Tagger

The pairing that I was hoping we'd be similar to in production was the Wolf-Thomassen combo (since that was my peak activity era) so I'm very happy that we managed to top that together!
 
Feels like our partnership was kinda like the Sturridge(Me)-Suarez(You) partnership for Liverpool back in the day. Both put up big numbers together but even in that period, you were still very much the better performer and you continued after leaving whereas I became injury prone/inactive and barely seen for the remainder of his career.

The pairing that I was hoping we'd be similar to in production was the Wolf-Thomassen combo (since that was my peak activity era) so I'm very happy that we managed to top that together!
 
Feels like our partnership was kinda like the Sturridge(Me)-Suarez(You) partnership for Liverpool back in the day. Both put up big numbers together but even in that period, you were still very much the better performer and you continued after leaving whereas I became injury prone/inactive and barely seen for the remainder of his career.

The retirement of Edwin Preencarnacion @Tagger this off-season, my long-term linemate in Riga, means I can finally complete an article that's been on my mind basically ever since the Cast-Preencarnacion 'EdwinCast' duo burst onto the scene in S61 and especially S62. Once the two of us realised the on-ice chemistry we had, we made it a sort of half-spoken goal to become one of the best linemate partnerships in VHL history. Dreams of eight seasons playing on the same line didn't quite come to fruition after Edwin went inactive, while Cast was moved to Moscow once the Reign's offense dried up in S66. However, I think we still made a good fist of it.
 
Below is primarily a countdown of total combined points accumulated by two players on the same line, therefore the focus really is on longevity rather than 2-3 seasons sparks of unbelievable chemistry. However, I have thrown in a few of the best short-term duos to round off the top 10, as well as including some honourable mentions below. Finally, at the bottom of the article is the comprehensive list of best duos based on average combined points across their time as linemates.
 
Honourable mentions:
Leeroy Jenkins, Pavel Koradek & Matthew Boragina (S24 Davos, S25-S27 Helsinki) – 301 points per season on average @Squinty @Koradek @Boragina
 
One of my personal favourite VHL trios of all time, probably at least partially as a result of them existing relatively early in my VHL life. Jenkins and Koradek started off as second-liners on the S24 champions in Davos, before rookie Helsinki GM Boragina brought Koradek to the Titans and the two clicked instantly, breaking the 100-point mark each, with Koradek becoming one of the few MVPs in league history to play for a non-playoff team. The puzzle was complete in S26 when Davos rebuilt and traded Jenkins to Helsinki as well – as a top line, the three put up 411 and then 395 points as their drove one of the more underrated Titans squads to the cup in S27.
 
It would be hard to split this trio into any two pairings, Jenkins-Koradek or Koradek-Boragina, which is why they don't crack the list. But if I ever do a similar article on most productive lines in VHL history, rest assured this powerhouse will be right near the top.
 
Teams rather than single duos
There were a few duos I came across in my research where in fact, it wasn't just one line doing the work, it was both the first and second lines on the same team.
 
S17-S19 Calgary – Mikka Virkkunen & Lars Berger (averaged 224 points over 3 seasons), Jardy Bunclewirth & J.D. Stormwall (239 average over 2 seasons) @Matt @Victor @JardyB10 @Zero
 
The first was the offensive juggernaught which was S17-S19 Calgary. With four of their six forwards being future Hall of Famers (and S17 rookie of the year Matthew Gunnarsson thrown in for good measure), it's no real surprise in hindsight that the Wranglers romped to back-to-back championships. This was in spite of barely having a defence or active goalie in S18 – when they sorted that out, Calgary only lost 1 game in the S19 playoffs. Berger, Virkkunen, and Gunnarsson took on their opponents' top defencemen and when teams tired of defending against that line, the 1-2 punch of Bunclewirth and Stormwall hit them on the line change.
 
S41-S42 New York – Conner Low & Tom Slaughter (237 average points), Jody 3 Moons & Xin Xie Xiao (218 average points) @Smarch @sterling @gorlab @tfong
 
In a similar way to the old Calgary team, the finest New York team of all-time was also able to run two unstoppable lines and terrorise opposition. It only led to one cup in S41, but keep in mind this was the continuation of the S38-S40 run, which had already brought a cup and two finals appearances. Conner Low's move from defence up front to accommodate Matt Bentley and replace Odin Tordahl coincided with Slaughter and XXX hitting their prime, while rookie 3 Moons was more than happy to do the damage on the Americans' second line.
 
Threepeat Toronto – Max Molholt, Zach Parechkin, LeAndre St. Pierre (S46-S52) @Molholt @DollarAndADream @atw2592
I was actually quite surprised how little time the Hall of Famers Molholt and Parechkin spent on the same line, barely playing much for two of the cup-winning seasons, S48 and S49, or in S52. That balance is probably why the Legion were so successful though and I would be remiss to not mention this duo, as when they did play together for four seasons, they put up an impressive combined 784 points. But Molholt's most prolific partnership actually came with the more unheralded LeAndre St. Pierre, another threepeat regular, who put up 200 points to Molholt's 253 over two seasons as linemates in S48 and S49.
 
The ones who benefited from inflated seasons:
There were a couple exciting partnerships which I couldn't include because their brief time together also included two of the most obscenely high-scoring seasons in VHL history: S20 and S62.
 
Tarik Saeijs & Mikka Virkkunen (S20-S21 Riga) – 262 points per season on average @frescoelmo @Matt
Jasper Canmore & Keaton Louth (S61-S63 Calgary) – 241 points per season on average @Bushito @Beaviss
 
Saeijs and Virkkunen was a classic duo, a future Hall of Famer on his entry-level contract, and a retired legend with his spot in the Hall secured. Unlike Calgary two seasons earlier, it wasn't enough to get a cup, but enough to secure Saeijs a 157-point season. Meanwhile, while the agents behind the Canmore and Louth have fallen out spectacularly in the time since, and both players are still on the outside looking into the Hall of Fame, for three seasons they were the partnership to beat in the league. Each put up 100+ points in each of S61, S62, and S63, hitting 138 (Louth) and 142 (Canmore) in S62, when they also won the championship on the second of three straight trips to the finals.
 
Fredinamijs Krigars & John Locke (S57-S58 Riga) – 263 points per season on average @hedgehog337 @Will
Finally, this one might come as a shock as this duo came third in average combined points, but were penalised for playing on the second line. Without doubt, the Krigars-Locke combination was essential to Riga winning back-to-back cups in S57 and S58 and securing their Hall of Fame stats, but it's hard to rank against all the other lines based on weakness of opposition.
 
Alright, now onto the countdown:
 
 10. Unassisted & Diana Maxwell (S52-S54 New York) – 249 points per season on average
There was a lot of free agency movement in the S51 off-season, including the Hamilton brothers and Greg Clegane signing in Toronto, but probably the most influential was Unassisted @STZ moving to New York. Already a prolific scorer with Quebec and Calgary, joining the Americans allowed the one-name center to get his hands on the Continental Cup twice, thanks to a prolific partnership with fellow future Hall of Famer Diana Maxwell @street. Together, the duo put up a combined 747 points in 3 seasons, before breaking up in S55 as Maxwell moved onto a line with Essian Ravenwing. With Tom Lincoln also featuring on the team, New York chose to outscore their opponents, and did that to good effect.
 
 9. Scotty Campbell & anyone (specifically Alex McNeil and Matt Defosse) (S2-S5)
You can't go through a VHL ranking without mentioning Scotty Campbell, at least not when goals and points are being considered. His first consistent linemate was good personal friend Matt Defosse, with whom Campbell linked in Vasteras for 2 seasons before both were famously traded to Seattle before S4. Over 3 seasons, the duo put up 822 points, for a borderline insane 274 average points per season. That is, until Campbell found even greater chemistry with their new linemate on the Bears – Alex McNeil. In S4, Campbell put up 174 points to McNeil's 126; in S5, once Defosse left for Helsinki, Campbell got 190 and McNeil 162 – those are stats still among the untouchable VHL records. Prime Scotty was an unstoppable machine and his almost as prolific linemates ensured the championships kept rolling in.
 
 8. Tukka Reikkinen & Lasse Milo (S25-S28 Vasteras) – 840 points
Keeping to the Vasteras theme, the cursed franchise's second and final Continental Cup came in part thanks to having a few points of attack, enabled by the younger second line featuring Tukka Reikkinen @.sniffuM and Iron Eagles lifer Lasse Milo @PensFan101. But it was actually after the win in S26 that the duo broke out, as with the team stripped of all other assets they put up Campbell-esque stats in S27 (152 points for Reikkinen and 147 for Milo). That was ultimately the highlight of their time as an offensive partnership; Reikkinen's best days were still ahead of him with New York, while Milo never quite hit the same heights again. However, for their obvious chemistry and being the defining players of the last good Vasteras team, they deserve a place on this list.
 
 7. Alexander Chershenko & Volodymyr Rybak (S28, S30-S31, S34 Calgary) – 899 points
On paper, this should have worked out even better than it did. Two Ukrainians who would end up with some of the best career stats in VHL history, playing on a perennial contender in Calgary, as well as one consistently producing some of the league's most entertaining hockey. In fact, Chershenko and Rybak didn't quite click as much as they could have but still had their moments – a Continental Cup in S30, joint-140+ point seasons in S31, and one last swansong on Chershenko's return to the Wranglers in S34. Purely on talent even if not on actual line chemistry, these two managed to put up some elite numbers together.
 
 6. Lukas Muller & Pierre Gaudette (S53-S57 Quebec) – 937 points
Perhaps not a duo that immediately comes to mind, but the last great Quebec team before its move to Vancouver lent itself to prolific scoring. The Meute focused on star power rather than depth as they got to 4 straight finals in the 50s and their cup-winning team in S56 featured just 8 players, but 5 of them future Hall of Famers. One of the other 3 was Pierre Gaudette @Frank, who formed a highly effective duo with Lukas Muller @solas, one of the finest playmakers the VHL has seen. Together they combined for 5 individual 100+ point seasons, while also accommodating various other superstats on the same line – John Locke in S54 and S55, Pietro Maximoff in S56, and Diana Maxwell in S57.
 
 5. Felix Peters & Jarvis Baldwin (S26-S30 Seattle) – 1,009 points
Into the top 5 and into the duos which put up over 1,000 points in their time together. Naturally, two members of the Seattle Six make the cut – six stars (3 forwards, 2 defencemen and 1 goaltender) who spent all five seasons of that contending period together. Felix Peters @gregreg and Jarvis Baldwin @CoachReilly are perhaps its most famous members and both benefited from the chemistry they found on the ice. Five 100+ point seasons between them rarely falling below the 90-point mark, Baldwin and Peters also formed a legendary line with Nikolai Lebedev, although not during his best year, the cup-winning S28.
 
 4. Bruno Wolf & Aksel Thomassen (S40-S44 Quebec) – 1,086 points
Perhaps the perfect example of a prolific duo – a hard-hitting goalscorer and a silky smooth playmaker, aided by a GM who was willing to sacrifice team balance for individual results. Despite this, Quebec probably deserved more in the playoffs in that S42-S44 window, but that team is best remembered for the Wolf-Thomassen duo (@Kesler and @Frank). They broke out in S41, putting up 537 points between them in the next two seasons, Thomassen providing the assists on a plate for the clinical Wolf. They slowed down a bit for the last two seasons as the team grew deeper, but still each hit the 100-point mark with ease, consolidating their Hall of Fame careers.
 
 3. Franchise Cornerstone & Rudolph Schmeckeldorf (S55-S60 Helsinki) – 1,221 points
Generally, this list is filled with Hall of Famers as having a prolific partnership generally helps both players' career stats. However, in this case, Helsinki's Schmeckeldorf @Corco was just happy to ride the coattails of his (literal) Franchise Cornerstone @boubabi. He hit 100 points twice, with 113 in S57 and 109 in S59, but most of the legwork was done by his more talented linemate. Cornerstone also formed a similarly strong duo with Theo Axelsson, first on the second line in S53 and S54 and then to devastating effect as the top line in S56 and S57. However, they couldn't match the longevity of the most loyal Titans of that generation.
 
 2. Podrick Cast & Edwin Preencarnacion (S61-S66 Riga) – 1,261 points
Well, here's the most recent addition to the list, climbing to 2nd place on perseverance alone. Without doubt, their totals were helped by Cast's modern day record 174-point haul in S62, with Preencarnacion not far behind with 141, but the duo remained unrivaled in 60s VHL for their consistency. Preencarnacion continued to put up 90+ point seasons every year until Cast's departure after S66, no mean feat in the modern low scoring VHL. The fact that Riga couldn't win another playoff series after the S63 cup win will be used against 'EdwinCast', but it will take something to match their regular season prowess going forward.
 
 1. Phil Rafter & David Smalling (S27-S33 Davos, S34 New York) – 1,650 points
Finally, the expected top ranked pairing. Brothers David @Knight and Phil Knight @Phil finally got their players onto the same team simultaneously and proceeded to spend the rest of their careers together, other than Rafter's brief stint in Helsinki after the S32 trade deadline (he came back to Davos for S33). The British duo were effective the originally Thomassen (all-out attack guy, i.e. Rafter) and Wolf (two-way dynamo, no pun intended, in Smalling), but for much longer and to a higher level. Like with the 'EdwinCast' tandem in second place, Rafter and Smalling surprisingly only brought home one Continental Cup despite considerable regular season success, but that will not stop them from remaining the forward duo to beat.
 
And here's a full ranking by average combined points per season:
 

Thank you to everyone who applied.
 
@OrbitingDeath and @Tagger have been hired on as Updaters. As well, @rjfryman has also been added as an updater, but will not be claiming pay for the job as he is already at the cap.

When I first got into the New York locker room, one of Esso's first requests was a normal one: PM him what number I wanted on the team. The addendum though actually caught me a bit off guard, even if it shouldn't have: "Make sure it's not a number that's retired."
 
According to the Team Announcements forum, the last jersey retirement occurred more than a calendar year ago: Helsinki and Higgins retiring Ay Ay Ron's number for Boubabi. In other words, long enough ago that Boubabi has been banned, unbanned, and Higgins inactive then active again since then. The last jersey retirement for the Meute was S56, the Legion S53, the Americans S52, the Reign S45. Both the Vikings and the Express - two teams that haven't existed in 10+ seasons - have retired jerseys more recently than the Dynamo (S41!) or the Wranglers (S36?!?). The Bears have absolutely nothing; the team's "Hall of Fame" has had one old player and question marks for 10 seasons.
 
One of the main reasons I stick around the VHL in particular is because of the history of the place. And while the Hall of Fame is the best place to commemorate that history, I'd argue that retired numbers are the second best - they demonstrate the long-standing history of many of these teams, and the unique players that were a part of franchises that may not have been good enough for the HoF proper. Players that are 6-8 good, active seasons on one team should be awarded, in my opinion.
 
So, I'd like to see not only numbers (why were they removed from player creation?) but number retirements become more of a thing again. It wouldn't be too much work from GMs - just a bit of understanding of a team's history, as well as a quik photoshop job from someone on the team. I think it'd be a time investment well worth the effort.

Yeah like DollarAndADream says, the 2 TPE articles go into the VHL.com Articles section of the forum (on the home page between VHL Hall of Fame and VSN). Since I've seen you've claimed this for 2 TPE, I'll move it for you accordingly, but all future 2 TPE articles should go in that section. 

I don't have a player in the league at the moment (he's coming at the deadline) but I'd be interested in the position of updater and taking up the role prior to my player's creation. 
 
When I was in charge of the LIVE Player Rankings as Recruitment Crew, I would go through the update queue prior to updating those rankings and put through everyone's update free of charge, often on a daily or every other day basis, so I have experience with the job (and actually still have the powers leftover from that period). I'm very alert to what is and isn't considered valid in terms of TPE claimed (No complaints were ever levied my way in regards to incorrect updates) and in the past have spotted errors that other updaters had not. 

I don't have a player in the league at the moment (he's coming at the deadline) but I'd be interested in the position of updater and taking up the role prior to my player's creation. 
 
When I was in charge of the LIVE Player Rankings as Recruitment Crew, I would go through the update queue prior to updating those rankings and put through everyone's update free of charge, often on a daily or every other day basis, so I have experience with the job (and actually still have the powers leftover from that period). I'm very alert to what is and isn't considered valid in terms of TPE claimed (No complaints were ever levied my way in regards to incorrect updates) and in the past have spotted errors that other updaters had not. 

Good stuff, will give it a listen when it's done.
 
If you fancy a question for it:
 
The last time that Team Scandinavia won the World Cup was in Season 48 (10 tournaments ago), given the amounts of Scandinavian talents featured in the first round of this last draft and some top prospects for Season 69 Draft, do you think Scandinavia could break that spell sometime in the near future?

But they stayed down under the impression that they would get achievement tracker TPE from this season. I could understand that viewpoint if this had been announced earlier, but not when it comes after the cutoff date and some of these guys have jumped through hoops to get under the cap to qualify for the extra TPE.

I guess I just don't understand why it couldn't just have followed the same path as the media, which kept pretty much the same requirement but allowed you to do that much (500 words) multiplied by however many weeks you wanted to do, given that nobody has ever made a complaint about the minimum required for a podcast previously. Like I don't understand why the TPE:minutes ratio gets better value once there's three or four people given that it's much easier to do a podcast with more people as that gives you more people to bounce off of, more follow up question opportunities, etc as opposed to having to come up with all the discussion topics yourself as a sole podcaster.

So for the most part, excellent changes. Even as someone who was more in favour of crossover, I can understand the limits the sim presented and I think a decent compromise has been made.
 
HOWEVER...
 
Im really confused by the changes made to the podcasts. As someone who puts more than enough information into their 10 minute podcasts to warrant the 6 TPE, I don’t understand why the required length of a one week PT has now gone up by five minutes, especially given the more relaxed approach that has been taken to other PTs (e.g the quality required of graphics) across the league. Is there an explanation for this?

Posting up a thread because I'm not sure if something's affected the BOT but no thread was posted when I retired.
 
Retired to save Riga from cap problems and my stats from plummeting even further. Recreating at the deadline. 

Posting up a thread because I'm not sure if something's affected the BOT but no thread was posted when I retired.
 
Retired to save Riga from cap problems and my stats from plummeting even further. Recreating at the deadline. 

Woo, I got myself even though I realised after the fact I messed up one of my answers (put that I'd been here 10+ years, but I was thinking of sim leagues in general rather than VHL ?)

So earlier tonight, @HulkHogan made a "which VHL member are you?" quiz. I took it and it sucked. 
 
So, I made a better one. http://www.quiz-maker.com/QKBX8B7
 
So far, it's done wonderfully--Fonzi, Josh, Victor, McWolf, and Berocka all got themselves on the first try. I got myself when I tested it. And every member who is one of the possible outcomes managed to get themselves within two tries.
 
So, I'm putting this here for whoever wants to do it; there are about 20 possible outcomes to the quiz. It says there's a "limit of 25 responses," as I haven't forked over any of my money, but I don't know if that means that it can only be done 25 times, or that I can only view 25 people's responses--which I don't care about because I closed the window without ever making an account so I have no idea if I can even access the responses. If the link goes dead, I'm sorry. But have fun.

The thing to bear in mind in regards to doing order of draft picks by regular season is that we operate in a league that gives an incentive for teams to grab players later on in the season through a reduced salary hit based on when they come in, therefore their regular season record isn't neccesarily a great indicator of how good the team is come the end of the season (which in turn would be closer to how they will look at the start of the following season), because some of their star players could have been playing elsewhere for 2/3 of the season. 
 
If the trade deadline had been more akin to say the NFL one (less than halfway through the season) I could see more of an argument in favour of regular season playing more of a part in the draft. 

Talking about Preencarnacion's retirement and the plan with the next player

Talking about Preencarnacion's retirement and the plan with the next player

Talking about Preencarnacion's retirement and the plan with the next player

it was an honor sharing the blue line with you for a part of this season o7

EdwinCast one of the greatest duos in league history. Rest in peace brother.

Anyone still playing Overwatch? Gotten very interesting recently with the new role queue feature and the new hero Sigma.

A couple weeks ago I went through every active player in the VHL above 100 TPE (i.e. S60 to S69) and put down the usernames of those players. I then added a few other members who don't have players but still pop in occasionally. Finally, I added their first player's draft year (or first relevant player's draft year as a few people only properly joined the league on their second attempt) and actual real life year that draft took place in. Then I pivoted the fuck out of it.
 
Here's the result.

 
So what does this show us? Well, for one, the absolutely insane recruitment effort which has taken place since the start of 2018 (S60). Now naturally, a table of S60-S69 players will be skewed towards the last two years as even inactives count towards the total and a similar snapshot at any point in time would have resulted in the more recent years being dominant. That said, this is still an unprecedented influx of new members, with roughly 75% of the league still on their first players. Even if only half the new joiners stick around for several years, 2018 and 2019 will still be the most popular join dates of active members.
 
Aside from that obvious trend which has directly contributed to the revitalisation of the VHL after a really rough year or so, you can also see why the league was down in the dumps for so long. The pivot by year shows the continued retention qualities of the VHL as roughly the same amount of people have stuck around from each year, whether that be the guys here since S1 or anyone more recent. However, the last real good recruitment year before this boom seems to be 2013, with guys like CowboyinAmerica, boubabi, Tagger joining the league after expansion and keeping the momentum going through the 30s. Then the talent stopped trickling in. You look at the five members who joined in 2016 and still have players today – 2 of them are inactive, while the other 3 actually only just resurfaced. Essentially, before Beaviss and Spade joined in S57 towards the end of 2017 and then completely rehauled the league's recruitment efforts, the last 3 major contributing members to join the VHL were hedgehog and Bana in S42, and jRuutu in S43, all now over 4 years ago.
 
That therefore paints a pretty good picture of why by S50 we were looking at artificially increasing the player pool with Project Player Two and when that didn't help / sucked the energy out of the dwindling member base we still had, we ended up with contraction by S58. So I suppose what I'm trying to say is the recruitment effort after that lowest of low points has been absolutely immense. I retired my “last” player in S52 and genuinely had no intention to come back on a permanent basis throughout 2017. Even when I did, I still found myself zoning in and out of the league in Cast's first two seasons – S60 and S61. But activity has picked up massively, I'm now in charge of an expansion team, we're expanding to a level we never came close to reaching at any point in the Cologne/Quebec era, and I might even be hooked enough to recreate for the foreseeable future. That's a job very well done if you ask me.
 
Well done @Beaviss and the @Recruitment Crew

That is my fav GM run in history I think, and it'll be hard to top it for me, regardless of what happens. I just really dug the group of members we had during that run tbh. Plus it felt like @Tagger was just building up assets/picks waiting to give me the reigns so I could do what I do. Ergo, draft one or two players and trade the farm.  One of the most underrated and unheralded aspects of good GM's, is how well they prepare their team for the person next, and in a lot of cases good GM's will find the right person to take over given the team situation. It's a big reason why some franchises can go on such long and successful runs. Look at Helsinki, when is the last time they had a bad GM or a bad run? Tons of smart GM turnover there with a mind for the vision of the franchise with every GM who has taken over. 
 
Anyway, thanks for the kind words my dude.