Spence King

Welcome to the VHL,
 
If you have any questions please feel free to reach out. The draft is on Sunday, goodluck!!
 
Ricer13
Miami Marauders GM

what about you and the man that made you the legend on the ice @Hudogg!!! Dont forget to throw him a mention or two  I :fingerscrossed you two end up on the same team in the draft tonight ! Joshoooo and Huard 😱
 

This is AMAZING ! Great work for you 1st Graphic ! with little to zero guidance ! Great work Josh-O ! The font is amazing i really really like the way you made it pop and an interesting but appealing color contrast that i find extremely aesthetically pleasing The Watermark is your biggest flaw by far , next time make sure to use an image that isnt copyrighted with a watermark, even removing a watermark is considered disrespectful even if that wasnt the intention , it is. So avoid watermarks like the Canvas one here . Other wise i love the Logo choice obviously the colours look great the actual player pic is a great shot with the shadowing it looks for a great pre draft Graphic ! My advice : Next time use a VHL/VHLM related Logo, maybe try a graphic that involves you formatting the team8/9your drafted to and there Logo which can be found on google just seach png the team name and try and do a logo swap, this is NOT easy, but i think you can do  it 
Review:8/10

With the upcoming draft just around the corner I thought it would be time to talk about one the best picks available; Joshothegreat. Josho is for sure the fastest player in this draft class and his hands are pretty good too, this guy just knows how to score goals and make everyone around him so much better.  I was able to spend some time this off season watching him train in Sault Ste Marie and i was blown away by the skill set that he has and blown away with how hard he works everyday to be the best. In my opinion whatever team selects Josho is going to be very happy in the player and person that they get.  I can assure anyone that this player is the real deal and whatever team does select him are going to be going on long championship runs for years to come because this guy is a winner!

Halifax is gonna have one of the best locker rooms now, congrats to @rory its a great choice!

sorry DIl
congrats rory

congratulation to former best agm rory

It obviously sucks to take over from someone who has been such an influence to both me, and the entire league. I have a lot of respect for Dil and his dedication to the league and to Halifax. Talking with Dil in discord has been one of the highlights of my time in the VHL and I was honestly sad when the charity drive was as successful (?) as it was. 

I hope I can be half the GM Dil was. 

congrats @rory well deserved. 

Congrats Rory. You're a hell of a member.

Can we not do this

Sorry to see. Best wishes moving forward Dil. Chin up!
 
Good luck Rory.

It's always unfortunate to see a GM fired. I wish Dil the best of luck in the future.
 
Though congratulations to @roryfor the promotion. You deserved it bud.

Uh???? No....
 
Side-note: congrats to @rory. Time to join the Halifax GM club!

RORY!!!!!

feeling FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY @DMaximus @diamond_ace  no hard feelings whatsoever deffintely a GREAT hire and this " feeling Ssnubbed" not Fisted in anyway Love to DA ! You rock and thanks for keeping things in such good order here. The league is possible without your daily and incredible demonstration of dedication and Genuity ❤️
 

Scotty Campbell, very clearly, is the VHL’s greatest player of all time. No one even comes close. He is the only player to have a point total in the quadruple digits, as well as the only player to average over one goal per game through their entire career. He is the undisputed GOAT of the VHL. However, it’s impossible to deny he had some help. I have been tirelessly trying to find ways I can to prove that Campbell isn’t perhaps as great as everything thinks. I had a media spot a couple weeks ago accusing Campbell of being a playoff choker; this held true until I realized that his playoff career totals in his hall of fame article were completely incorrect. So, I naturally had to take things one step further.
 
We all know that the league has the most activity right now than ever before. There are more players in the league, double the amount of teams we once had, and we are not even ten seasons removed from the two largest draft classes in league history (S66+S67). In the modern VHL, there are more good players, less minutes to be played, and less opportunities to score, problems that Campbell did not ever have to face. The biggest difficulty that players face now is that when they enter the league, most players have more TPE than them at the start. Since Campbell started in S1, he didn’t have this problem. He was always the best player, throughout his whole career. It’s clearly harder as a player to produce points in the modern VHL than it was in the beginning, but how can we prove this? Unfortunately, the only true way to find out how scoring has changed throughout VHL history is to collect every single player's all time stats, and sort them accordingly. This is going to be fun, right?
 
I split up VHL history into nine generations. Each generation was 8 seasons, the maximum length of a player's career. Every player with 200+ games played is a part of this data. I collected the points, goals, assists, points per game, and games played for forwards and defense, as well as save percentage and goals against average for goaltenders.
 
Data
 
Firstly, we are going to look at forward stat changes throughout the years. In order to find this, I took the average games played, goals, assists, points, and points per game and put them on a graph over time, to show how scoring has increased or decreased throughout VHL history. Here is the graph:

Blue: Games played \ Yellow: Points \ Red: Assists \ Orange: Goals \ Green: PPG (multiplied by 100, so it would show up on the graph)
 
Just from a first look at this graph, we can tell that everything decreases over time. The only thing that doesn’t noticeably decrease is games played, which was actually steadily increasing until it hit a low in the ninth generation. It’s very clear to see the trend; as more time went on, scoring became less common. We see this especially towards the end of the graph, which is where the ninth and final generation take over. Goals, assists, points per game, and especially points all clearly decrease, especially points. It takes a nosedive. This is the trend that I was hoping to find. Despite the total number of games played staying pretty steady throughout all of VHL history, the point totals have all taken a very noticeable dip, in two distinct four season groups.
 
The first four generations all saw average point totals over the point per game mark, a testament to how offenses would dominate in the early years. However, that then dropped to around 0.92 points per game for four seasons, and would hover around that mark until the final generation where it dropped all the way to 0.7.
 
Despite games played staying pretty consistent throughout each generation, scoring takes a very noticeable decline. Let's look at stat changes for defensemen.

Blue: Games played \ Yellow: Points \ Red: Assists \ Orange: Goals \ Green: PPG (multiplied by 100, so it would show up on the graph)
 
For defensemen, the trends are a little different, but still tell the same story. Defensemen’s careers actually got longer as time went on, yet all their other stats continued to decrease. If you look at the start and end points of the graph, it looks pretty even. However, that doesn’t tell the full story. Point totals peaked at around the fourth generation, and then continued to decline even though games played continued to increase. In the ninth generation, games played increased by one of the most noticeable margins, yet all offensive stats went down at the same time.
 
The two distinct four generation groups strike again, similar to how it worked for the forwards. The first four generations saw point per game totals around .85, peaking at .91 in the third generation (S16-S23). From the fifth to the eight generation, points per game all hovered around 0.75, and then in the final generation it hit its lowest point, at 0.68 points per game.
 
The biggest difficulty with defenseman was sorting out which defenseman were forwards for a portion of their career. All of the point totals would go up artificially, so I had to fix some things. If a player played half his career as a forward and then the other half as a defenseman, I collected their season by season stats and put their offense stats with forwards and defense stats with the defenseman. The only players this affected was Matt Bailey and Keaton Louth, who both played exactly half of their careers as a forward and the other half as a defenseman.
 
For defensemen, you can look at this graph in two different ways. If you take the graph as a whole, you can clearly see that games played continue to increase, while the rest of the stats stay the same or slightly decrease. You also could look at the graph’s from the peak in points. The point totals go way down after the peak, even though games played increase. Now it’s time for goalies.


 
I decided to add trend lines for the goalie graphs, to make it slightly easier to look at. The data is a little choppy, going up and down, so the trendline helps make it easier to see how the stats change over time. Goals against averages decreased over time, while save percentage increased over time. GAA was at 3.11 in the beginning of the VHL, which reached a low of 2.03 in the seventh generation (S49-S56). It has gone up since then, but the average is still very clearly decreasing.
 
The graphs show that the GAA for goalies have decreased over time, but we can really put these numbers into context. Throughout VHL history, 104 goalies have played 150+ games, the minimum number of games to qualify for this list. When you rank them in terms of GAA, the best first generation (S1-S8) goaltender to appear on the list is Matt Pogge. He ranks 37th, with a GAA of 2.48. He is the only first generation goalie in the top half of the list. Perhaps even more amazingly, Pogge (hall of famer) and Adrian McCreath (hall of famer) are the only goaltenders from the first generation that aren’t in the bottom 25. Out of 14 first generation goaltenders, 12 of them are in the bottom 25. Compare this to the most recent generation (S65-S75), where only one goalie is ranked in the bottom 25.  That goalie is Owen May, and it's almost not even fair to have him ranked in the bottom 25. In his five seasons as a starter, he spent four of them on expansion teams (Moscow and Prague), and then another season with the rebuilding Toronto Legion. Meanwhile, we have hall of fame goaltenders from the first generation ranked below May.
 
Save percentage is another trend that is clearly on the rise. In the first generation, the average save percentage wasn’t even above 0.91. Despite the decline in recent years, it still is clearly increasing, as shown by the trendline. When you rank all 104 goaltenders by save percentage, eight first generation goalies are in the bottom 25. However, we also see three goalies in the top 20. What does this mean? Does it mean that goalies in the first generation weren’t as bad as we think? Not necessarily.
 
The way I interpret it is that there were way more shots on net in the early days of the VHL. If the save percentages of the top goalies are holding up 75 seasons later, but their GAA’s are in the tank, it must mean that goalies were facing tons of shots per game. When we look through the all time stats, my claim holds up. Three first generation goaltenders appear in the top 10 for shots against. Dominick Stryker, Greg Goldberg and Anton Nygard are the three, and Nygard and Stryker are the two highest ranked first gen goalies by save percentage. Stryker is first in shots against, Nygard is sixth, and Goldberg is eighth. In fact, Stryker is over 2,000 shots ahead of second place despite playing 60 less games. Despite being ranked in the top 10 for shots against, Goldberg, Stryker, and Nygard own three of the four fewest games played totals in the entire top 25. Nygard only played 377 games and still sits 70 shots ahead of Norris Stopko, who played over 150 extra games than Nygard. Who is the goalie that also has one of the four fewest games played totals? Jonas Markstrom, a second generation goaltender. In the early days of the VHL, shooting was much higher than it is now, and that is reflected through goaltending stats.
 
Final analysis
 
So, what does all of this mean? Did I just spend hours combing through the all time VHL played and goaltending stats for nothing? That was a fear I had before I took on this project. What if I spent all this time researching, only to find that there is no trend at all? What if I found the opposite; that scoring is actually more common now? After a few hours worth of research, I luckily discovered that was not the case. Scoring has clearly gone down since the early VHL days, and it’s by a good margin. In the first four generations of VHL history (S1-S32), the average player scored at a rate above a point per game. Now, the average player doesn’t even score at a rate of 0.7 points per game. Shooting numbers have gone way down, while GAA’s have gone down and save percentage has gone up. But if you recall, the reason for doing this wasn’t to look at scoring trends throughout history. It all was about watering down Scotty Campbell’s success. How did he do it? He was so good, he was impossibly good. He played in the era with plumbers, players today are much stronger. It’s impossible to tell how a player from a different era would do in the modern game. This is true in real life sports, with real life players. It’s even more impossible to determine how older players would do in the modern era when they don’t even actually exist. However, I tried my best to do just that.
 
Julian Borwinn, the highest scoring player of the ninth generation. In 576 games, he had 325 goals, 380 assists, and 705 points. How can we compare him to Scotty Campbell? What I did might not be the best, most scientific way to go about things. In fact, it probably isn’t. But at the end of the day, I thought it was acceptable, so I went through with it. 
 
I compared Scotty Campbell’s stats to that of an average first generation player, and then compared Borwinn’s numbers to the average ninth generation player. Campbell scored goals 3.2 times as often as the average player, and also dished out 2.5 times as many apples. Borwinn, on the other hand, scored 2.8 times as often as a ninth generation player, and had 2.3 times as many assists. I took those numbers, where we compared Borwinn and Campbell to average players from their eras, and then flipped it all around. I took Borwinns rates of scoring, 2.8 and 2.3, and applied it to the average first generation player, and then I took Campbells rates, 3.2 and 2.5, and applied it to the average ninth generation player. What are Campbell and Borwinn’s new stat lines? Is Campbell still the VHL goat? 
 
Campbell, when adjusted for ninth generation scoring rates, had a career where he scored 372 goals, had 410 assists, and 782 points. Hall of fame worthy career? Absolutely. Greatest of all time? No way. But what about Borwinn? The reason Campbell is the GOAT is because of his sheer dominance, and if Borwinn can’t put up seriously elite numbers, it will simply prove Campbell is worthy of his GOAT status. So, what did Borwinn do? When compared to first generation scoring rates, Borwinn put up 524 goals, 593 assists, for a whopping 1117 points. It isn’t the same as what Campbell put up, but it still is an incredible total and would make Borwinn only the second player to ever reach 1000 points. This study doesn’t even take into account the change in shooting numbers. Campbell took over 1500 more shots than Borwinn in the same amount of games. If Borwinn shot the puck as much as Campbell, perhaps his adjusted numbers would be even better than Campbells. 
 
So, after a ton of research and lots of writing, what conclusions can we draw from this? Firstly, Campbell is still the GOAT. Even though he played in an era where it was much easier to score, he still dominated at an unprecedented level. However, it also shows us why many of his records are considered unbreakable. No one will ever reach his point total, or even come close, just because it’s much harder to score in the modern VHL. Scotty Campbell will always be the GOAT of the VHL, but it’s impossible to deny he had a much easier time scoring than any current players would.
 
2378 words

A few people have already heard about what is going on here, so allow me to get out in front of things:
 
Due to multiple things over the course of several seasons, and having been warned in the past and having been on the receiving end of violations, enough has added up that we have decided to remove @Dil from the role of Halifax GM. Understandably, this is a severe move with only limited precedent, and it's particularly harsher than might have been expected, but it's added up over time to such a point that for the sake of the Halifax team and those associated, it was seen as the necessary move to make at this time.

*NOTE: Dil himself has received a bit more in depth explanation on the matter, but I would request that the main details remain among only the relevant parties. Dil is the one who needed to hear it, and he has. He was owed as much out of respect for his time served in the role.
 
Effective immediately, as it is the busiest time of the season for VHLM GMs and it's simpler under the circumstances to give the team to an individual already intimately familiar with the workings of the VHLM (and he was among a select pool of qualified candidates anyway, making this part of the decision much easier than the decision to remove in the first place): @rory will be taking over as Halifax GM.

Again, this is not a step we take lightly, so please treat this situation with the seriousness it deserves - it's going to be hard on a lot of people, especially Dil himself.

Team slogan graphic for my expansion team the Colorado Gold Kings: 
 

Like I did with the Ohio Railers, I took a stab at making another expansion team for a future VHL/VHLM expansion! I took some influences from teams that I created on my playstation through the EA NHL games and if this is a hit I'll slowly add in more from my arsenal. Or not, who knows 🙃

Hailing from the Rocky Mountains, this team is named after the second largest gold rush in the area that helped to create the Colorado Territory in the mid 1800s. Using the slogan As Good As Gold, this team is ready to excel in every aspect of the game while creating a unique environment within the arena for fans of all ages!

I give you....
 
 
 
 
 
THE COLORADO GOLD KINGS!


 
 
 

 
 

@MMFLEX To the one and only DAN DAN "The Man"
Welcome up to the Pros Big Boi lol
 
If you Notice @PatrikLaine is in on the hug, so in character for him lol
 
 

https://gyazo.com/3b80bd0ed6e9b914b77804e5d1680f78
 
M U R I C A

Salutations VHLiens,
 
It's that time of year again. The most controversial forum topic of the off-season is back for it's 7th-annual satirical judgement of the next generation of VHL stars. Despite this being largely a comedic / groaner type of media, my unquestionable status as a sim hockey legend does lend some weight to the status I give out to the rookie crop of VHLers every season. In a future BUST OR LICK, we will be analyzing the results of previous BUST OR LICK articles (or maybe I'll bring in an unbiased third-party researcher) to really show how accurate my ability to predict sim careers is. Today, however, we just have a normal edition of BUST OR LICK.
 
The formula is simple: I don't pay attention to anything having gone on in the VHLM for the past 1-2 seasons, use marijuana, and categorize each pick in the 1st round of the VHL entry draft into one of the following two categories:
 
BUST - A bad selection, meaning the selected prospect's career will not pan out or be considered a success. This can be the fault of the player themselves (going inactive, building wrong, etc.) or the team selecting them (cursed, GM'd by beaviss, located in Davos, etc.) will not be experiencing much success in the tenure of the selected player's career.
 
or
 
LICK - A good selection, meaning the selected prospect will likely experience a successful career with any combination of stats/cups/awards. This is usually down to the powerful aura of the user themselves, but can sometimes pop off if the team is looking good/contending.
 
 
Now, without further ado....
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
*** TRIGGER WARNING ***
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
*** TRIGGER WARNING ***
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BUST OR LICK - S76 VHL ENTRY DRAFT
 
 
1.  Red Lite - @Tate - Tate coming off of a sneaky HoF calibre career with his first gen (I think Lincoln Tate was his first gen player anyways) so it's very hard to give this pick a bust, when you also consider how hot his wife is. Tough break on going to NYA but esso still got hope to turn things around for the franchise. Last season was the first time the 1st overall pick received bust status, and it will remain the sole example of such freak phenomenon because Red Lite gets LICK approval for NYA. 
 
2.  Battre Sandstrom - @Acydburn- Another re-create I am pretty familiar with. I believe Acyd is also coming off his first-gen effort, which was far less successful than Tate's, but he did manage to claim a couple of cups with Acyd Burn. Good guy imo, pretty decent with graphics but gets lazy with it. Tough call for me, because I think his allegiance is with some other sim leagues and he's an Affiliate claimer, which to me has red flags. Tough break on the draft destination as well.  This is going to be a BUST for me, but I hope Acyd has a good time with his second player. 
 
3.  Tom Eagles - @Greg_Di- Uhh, is this draft all first gens going to their second player or wtf is going on here? Greg_Di back after a pretty good run with Greg Eagles, quite a bit of hardware and cups. Pretty rare for a first gen goaler to hit a lick like Greg Eagles did, and even moreso since he played half his career on Vancouver. Don't know too much about the guy, and he's kept his forum avatar as a default image - hence we have another BUST.
 
4. Hulk Hogan Jr. - @Beaviss - Look, another first gen member coming into their second player.... ahueueueuee, Beaviss coming with another effort here. Not sure how Beav manages to have multiple players on the go in the VHL at basically all times, but since his only HoFer (HHH) is like, 3 players ago now, this can't really go down as a lick. Hopefully Beav and Josh combine like Voltron and take LA to some sort of mediocre success, because the franchise looking like it's falling behind it's expansion counterparts bad. BUST.
 
5.  Kristof Welch - @Juice - Literally never heard of this player/member until right now. Peace likes to think he's got a pulse on the VHLM / new gens, which is fine by me. Pretty much the safest BUST of the first round thus far. New member coming into a rotten franchise, that's a big yikes for me.  Good luck to ya though. Maybe you are the missing link that takes Toronto back to relevance (not likely though).
 
6.  Frank Funk Jr - @Rayzor_7 - Now here's a much better shot at bringing Toronto to some level of relevance. First-gen on their second player seems to be a running theme in this draft. Rayzor, for me, probably had the most successful first gen career of all the draftees thus far, and imo elevated Seattle into a dynasty team with his last player. Dude has some good info in the finances & stocks discord channel, has gotten into some trouble in his career, and seems to be disliked by a decent chunk of the community. This is a recipe for success in my opinion, and as much as I don't want to do it, Toronto has found themselves a rare LICK here.   We'll see if Rayzor can translate his goaler success to skater success. I think he prob can.
 
7.  Caitlyn Catowize - @CrazyCaityCat -
 
8.  Hex Rose - @Hex Universe - A really really really really enthusiastic first gen. Annoyingly so. Seattle seems to have a knack of turning this misfit-type member into success, but SEA dynasty is over and not starting up again any time soon. Don't know, or care, what Hex did in the VHLM, and I don't read his articles, sooooooo.....  BUST. Hold this L for now and maybe you'll be lucky enough to throw it back in my face in a few seasons, but I doubt it.
 
9.  Phoenix Dawson - @Toast - Ahhhh, finally we get to a historical member who was putting in that sim league pain long before any of the previous draftees. Salute to Toast, always been a good guy to chat with, and when he's active, can be a really enjoyable/driving force in the league. I haven't followed his VHLM career, and unless he's incognito on Discord, I haven't seen him much there either. I clearly have a huge bias for historical members, but let's keep it 100 here. He's on Seattle, and he's probably going to go back inactive. BUST.
 
10.  Robin Galante Nilsson - @RomanesEuntDomus - Another somewhat historical member. I've clashed with him numerous times over the past ~10 years or so, but I can't deny he knows how to build an STHS player, and **CAN** be a big/active member of the community. Pretty sure he still calls SHL home and treats VHL as a side-piece, which is a flaw for me. For anybody who knows our history, this is going to seem like a massive heel turn, but I'm willing to say that if VHL was his main league, and he wasn't welfare'ing, this would be a lick. Even being on Welfare, and being on Vancouver, this guy does have the capability to produce a dominant sim league player. BUST anyways though. GL to you RED. 
 
11.  Gunnar Odinsson - @BOOM - Best pick of round 1 full-stop. When you factor in that BOOM is one of the most iconic VHL members of all-time AND you have the enigma Jubo07 popping up, out of literally nowhere, to take him @ 11th overall, which I think was surprising for a lot of people, makes this a very volatile LICK for me. VHL has changed a lot since BOOM's peak of activity era when he was posting beautiful topless women without a care in the world, but I HOPE he continues activity for the career of Odinsson just because he's a great community member to have around. Jubo might have cracked the code and entered the matrix with this pick. Look for Helsinki to be a force again shortly. BOOM the only VHLer in history to be willing to cop plane tickets to come run a fade. If that ain't lick status IDK what is.
 
12.  Phil The Rock Johnson - @Phil - Back-to-back iconic VHL members at 11 and 12 here. In the current VHL gen, Phil has fallen back a bit, but he definitely has the ability to crack off a HoFer and be a positive, enjoyable member of the community if he's regularly active. I do have some activity concerns, but his pedigree is unquestionable. I don't want to fuck up my lick ratios, but for a member as iconic as Phil, exceptions need to be made. Sorry about going to SEA, phil.  LICK.
 
13.  Philip Stein - @IHateBobNutting- Going to assume this guy made an impact in the VHLM. Hopefully McWolf unearthed a gem for himself, as LDN finds themselves with LA, lagging behind the rest of the expansion teams. Obvious BUST though. We got VHL legends at 11 and 12, then somebody who hates BobNutting enough that he made it his username. What's so bad about Bob Nutting anyways?
 
14.  Magnus Verlander - @Jbeezy76 - Username is sort of familiar to me, so they might be a recreate, or from another league.  Calgary can't update their new logo as an emote though???   Have nothing coming to mind when I think of this player / user. Good luck in your career I guess? BUST.
 
15.  Abe Roque - @Abe Roque - Now this is a first gen I like. Same name on the player and user. I know nothing about this guy, but he seems like a meat & potatos type of player. Nothing fancy, just hard work and dedication. Obviously not a lick, but hey, could be the next great VHL member? Probably not but I guess d_a can dream. BUST.
 
16.  Jivere Zolnek - @Sixersfan594 - This guy is actually a sim league legend as well. Beaviss MIGHT have caught himself a lick here, because even though sixers aka taron aka tomer aka DYMO (like I said this guy has a rich sim league history) I think is primarily on SBA and doing affiliate PT here, he does have STHS experience and can both build a productive player, and be a productive LR guy. He's a good guy and I consider him a friend, especially from my SBA days, but he might fuck off on beaviss or beaviss might misuse him. Hate to not give him a lick, but he'll get over it. BUST for me, but really a solid pick for 16th overall IMO.
 
 
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There you have it folks. Another season, and another crop of VHL prospects who have had their unplayed careers judged and categorized by someone who barely remembers anything about the VHL other than what my own player does. Hope everybody had fun, and congratulations to all the recently drafted players. May you find your time in the VHL to be a LICK even though I've already confirmed that it's going to be a BUST.
 
 
 
Thanks for reading. Cya next off-season. 
 
 
[ 4 LICKS  /// 12 BUSTS ]