Gustav

Yeah I did that half of your bracket first and I was like “oh no, people are going to think I’m just making stuff up to fit someone’s picks…” Fortunately for me it wasn’t like that throughout. Like I said, I understand it if someone wanted to pick Lovstrom in the first round and I could certainly see him going far after that…so tough luck I guess.

For the record I hate that. League admin needs to bring our memes back.

Here we are--welcome to the first round of results for VHL March Madness! For those unfamiliar, last week I posted an article where I challenged anyone who wanted to participate to fill out a March Madness-style bracket of VHL players. How would those players defeat each other and advance to the next rounds, you ask? There's only one condition to meet--they have to (in my personal opinion) have the more impressive career stat sheet. Since that seems pretty simple to me and I have over 3000 words typed up in a Word document offsite, let's list those words here. (16) Leif Reingaard defeats (1) Gianfranco Del Rocco: It’s official—something that’s only happened twice ever in the real March Madness makes its way into the VHL with a 16 upsetting a 1! We can talk about bias toward older players all we want, but Reingaard has pretty much the same per-game point rate as Del Rocco despite playing on defense, and obviously has all those defensive numbers that Del Rocco does not because of it. And it’s true that being around long enough to make the numbers higher works in Reingaard’s favor, but over the time both of these players have been in the VHL, Del Rocco hasn’t yet been the better performer. Plus, Reingaard has won the Cup! It remains to be seen whether the future holds something a little more special for Del Rocco—he’s already a good goal-scorer and is waiting to see whether the rest of his game can be rounded out a bit. (9) Lazlo Holmes defeats (8) Eric Thorvaldsson: Is this biased? I hope not. It’s at least a very nice comparison with both players being the same age. Lazlo has more points and is similar defensively, plus there’s no difference in awards with both having won a championship. At the very least, it’s very close, and this season sees similar production from the two so far. (5) Jarmo Ruutu defeats (12) The Phantom of the VHL: This one is pretty easy because Ruutu has multiple 100-point seasons to Phantom’s none. It’s true that Ruutu’s first came in his fifth season, while Phantom is entering that fifth season, but Ruutu’s standard of production (including a Beketov win) would be a significant improvement this season over Phantom’s current rate. (4) Phillip Rave defeats (13) Gul Dukat: Rave has put up over a point per game over the course of his career, and he’s played on three different Victory Cup-winning teams in Malmo over the S90s. Dukat has a Victory Cup, too, but the offensive stats are pretty run-of-the-mill (even considering the position difference) and there just doesn’t seem to be anything there to prompt the upset pick. (11) Red Panda defeats (6) Andrew Skilton: With the First Four matchups essentially giving us two options for the first-round opponents, is it really that much of a surprise that we’re seeing our second upset with one of those winners already? Regardless of how you want to think about it, Skilton is good but he’s not 3-time 40-game winner, Cup-winning goalie good. It’s possible that this would be closer without the championship run in S95, but Panda takes this decisively. (3) Guntis Gavilrovs defeats (14) Aleksanteri Kaskiniemi-Kekkonen: I already knew where this one was going, but I did take a look at AKK’s player page in good faith. I like that AKK has moved back and forth between holding and losing the starting role and shown persistence in doing so right up through becoming the regular starter in Davos, but Gavilrovs burst onto the scene last season as one of the league’s premier defenders and is putting together another campaign to remember in New York. (7) Mina defeats (10) Matteo Stefano: This wasn’t a strong decision, and even though I expect most people to make it the same way I’m making it (as I write this, I haven’t looked at anyone’s brackets yet!), it could realistically go the other way if totals weren’t a big factor. That said, I made rules and we have to play with them now. Both players have a Cup, but Mina just has more points. She isn’t the strongest on the defensive end, which is concerning for someone who plays defense, but she put up a good line last season after adding more of a physical side and has simply just had more time to work with. (2) Riley Martin defeats (15) Chris Reynolds Jr: Martin has done a good deal more than I’ve realized, putting up at least 40 goals and 200 hits in each of the last two seasons in a career that up to this point has been spent entirely with Vancouver. Interestingly, Reynolds is on a solid upward trajectory as well, at point-per-game pace in a fourth VHL season. It just hasn’t been the same as Martin’s sneaky Hall of Fame potential, which still has a few seasons of legacy left to define. -- (1) Antonia Bucatini defeats (16) Alagsantere Groenvold: I wonder if anyone noticed that I misspelled “Groenvold” on my spreadsheet. Thankfully, for anyone who wants to get pedantic about that sort of thing, we won’t be seeing the name much longer. As a S96 player, it’s an achievement that Groenvold has even earned enough to make the bracket—which is just about as much of a victory as is possible in this situation. Bucatini has been nothing short of sensational across her first four seasons, putting up some of the league’s most physical numbers and breaking the 40-goal mark in both of the last two seasons. (8) Joshua Schwarzer defeats (9) Spider Panda: I actually see some room for debate here because Panda, S96’s top rookie, has been pretty good up to this point, and one of Schwarzer’s big advantages is in longevity, which I’m trying not to weigh too heavily. I think it’s a little too big a difference here, though, because Schwarzer has played over double the number of seasons as Panda and played pretty well in the majority of them. Indeed, Schwarzer has scored at least 40 goals in each of the last four seasons, bringing lots of joy to Chicago over that time. (5) Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage defeats (12) Pan Daffleck: You never know when a player from the OD agency is going to jump into the league’s top tier, but it hasn’t been quite yet and Bocage has been one of the league’s best on defense for the past three seasons. This season featured a switch to forward that I hope won’t derail talk about his career totals in Hall of Fame voting, and that’s not (yet) a sentence I’d use if Daffleck switched. For now, Bocage advances pretty easily. (4) Callum Gary Yannick Janser defeats (13) Ahsoka Tano and sets up a very interesting heavyweight matchup with Bocage in the second round. Tano is the successor to Jesse Teno, who would have challenged for a deep run in this bracket in the early S90s, but is just too new and doesn’t quite stack up to the perennial Wylde nominee (and S97 winner) in Janser. As one of the league’s best at piling up hits and blocked shots, Janser is the one who has to get ready for one of the bigger second-round opponents. (6) YaBoi Oven defeats (11) Miner vHLer: Oven was known for being one of the few players to skip the E back when it was a thing, which could have derailed his TPA and seeding a bit but did nothing to stop him from being a consistent 90-ish point producer after his rookie contract was up. I’ve praised vHLer’s build in the past, but the production hasn’t caught up to the build to the extent that I’d like to see in this bracket. It’s a pretty easy win for Oven in this case. (3) Axle Gunner defeats (14) Lionel Collberg: It’s a fresh start for Collberg this season, who heads to Vancouver after spending six with Chicago. I actually want to give Collberg some positive credit for pretty strong defensive numbers over that time, but Gunner was Top Rookie in S91 and hasn’t looked back since that point. Gunner may make the Hall of Fame with a Boulet and two Playoff MVP performances, including a record-breaking run last season with Riga that featured 47 points in 22 games—that’s a pace of 154 per 72-game season. Even without recency bias, Gunner’s numbers are strong enough to be decisive. (7) Kimi Raikkonen defeats (10) Phil Sakic: Raikkonen has a championship and one season with a higher point total than Sakic’s best, which is a good non-longevity reason to make this pick. Overall, though, Raikkonen has simply played longer and done more. We’ll see what else Sakic’s career has in store for us in the seasons to come. (2) Felicia Hardy defeats (15) David Pastanap: I knew where this one was going before I looked at the player pages as well. Hardy doesn’t have any awards, although I know for a fact that I’ve voted for her for something at some point. That’s because despite being heavily pass-first, Hardy has managed to play really well over four seasons. Pastanap has been mostly OK for three, which interestingly gives us a higher-seed winner in every matchup in this quadrant. -- (1) Logan Ninefingers defeats (16) Conference Prince-de-Galles: The selection of Conference over Brandon Petan Jr in the First Four drew some criticism, but neither would have held up against Ninefingers anyway. A lifelong max earner with Vancouver, Ninefingers broke the 100-point mark for the first time last season and also played very well physically. There are just higher peaks here than Conference and more reasons to be distinguished than just another part of the lineup. (9) Forum Content defeats (8) Roger Eagles: We have a cross-position difference to work with here, and Eagles trying his best to make things work with LA under a long-term contract could quickly turn into a sad story if the team can’t turn things around. Forum Content’s prime is just starting, but there have been enough bright flashes (including 92 points last season) to make it meaningful, and last season’s championship is a nice bonus as well. (5) Soju defeats (12) Johnny Tsunami: This one was really tough with both players in the early stages of their careers. Tsunami has played one more season, which does add up to some extent, but his best up to this point has been 81 points and that isn’t all that impressive next to lots of other names in the field. It’s comparing skaters to goalers, but Soju played most of a Cup-winning regular season in S96 and put up 45 wins and a .928 SV% last season as the full-time starter. I wouldn’t fault anyone for making the opposite pick here, though—it may be the closest we’ve seen up to this point. (13) Martin Kemp defeats (4) Pierre Marc Bouchard: This is another one that is up for debate in my view, but it’s interesting enough to warrant an upset. The same point that I used for Soju applies here (Bouchard has a better best season), and there’s no doubt in my mind that Bouchard will eventually have a better career, but Kemp has played longer and has better totals. In saying that, I don’t want to discount Kemp’s role in Malmo’s Victory Cup last season or his strong physical play—after all, the wins I’ve described here have all been earned. (6) Grimgor Ironhide defeats (11) Konstantyn Shevchenko: Interestingly, much of Ironhide’s impact has been as a prospect—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a player win five whole individual awards, plus a Cup, in any single M season, and he also went on to be Top Rookie in S92. It’s not like Ironhinde’s VHL career hasn’t been more impressive as a whole, though—yes, he’s played longer, but along with more points (and tons of hits) comes a higher point rate. Shevchenko came up to the big league immediately and could play 9 seasons, which could get interesting, but we’ve seen less than half of those so far. (14) Jebediah Big Ol Doinks in Amish defeats (3) Bollos de Trueno: I turned this one over in my head a few times. I think Bollos, who has an individual award (last season’s Beketov) is the better player and would take this one if that were the condition to meet. Overall, I can’t justify using one good season to overturn the overall impact of Doinks, who’s wrapping up a career after this season and has put together a few decent enough campaigns as well. (7) WWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWW defeats (10) Maxim Anisimov: This one leaves some room for debate because Anisimov does have the advantage of having played a full career and hasn’t fallen below 88 points in any of the last 5 seasons—plus, W has never won 40 games in a season. Overall, I give it to W for a couple awards that Anisimov doesn’t have: the Clegane in S92 and an MVP in S96. Both came with some level of controversy—S92 wasn’t W’s Top Rookie award but Ironhide’s, and there wasn’t a Shaw to come with the MVP in S96. Were there no award wins here, it may go to Anisimov, but I’m also learning that there are a lot of forwards who have hit 100 points a couple times in our league and I don’t want to reward that too much. (2) Jillian Woods defeats (15) Toby Kadachi: This one could legitimately go either way. Kadachi has the advantage of having played longer, and he’s also an absolute hit machine—something that I personally like a lot. From years of BoG voting, though, I have a feeling that I weigh that more heavily than most other people do. With the idea in mind that offensive production matters a lot, Woods scored 33 goals last season on defense and won both the Valiq and the Funk in S96. And we’ve seen the same situation elsewhere here where I’ve picked the player who’s played a significant amount longer, but those players generally match the shorter-career player’s points a little bit better. Add in the impressiveness of Woods doing this on defense, and we have a win that could be controversial. -- (1) Maverick Goncalves defeats (16) Deadpanda: Deadpanda has only played one full season, which did go well, but Goncalves looks to ALREADY be a generational player despite having over half a career left. As S95’s Top Rookie and two seasons already over 110 points, plus two Victory Cups and a Boulet, it will be interesting to see how Goncalves compares to players who might have been around for longer in future rounds. (9) Raimo Tuominen defeats (8) Giorgiy Costanzov: Costanzov won the Cup in net last season, which is no small achievement, and has started most of five full seasons up to this point as a sort of #1A in Seattle in S93 and 94 before fully assuming the starting role in S95. I like Tuominen a little better because the individual production has been more noticeable. Including a 120-point, Funk-winning S94 campaign, Tuominen has put up at least 90 points four seasons in a row, has a good physical side to his game, and is looking to make an impact in a final season with Toronto after seven in Calgary. (12) Spanish Moon Moth defeats (5) Jorgen Lovstrom: A heavyweight matchup in the first round, both of these players are better than the majority in the pool and deserve placement in the second round. Lovstrom made major headlines last season by winning the Clegane for the second time on the way to a Victory Cup for Malmo, which could certainly be enough justification for him to make it to the second round. I give this one to Moon Moth mostly for being good for longer, which I know is a cheap factor for lots of people. Aside from that, though, I really like that Moon Moth manages to stand out from a lot of other forwards—scoring 115 and 114 points in the last two seasons is great and more than most others in our pool have, and that’s not even to mention the 58 goals last season. I can see some disagreement arising from this, but that’s how opinions work. (4) George Richmond defeats (13) Dorji Khan: This one is fairly obvious when Richmond’s lowest point total would be Khan’s highest. That’s really all there is to say about that, so let’s admire other things—like how Richmond’s hit total has increased every single season or that Khan is one of three very good forwards on Toronto’s roster (along with Shevchenko and Moon Moth) that also cost just $4.5M each and make the lineup surprisingly economical. (6) Thor Reingaard defeats (11) Eric White Jr: It would be hard to find two more similar player pages in our bracket. Both of these players have basically the same amount of points in the same amount of games, which automatically makes them pretty close. White has a Cup that Reingaard doesn’t, which could be a point to differentiate them. Personally, I think Reingaard is set apart a bit more strongly by two factors. First, Reingaard has a lot more hits than White, and second, Reingaard’s point total is made up of goals more than White’s is. (3) Adi Dassler defeats (14) River Harrington: This season is going quite nicely for Dassler, who’s cracked 95 points three times but never 100. That’s also come with fairly high goal totals, which have met or exceeded the point total of Harrington’s one complete VHL season twice to this point. Obviously, that makes this pick pretty easy. (7) Wayne Gretzky defeats (10) Pombo: Pombo had a good time last season in breaking 90 points for the first time, but it was the second time for Gretzky. Overall, these players are in about the same tier skill-wise, but Gretzky has just been doing it for more time and has nicer looking numbers. (15) Dalkr Vidarsson defeats (2) Lucy Leitner: I feel a little bad doing this to Lucy after she had mentioned actually reading my article last week and filling out the spreadsheet, but here we are—it’s a close call for a few reasons, I think. I don’t want to overrate someone for simply playing goaler on a good team, and Vidarsson has had a few average seasons, but Leitner’s career is just a bit shorter and Vidarsson won MVP in S95. Leitner is off to a great start and definitely wins the “who would you place on your best possible roster” battle, but under the guidelines I set in place, I don’t think I’m in the wrong to pick someone who’s demonstrated enough impact to transform a roster and found similar success in other seasons. -- I had three people submit brackets to me, and our standings are as follows. This is based on each correctly guessed winner in the first round being awarded 10 points--next round, it's 20 each, and it's 40 each in the one after that. I've made my own copies of each bracket and marked them up as necessary. @sadie - 280 - LINK @jacobcarson877 - 240 - LINK @Corco - 190 - LINK HERE IS A LINK to a sheet tracking the current progress of the tournament. I was surprised by a lot of things here. Everyone who entered seems to have a fairly different idea of who's good and who's not, which is a bit of a relief to me because I was a little worried that we would have things end up too similar to each other--maybe I'm just particularly opinionated. Each person has at least one player making it to their Final Four that I had knocked out in my own first round (and there's even one in the finals that I knocked out already!), which will make scoring interesting in the later rounds. Overall, I'm very happy with how this has gone so far, and I'll try to drop the next two rounds next week to remain reasonably consistent with the timing of the real-life tournament.

Yes but I don't have a problem with that. First off, there's room for flexibility in it (someone who's had a few awesome performances over 5 seasons could beat someone who's been OK for 7 and has higher totals, for example). But also it's just a matter of how you want to define a winner--I chose to do it one way and there are other ways to do it that would also be valid.

I'm stupid and I think I just blanked out on this. I definitely looked at both player pages, and thankfully I think that means my reasoning holds otherwise.

Just when you thought I was done writing, here we are. Let's all have some fun with this. Before a couple months ago, I hadn't expected to get into college basketball. I'd never followed basketball on any level before, and despite having a team in a competitive conference to root for over the last few years, I'd never been more than just a casual fan. After all, as long as I've had them on my radar, my team always starts the year ranked somewhere around #20 and then very quickly drops off into irrelevance. Something I did enjoy quite a bit over the last few years was filling out the bracket at work. It gave me teams to root for so I could get my bragging rights in. Plus, by this point in the season, the hockey teams I like are generally completely wiped out of playoff contention, baseball season hasn't started yet, and my favorite sport of all in football is done for almost the next 6 months. I can get really into basketball for these few weeks at the end of March, and this year it's been more than ever now that I've actually followed the back half of the season. For those wondering, my real-life bracket has Florida beating Alabama in the championship (and I've learned over the last couple days that SEC bias is as much of a thing in the basketball rankings as it is in football, unfortunately for many of my picks). So, because I'm in the middle of nerding out over the championship bracket, I thought I'd write up something fun for the VHL and invite you to play along. For those unfamiliar, the college basketball championship bracket works as follows: 68 teams are selected to compete, with a preliminary round of the "First Four" games eliminating 4 teams right off the bat. After that point, it's a 64-team, single-elimination playoff. Four quadrants are created, with teams ranked 1-16 within those. Ideally, teams selected to be at the same rank (i.e. two 7-seeds from different quadrants) should be as equal in skill as possible. Submitting a bracket (at least, under the points system in my group) awards points for correctly predicting the winner of each of the following: 10 for the first round, 20 for the second round, 40 for the third round (or Sweet 16), 80 for the fourth (Elite Eight), 160 for the fifth (Final Four), and finally 320 for predicting the national champion. You have to fill out the whole thing before the tournament starts, which is why predicting wins becomes worth more points as it moves on--it's more impressive to guess a winner five rounds out, and those later rounds matter more anyway. I am not asking you to fill out a college basketball bracket. Instead, what I've done is the following: I've sorted the list of all current players by TPA and assigned rankings to them (the top 4 are all #1 in each quadrant, for example, and the next 4 are all #2s, and so on). I'm going to be releasing a series of articles that puts these players up against each other based on their placement in the bracket and assigns a winner for each round. I'll work all of this out on my own terms behind the scenes over the course of this week. The metric for assigning a winner will be my own personal opinion of who has had the most distinguished VHL career between the two players in a given matchup. Much like in college basketball, we have a general idea of who's good and who's not (TPA), but the actual results will matter when it comes to the matchups. To give you an example of my thought process, I've gone ahead and assigned winners of the First Four to my bracket. In real life, two games are played to decide two of the four 11 seeds, and two others are played to decide two of the four 16 seeds (why it's not just all of the 16s or something, I don't know). Doing the same here, I have: Leif Reingaard defeats Gustav Mattias for a 16 seed: Reingaard has recorded more points than Gustav despite playing on defense. Additionally, Gustav is essentially inactive and has done little more than fill roster room for LA over the past few seasons. Eric White Jr defeats Ryan Artyomov for an 11 seed: This one was tough for me because I'm comparing a skater to a goaler and both have been at least decent over the course of their careers. To me, it's not like Artyomov hasn't played well, but so has White, and White has won a Cup in both the VHL and the VHLM (as well as in the E!). Red Panda defeats Wally Lose for an 11 seed: This one was pretty easy because both play the same position, and Panda has played longer and simply done more. Conference Prince-de-Galles defeats Brandon Petan Jr for a 16 seed: This one was also pretty easy because Petan only came up to the VHL last year and Conference has been up for a long time. Longevity and career totals aren't always going to be the answer, but big differences like we have in this case are going to make other considerations irrelevant. I'd like to challenge you to play along with me, actually. If you'd like to participate, go make a copy of THIS SPREADSHEET, fill out the entire bracket, label it with your name somewhere, send it to me by this time next week, and I'll keep you in the loop about your scores in each round as I write. Put as much time analyzing stats or as little time picking names you like as you want--we're just here to have fun. Even if no one takes me up on my offer, I'll write the articles anyway because I think it's a cool idea. The winner gets nothing, except maybe if enough of us like this, I'll make sure to keep a record of it and mention you as the first one ever to do it next season.

G - Aleksanteri Kaskiniemi-Kekkonen And we are done I think @leandrofg

Sorry, my phone won’t let me click on the notifications tab for some reason and I forgot that maybe the notification it was showing me would pertain to something time-sensitive. F - Raimo Tuominen D - Pan Daffleck

D - YaBoi Oven F - Axle Gunner @Corco

FUCK Discord drafts F - Maverick Goncalves @Corco

Basketball! Lazlo's backstory is that he's a former basketball analyst. I've also started to get into college basketball in real life, which is great timing for the upcoming tournament for the championship. I like the Sabres, and trading for someone with massive injury issues who's locked down long-term on an expensive contract couldn't get more Sabres. I'd be disappointed if I hadn't been that way for the past 12 years already. The VHL has a lot of teams in the US, but really nowhere near all of them have good names that fit the places they're supposed to be. One of my favorite team proposals in the PBE was the "Mobile Mystics," dedicated to the city of Mobile (Alabama)'s hardcore celebration of Mardi Gras. I learned later that this actually used to be a hockey team, but we have the Ottawa Lynx already, so who says we can't rip off the names of dormant sports franchises? I'd love to see it. 1. Which VHL city would you most want to travel to in real life and why? 2. What are your thoughts on a large group of members (allegedly) waiting to recreate so their player can be part of the S100 class? Is it fun? Is it stupid? 3. What was the last concert you attended?

If you don't get the reference with the title, go look it up and go read the book. It's great. This weekend, I had to check out of the VHL and devote myself to the biggest event of the year in my building. Something really interesting that they don't really tell you about grad programs in my field until you get there is that when you're accepted to one, the school gives you an all-expenses-paid, multiple-day visit shortly thereafter where the department rolls out a massive amount of money that they've spent all year pretending not to have and turns its faculty and students loose with it to give you and maybe 15 other nerds the time of your life in an effort to get you to accept their offer over everyone else's. When I was looking at schools, these visits actually taught me quite a bit about what I was looking for--and they were such a fun time for someone who was just coming out of COVID protocols and hadn't really lived a lot in undergrad. Don't even get me started. I mention this because these things tap into a particular skill set of mine that I realized I had here in the VHL: being part of a system and indoctrinating people into it representing it well in such a way that others want to join it. I'll save the details lest the updaters take issue with this not being league-related enough, but I'll just mention that we put on a mean campus visit this weekend and I like to think that I had a lot to do with that as the head of the committee that had a hand in almost all of the event planning. In other words, VHLM GM Gustav absolutely showed up. We did tons of stuff that was never expected of us, and a lot of this was noticed. We've managed to pull in a few acceptances off the visit already, and someone who's coming even reached out to me to send a note of appreciation. On to VHL words, and I promise that you guys can check that I have 150 of them: There are things that we have to do in the VHL and things that we do not have to do. That does not mean that things we do not have to do are not useful. A GM needs to be there for the drafts, put effort into considering who goes where in their lines, and be available to answer questions from players, but who's to say that someone who does all of these things will be highly valued as a GM if that's all that happens? Likewise, anyone has to do tasks for TPE and anyone except league admin and half the mod team has to do a lot of tasks to earn a lot of TPE. There are still people with lots of TPE who I am surprised to learn have as much as they do because I just don't tend to notice them. The difference is being visible and willing to interact. A big issue I have with the VHL is complacency with the system and a sort of "let me run through learning the letters again so I can keep my Duolingo streak going" mentality when it comes to getting things done. It's a short article because it's late on a Sunday, but I just can't help but think that the league could achieve so much more if it brought the same sort of passion to doing things that's often necessary to get someone to sign up to spend the next five years of their life in your program. What's the equivalent of learning someone's listed interests ahead of meeting them or taking them out for drinks after all the official stuff is over? It could be as little as just commenting on someone's article and making them feel seen. It could be whatever you'd like as long as it's coming from your heart. Think about how you can express that in some way, at some point, and be more than just someone who exists on this site. People will see you, people will notice, and they'll want to have the fun that you're having.

See I wonder if I can make some extra cash by joining the pyramid scheme early and getting out before it collapses. Really makes you think. And yes I feel better now.

Damn, I guess we’re not good enough friends for me to get a scam link. I see how it is, everyone hates me smh