Spartan

Yeah I need to learn to not elaborate on every thought that pops into my head. I'll blame my lack of affiliate check claims on my inability to write less than 300 words in one sitting.

Time for the monthly VHL.com to claim as affiliate checks! Anyways, since the last media spot/blab, our final regular season position was determined, as well as the projected pick ranges for our two first rounders. For the second season in a row, I'm excited that Moscow holds 2 picks in the top 3, also holding the projected 1st and 2nd overall selections. Luck's really been on our side so far, as two trades with projected contenders in the past two seasons have ended up with Moscow receiving the 1st overall pick, or at least the best odds for it. Do I expect this trend to continue? Hopefully not, as I'd hope we won't be trading for 1st round picks when we become a contender. I'd rather see that kind of luck show up in our sims in the next few seasons. Plus, roster space is starting to get tight, as we're looking at having 4 forwards, 1 defenseman and a goalie coming up from our prospect pool for next season, not counting our two 1st round picks in this draft who are likely to also start on the pro roster. It's going to be a challenge to manage all of these VHL caliber players while still giving everyone meaningful time and also making sure we stay under the cap. More specific thoughts on this draft: I'm pretty excited about the top 6-7 prospects in this class. I think nearly all of them can be valuable day 1 players for Moscow, and likely won't need another season in the M. Markinson and Reikkinen are the clear top 2 defenders in the class, although it's a decently deep class for defensemen with 15 actives over at least 120 TPE. Defense is definitely a need for Moscow, especially as it's the one area of our roster where we don't have many young players, or players ready to make immediate contributions to the Menace on the ice. While we have Tristan, Kamkar and Tipton all at S75 or younger, we're still looking for a franchise "top defenseman" to be the leader in the position group both on and off the ice. We're guaranteed to have our selection of at least one the top 2, but I think Sova and Tavau also merit strong looks. Seabasstard and Tallinder are the clear top centers, with Tessier also up there. All three will likely be ready to play in the VHL, although I suppose there may be a little bit of ambiguity with Tessier at 229 TPE, so I think the time between now and the draft will clear up his situation. Giersbergen is likely to stay down another season, which in terms of goalies, isn't going to make much of a difference. It's just 8 fewer career starts at worst, which is negligible in the long run. Regarding forwards in this class, there's a decent level of depth for centers, but just a few high end wingers. Anze Miklavz, Henri le Massif and Alex Johnston are likely to go higher than projected, mainly because the defensive depth of this class can allow for defensive needy teams to hold off on selecting one early. I think it'll be interesting though to see how teams will value defense, as there are 7 defensemen within 30 TPE of each other in the 180-150 range, which is a relatively easy gap to catch up to. But wingers will definitely be a valued position in this draft, so expect a run on them in the first round. Yes, yes, I know that centers can play winger. But I'd imagine folks would prefer to play in their natural position, especially as they're likely to have invested TPE into FO, making them a less effective forward overall. I know centers in recent seasons have hinted at or expressed frustration with not playing the position they created to play, so I'm thinking as if teams will draft players to play their natural position. Lastly, goalies are an interesting area here. There are really only 2 top goalies here, with about 50 TPE separating Giersbergen and Greiss. Both players have developed nicely since entering the VHLM, though timing really explains the gap between Giersbergen and Greiss. Had Greiss created sooner, he'd probably rival Giersbergen to be the top goalie in this class though I know GM's interested in goalies will have to decide who they think will have the better long term value. Both goalies are likely to stay down for another season, but I don't think there are many teams who will be looking for a new, starting goalie. DC is the main team that comes to mind, so despite them not having their own first round pick, it may be a blessing in disguise as they have their 2nd round pick, which should be high enough to take one of these two goalies to eventually replace Wolski. I know that I'm keeping an eye on these two, mainly because Malone is S74, with regression just 2 seasons away. Bowman could blossom into being the starter, but I suppose that it's always nice to try to be prepared for the future. Overall, I think this draft class has essentially held to the expectations set by myself and a few other GM's towards the beginning of the season. Very strong at the top, with 4 or 5 players ready to start in the VHL immediately. There's another small pocket of players who are likely to also be mid-first rounders, and then the group that comprises the late 1st can be lumped in with most of the players projected for the 2nd round. There's a tad bit more spread on this class than before, but a mix of familiar and fresh users along with mixed histories will certainly play a factor into where their players go. This will be my first full offseason, since I was named GM just a few days before the S76 draft, so I'm excited to have the entire offseason and this playoff period to chat with the players in this draft and work with my scouting crew. I've always believed in building internally, although my impatience leads to me trading picks and players for more established players to speed up a rebuild and contend sooner. However, I think that the plan that I set for Moscow is going well (famous last words eh?), so I'll continue to make an effort to stick to it and hopefully put together a contender with the ultimate goal of winning cups. Word Count: 1,085

Question for Brozik: Will you still be playing hockey after a season in the minors?

"I feel like Stevie Wonder "

much better

1. Uh, thanks for the support, really means a lot. Not sure what the future holds but I hope to be part of a revitalized D.C. effort next season. 2. Yeah I always like to follow along here and there, it's good to still watch some hockey even when we're not playing, you can learn a lot. 3. I'll probably root for London since I'm friends with their GM and have some friends on the team as well, old teammates from Moscow. 4. Oh I answered the wrong question ig, but I'll still stick with London. 5. Playing is playing, at least we can try to prove that we're not the worst of the bunch as our record indicates. 6. Don't be surprised if you suck lol. Not every rookie can be a PPG, don't think any rookie in S77 went for a PPG. Just set realistic expectations and you'll be fine.

we've got new lines coming in for today, giving a couple folks who wanted experience with sths the chance to send in lines

i'll apply, I heard NY AGM's become GM's

smh my head, I wouldn't have challenged you to do it if I didn't think you were capable of doing it

bite me

New PC Q's (Week ending 5/2) 1. So the season's officially over, and we're not in the playoffs for the first time in a long time. What was your favorite memory about this season? 2. Reflect on your performance this season. How did it go for you personally? Did you meet your expectations, blow them away, play like ass, etc. 3. Which team will you be rooting for in the playoffs and why? 4. We've got the lottery tournament coming up, and currently the 2nd best odds to win the lottery. How are you going to prepare for the tournament? 5. We're in an exciting scenario where the DC 1st that we traded for a couple weeks ago is now projected to be the number 1 pick in this season's draft, which means we own two top 3 selections guaranteed in this draft. Who should we select? 6. I did a little dabbling with VHFL stats today to try to identify problem areas in the current scoring system. If you were running VHFL, how would you assign points to each statistical category? This doesn't have to be every stat, just pick 2 or 3.

1. Ok so season's over but honestly, I'm mad Davos didn't make it. Really hoped this would be the year that'd break the curse. Oh well, will just have to do whatever it takes to get Letang's corpse to Davos after next season. 2. I suppose we saw a few eh? I think some GM's were antsier this season and were willing to make moves before the deadline to have the most amount of time to commit to their goals. DC and Prague both bought from Moscow in the week or two before the TDL, Prague's being the weekend before the TDL. 3. Would be pretty funny if Malmo won it eh? Or is that a bit of a sore subject....maybe the worst team in NA then I suppose. STHS is fucked anyways. 4. I just want to be able to talk to people without a mask on. I do plenty of that with my close circle, but it's different to be able to just walk somewhere public without feeling constricted. 5. Lol, EFL, SBA, SHL, SFC, few other GM leagues. I'd like to be back in a baseball sim league since the SBL folded, it was nice while it lasted. Don't want to join another money league/forum updating league like PBE though. 6. I probably wouldn't change my posting habits. I think once you go viral, there's some expectation to be actively posting on twitter, but I just post once in a while if something truly clever pops into my mind that I decide is worth craving validation on social media.

Everything starts with the intent to be a vhl.com, how much pops into my head determines what I end up claiming it as lol

....is Simon T. Now that I have your attention with some clickbait, join me in offering my condolences to the S77 Riga Reign for getting the most ridiculous sim shaft I have seen in my time in the VHL. It isn't much (just S71), but I do feel for Hedge and the folks on the team. I joked before the season started to Hedge that we'd be seeing them in the lottery tournament which was funny at the time, now I feel pretty bad for potentially cursing their team this season. Sorry lads Anyways, the point of this was basically to be a casual season recap as Moscow's season looks to draw to a close tomorrow with the final regular season sim of S77. It's been a very different season than most, particularly because of the obvious change in my sim league life of becoming a pro league GM for the first time. It's required a significantly different mindset than I've had in my managerial career which has solely been at the minors/collegiate levels, with different intents and purposes. But changing my perspective to focus more on team building wasn't as difficult as I thought it'd be, perhaps because of my penchant of making aggressive moves with Vegas to try to contend every single season to mixed results. This season was basically the opposite though, trading for picks and younger players while trading away friends and VHL stars instead of trying to force a team into being something it just isn't ready for. Learning from experience, you love to see it. Luckily, I haven't made a move that I've disliked or regretted, all the way back to last offseason. Moving Davis, Lahtinen and Tonn while also requesting the Letang trade truly helped Moscow escape from the perilous middle ground of mediocrity and retreat to the safety of the basement of the VHL, albeit with a clear vision of what the future looks like. Atreides and Idaho were easy picks in the draft, and franchise cornerstones that I expected to feature quite a bit over the span of the season. The biggest and most pleasant surprise however was the development and performance of Phillip Stein, a rookie we traded for from London in the Lahtinen/Tonn trade. At the time of writing this, all 3 rookies are in the top 3 of rookie scoring. In a perfect world, I would love to see all three jointly win RotY, as they've truly been a very strong line despite just being rookies. I've really enjoyed the other active acquisitions in both trades and draft selections, as all of our draft selections have remained active and project to come up to the VHL within a season or two, which is awesome to see. We re-signed Malone to be our goalie of the future, or well, for the next season, but eagles is a lovely lad who has great history with Moscow, so it's just been very nice to have another familiar face on the squad from when I first got into the LR. At the risk of writing too much for a VHL.com, I'll wrap it up with our midseason trade, specifically our trade with DC. As of right now, DC has the 2nd worst record in the league, losing the tiebreaker for last against Riga, which at a glance appears wrong since DC has more wins, but there's still 3/4 games left for each team to determine their final standings. We gave up Schwarz, Jones and DC's S77 2nd for Magnum, Foles and DC's S77 1st. Schwarz will be hitting FA, Jones is a S72 player so depreciation is going to be a bitch, but it was to try to boost DC a bit more up the standings to contend for the cup, or at least make the playoffs. Magnum and Foles were just cap casualties, and won't be on Moscow's roster next season anyways. But as a user with a player on DC, this shit just backfired at a level I couldn't imagine. Not only did DC not make the playoff, but that first is looking like a top 3 pick. As a player, it sucks to miss out on the playoffs with decently high hopes for this season, but as a GM.....man am I thrilled. Our own 1st and DC's 1st this upcoming draft could both be top 3???? Sim gods gotta be looking over me to make trades to supposed contenders work out like this 2 seasons in a row. I expect some horrible luck is incoming in a few seasons, as balance must be restored. But I'm pretty psyched to have some really good looking picks in this draft to potentially finish out our roster, or at the least complete our core for the next few seasons. There are some really strong players in this next draft and it's really exciting to not only have a shot at one of them, but two of them. Doing a quick word count at this point, I've written way too much so might as well just find something else to blab about until I hit 1k words. Maybe I should actually explore the topic that I pretended to breach with the title? Put a bet on how many people will angry react this after getting clickbaited? I'll set the line at 3.5, which is rather generous since I feel like 2.5 people read these things, the half going to Cow who probably just opens it to approve and then doesn't bother reading it. Speaking of Cow, maybe he's a candidate for the horniest person in the VHL. He's come dangerously close to rivaling Fong recently, with pure, unbridled horniness in both gen chat and Moscow's LR. I'm honestly a bit scared for him, who knows what happens if he gets desperate while on his cow farm. Perhaps the horny police will need to go conduct a wellness check on him out in buttfuck, nowhere. I have now hit 1,001 words, goodbye. Tags to make people panic:

Good showing, I'll take it! @N0HBDY with a goal tho

Welcome

welcome back my man

New PC Q's (Week ending 4/25) 1. We've seen a decent amount of trades in the past week or so, including sending out Ryan Schwarz, Jay Jones and Fat Palloon. Anything you'd like to say about these players? 2. Given the moves in question, how do you (honestly) feel about the direction of our team? 3. Moscow has had some rough games in the past week, albeit playing against most of the top teams in the league. What do we need to do to stop the slide and get back to winning games? 4. @WentzKneeFan036 re-signed with us this past week, how excited are you to have Malone as our starting goalie for the next season! 5. There's been some chatter of folks wanting a gaming channel in the Moscow LR. What games would you talk about if it was added? 6. You guys roasted me last time, say something nice this time

Hi creed, quick review for you here. I really like the depth of your rambles which holistically cover most of your activity in the VHL over the past week or so. Well done on applying for more league jobs, excited to see you trying to be more involved in the league. Now for some feedback, my number one thing here is going to be formatting. Large blocks of text, or one massive paragraph is difficult to read, and also difficult for you to go back and proofread to fix any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. I highly recommend that if you're ever changing the subject and moving on to a new topic, create a new paragraph! A perfect spot for it would have been after you finished talking about applying for the Houston AGM job and then started talking to the Philly GM job. Splitting it into a new paragraph would be amazing. In addition, remember to capitalize the first letter in each sentence, it also helps a lot in making these posts easier to read! Overall, nicely written with a lot of depth, but make sure to fix some of the formatting and spelling errors, 7/10!

Maybe it is indeed time to delete the M smh