Gustav

Love the name and welcome back!

You're super far from the first (and the last) time this has ever happened--situations come up all the time that very understandably remove people from the VHL. The fact that I mentioned you in this article and you're still active enough to read it says a lot.

Maybe this is why Devise sold all his picks--what was Toronto thinking? We'll break it all down here. Why I do this, I don't really know. This article started as an analysis of draft classes over time, where I set out to track draft busts across each season and see if we've had any trends worth thinking about. I found out pretty quickly that the results of that analysis were inconclusive, but at that point I had a spreadsheet with lots and lots of data to look at. I wasn't going to waste that, so I thought up something different. With the S89 class in their last season in the VHL, we now have a clear evaluation of which picks have and have not worked out over the whole S80s. So with my data on draft busts, why not write an article about those draft busts? It's going to be a long one, but I promise that it will be worth your time. I don't want to formalize this as the official start of a series, but I've done things this way in the past and I think it's fun, so I think I get to draw special attention to the heading: Let's Invent a Stat! It's surprisingly easy to crunch the numbers when you get to decide what the numbers are in the first place. What I'll be doing here is creating a number that I'm non-creatively calling Bust Grade (BG) to rank exactly how much of a draft bust each draft bust from the S80s is. Our equation for this is: BG = (DAD + GA + PA - DAL + (EXP/10) + ((1-(LEN/8))/10))/1.07 Of course, these are unfamiliar abbreviations, because I've also made them up: Draft Adjustment (DAD) = -0.2*Diff/12, where Diff = "Differential," or the difference between a player's draft position and their final TPE ranking within their class. The largest DAD from the S80s is -12, and we multiply this by -0.2 to make the number positive and also to limit its efficacy. So, a player whose final TPE ranking matches their draft position will have no points applied to their BG, while the player who dropped 10 spots down the list will live with 0.2 extra. Gain Adjustment (GA) = 0.6*(1-(Gain/1000)), where Gain is the amount of TPE earned after the draft. This number gets larger as that amount gets smaller, making a player more of a bust with less TPE earned. No player on this list earned over 1000 TPE after they were drafted (of course, because how would they be a bust in that case?), so every player has some contribution to their final BG total from GA, which increases to a maximum of 0.6 points. Pick Adjustment (PA) = 0.3*(1-(Pos/16)), where Pos = Draft Position. A player drafted 16th overall, at the end of the 1st, gets no extra contribution from this number, while a player drafted 1st overall would receive its maximum of 0.3 points. This is because a player who is drafted higher (and with larger expectations) should be considered more of a bust if they don't work out. Draft Allowance (DAL) = -0.4*(1-1/(1-0.12*(NUM/5)+0.08*(BP/40)))), where: NUM = the number of busts present in that draft, and: BP = "Bust Points," a system I came up with to assign points to a draft to gauge the chances of making a bad pick. Whether a player is a bust or not, they earn Bust Points for their draft through recording final TPE totals, Diff, and Gain that are below certain totals. Either 1 or 2 points can be added in each category, depending on severity, and most players who earned at least 4 Bust Points are present on this list. DAL, unlike the others, is a forgiving number. A player who is present in a draft with lots of busts (or disappointing player numbers in general) will have more DAL subtracted from their BG than a player who was a bust in a draft where just about all picks around them went great--essentially, a mistake made in a good draft is a larger mistake. Up to 0.2 can be subtracted from BG by DAL; with up to 0.12 coming from NUM and 0.08 from BP. EXP = "Experience Factor," which is just a flat 1 if the player was a recreate and a 0 if the player is a first-gen. This is divided by 10 to make it a difference of 0.1. A bust is a bust, but it's more of one if the builder has a reputation that would give more reason to believe that they would turn into something. LEN = Career Length. I wasn't going to factor stats into this quantitatively because it would just be too much to compare forwards to defenders (and especially to goalers), but we can at least use the length of a player's VHL career to give us a small correcting factor for how much they contributed to the VHL. A player who played for 8 seasons earns no extra points from LEN, while a player who never made it up registers an extra 0.1. This is all divided by 1.07. I tried to make a high total approximately equal to 1, and it turned out that the highest grade was a 1.07. So, we divide all numbers by 1.07 to make a 1.00 the highest BG possible and give us a nice round number. We've invented a stat! I'll note a few things: Who is and isn't a bust was aided by my analysis of Bust Points but ultimately up to my own opinion--my rule of thumb was to include anyone with at least 4, but I made a few exceptions. A prime example of this was @Pifferfish's Elias Lampi, who put up 4 Bust Points by recording a moderate career TPE total and dropping 8 spots in the TPE rankings in a loaded S86 draft. My spreadsheet says he's a bust (and he has a higher BG than some others in this article), but he was a solid player stats-wise and even won the Labatte in S91. Numbers aren't perfect. On the other hand, I threw out players who didn't work out if there was really no one good drafted after them. S87 and S88, for example, have no busts at all because they were very thin classes--those drafted early stuck around because they were expected to, and those drafted late were never supposed to be good in the first place. I'm not going to call players busts if there were no good options left on the board. I kept this analysis to the first round only. Beyond that point, anyway, picks that don't work out aren't usually huge mistakes. Here's what BG looks like when it's broken down per pick. Perhaps you can guess what some of those picks were! According to my analysis, interestingly, London and Riga only messed up once, but both messed up big by making the worst picks of the decade. We're just about ready to break down the list, but I have to note something else that's important. This isn't just a ranking based on BG, because I've passed all of these players through a different filter called My Personal Opinion. Things like stats mean a lot and aren't reflected in BG, and there's also something to be said for personal history--a recreate known for going inactive shouldn't be considered as much of a bust as one who has shown huge earning potential, and I think about this too. I actually really like BG as a general correlation, and it helped me a lot with sorting out where to put everyone on this list, but you'll notice that I go out of order a lot. In total, it's just a list of opinions, but I think they're more legitimate if I've tried to work them out with numbers. On to our ranking of the draft busts, in reverse order: 22. Robert Wilk | 12th Overall, S81 | RW | 210 TPE | @Tomat0 BG: 0.40 Wilk showed lots of promise with an 84-point rookie season, but getting passed around to six different teams over a 7-year career is something special. It turned out that his rookie season would be the strongest in just about every category, and the decline that followed saw him failing to hit even 30 points in a final S88 campaign with the Stars. The S81 draft was a risky one to pick in, especially for the early part of the decade, but this was one of the picks that didn't work out. 21. Justin Adolfsen | 14th Overall, S83 | LW | 205 TPE | @NJDevils24 BG: 0.38 The S83 draft wasn't bad, but it was interesting in that its first two picks (Scotty Sundin and Brandt Fuhr, neither one a bust) earned significantly less TPE than many players who followed. In fact, Landon Wolanin (who would lead the class in TPE) was drafted just one spot ahead of Adolfsen. Though Adolfsen didn't go inactive immediately and got close to 700 TPE, he only broke 50 points once and recorded a net -70 rating in a 6-season career. Some of the picks that followed would have been much nicer for the Americans: Tomas Sogaard, Brian Kowalski, Hall-of-Famer Jake Thunder, and others. 20. John Richards | 16th Overall, S86 | RW | 242 TPE | @John Cimarno BG: 0.48 I debated including Richards on this list because the S86 draft was very binary--the first round was one of the most stacked we've ever seen, and the field was pretty limited after that point. Still, there were players after Richards who made something more out of their careers, and it's fair to say that Richards was the first and only real disappointment of S86's first round. Only earning 207 TPE after the draft, Richards also only made the VHL for 4 seasons, three of which were with different teams. 19. Tadhg Byrne | 16th Overall, S81 | G | 196 TPE | @teknonym BG: 0.62 Byrne is our first player to never make it to the VHL, and it's with good reason as the Irish goaltender only earned 44 TPE after being drafted. This even looked like a good pick--Byrne's agent was doing 6-point tasks and max earning before disappearing over the course of a couple weeks. Interestingly, Byrne kicked around the E for all nine seasons after the draft, sometimes starting, sometimes as a backup, always as an inactive. 18. Baxter Arcanum | 8th Overall, S83 | D | 223 TPE | @ctots BG: 0.56 Arcanum is one of just a few players on this list to break 700 TPE over the course of a career, but makes the list after tapering off in activity from a highly active max-earning start. I'll admit that I didn't know off the top of my head who ctots' first player was, but I remember ctots being super promising as a first-gen and I took the liberty of going slightly out of order BG-wise because Arcanum could have been the next big thing in ways that Byrne probably wasn't. Arcanum would go on to play five seasons in the VHL, spent mostly with DC, and manage to win a Cup in S85 before wrapping it up with modest career totals. Other players who hit on their potential after Arcanum's selection include everyone I listed for Adolfsen from the same season, plus Calgary's twin powerhouses in Goncalves and Wolanin. 17. Wumbo | 10th Overall, S82 | G | 276 TPE | @Fire Tortorella BG: 0.59 I started writing out @Fire Tortorella's name as "flyersfan" before realizing that his name hasn't been flyersfan1453 (I think that's the number anyway) in years and that much of the community probably has no idea that that was the case and also probably thinks of someone else entirely as flyersfan. Anyway--the builder who I still think of as flyersfan and the former creator of Hall-of-Famer Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen came back in S82 with fellow SpongeBob reference Wumbo, who wasn't a super top-tier prospect but who was picked up by a team who had found big success in the past with other mid-level goaltenders (remember Ajay Krishna?). There wasn't really a better goaltender available in S82, and Wumbo would in fact pull a Krishna run of his own by winning the Cup in S84. He really wasn't a bad player, but he'd go inactive with under 700 TPE and wasn't the long-term solution that the Predators had hoped for. After being shifted to backup as an inactive in S88, Wumbo returned to starting in a disappointing 10-win campaign in S90. 16. Maxwell Mathias | 15th Overall, S82 | RW | 260 TPE | @Underclass_Hero BG: 0.72 If it weren't for drafting first-gen superstar Girts Galvins in the second round, S82 would have been a horrible draft for Warsaw. Yet another player they valued above Galvins was Mathias, who brought steady TPE from affiliate leagues and seemed like a sound choice as the GM of Oslo and a job-holder in the E. This wouldn't last too long, though, and Mathias topped out at 332 TPE. Making it up for just one season in S86, Mathias put up 23 points split between Davos and Riga before exiting the VHL for good. 15. Tater Tottingham | 6th Overall, S85 | D | 241 TPE | @Trunkxolotl BG: 0.64 I'm not entirely sure what the expectations were for Tottingham, because this player ended up earning just about exactly the same as the agency's previously-represented Tater Tot. Now, that wasn't bad at all--786 TPE is hardly something to be embarrassed about and Tottingham put up some solid seasons. It's just that Malmo put a bit too much stock into the TPE totals on the board and overdrafted by a bit. Picks following Tottingham (who was traded before ever putting on a Nighthawks jersey) include higher earners Alfred Champagne, Sunglasses Joyo, and Nikolas Kauppi, plus the greatest goaler of the generation in Jesse Teno. 14. Reid Johnson | 9th Overall, S85 | D | 232 TPE | @TopTiddee2 BG: 0.65 It's really not on purpose that this is another pair of players picked by the same team in the same season; I'm not too sure but I'd at least assign some of it to identical adjustments to BG being made by coexistence in the same draft. Unlike Tottingham, Johnson also eventually played for Malmo, but this would only happen after being traded back to Malmo from Helsinki in S88. All of the "Malmo could have drafted someone else" complaints still apply, but perhaps Helsinki (having traded for both) suffered a bit more. In any event, Johnson only played 3 VHL seasons and retired with under 600 TPE, receiving a fair ranking as more of a bust than Tottingham despite a lower draft position. 13. Cadmael Ixazaluoh | 5th Overall, S81 | D | 242 TPE | @Vice BG: 0.69 The Legion were not wrong to draft Vice, one of the more promising first-gen prospects in recent memory (this article also makes me realize how "recent" or not this was, because I have a specific memory of talking to Vice on Discord in a place I only would have been 3-plus years ago). Ixazaluoh broke 600 TPE and spent 7 seasons on Toronto's blue line, and in that sense was valuable, but just didn't maintain that super promising first-gen activity for long enough to become a star player. Vice is back and better than ever with Davos' Johnny Tsunami, who could end up being a symbol of what might have been the first time around, but Ixazaluoh will have to settle for being one of S81's five busts. 12. Tyler Busser | 9th Overall, S84 | C | 309 TPE | @diacope BG: 0.75 The to-be-banned user behind Busser had raised some concerns for GMs by S84, but that didn't stop them from accumulating a TPE total and earn rate well worthy of the first round. To be fair, this kept up right up until an abrupt retirement in S85, making this a really weird pick to try to grade and one that's probably logically worth placement higher up on the board. Only playing one season and being at the center of issues that came up during that time says a lot about the magnitude of a bust for a max earner, but part of me also wasn't surprised when this happened and I feel that Toronto should have known better--especially since higher-TPE and perfectly proven noncontroversial players were left on the board (why AK92 slipped to 13th overall remains a mystery). I would have graded this as a reach when it happened, so how much of a bust is it really? In this case, I'm happy to have the numbers to back me up. This is where Busser was ranked per BG, and I have not changed it. 11. Otis Boudreaux Jr | 9th Overall, S89 | LW | 230 TPE | @Ozzy Batty BG: 0.75 Boudreaux was a very good pick and a very promising user as a first-gen, and one who I have lots of nice things to say about. Things just didn't work out for his first player, who looked at first like a solid mid-round pick in a thin S89 draft. Unfortunately, Boudreaux also never made it up to the VHL with the Stars, and only scored 11 goals across four seasons, each with a different team, before retiring for a do-over. It's ultimately more sad to see a player fade away than burn out, and the fact that each of the next four picks proved to be decently active plants him firmly in bust territory. 10. Milan Dvorak | 5th Overall, S82 | D | 283 TPE | @solas BG: 0.73 I love solas, and Dvorak wasn't far removed from the reign of Chicago's franchise goaler Jean Pierre Camus in the S70s. Across an 8-season career, Dvorak wasn't bad defensively but also generally played for mediocre teams and never put up more than 50 points (including a disappointing 0-goal campaign with DC in S89). In a very Aron Nielsen-type career, he occasionally came back for welfare but as a whole was barely active for a bit, just barely cracking 700 TPE and going before a whole host of good players later on in the round. In the same way as players like Tottingham, he wasn't bad, just a bit of a reach--and worse numbers in the metrics that calculate BG push him farther up the list. 9. Montgomery Burns | 3rd Overall, S89 | D | 300 TPE | @LastOneUp BG: 0.79 Burns is closing in on a 400-point career this season, but in much the same way as in the early S70s, his agent left the VHL on short notice after building a player with a solid foundation for success. The S89 draft was terrible in general (and about to be heavily featured here in the top 10 despite corrections made for it being terrible), but very good players were available at #3 and Toronto mostly swung and missed. Even though my numbers (and I like to think my list) account for bad draft classes by being lenient to their players, having a pick at #3 overall is huge in any draft and there were seven players drafted after Burns who have exceeded his TPE total. Burns put up 82 points in S93, but apart from that has called four different places home in an otherwise nondescript career. 8. Eric Queefson | 2nd Overall, S89 | D | 337 TPE | @twists BG: 0.75 A player who broke 800 TPE is probably not the first player who comes to mind when thinking of draft busts and how to rank them, but Queefson probably already deserves it a little bit for his name and a little bit more for having the worst career of any second-round pick of the S80s. He gets some forgiveness from S89 being a horrible draft pool, of course, and it's tough to rank someone with the highest TPE total on this list this high up on it, but he's also the highest-drafted player on it and it means even more than Toronto whiffing on the #3 pick that DC whiffed on #2. Queefson went straight up to the VHL after the draft and would not have made this list had he stayed active, but he retired in S94 after his first round of depreciation and hadn't done too much of note up to that point. Queefson was OK at times on the scoreboard, but his career totals and lack of dominance stand in stark contrast to his draft position. 7. Zyn Westwood | 5th Overall, S89 | D | 272 TPE | @Sullvino BG: 0.84 There's a big difference between Westwood and Queefson in terms of BG here because it heavily weighs TPE earnings, and I'm up in the air over who belongs where. It's true that Queefson had higher expectations, but Westwood certainly failed harder, spending most of his time as a roster filler on rebuilding teams--how does a -85 rating last season sound for an early 1st-rounder? Curiously, Westwood's agent has created just one other player in the VHL (Aston Martin), joining just a season after I did and doing essentially the same thing in earning well until the draft, going in the top 5, and going not much further. Perhaps this is something that could be a red flag to GMs in the future, but the earning potential is there--the VHL of the future could see something great if that's locked in long-term at any point. It just...hasn't been done yet, and Westwood is a good example. 6. Pope Francis | 8th Overall, S89 | D | 297 TPE | @nurx BG: 0.79 I gave this spot to Francis above Westwood for a few reasons. By the numbers, Westwood has a higher BG because he was picked earlier in the draft, but Francis was rated just as highly at the time of the draft and certainly had a more solid reputation as a former M GM and someone who was highly visible around the forum and Discord. Francis came into the draft asking to play only for teams who did not scout him, so perhaps it's fitting that what he gave his team was the return that teams usually get for not scouting. Playing only one season for the Stars, Francis would fill rosters for two more, on two other teams, before an early retirement with exactly 100 points to show for it. 5. Astro Singh | 5th Overall, S85 | D | 273 TPE | @8Ovechkin8 BG: 0.96 Here's the highest BG out of anyone up to this point! Singh has the misfortune of only making it to a career total of 439 TPE in a stacked draft, dropping far down the TPE rankings list. That plus a short career and (technically, after many years on end) being a recreate leads to a uniquely high BG. Perhaps more uniquely, Singh was out of the VHL entirely after just one season after going inactive and being released in S87. Had he not been claimed by Vancouver in S91, his BG would be even higher and he'd probably be the highest-ranked player by number on this list. He's one of the more unique players on this list in general--I had the pleasure of getting to know 8O8 on a basic level over the time he was here and he was really nice, plus it seemed like he was excited to end up with London where I think I was still technically AGM. But playing for five teams over four seasons, in a career that technically spanned eight, and being drafted higher and earning lower than others who have already been discussed here, is a very weird combination of factors and one that's worth significant mention. 4. Harkat Mulds | 9th Overall, S81 | D | 359 TPE | @hylands BG: 0.79 Mulds was second in TPE on draft day and the product of an agent who had put up as strong a showing as is realistically possible from a first-gen career. There was no reason to believe that this should have been as low as a 9th-overall pick (except that I think I remember hearing after the draft that there actually was for some reason that I don't remember, and maybe I'm making that up entirely so we'll just roll with it). In any case, a super-earning prospect that had the TPE total to warrant a top selection only earned 154 TPE after being drafted, finding a new home every season after S82 and never living up to the franchise defender dream held by the Legion. Interestingly, Mulds played for both Moscow and Prague (not terrible teams) on two separate occasions and put up a decent point total, so perhaps #4 is a bit harsh here and I should have trusted the metric a bit more, but I'm a bit too lazy at this point to move and reformat this paragraph. 3. Cobalt Burns | 4th Overall, S84 | D | 351 TPE | @Ledge BG: 0.90 S84 was the class for lots of S75 recreates, and it was supposed to be a big deal because of this--I specifically remember Ledge talking about how loaded up it was going to be in some article. Ledge was also a former M GM and highly active member who was building what seemed like a very safe pick in that recreate class. Curiously, in much the same way that our aforementioned Johnson and Tottingham were traded early on from Malmo to Helsinki, Burns was almost immediately traded from Helsinki to Malmo a season earlier. I don't think either team intended to move draft busts at those times, but somehow none of those picks worked out. Burns was the most extreme example of this, though--he did manage to earn 600 TPE, and put up a surprising number of hits during a stint with Chicago, but being one safe pick out of many doesn't quite work in one's favor when you're also one of the only ones to turn unsafe. Ledge hasn't been back to the league since Burns, and having been in a couple draft classes and shared some of the same experiences with him, he's one of the players on this list that I miss the most. 2. Maximus Decimus Meridius | 4th Overall, S81 | RW | 281 TPE | @Beaviss BG: 0.77 When making this article and thinking about who I would rank where, MDM was one of the only players that immediately came to mind and also managed to be the player who I thought would be #1 off the top of my head. MDM isn't #1 by BG score, and that's pretty understandable--he accumulated almost 700 TPE and was in a draft that had a bunch of shaky picks. That said, being a recreate who was drafted pretty early on gave him a high BG score anyway, and out of everyone on the list, this was always going to be the player who was ranked higher based on vibes. In the past, every single player created by Beav had set records for TPE and at least seriously challenged for the Hall of Fame. Just "being a recreate" isn't enough to quantify the ranking here when 700 TPE used to be a walk in the park, and Beav's withdrawal from the league during MDM's career was as shocking as any. He doesn't quite earn the title of the biggest bust of the S80s, but he easily qualifies as the most high-profile bust, and the vibes make this make a lot more sense than most newer members realize. "But Gustav," you say, "if you thought all along that MDM was the biggest draft bust, then who is it really? What changed your mind?" To that, I ask that you allow me to reveal the true biggest draft bust of the S80s... What do you think? Would you like to see me invent more stats in the future? This article was a lot of work, but it was also lots of fun. If you're curious, you can find my spreadsheet through this link, where I have all the stuff I talked about plus some (disorganized) info on every draft class of the S80s. I hope you enjoyed whichever parts of this you were willing to read, and I'll catch you next time! 4,900+ words/see you in a month

David

I swear finance bros just make up job titles sometimes smh

I don't think the difference between Photoshop and nothing is worth the price unless you were serious about it. Last I knew about it, it was something like $120 yearly normally--I justify it because I get it at a reduced rate of something like $30 and I also open it up for work reasons sometimes. I don't do a lot of sim league graphics anymore, so I would have canceled it by this point otherwise. Both of the alternatives at least work in basically the same ways, so if you ever found yourself on Photoshop you would find that a lot of what you built up elsewhere transfers well.

Welcome to the league @Xavier Dumont!

Yeah, one of the consequences of this was that the M now has 400-TPE goalies who aren't having their builds limited by the hybrid system going up against 400-TPE skaters who do have to deal with this and would be more like 180-TPE skaters under the old system. The differences even out a little at VHL TPE levels, but I'm not surprised that the switch caused lower scoring for this reason. It isn't something I necessarily have a problem with because the numbers don't need to be anything in particular as long as the league is working fine, but I'd understand finding it weird/hoping for a little more.

I've used Photopea a few times and I was always impressed by it for it being on a browser. It's close enough to Photoshop that you can actually import and work with .psd files there. It does hog lots of energy and it's practically unusable on my old laptop, but that doesn't mean much because I'd describe lots of things that way. I also started on Gimp and from what I remember it's very accessible as well. I've been fortunate enough to get Photoshop mostly paid for by school, and I easily like it the best--but I think both of the others are great free options and both have lots in common with the actual Photoshop experience.

I would be interested in seeing the data on it before I develop an opinion on whether we should do it. As of now, all I said was that I think it’s a cool concept. Anyone who shot it down just based on vibes is dumb. It’s interesting because if it aligns super closely with the standings, then there’s no real point in doing it, and if it ends up being really far off, then it’s probably too extreme. To me, success under this system would look like a.) teams get the best picks when they are clearly non-competitive but at least make an effort to assemble a roster and aren’t openly tanking, and b.) the VHL actually recognizes this and we see a decline in teams that are openly tanking. I see the potential for this to go wrong (let’s say openly tanking still gets you more assets so people do it anyway), at which point I wouldn’t really care about it. But if it went right it would be cool.

I really just skimmed this (for now), but it was the first time I've heard of Gold Drafting and I think it's cool.

Last season, the VHL decided to wait until I had exhausted my entire memory of everything that has ever happened to me in the VHL across my Gustav 30 in 30 series before asking us to write about "VHL lore," of all things, before theme week. It only stands to reason that this season, the VHL would wait for me to put out a really cool article that is highly specifically about the trade deadline, and then they would decide to make us write about nothing other than the trade deadline for our doubles week. Perhaps I should just shut up and take the compliment that the blues obviously read everything I write, but I will instead choose to believe that they hate me and enjoy watching me suffer over having to come up with two cool ideas in a row on the same topic. It's weird that they would do that--if you want to see me miss TPE, just post Fantasy Zone and wait for me to forget to do it. Luckily for you, and thanks to Mike's Hard Lemonade, I have another cool idea for you. Last week, I tried to make something that was a little more realistic, but since the blue team decided to do something truly unbelievable to me, I have something a bit less realistic for you. I shall not disappoint. One of the major complaints about the trade deadline is just that there isn't enough happening around the trade deadline. In some seasons, trades are very lacking, and some of you like to complain that this means the system is broken because not enough things that are exciting to you personally are going on. Because of this, I'd like to (non-seriously) propose some exciting rule changes that will be sure to spice up the trade deadline and make it the most exciting day of the season. Injured Reserve: you heard me right--if you've ever wanted to pull a Tampa Bay or a Vegas, here we are! We don't have injuries in the VHL, but they exist in STHS, and if we were to flip that switch, we'd have a system that you could game hard enough to really get people talking! Of course, we could also make sure that the salary cap is easily gamed as well by things such as these. Imagine being able to place a player on IR to free up a few million in cap space, use that cap space to trade for an 1100-TPA player from a team that's down on its luck near the deadline, and then have your injured player magically recover in time for the playoffs with it not counting against your cap hit! Teams that are loaded up are the cause of lots of deadline inactivity, because they want to compete but don't have the cap to get any stronger. Here, we could have it both ways. Half-Season Contracts and Deadline FA: Want to save money as a GM? Why not sign a player for half a season for half the cap hit? Players will like signing until the deadline because they'll have the choice to go to teams with a chance to win afterward, and teams with a chance to win will like it too because they'll be able to sign people for half off if they've got the space through some system like IR or something. If you're a bubble team, too, you might find that you can have more success in signing players in the offseason--you'll be able to promise people more of a leading role on your team over that first half, where they'll get the numbers they want, and at that point perhaps you'll be good enough to warrant a playoff run and a re-signing. I see nothing wrong with this. A Deadline Rule 5 Draft: In the MLB, teams can draft players directly from the minor league systems of other teams through something called the Rule 5 draft. Each team can protect a certain number of players, and it's inherently limited to serious prospects only because players who are selected need to be kept on the team's big-league roster for the whole year. My idea is to assign Rule 5 picks in the same way that Supplementary Draft picks are assigned in the NFL (you don't get them for free; you need to give up a regular draft pick for a pick there and those picks are assigned in the order they were in the regular draft). Teams opting into the Rule 5 draft in this way could then select from a pool of unprotected VHLM prospects from other teams, which would happen at the deadline because the deadline is boring. These players would then need to be kept on the roster and played in the regular lineup until at least the next season's deadline, thus discouraging teams from picking just anyone, and at this point good picks could enjoy their new home and bad picks could be cut or shipped out. Notice how that could also free up cap space around the deadline and make teams open for trades? I do too. No Changes to Cap For Retiring Players: This is somehow both the least weird and most radical idea on the list. Currently, teams taking on players on deadline day take 50% of the cap hit, still making it so teams who are right up against the cap can't take anyone more expensive. Originally, I didn't have the "for retiring players" in this section, but to keep it more sensible and just talk about those players, why not enable cup-chasing for that one last season? Teams who want to go all-in would still need to pay fair value for it; they just wouldn't need to crunch the numbers. I think that by putting my ideas in motion, the league could have much more exciting trade deadlines. Let me know if you'd like me to take any of my ideas to the Board of Gustav.

You guys also made LAST theme week about the article I wrote immediately before it. Stop making me come up with stuff after I’ve used up my ideas.

This is really cool! I’ll never have anything to show for it, but no one can take away the 300 wins at least.