used today, with different compositions being experimented with and improved upon constantly, most notably with modern carbon-fiber designs. A criminally obsessed-with feature of modern sticks is their "flex"--i.e. the amount of force upon the stick necessary to make it bend a certain amount. Lower numbers mean less force (and more bendy), higher numbers mean more force (and less bendy). So why does this matter in the context of science? This is what's known as a stress-strain curve. Simply put, stress is the amount of force on an object, and strain is how much that object's shape changes under a given stress. A hockey stick's stress-strain curve will probably look the most like the blue one here, line B. Line A is a very brittle material (like diamond), while line C is a very stretchy one (like rubber). The vertical dashed line at the end of each curve is the point where the material will break (so material A doesn't stretch a lot, material B stretches a bit, and material C will stretch out a ton before it breaks). Remember those two terms I threw out there earlier? Only the part where the line is straight, not curved, is the part where elastic deformation is happening. When the line starts curving, that's when the object's shape starts changing permanently, and we don't want that in a hockey stick. So, there's a trade-off to be made as the only real "usable" portion of the curve is the straight one. Do you want a stick that bends a lot and may give you a bit of an advantage with the speed of your shots? It may not tolerate as much stress before you break it. If you're a smaller forward who likes wrist shots, you want your stick's stress-strain curve to be somewhat between B and C here--you can build up some nice extra energy on your regular shots by having the stick bend a bit more, and less stress on your stick before it bends permanently or breaks isn't a major concern. But what if you're a big, powerful defenseman? You're taking a lot of slap shots and putting all your weight into them, so you don't want that stick breaking on you. You want your stick to be between A and B on this chart. It's not going to bend like that forward's stick. It's actually going to feel more fragile because of that. But it isn't--it's actually stronger because you can put more stress on it before it snaps, even if it doesn't bend much before it does. See how line A reaches a higher point than B or C? It's going to be very hard to break something with that curve, but it's also going to be impossible to bend it because the material would rather break than bend. Same with line C--the material is actually so eager to bend that rearranging itself so it's able to bend actually takes away some of the stress on it. For the purpose of illustration here, think of line B as a nice happy medium (and the reason why I said that's your average hockey stick). It will bend a little, and it can stand up to a decent amount of force. Hopefully this is a nice and understandable read, there are a few other interesting concepts I have in mind but there are also better things I could be doing this week. See you after exams. 1,001 words; guess I have next week off too but I won't complain about that.

I'm in, happy to manage a group as well.

Japinder Singh

I forgot this was even a thing, thanks to whoever for nominating me.

Yeah, I remember my first signing as a VHLM GM when I did the same thing--didn't know we were supposed to offer on the forum and thought PMs were okay. Turns out they weren't and I came on Discord to a few people calling for my head in GM chat. People were still fairly understanding when I clarified that I didn't know the rule, but I definitely don't miss how the minors used to be in that regard.

I wanted to put up a stupid egotistical thread like this for my 5,000th post, but I forgot about that so here we are. I invite all of you to bask in the radiant glow of my ego. Pictured: the radiant glow of my ego. Bask in it. But to make this thread meaningful for the sake of conversation, I'd like to put forward a prompt for our community. What's your best VHL story? Bonus points if not everyone remembers it--I'll go first. Back in S66 (I think), I was one of the draft's hot rookies, and as such, I managed to see myself picked in the first round, as Jerry Garcia, worst-ever 1500-TPE player, went 7th overall to Malmo. Being an expansion team, as we were, we had quite a bit of cap space, and since we weren't there to compete, @Advantage went and handed out some bonuses to our players. I was the first one to get a bonus offer, in the form of a cool $1 million. But, you see, this was also the first time ADV had used the portal for GM business, so instead of $1 million, I inadvertently got a bonus offer of...$1. Which I accepted, because I figured it was probably $1 million and I was just reading things weird. Well, turns out it wasn't, and I'd just accepted a dollar onto my contract. I was then given a real bonus offer of $1 million, and I accepted that too. I then open up the Nighthawks' Discord server and see this: And not understanding the backup-goalie-gives-you-extra-money-to-work-with rule, I proceed to think I'd just put our team over cap with my stupid one-dollar bonus. I apologize profusely and probably call myself an idiot a lot, until the rule is explained to me two or three times and I finally understand that no, we did not just lose a pick because I put us one dollar over cap. So yeah, what's your favorite VHL story? That, and FEED MY 5,007-POST EGO.

It's less this for me than it is just the fact that I don't like the new career tasks. Junior Review and Prospect Scouting Report are basically the same thing (I get that they're supposed to be different but "I want to build my player this way" leads to basically writing the same thing for "here's what my player did"). Rookie Experience and Veteran Presence are stupid because the rookie one is just 400 words of "hi I'm new, I hope I'm good someday" and the veteran one is...I don't even know what because talking about how you've improved and writing about "what it means to be a veteran" isn't even applicable to anyone outside of highly active first-gens because there isn't really anyone else who goes from being a noob to being a leader in a few seasons (regardless of how old their player is). Half of my Veteran Presence was just me complaining about how much I disliked writing it. I think there's still some room for improvement with the current tasks, like if one or two could be overhauled and made into something better that would be nice. The way they are now, though, I'd much prefer the old rookie profile/bio.

The big 3-0