Matmenzinger

Good evening, comrades. It gives me great pleasure to unveil the Moscow Hall of Fame, where we will be honouring the greatest player to don the black and gold of the Moscow Menace. Now six seasons into our existence, we have seen a number of great players play and continue to play in Moscow, and it has resulted in our crowning achievement to date: the S70 Continental Cup.
 
So it is time to induct the first member of the Moscow Hall of Fame, a key component of that championship. There's a certain irony that the first member is a Latvian, and whose agent is the GM of our rivals in Riga. It's also quite amusing that when he was acquired alongside Podrick Cast for a very hefty price in S67, Randoms was something of an afterthought. Yet we got four seasons of one of the best forwards of the last half decade, who formed the most prolific duo of his time with Jet Jaguar, consistently put up more than 80 points and ended his career with back-to-back Scott Boulet Trophies, as the VHL's top goalscorer, and a Continental Cup champion and World Cup gold medalist.
 
Whether that's enough to enter the VHL Hall of Fame remains to be seen. Randoms' place in Moscow folklore is inarguable however.
 
Congratulations @hedgehog337!
 

 
 

 
Graphic credit to our esteemed leader @gorlab

Tocco Tocco Tocco

Alright. With only 4 players left to update their Starting TPE I feel comfortable now. The draft is officially open!  
 
As I lay out in detail in the rules above, this draft will be done entirely here on the forum with GM's tagging each other when the next one is up for selection. The player hub has been updated with updates, so you can see both total TPE and what people have spent their attributes in for scouting. But we can formally get this underway. The rosters have also been updated in the main post, with the GM players already being assigned to their respective teams. You can see how many of your position slots have also been filled underneath your team. 
 
The Brampton Blades @Jbeezy76 are up with the 1st overall selection in the User Created Draft. 
 
 

Except durability and endurance.

Good ol fashioned Moscow.
 
Tocco with Gordie Howe hatty.
Gritty clutch, what's new.

@Devise I'll take Madrid Thunder.

Player Name: Wölfe Weiß
Position: Center
Gm: I guess I could give it a shot.

The crazy thing is that Tocco didn't play on the first line with Jet most of the season. I played on the second with Gritty and put up those numbers. Just a testament to how deep Moscow's roster is. @Victor built an absolutely stellar team.

The defending Continental Cup champions are delighted to announce their leadership group going into Season 71. It's largely unchanged, still led by the indomitable Jet Jaguar in his 4th season as team captain. Mat Tocco returns as one of the alternates and the joint second-longest serving player on the team alongside Dean Clarke and Vladimir Pavlov. We sadly bid farewell to Dan Baillie so his "A" goes to the league's most outstanding player, the magnificent Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen.
 
C - Jet Jaguar @gorlab
A - Mat Tocco @Matmenzinger
A - Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen @flyersfan1453
 
 

Still no Pavlov hmm. Either you're all very wrong or very right.

VHL Top 25 Players
 
Part 2: 20-16
 
Season 71 continues to draw nearer as teams iron out the final positions on their rosters. Some prospects will discover whether it's another season in the minors or their shot at the bigs with today's deadline, but today we'll find out which VHL talents made the cut today for the Top 25! Today features primarily offensive talents, including one who is making the switch to forward. @FrostBeard, @Doomsday, @Erik Summers, @McWolf and @Mr_Hatter are back for more, #20 to #16 are next!
 
20. Shawnomir Jagr, RW
 
Shawnomir Jagr, the man who swore two seasons ago that he’d appear at #1 on our list soon. Two seasons later, it’s still not the case, but he still manages to make the Top 25 for the second campaign in a row, thanks to two straight 30-goal, 80-point seasons. Jagr is expected to, once again, share a line with two other Top 25 regulars: Julius Freeman and Hunter Hearst Helmsley. He held more of a support role to the Vancouver Wolves’ two-headed beast in Season 69, but really stepped up last season, and actually finished tied with HHH for most points and tied with Freeman for most goals on the team. You might think that level of production should have propelled way up unto the list, closer to where his two teammates appear, but the fact that he has just started to scoring consistently - combined with the fact that age is catching up on him and he has started regressing - makes it harder to put him at a better position than #20. His numbers might drop a bit, but 25 goals and 75 assists isn’t out of the equation, as he appears to be all fueled up and ready to hit the ice for his sixth straight season with the British Columbian franchise.
- McWolf

 
 
19. Guy LeGrande, LW
 
Guy LeGrande will be looking to make a splash in the North American conference as a left-winger, having just switched to the position after playing as a defenseman his first four seasons in the VHL. An able-bodied scorer, LeGrande’s killer instinct should translate well to the forward spot. The former New York American reached his career-high in points during his sophomore season with New York, before being traded to Seattle in Season 69. As a Bear, LeGrande has struggled to find his prior scoring pace, having scored around 50 points the past two seasons. Expect this to pick up, however, with his transition towards a more offensive position. LeGrande is a phenomenal puck handler, whose quick skating will tear through any VHL defence. Seattle will look to him to be one of their leaders, as he is entering his prime as the third-highest TPA player on the roster. Due to cap issues they have had to shed some of their stars, and with only youngsters to fill the gaps, LeGrande will look to this season as an opportunity to lead by example and carry his team back to contention for the Continental Cup; expect an eye-opening performance from Guy LeGrande in his first season on the forward lines.
- Mr_Hatter
 
 
 
18. Lincoln Tate, D
 
The first overall pick of the Season 67 VHL Entry Draft, Lincoln Tate's fiery demeanour has led to him becoming among the league's most able defensemen. Scoring 20 goals to go with 88 points with the VHLM's San Diego Marlins in Season 66, Tate's electric two-way play made him a natural choice by the Riga Reign as the first overall pick. It was not, however, a seamless transition for Tate, with a 15 point, -8 season as a rookie. Struggling to contribute on offence and in his own end, it was a rough start for Tate. But whatever was holding him back as a rookie was no issue in Season 68, as Tate took a huge stride forward. His physical play improved, and he additionally more than doubled the number of shots blocked from his rookie year. With 28 points, his offensive game was now beginning to bloom. The past two seasons, Lincoln Tate has shown why he has earned his #18 ranking, becoming a consistent force for the Reign. He has scored 11 goals for two seasons running, breaking 50 points both times. His hits and blocked shots continue to climb, setting career highs in both 179 hits, 140 shots blocked) in Season 70. In his final season before depreciation begins, are we about to see the best of Lincoln Tate in Season 71?
- Doomsday
 
 
 
17. Mat Tocco, RW
 
Former 31st overall pick of S66 draft has turned his game almost completely around. Mat Tocco was known as a true hybrid player and a winger that was easily able to pass and score. His 2 seasons in VHLM showed that he has skill but he never exceeded to a level of star. His first two seasons in VHL with Moscow showed a very similar type of game, quality scoring and playmaking but yet nothing on a level we saw this past season. With the increased role on Menace, he turned his career around and clearly showed why he is one of the better players in VHL. His amazing prowess as a true goalscorer and a fairly active player on the defensive end has earned him a spot on this list. With 39 goals in 72 games played, he was a top 5 goalscorer in the league. Surely, the fact that he played on a team with Randoms and Jet Jaguar helped his case but funny enough they all together ended up on the top 25 list. In my eyes, he is a brilliant player with a wicked shot that will keep his game up if Moscow will play on a similar level as they did last season.
- Frostbeard
 

 
16. Boris the Forest, C
 
Drafted 10th overall in the S67 entry draft, Boris was a bit of a sleeper after a good, but somewhat middling season with the Mexico City Kings. He was called up immediately and had a phenomenal rookie season with 56 points. Also, despite not being a physical presence, he made a lot of great plays in his own end with 32 shots blocked. Since then, hovering right around a point per game and continuing to be a presence at both ends of the ice is still the Forest’s calling card. New York is one of the most storied teams in the VHL, but their recent history has left much to be desired. This has left Boris without many of the accolades of his peers, but he is just entering his prime so there is plenty of time for that to change. The Forest leads an exciting roster this season that looks to be part of a North American Conference changing of the guard. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that whoever wins the conference title will have to go through Boris and the Americans to get there.
- Erik Summers
 
We're ten players in, with fifteen more to go! What do you think? Some players make the list too soon? Feel like someone else is meeting with a circus monkey right now? Let us know in the comments below!
 
Players Mentioned: @TheLastOlympian07, @rjfryman, @Beaviss, @Steve, @Tate, @Matmenzinger, @hedgehog337, @gorlab, @chillzone

It's been six seasons now since the Moscow Menace entered the VHL and took part in the S65 expansion draft. Now that we won the Continental Cup featuring one of our original expansion draftees, with all of the players involved retired or moved on, it seems a good time to revisit that draft and consider whether there was anything that could been done differently and put Moscow in a better position early on.
 

From Calgary: Karl von Moltke + a 3rd round pick (Justin Cole)
Other options: Aksel McKnight, Johannes Vilhjalmsson
 
The Wranglers had the best situation for the expansion draft in that they could protect all their actives. They actually no longer have any of their protected players left – Brick Wahl lasted the longest – which shows how much they've had to adapt during their rebuild. However, that had little impact on me – I was just happy to get a draft pick along with an inactive player. The draft pick had big potential to be my starting goaltender – Justin Cole – but he fizzled away kicking off a line of failed Moscow goalies, now finally ended by Raymond Bernard, who really turned up the heat at the most important point of the playoffs in S70, against both Riga and Calgary.
 
The only thing that made my pick from Calgary a bit more interesting was that I had also traded for Mark Gebauer before the expansion draft, but Bushito had already locked in his protected list inclusive of Gebauer. It did ultimately have little impact on either Moscow or Calgary – the Wranglers used the pick I traded for Gebauer on Elasmobranch Fish, who turned out to be a better player, but I doubt I would have selected him or the other player from that section of the S65 draft who turned out decent (Denver Wolfe). Either way, although I would have ideally had an active Gebauer given he was still very recently Moscow's second-best all time scorer purely based on a solid build, I didn't miss out on any superstars in the draft who would have propelled the Menace build forward.
 

From New York: Ryan Zabby
Other options: Scott Shawinganen, Anton Edvin, Sven Hitz
 
The Americans' pick here is the biggest “what if” of this expansion draft – what if Spade didn't decide to last minute protect Matthew Materazo? In the end, he ended up losing him to Malmo a season later anyway, and New York's failed contending cycle broke up not long after that, so serves him right. But for me, I had to pick from some scraps of the Americans rebuild, with the best of the bunch being Ryan Zabby, a highly rated S64 prospect who was clearly coming off the boil but I had no one better to choose. Still, I expected a bit more mileage out of Zabby than him retiring the day after the expansion draft and never playing a game for Moscow.
 

From Seattle: Evgeni Komarov @Gooningitup
Other options: Mountain Thunderfist
 
This pick was set in stone pretty much as soon as I announced a team in Moscow – Komarov wanted to join straight away. Seattle was quite accommodating in leaving him available, although they also had eight better players to protect in the midst of their previous, less successful, cup run. Komarov was a good person to have around, although realistically he was never going to work build-wise with a contending Menace team. That wasn't an issue for the first two seasons though, and then he was happy to sit on the third pairing after that, without detrimenting the team much. After 4 seasons, he had to be moved on for cap reasons though and as his attention moved away from the VHL. Overall, I got what I expected with this one – a loyal servant as Moscow established itself. Win/win.
 

From Toronto: Lew Bronstein @stevo
Other options: Johnny Havenk Carison, Sebastian Ironside, Shawn Mendes
 
Toronto was a weird one – this was in between their S64 and S65 championships and they already had been affected by Devise selling the farm so had little to lose to expansion. Ironside was not eligible to be signed by any team that touched him before free agency because of the old GM player rules, so I couldn't pick him, and Mendes hadn't and never would hit 100 TPE. That left Carison, which was the other player alongside Materazo with whom Malmo had better luck with timing. A season later, Carison would be exposed again but on a contract, while after S64 he was a pending free agent. I decided to pass and hope to sign him in FA which I almost did until he signed in Toronto before I had a chance to make him an offer in the portal, directly contributing to Toronto winning the cup again. Regardless, Bronstein was the only option left and he was a good placeholder on defence for Moscow's first 2 seasons.
 

From Vancouver: Nathan N
Other options: Konstantin Mulligan, Toby Fitzgerald
 
Beaviss was the only GM who tried to swing a deal which would have forced me to draft Mulligan, but his build put me off him completely. Nathan N seemed to be a safer bet than any draft pick Vancouver could have offered, that is until he retired midway through S65. Of course, Beaviss and I had no idea that would happen hence the bit of initial wrangling, but in the long run it didn't matter at all.
 

From Davos: Dan Baillie @wcats
Other options: Connor McDavid, Jose Gonzalez
 
The first real success story and the only expansion draftees to survive until the S70 Continental Cup win. The Dynamo always were forced to expose some actives and Dan Baillie was the first talent they lost – now the Menace's second all-time leading scorer and alternate captain for the past several seasons. Baillie has developed how I hoped Nathan N, Zabby, and Gebauer also would, which makes you think what could have been, but even one quality, loyal top 6 forward is a good result from an expansion draft. Ultimately, getting Baillie a cup before he retired (or as it happened, had to be let go to free agency) was one of the feel-good stories of Moscow's cup run last season. The only other Davos player I was considering, Connor McDavid, I ended up getting later on as a cap dump anyway, although his impact in Moscow was significantly lower before he retired.
 

From Helsinki: Paolo Nano @leafsman
Other options: Joey Boucher, The Charm
 
In terms of what I was trying to build (a team made up of S64 and younger players), Helsinki didn't offer much, but they did offer an underrated defenceman when other than Komarov, I was almost exclusively drafting forwards. Gambling on Paolo Nano paid off big time, even with him initially wanting to test free agency and therefore being traded to New York during S65. Something in Moscow just made Nano put up great offensive numbers and he remained a top pairing defenceman for four seasons. We couldn't quite win a championship before Nano retired, which is a shame but he made a solid impact even in his waning years – one of the most underrated players of the decade for me.
 
One of the other options here was also solid – Boucher only just retired as a defenceman of similar quality to Nano, while The Charm was subject to the same restrictions as Ironside in Toronto, therefore wasn't a viable option for the Menace.
 

From Riga: Kyson Blake
Other options: Mikka Pajari, Kisshan Shan, Basaraba Moose, Curtis Gary, Bolt Vanderhuge, Dylan Nguyen, Anthony Dabarno
 
Riga at the end of S64 was the first contender with a massive prospect pool, meaning on paper they were going to expose the best player. They did, and in fact Kyson Blake's player build was as good as I expected it to be, culminating in him being named top rookie in Moscow's first season. Unfortunately, he stopped earning TPE very shortly after joining Moscow, therefore was let go pretty quickly. I can have few regrets about choosing Blake over the other options from Riga because no one on that list would have helped the Menace any more, but that does seem to be the overwhelming theme: despite making the right choice with every one of the 8 selections, almost all of them still weren't good enough.
 
Fortunately, a few other pieces fell the right way later on, like Jet Jaguar falling to tenth overall, or Mat Tocco and Dean Clarke being drafted ridiculously low in the same draft. That theme of steals making up the Moscow cup-winning roster became bigger with the addition of Nate Telker and Killy Foilen (S68) and Oskar Lagesson (S69). The goaltending situation was very shaky for a while, courtesy of Owen May's disappearing act, but came together just in time to convince the free agent duo of Smitty and Gritty to give Moscow a shot. And here we are, with perhaps my finest GM achievement, starting with a distinctly average expansion draft but ending in the euphoria of S70. Or, perhaps, just beginning...

@FrostBeard could've had the competition's leading scorer. Shame. ?

Jesus fucking Christ Kriketers fell to the mercenaries.
 
Not to mention Tocco Tocco Tocco

I usually agree with your stance whenever you call out problems with the league, but the changes with donations seem like the least offensive of the changes here, and this is coming from someone who has donated.

I fail to see why the VHLM graduation bonus needed to be nerfed. 

I thought the point of the bonus was to make recently promoted players more "VHL ready" by giving them extra TPE to become more relevant in the VHL, where there is a large TPE gap between rookies and veteran players.
 
I think if we want to fight TPE inflation for high earners, we should increase regression, not punish recently promoted players.

1. Moscow has made the finals. A 7 game series with Calgary stands between us and the cup. Who do you think is Calgary's most dangerous player? 
Who cares? We fucking won boys!!!!
 
2. Two of the coldest climates in the VHL are playing for the cup. Win or lose, where are you going for summer vacation? 
Staying right here in Moscow, and will probably visit home since I'll be pretty close. 
 
3. Who is your early choice for playoff MVP when we win the cup? 
I think Smitty takes it home.
 
4. Are you altering your player build at all before the finals or just keeping it as-is? 
Kept it the same. Stocking up for my first bout of regression.
 
5. Smitty and Gritty are really hungry for the cup, but who is going to party harder when we win it? 
I mean.... have you ever seen Gritty?
 
6. Can you recommend gorlab another movie to watch? 
Vanilla Sky. I've recommended this movie to basically everyone for over a decade.

@Matmenzinger

1. Moscow has made the finals. A 7 game series with Calgary stands between us and the cup. Who do you think is Calgary's most dangerous player? 
Who cares? We fucking won boys!!!!
 
2. Two of the coldest climates in the VHL are playing for the cup. Win or lose, where are you going for summer vacation? 
Staying right here in Moscow, and will probably visit home since I'll be pretty close. 
 
3. Who is your early choice for playoff MVP when we win the cup? 
I think Smitty takes it home.
 
4. Are you altering your player build at all before the finals or just keeping it as-is? 
Kept it the same. Stocking up for my first bout of regression.
 
5. Smitty and Gritty are really hungry for the cup, but who is going to party harder when we win it? 
I mean.... have you ever seen Gritty?
 
6. Can you recommend gorlab another movie to watch? 
Vanilla Sky. I've recommended this movie to basically everyone for over a decade.

Moscow has won there is nothing left to achieve. Delete league.

I was always picked last in gym because I was really emo, wore skinny jeans under my gym uniform, and refused to participate. Don't feel bad lol.

I was always picked last in gym because I was really emo, wore skinny jeans under my gym uniform, and refused to participate. Don't feel bad lol.

The team captains might be a tiny bit biased, but who's to say?

Very nice playoff run, Calgary. Thank you for the series. You'll be back to the finals soon enough. 
 
Thanks to everyone on Moscow. Very fun season with an awesome ending. @Victor you built a borderline legendary unit here imho, thank you for everything besides not leaking me the trivia answers every week. @flyersfan1453 thanks for the carry, but I really could have used this Kanou for my own HoF claim, smmfh ???.  @eaglesfan036 best top2 center combo in the league, thank you. @hedgehog337 I'm happy our players had as good of chemistry as you and I do as sim leaguers/friends. See you in the HoF, hopefully. @wcats @Matmenzinger @Kyle you guys are the glue of this team imo. Thank you for the cup. @Mr_Hatter the unsung hero of this season/team. Thanks for staying active through the dry times to get to this cup. Set all the MOS goaltending records super high pls. 
 
@Aye my name jeff @fever95 @Telkster congrats on the early cup boys! HoF resume criteria acquired for all of us. Keep it going. 
 
@Will couldn't have done it without you........ Well, we could have, but I'm glad you were on this team. 
 
 
 
MOSCOW MOSCOW MOSCOW