Spartan

Turns out my mom tested positive for COVID so the past couple days has been hectic. It sucks that she's gotten it and is symptomatic, but the timing portion is also the thing that makes us all laugh and seethe as well. In the 2+ years of COVID, not a single one in my family got the 'vid. A week and a half before my mom and I fly internationally and days before my cousins come to NJ to take an international flight, she gets it. The worry is that she recovers and tests negative in order to be able to travel and also that I don't test positive sometime next week, as that'll jeopardize our trip. From a league side of things, Theme week has certainly produced some interesting content with a decent amount of looks back at the league's history and how things have changed/grown. Pretty neat to see the different experiences and perspectives people have within the league. Everyone really has some sort of unique take which is obvious, no two people will have had the same experiences. But even the massive difference in eras is pretty crazy to read about and covers some stuff that is just difficult to wrap my head around. Mostly stuff about the league when I was literally 7-8 years old. Moscow still vibing in the EU and apparently now in the league overall. Feel like a decline is inevitable and that we're overperforming but we'll ride this out for as long as possible I suppose. Young guys are putting in the work and it's helping for sure. Papa still best goalie in the league. Nico leading the league in points and tied for goals which is also fun, hoping that he can help carry Helsinki into a top 3 seed to dodge the wild card. Maybe will lead to an MVP nod? Would be cool, back to back players winning MVP's!

Oops

No, I know it was my question, he just decided to never pay me out smh.

What if your question was used but you were never paid for it -_-

I don't think you ever need to do a PT again holy shit

- Happy birthday VHL, I talk about VHL's growth and how COVID has shaped the league - Thanks for listening to my last podcast @Thunder, you reminded me to record another one for the VHL - @Steve thanks for being my other listener, I gave you a shoutout towards the end - Random other mentions that I cba to recall

I expect a sweet 16 with candles and cake next year

Nice tag @Moon

My head hurts

One of the nicest things about BMTH releasing a new song is that it gives me and Beav a reason to reach out and chat, which is always nice to do. This next album is obviously going in a very different direction from PH:SH, but it's pretty cool and I think it'll sound great live, so hopefully the album releases by September (doubt it though). Updater applications were opened up again after some requests to add a couple more folks to the fold and it's pretty crazy to see how many people have applied. The interest rivals that of VHL GM positions, maybe even more than that. I don't really know what people's motivations are to be an updater, but I'll just drop the disclaimer that you can't approve your own update - if that was part of the rationale to apply . But it is a fun job, it really forces me to read more content around the league and become more aware of users and their experiences that I would otherwise not really take the time to go and learn about. It can also be extremely exhausting, especially when the queue is massive or you have to deal with either user mistakes, or your own mistakes as an updater. So let that be my short blurb about the role. Moscow is churning along, somehow, and currently sits first in the entire league. Pretty baffling to me as I expected us to at least be a playoff team, but not really "top of the league" like we were last season. Pretty nuts to be in this position with Idaho, Moreau or Atreides, but that really speaks volumes to the younger players on the team who have stepped up to fill those massive shoes. Sergey Preobrazhensky is shaping up to be a top forward in the league, Kyosti Karjalainen and Wattson Power are really stepping up and scoring points, and even our rookies Tomas Sogaard and Jason Argos are holding their own and exceeding expectations. Hollywood Hlozek is having a monster season before his retirement and Seabasstard and Markinson are simply unstoppable. Toss in the best goalie in the league in Papa Emeritus (and the best backup in the league in Leroy Johnson) and the squad is just rolling opponents (especially Warsaw). Fun season so far, and we hope to keep the momentum going.

This is going to be a long series lol

I denied it so I'll comment for fun and for the glorious forum content. I'm going to assume this is very tongue-in-cheek/joking, but correct me if its not. People can write personal stuff that resonates so much more with the community than stuff relating to any of the three leagues. We see most of those in the General Discussion (see recent political threads, pregnancy/birth announcements, updates on health, etc.) and those also get pretty solid engagement. Unfortunately, engagement/forum content =/= meeting requirements for tasks. Quality is mainly taken into consideration for graphics and career tasks, and even then it really just means "did this person put in at least a decent amount of effort and/or does it look good." Sure, good is also subjective but we can generally all identify low-effort graphics - for example the ones that look like someone just put a team logo on top of a jersey without literally any other elements or actions taken. There are graphics we accept that don't take hours and hours of effort like some of the best sigs around the league, as we recognize not everyone has been making graphics for years. But even if stuff isn't high quality or high effort, we still have the VHL.com section for people to toss their quick/low effort graphics into and get 2 TPE. We've tried to sort of remove the subjectivity of "quality" with stuff like reviews/game recaps/articles/media spots by providing specific word counts with the intention to make people think a bit in order to spit out some words, but those also need to be primarily league-related. From an updating perspective, no. We're generally looking for content largely centered on the players, teams, users and leagues - but we obviously understand that interactions occur in the community as well and that is considered league related. We had a whole theme week about appreciating other users, but that is largely from the lens of interacting within the league and its community. Personal anecdotes and updates, which while I enjoy reading and encourage you to keep posting in the general discussion subforum, doesn't fall under that umbrella. For example I talk about my day in my podcast sometimes, but it's about 5 minutes or so while the other 25+ minutes are about stuff around the league. I still get to claim it for 2 weeks since a significant majority of the content is league related. It didn't necessarily need a formal announcement since it's not a rampant issue, just one that has seemingly become more common in recent weeks which I correlate to summer and people doing more interesting things away from the league and choosing to talk about that in their PT's. There have been articles completely non-league related and updaters generally noticed that we could probably be a little less lax when we see things slipping. We've done the same with press conferences before, cracking down on the less than a sentence answers, and with videos a few months ago which were skirting guidelines. It's really just trying to make sure we don't stray too far from the guidelines for tasks - which can always be revisited in the BoG. Either way though, I think even if we warned instead of denying, we'd probably be having this same sort of conversation except it'd be "updaters don't like my content" instead of "updaters denied my content." Oh and also the three things you linked - the first life update was completely non-league related and could have been denied but guess it slid, that was probably me. The other two are actually significantly league-related, talking about your player vs the two brief sentences in the vhl.com that got denied. Cheers.

Better leave em both on, considering they both scored goals on Calgary when we beat you guys 5-3 this season

Because he's elite. None of your metrics are needed

Sogaard #1 and Argos FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY

NGL when I first saw this I thought it said "GM needed" and I was going to be sad

Happy belated bud

1. It's a bit disappointing to have lost the momentum we started the season with, but we know what we have to do to get there. Just have to find our game again and play well offensively like we did before. 2. Probably between Riga being top 3 in EU and Calgary not being in top 3 in NA. 3. I think we just need to score more. We've clearly got a very strong offense but we're not scoring enough and bailing out our young defense. 4. I don't know, obviously if a team doesn't perform for as long as NYA or Davos, there'll be chatter about a curse. Sometimes teams being in bad states carry over into the next regime. But there are always points where you can look back at and question "why did they do this?" I'm not free of that as a GM and I criticize my own moves in retrospect. Some moves that the Americans made were just.....questionable and should have rightfully been critiqued, but personal jabs and undeserved criticism isn't ok. 5. Definitely grilling some salmon with some garlic honey glaze, we also have a burner on the side of our grill that we fry some fish in sometimes as well. Really, really good. 6. I'm not a big beach guy, but I did spend time as a kid at a water hole in Seattle which was pretty fun as long as I wasn't swimming near seaweed. I'd always thing the seaweed was a hand grabbing my foot and I'd panic.

Ironically, WJC used to be midseason before it was moved to the off-season since people found the off-season too dull since there were no sims of any sort, but I think the league's stance is "if you want to do it, do it yourself and go nuts."

Claim 3/4

Menace cove must be restored and upgraded

I'll give you a 3rd

@Arce How did you fumble the bag on dropping this rumor?

1. Probably not considering the NA is the easier conference. It's just tighter since most of the GM's don't know how to have a full roster. You know who actually has 30 points in reality, and not a hypothetical? Nico Pearce. 2. Apparently Nezuko's shirts have been flying off the shelves, apparently there are a bunch of weebs out here in Helsinki. It's also quite easy to sell those "BOOB" shirts here, we've got a real degenerate fan base I guess. 3. I can't even recall his impact on the ice, he seemed to really fit the mold of mouth-breathers in the COD lobby who don't know how to mute their mic while crying that they're doing the worst on the team. 4. Considering we weren't even re-signing Jokinen, I feel like we already fleeced Calgary enough by getting a pick from them, let alone a first-rounder. 5. I don't mind, obviously their own players can't give them the content that gets attention and clicks. We're happy to keep other teams' reporters afloat! 6. They've been fun ones so far, but Helsinki will take the win.