Spartan

I usually don't write two VHL.com's in the same week. I also don't usually pick songs based on the topic of what I'm going to write about, but rather just a song I'm enjoying at the moment. But New York has managed to buck the expected trend themselves, meriting this article. I'm sorry @STZ . One thing you might see when looking at today's VHL standings, is NYA's accomplishment of allowing the least Goals Against in the entire league. A lot of credit has to go to stellar defense led by veteran Malum Maellard @frescoelmo and rookie Callum Gary Yannick Janser @Daniel Janser, and also top rookie goaltender WxWhatever # that is @rory - who is not only a league favorite for RotY, but also very much in the hunt for VHL-wide hardware for goalie performance. However despite allowing the least goals against in the league, New York is sitting in 6th place in the NA - outside of a playoff spot, and 13th overall in the VHL. I was genuinely curious to see how many times this phenomenon has occurred in the VHL's history, so I did a little digging. Here are my results: Season Team GA Reg Season Standing S92 NYA 100 13th S91 TOR 161 6th S90 DAV 165 1st S89 MOS 172 1st S88 CHI 172 4th S87 CGY 180 2nd S86 CHI 155 3rd S85 VAN 179 3rd S84 MOS 153 1st S83 SEA 154 1st S82 VAN/LAS 220 1st/2nd S81 VAN 220 1st S80 CHI 193 2nd S79 CGY 209 6th S78 LDN 223 4th S77 LDN 203 2nd S76 MOS 180 1st S75 HSK 189 2nd S74 MOS 194 1st S73 CGY 184 4th S72 CGY 179 1st S71 VAN 159 1st S70 VAN 163 2nd S69 RIG 141 2nd S68 DAV 173 5th S67 TOR 180 1st S66 HSK 176 1st S65 RIG 174 2nd S64 RIG 167 2nd S63 QCM 160 4th S62 CGY 141 1st S61 CGY/NYA 128 1st/4th S60 SEA 150 3rd Beyond the interesting scoring differences across the eras, you might notice that not a single other team since at least S60 managed to lead the league in fewest goals against while missing the playoffs. In fact, it was much more common to lead your conference or the league in the standings by leading in least GA, let alone miss out on the playoffs. I honestly just got bored after hitting the early S60's with just 8 teams in the league where it was essentially impossible to miss the playoffs with a half decent defense. Fortunately for New York, they're on pace to make some history in a disappointing season otherwise. Perhaps just not the type they'd prefer to make. At least Rory should be able to win some hardware, right?

Posted in the wrong subforum so your Malmo praise is invalid, Moscow praise is fine.

This man really got rid of waiver pitches and asked to be waiver pitched smh

We've got a week until TDL, dw

Had been trying for a while, glad to finally get you back on a team of mine after Nico and Dogwood played together on VAN what feels like a lifetime ago. Glad to have you for the final stretch before retirement @dogwoodmaple! Cheers on the chats @N0HBDY Condition: If Moscow fails to advance to the Conference Finals in S92, the S93 MOS 3 becomes S93 DAV 3.

brutal

Writing was always on the wall

Did you intend to create a week early?

Oh ok, in that case, who wants this bum?

There's always a random song here and there that I hear once and just scratches my brain and forces me to put it on repeat. For now, that appears to be this random k-pop song that's just 2 minutes long. I amaze myself sometimes. What also amazes me is that Moscow is somehow sitting 2nd in the EU and 4th overall in the league, slightly past the midway point of the season. I've spoken about our pre-season expectations before - how we hoped to show some signs of progress this season after another rebuilding season in S91. Despite losing Thor Reingaard via trade to Warsaw, the pieces have seemingly started to fall together and the team is now on a 6 game win streak. While the rest of the EU is still very competitive with everyone but Davos seemingly in the race for a playoff spot, it's a great sign that this Moscow squad is putting together an underdog run. Axle Gunner @Steve and Left Alone @okochastar have both stepped up to lead the team in points with 48 apiece, with Alone leading the team in goals and Gunner in assists. Even third year forward Jeff Lewis @nerji has taken a big step forward with 45 points this season, with all 3 hoping to finish the season well over a PPG. Behind the obvious stars though, sophomore Jarmo Ruutu @jRuutu is about to pass his rookie season total of 39 with just 6 more points with 32 games left in the season. Rookie Leif Reingaard @Zetterberg is having a fantastic rookie run with 37 points in 40 games as a defenseman. Depth like David Rashford @Knight and rookie defenseman Celise Pereira @asteria are also exceeding expectations and putting up valuable points, with Rashford surprisingly 4th on the team in goal scoring. While many contract situations are up in the air and roster spots remain tight with highly regarded prospects Adi Dassler @BOOM and George Richmond @badcolethetitan eager to make their impact in the VHL, Moscow management feels comfortable in their ability to navigate these personnel scenarios and come out with a strong roster for S93 and beyond.

Isn't that the same thing you said about Voss before we gave you time to earn TPE and a solid build

Has this ever been a thing?

If you want to look into it and come back with a media spot or a DM to a BoG member with your math or details on what it'd look like, I'm sure it'd be evaluated for validity. I just don't think you're going to get the BoG to start looking into attribute changes with just a "I wonder if we can do better" when what we have right now is meeting the goals we had for it. We definitely need some baseline to be going off of.

Welcome @ffial!

Welcome @Bazeus!

I promise you, people would always take the option that gives them more SC in the fastest manner. It's only because we have them as equal right now that people are taking the ST attribute first over the long run because its relatively more valuable with faceoffs and defending against getting hit than penalty shooting. But the point goes back to the fact that spending on WS as a new user does not mess up their builds whatsoever unless they dump like 150 TPE into it - which would be equally bad if done with SS. Realistically could we swap the Penalty Shot with Puckhandling and make it like 0.08 PH and move PS to like, Deking? But then you'll have people complaining that one of the two main DF providing attributes also gives you penalty shooting. and you lose a significantly efficient PH avenue. Just doesn't seem like a worthwhile change to make. If your desire is to redefine the meta hybrid build, I will say it jokingly here, we genuinely could just hit shuffle on the attributes every 6-7 seasons and see what the new set looks like. But unfortunately, when designing our current ones, we had to keep in mind which attributes are valued most by users building players in STHS and set attributes in a way that didn't make anything overly efficient or clearly meta. As I said before, most players will get around 7-8 attributes over 70 to have a decent player. That used to be just 4. And there's still quite a lot of wiggle room in what attributes you improve upon based on the type of player you want to be at the VHL level. In the M/E, the overall TPE is just way too low to have anything clearly defined.

Nothing wrong with it, I think it's probably for the best if you're trying not to burn out writing this sort of thing every week. Just might have to pick and choose a tad bit better or even not be scared of criticizing more! I think a little more spice can never hurt if done well

There probably is, I just haven't seen anything since we released attributes (and then maybe after the immediate adjustments post-release to fix blatant issues) that makes me want to go to the BoG and say "hey, here's something that is a valid issue, and this is what I think we should do about it." And I think that's a pretty important threshold that needs to be crossed, for any BoG member to look at something proposed and decide to take it into the BoG. So far I haven't seen any proposals or suggestions with the math behind it to convince me that the current attributes are anything more than an annoyance to people who are still expecting the simplicity and ease of upgrading the old attributes. Bek kinda covered it, it'd probably become the clear cut secondary option in that case with an even better secondary attribute than Strength. We'd just flip situations from SS being the "prioritized" secondary scoring attribute to WS. I don't think there's a problem with newbies investing in WS over SS. The benefit strength provides is not that massive that it messes up a new player's development. I don't think it comes close at all. I'm pretty sure my past forward, Nico Pearce, got both to 70 before incrementally increasing each one based on cost efficiencies. I also wasn't a center to need the ST investment immediately. Plus, not all attributes are going to make perfect sense with STHS and the real world comparisons, we just tried to come close without having meta hybrid attributes. The fact that most people will get at least 6-8 attributes into the 80's for their core build is a significant difference in the "core 4" that everyone would pump to 99 before hybrid and then become an elite player.

Surely we're not asking to make attributes more efficient and cost friendly when that was the reason we had to change attributes in the first place, right....?

Realistically could every goalie have just been name-dropped as I had pointed out (defense led by "insert defenseman and goalie") with the generic statement, sure. Is it a snub, I don't think so really. Seems like the writeup for every team followed more of a template/standard format which is fair for a weekly article that needs to meet VSN standards of higher word count and formatting. Some mild differences from team to team which would explain a couple goalies not being brought up. Personally I don't think my goalie should have been mentioned at all as a leader defensively, he's playing pretty poorly. And sure, the offense hasn't been carrying the team, you guys aren't doing the best there. But as I had mentioned, 2nd fewest shots faced (yet only 4th fewest GA) would make me personally praise the shit out of your defense. If I was writing 50 words about each VHL team, that's where mine would go for Malmo, especially with Stone and McFleury in the top 4 for team scoring.

Probably because he's 7th out of 16 starting goalies in save percentage and has seen the 2nd fewest shots against in the league. Not much to say in these lengthy articles about a goalie who isn't carrying the team. Seems like every other goalie mentioned was just included with a young defenseman to say "they're leading the defense." Doesn't seem like anyone in specific was praised in here anyways with Wallob also being told to step it up with Warsaw.

At this rate with Sully and the Pens, I'm gonna have to move on from him myself and get a new GM render

Play in the NA where playoffs are free....or should be at least

Can't believe I got Torts smh