Tagger

G - A Red Guy 

@GustavMattias

F - Phil Marleau @hedgehog337

D - Condor Adrienne @GustavMattias

F - Benny graves

@hedgehog337

10 minutes ago, DMaximus said:

Last year, I asked the doctors if I could go over 99 and they said no.

You should talk to Rauno Palo, the man who science hates!

The traditional belief that a hockey player gains more experience through more years of playing the game has been thrown for a loop after a recent study into the matter centered around the skaters of the VHL. Scientists rated each of the VHL's main roster skaters from 40 to 99 based on how much experience they gathered that the player had through analysis of their playing style and communication with teammates along with private conversations with each player centered around their approach to hockey. 

Interestingly, one current VHL player managed a perfect 99 score, and it was not even a player entering his eighth and final VHL season. In fact, it was Calgary Wranglers Defenseman Charlie Paddywagon @DMaximus, who they cited as having an "impeccable and unrivaled hockey mind". Further intrigue came from the player who registered the third highest experience. Edwin THE Encarnacion, Paddywagon's teammate and fellow defenseman registered a solid 85 experience (once the next update goes through), but what makes this really intriguing is that Encarnacion is not even a third of the way through his professional hockey career, but is demonstrating more experience than players who have played for over twice as long as he has.

While the scientists declared the research into any potentially positive effects from a player possessing more experience "inconclusive", it would be very interesting to see how a defensive line with both players on it would perform. 

1. Calgary has two new rookies that  will join you this season. Latrell Mitchell @dasboot (D) drafted 3rd overall and General Zod @Matt_O (D) drafted 6th overall. How will you welcome them to the team ? 

I will stare at them for 17 minutes straight,

2. Jacques Lafontaine just got his contract extended 5 more seasons past S72. What do you think about this potential franchise goalie signing ?

He’s a good player and it’s a great sign for the Wranglers

3. The Calgary Wranglers went 42-28-2 in S71. What Record do you predict to have in S72 ?

Not sure, it’s difficult to tell given I don’t know what the team is going to look like (I presume we’re resigning the two Bushito players, but that also puts us over cap).

4.  In S71 Calgary finished with the 2nd most "goals for" with 211. Calgary also allowed 201 goals against, which was 3rd most. If you had to predict a total GF and GA for S72, what would they be ? 

With us having younger depth d, I wouldn’t be surprised at a higher GA, but I think we can get more GF as well

5. In this upcoming season, would you consider anything less than making the cup finals a success ? 

Like the question two before, not really sure what the team is going to look like, but I think Conference Final would still be considered solid.

6. With new faces from the trade deadline and now the draft, let's get to know the members. This is good for members who have been around awhile  too. 

What country do you live in ?

Ps4, xbox, PC or not a gamer ?

How old are you ? 

Favourite food ? 

Are you trying to hack into my account?

Is this worth a listen? You bet your ass it isn't!

I talk about the draft for as little time as possible so I can hit the cap.

7KV17458MN5438301

Doubles

5 TPE

Full Free Week

What would be your ideal player stats for the upcoming season ? 
 

if I got 1500 points, that would save me a lot of hassle when it comes to HOF consideration

2.  Who do you think should win the "Slobodzian Trophy " (most outstanding player) and why ?

Brick Wahl because he was Very good at hockey

3. I don't like this question but if it's not Calgary hoisting the cup in S72, who has the next best chance ? 

I don’t like that question either!

4. The Wranglers are having a secret off season party. Who is the best candidate to host it ? 

Ill do it, I’ll post all the invites on social media

5. No VHL player scored more than 40 goals in S71. Will someone do it in S72 ?

Unless less than 1 percent of my 1500 points will be goals, it’s gotta be this guy right here

6.  Which VHL player has the best chance of hitting 100pts this season ? 

Same again, I’m getting 1500 so you can count on me

7. Had the NHL not been postponed, who wouldve won the Stanley Cup ? 

I would take a guess at The Hartford Whalers

42 minutes ago, Victor said:

 I think improving from OK to the best player in the league is still a valid reason to win it.

I guess my point is that, in my eyes, Wahl has already had seasons where he's been considerably more than OK, in fact among the league best. If they had only been OK, then I would have seen more of the argument towards it. 

Note: By this site, I mean the current domain we're on, which we moved to in S35 but the first draft was S36. Thanks to Victor for the spreadsheet to make this easy

Season 36

Dujuan Cook - 9th Overall (BagelBites)

Not a draft for first gens, exemplified by the fact Cook's last post was posting his achievement tracker prior to the VHL Draft. If he made the VHL, he didn't do so by right of passage, earning just 62 TPE.

Season 37

Jakub Linholm - 2nd Overall (RandomHero)

A considerably more hyped first-gen especially coming off a second overall selection (although this was only because New York held three picks in a row and figured they'd pick the first gen first), his consistent TPE earning stopped about a month or two after the draft (he did come back for a bit a few months later, but only put up 10 posts before leaving for good). Despite the low TPE total, he did win a cup, and had a very strong 82 point season in Season 41.

Season 38

Don Draper - 3rd Overall (Will)

I think Will's first effort at a player shares a lot of comparisons with S63 first overall first-gen Ryan Kastelic. Two players who earned an absurd amount of TPE (Draper's 1000+ TPE was during an era where the record was only 1400 and Draper retired two seasons early) and wound up in GM roles during their first player's stint in the VHL but their players never really performed to the ability that their TPE would have suggested. The most important first-gen created in this site's tenure. (However, if this doesn't post because of the site maintanence, I take it all back and Dujuan Cook was way better).

The VHL made a number of job changes recently so I'll give my thoughts on the ones I found most interesting (for the most part because I used to hold these roles):

The updater job has moved up to four TPE. In general, I am more than fine with a pay raise for an updater. During my time as an updater, there were weeks where the amount of words I was writing in PMs for denials/edits would have been more than enough to see me hit the TPE cap twice over through the usual PT means, so the pay has always seemed small for those who approach the work with the right attitude. But I think that's the key, this is fine for those who are claiming it and are doing the work that they are claiming to do.

One of the problems I had with the job were that there were a few instances where I felt updaters were not doing nearly enough to warrant the 3 TPE (and by that I mean ridiculously low update counts), yet still claiming it anyway. I remember one such instance where I had to tell an updater to start updating or have his claim denied because his combined pay for the month (which had been approved by other updaters) was sitting at exactly 3 TPE per claim processed, which is evidently not enough to warrant the pay as a singular claim can be done extremely quickly.

So I guess what I would like to see with the jobs where it makes sense to do so (so not jobs like Commissioner and Developer for example which focus on an overarching impact rather than a weekly basis) is people only being allowed to claim their job pay once they've done the job and there is evidence to prove they have done so rather than just being able to claim it whenever the week starts. This is something that we introduced for the VSN when it was clear there was rampant abuse of the claiming system (one such example saw a user claim 11 weeks of the pay with only one article produced during that period) and it's been incredibly effective in stopping this stuff and it is a pretty easy thing to monitor for most jobs (e.g. Fantasy Zone could be monitored with posts of new threads/awarding of TPE, same with Trivia, Recruitment Team can provide links to recruitment based threads like reddit posts, etc.).

Speaking of the Recruitment Team, their pay has seen the biggest hit of them all, going down to 6 TPE. I think this is something I'm more behind now than I would have been before, but I think part of that has to do with the fact that I've not personally seen as much activity in these fields in comparison to when I was part of the same crew. Also, while recruitment should continue to be a focus even through this peak period in the VHL's lifespan, it's definitely not as desperately required as it was when we first started offering 12 TPE out specifically for recruitment work, so I can see why the pay would go down at this time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

On another note, the VHL just posted up it's awards for the season and, predictably, Prague Phantoms Brick Wahl took home a boatload of individual awards. Deservedly so, the season that Wahl had was better than any other player and all of the awards that were received based on this individual season were merited. However, I personally don't believe that Wahl was the right candidate for the Dustin Funk trophy, the one which is awarded to the player who has shown the most improvement. While it cannot be denied this is Wahl's best season to date, it isn't like this is the first time that they've put up an exemplary season in regards to the other goalies in the league. In Season 66 for example, Wahl had the highest save percentage in the league and while no award was taken home that season, it still proved that he was already capable of being the best. 

Compare that with the climb of Erik Summers, a player who, while he took home the top rookie trophy last season, didn't make that much of an impact in the league as a whole, registering only the 33rd most points for a defenseman. Fast forward to this season and Summers has skyrocketed up the ranks to post the best defenseman points tally of the season and the joint-most assists in the league along with a very impressive +/- of 25. While it's readily apparent that Wahl had the best season, in my eyes, the player that has displayed the greatest improvement against what they had previously shown is Erik Summers.

My other gripe was that Keven Foreskin was even on the ballot for this award when there were much more deserving candidates. Foreskin did achieve a career best 65 points this season, but that's not really a considerable improvement over his 58 point season two seasons prior. Compare this to the Seattle duo of Scott Greene and Ambrose Stark, who broke their career best point totals by 18 and 21 respectively to take them from good starters to league best forwards. Funnily enough, Foreskin wasn't even the best candidate on his own team as winger Owen Nolan produced an 18 point improvement over his career best to catapult into eighth in points out of all skaters. 

Speaking personally though, this also marks the first VHL award that I've received a nomination and a subsequent vote for to round off what I feel has been a very strong sophomore season for Encarnacion. Heading into the season, I felt like this was the only award I stood any chance of winning, but I didn't feel like I was going to improve by as much as I did given my status as a second line defenseman. 

But finally, thanks to the VHL for providing me with content to write about given I've struggled immensely to come up with topics over the past few months.

1019 words

Using for two weeks (W/E 5/17 and 5/24 barring circumstances)

Sure

Over the last month or so, it has been clear that number one overall selection Edwin THE Encarnacion isn't finding it quite as easy as his predecessors did when it comes to earning TPE. Articles here  and here have showcased the problems that the Dominican has had when it comes to submitting point tasks, but, for the large part, he's managed to find solutions to get him out of TPE-jail, however questionable they may be. This week was no different, as he's made a last minute change to a VHL.com article to boost it just over 500 words so that it can qualify for media and it's that article's place, he's submitting this absolute codswallop to make sure he gets the 12. 

Given he's only just concluded the second season of his career, one has to wonder how long he can manage to keep this up over the course of a career that is expected to go on for still six more seasons .

Happy Birthday, sorry I'm late to the party!

I've been stuck for content ideas for my media spot this week so I figured I'd just do this, use Random.org to pick out a random trade recorded in the VHL archives to analyze:

This week's is a Season 62 mid-season deal between the Helsinki Titans and the Seattle Bears, a deal which I’m lucky enough to be able to provide some solid context to given that I was on a Riga Reign team that was in a similar phase of their own rebuild to the Bears:

To

(S56) C - Jack Shephard

To  

S632nd

S633rd

S64 3rd

Team Context:

Seattle

Starting a rebuild at the same time as Riga in S61 (both had 3 first round selections in that draft, two of those players taken with those firsts were current Hall of Famers Podrick Cast and Matt Thompson), the two teams were vying it out for the 4th best team in the VHL heading into the start of Season 62. Seattle would wind up winning the battle in the S62 playoffs, although Riga won the subsequent S63 draft lottery.

Helsinki

Heading into a rebuild after a long playoff stint and having lost lots of their personnel from the previous season to retirement.

Players/Picks:

Jack Shephard

Was coming into S62 off a career-best 102 point season but was in his second season of regression and hadn't updated in a month and a half prior to the trade. Went a point per game over the S62 regular season but led the league in goals through the S62 Playoffs. Would leave the following season in Free Agency to join Riga.

S63 SEA 2nd

Pick was Jesse Wilson, a very solid defenseman for the Helsinki Titans and a cup winner for them in Season 66. Coincidentally, the Bears picked a defenseman four picks earlier in the same round in Mountain Thunderfist, who Wilson would comfortably outperform both in on-ice production and TPE gains.

S63 SEA 3rd

Pick was Wlodzimierz Zajackowski. Looked like he could be a very solid under the radar pick, but went inactive shortly after Season 65 started.

S64 SEA 3rd

Pick was Sven Hitz. Accrued a pretty solid 400 TPE for a third rounder in that era and produced a lot of hits in his three seasons in the VHL, but ultimately his physical build saw him register very few points. 

Verdict:

I think this trade's success verged on Shephard sticking around for one more season with Seattle, given that it wasn't realistic to expect him to guide a Seattle team with one VHL quality defenseman to the Continental Cup in Season 62. Given that I don't think there were cap reasons for Shephard's entry into FA (Could be incorrect, but given all but two of their main roster were on rookie deals, I'd be surprised if that were the case) and that Helsinki got a solid player in Wilson (and wound up being better than the defenseman Seattle took earlier in the same round), I'd have to say Helsinki got the better of this deal.

1. Ok so things didn't go as planned.  You have just been eliminated by Vancouver in game 6. I know the wound is fresh but how do you feel ?

It's a shame but Vancouver were a very good team

2. Can Calgary come back next season an even stronger team ?

I think we can, although I think main area we need to address is the hole left by Tonn.

3. Do you have any plans for the off season ?

Much like the regular season, I plan on not leaving the house

4. What NA conference team are you cheering for now ? 

Well I think Seattle's the only one in now, so I guess them by default

5. What EU conference team are you rooting for ? 

Same as previous but with Moscow

6. Are you happy here in Calgary ?  

Sure, I can't argue with two straight playoff appearances to kick off my career.

After a completely forgettable rookie season, Edwin THE Encarnacion has bounced back in his second season with a huge improvement to his stats across the board. The Dominican defenseman came ninth out of defenseman in total points and leads the Calgary Wranglers in both assists and shot blocks. This has led to Encarnacion becoming a surprise candidate to participate in the Season 71 All-Star game. As things stand, Edwin is currently the eighth most voted for defenseman which (if voting were to end now) would be enough to see Encarnacion play a role in the All-Star game, however he is currently only one vote ahead of Seattle Bears defenseman Berocka Sundqvist and there was some controversy surrounding the All-Star game not originally allowing votes for Malmo Nighthawks defensive defenseman Condor Adrienne. Whether he makes the All-Star game or not though, Edwin will undoubtedly be happy with his improvement over his previous season and, with the potential of playing a bigger role on the Wranglers next season with the impending retirement of Jordan Tonn, will be hoping to improve even further heading into the last season of his rookie deal

1. I know this question was asked last week but the standings are shaping up and odds are we face D.C or Seattle,  who do we match up better against ? 

I'm gonna be the wildcard and say we face neither.

2. Only a few games left in the season. Is there any statistical milestones you would like to hit ? 

I was happy with how it went, leading the team in assists and shot blocks

3. Do you plan on growing a dirty playoff beard ? 

I already have a dirty everyday beard thank you.

4. The season is almost over. Who has been your teams MVP this season ? 

I would prolly go with Barabash Jr.

5. Is there a player in the upcoming draft you would like Calgary to select with Helsinki's 1st round pick ? 

Its a bit of a weird one given we need defense but top four in TPE in draft class are forwards. Latrell Mitchell is looking good though. 

6. What is something you enjoy eating that most people dislike? 

I'll go with drinking, I've found out that apparently people hate Tomato Juice whereas I believe it's definitely a top 3 fruit juice

The VHL has recently undergone a cosmetic change that has seen forums and topics moved around into different locations, so I figured I'd make my media article for this week about those changes. (Funnily enough this was going to be a VHL.com, but then I realised there were far too many words to not use this for media). 

Beefing up the VHL Hall of Fame

I think this is the one that I'm going to have to get most used to given that I'm one of those who has frequently used the career stats threads for the previous 30 seasons in their old location, but that's not to say it's a bad change by any means. Lumping all the career stuff together in one area is going to make it a lot more user friendly when it comes to research for trivia and, especially if anyone newer winds up taking over with these duties, they'll know where all the pages they have to update are.

Changing Up Point Tasks

VHL.com point tasks have now been moved into the Player Management category with the rest of the weekly point tasks, which is another welcome change. They've also split up VHL.com Graphics and Articles which I also like (I made a player card in January pointing out it was weird that there legitimately wasn't anything inside the forum to suggest player cards go there). Only thing I would say is that it might be worth making a thread within the Supplemental Point Tasks section giving guidelines on how many of these you can do in one week (e.g. you can't do all three of the VHL.com supplemental Point Tasks in one week). 

Career Point Tasks have also got quicker links on the front page, which I like. I understood why they didn't want it like that in the original layout (It would have added far too many sub-links in the point task section), but now they've been given their own sub-forum, it makes more sense. 

The one additional change I would make is moving VHL Trivia from Fantasy to Supplemental Point Tasks. I know Trivia is not exactly like the rest of the supplemental point tasks in that it does have a 1-2 week break at season end, but I think it has a lot more in common with those tasks than those in the VHL Fantasy category (especially now that there is no uncapped TPE associated with Trivia) and putting Trivia in with Supplemental Point Tasks will make it easier for newer members to see what is available to them for their 6 capped TPE from extra point tasks. 

The One Thing I Miss

I don't think this is a recent change (I think it's been gone for a few seasons now), but I would still like to be a finance archive added to the Hall of Fame category containing old finance threads and, if possible, finance sheets for previous portal seasons. For making historical articles, these were good reference material as to why certain moves were made and other fantasy moves couldn't because the salary cap has historically played a big part in the league's transactions. Without that material, it's a lot of guesswork and digging through other threads for context. 

1. So MU actually managed to throw PSG out. Surprised?
I remember being very surprised at the victory yeah. Shame we hit a rocky patch pretty much immediately after

2. Do you think Liverpool still has a chance at the title?

Who would have thought that COVID 19 would be pushing for the title at the start of the season eh?

3. Looks like Riga is now a solid second-third place team. Can we fight for the Victory Cup though?

Now Preencarnacion is done, no. 

4. The most important question that pisses me off - why my goalie is so inconsistent?
Well at least he’s now consistently retired 

5. How is it to come back to do VHLSC rankings? Like the draft is hella deep. 

So deep I couldn’t keep up with it. 

6. Do you think we need to raise a cap cause of an upcoming draft?
Sounds like we’re looking at expansion instead perhaps

How many people have I recruited to the VHL?

Directly, zero. Since becoming an active member of the VHL around the end of Season 33, I haven’t had anything close to an online presence outside of the league. I don’t use Reddit and I’m not a member on any kind of hockey forum (mainly because I don’t watch hockey), so I haven’t really been in contact with anyone who liked hockey but didn’t know about the league. The lone affiliated sim league that I’d been in at the same time as the VHL was the short-tenured USFL (which existed around S39-S40 VHL time) and while some players did make their way over to the VHL from that site, none of them were through me.

Indirectly however, I did recruit Advantage to what I seem to remember was his first player sim league in the ISL (an American football league) and from there he found the VHL, so that’s pretty much my lone claim-to-fame when it comes to recruiting efforts. Back when I was on the recruitment crew as a “retainment specialist”, I did give my two cents in regards to my thoughts on proposed recruitment strategies from both Beaviss and Spade, but I don’t know if I actually came up with any of my own (and if I did, they weren’t used).

Which recruitment strategy have I seen that had the least payoff?

I would say our least effective adverts have come courtesy of the paid google and reddit ads. In fact, I cannot recall any VHL members who are currently on the site (although maybe this has changed at some point) having found the site through our paid advertisements on those platforms. I think it’s fair to say that we’ll never get anything close to bang-for-our-buck when it comes to those advertisements as we just don’t have the capital or the userbase to make a noticeable enough impact in those spaces. I don’t use Reddit to post, but every time I go on there, I see the same advert every single time multiple times on the same page and it’s usually some trash mobile game or app.  

Which recruitment strategy have I seen that had the most payoff?

I’d have to say our targeted reddit community posts, which played a huge part in us being able to stack the Season 63 Draft with talented prospects in a draft that really needed it (there were only five recreates taken in the first three rounds of that draft, and of them one was under an alias and another had not added any of his TPE to his player). Also, our affiliations (while not being on quite as good terms as before) continue to provide solid recruits.

Thoughts on current recruitment

To be honest, I can’t make a proper comment on this since I feel like I may be missing some of the recruitment strategies that are taking place right now, but it’s good to see that reddit posts are still going and that we’ve made a new affiliation with the PBE.

After receiving an anonymous tip, the Court of Arbitration for Sports has summoned Calgary Wranglers Edwin THE Encarnacion to court. charged with bringing the game of hockey into disrepute. While none of these charges seem to be directly filed against Edwin THE Encarnacion himself, he is serving as a "punishment surrogate" for the potential crimes that were purportedly committed by Edwin Encarnacion, from whom THE Encarnacion was cloned from. While Encarnacion was a controversial figure both on and off the ice with his inability to play the game properly combined with arson and drug based exploits, he never faced any punishment from the VHL for these actions. What is different now though is that the tip details that Encarnacion "knowingly and willingly" participated in illegal activities in order to farm the TPE (The VHL's practice currency) that would spawn from the ensuing media response to these actions, something that had not been considered by the VHL previously. 

There's not been any punishment prepared in advance if Encarnacion is found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute, but sources indicate the worst possible outcome for the Dominican would be expulsion from the VHL with all previous Encarnacion records and achievements (including those of Reencarnacion, Threencarnacion and Preencarnacion) wiped from the record books. If that punishment is deemed to be the correct one, the party that stands the most to lose would be the Toronto Legion, as their historic three-peat may be reduced to just a repeat given the role that Reencarnacion played with the team in Season 50, the season which the Legion won their third consecutive cup. 

The trial looks set to commence next week and is to be documented by a private media crew. 

Five