Mongoose87

That's basically what 50% of the real hockey press does.

Never realized that was the 1OA they traded for Kosmo. He was good, but not 1OA good.

Gimme a P!

AI... what does the A stand for?

1. I had a pretty good slice of ice cream cake the other night. That was pretty great. 2. Mexico doesn't have a Seinfeld themed novelty goaltender, so them. 3. Probably that Seinfeld themed novelty goaltender. 4. That anyone has lost to us. Sorry boss. 5. That's tough. I think COVID pushed a lot of people to these sorts of activities and now the pool of people that would join has been reduced. I will say this: the E is draining too much talent from the M and the result is bad for retention. 6. To be honest, it's sucked in a lot of ways, most of which don't have a payoff.

Is it supposed to not ask my username?

1. Well, I like to look on the bright side. So, I'm going I get to set the league record for saves. 2. See my comment above about saves. 3. To be honest I generally only pay attention to my own team. 4. The Miami Marauders. I've got a lot of history there and a good rapport with the GM. 5. I saw a guy in a pretty good Duff Man costume. He didn't know that Duff Man can never die, only the actors who play him, though. 6. 100%. The NHL is one of the dumbest leagues with regards to safety. The Garage league.

What a way for Jimmy T to finish his career. Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

1. You're going to do beautiful things. I'm very happy for you. 2. There is no hatred like for Fake Purple. 4. I like it in general, though I am certain I've had several questions where I've been right and the question was wrong, but I can't prove it. 5. No, I just slow the draft down. 6. Is there any doubt it will be Bedard? 8. I've always been a sucker for gummies, the cheweyer, the better.

1. Refreshing the forums a lot. I've had lots going on IRL, so it's not been an issue. 3. I'd make giveaway and takeaway tracking work in the version we use. 5. Despite my pleas to make it more accessible in the VHL, I don't really have much love for it IRL. Two grown men stopping all play to punch each other in the face has no place in society. 6. I actually started in the SHL and ISFL (then NSFL). Then I was heavily involved in GOMHL (RIP). I am still in SCSFL, and was in HO there. All those before I landed here. 7. A giant, walking statue of David. 8. Do audiobooks count? I think the last I actually *read* was one of The Witcher books.

Jimmy T wants to go out with a medal!

1. Very bold to move McFleury. It's selling high, but you have to wonder if you'll ever get full value when a player like that goes. 3. I was hoping to hit the 50 goal mark again. Did not. 4. Go and read my whole article on why fighting needs to be completely revamped. Now, apply the same reasoning to checking. 5. I think it's fine as it is. Usually it's slower in leagues that have longer careers. 6. Now that I'm at the 5 TPE welfare tier, I often do that instead of a PT. I'll use some VHL.com articles and GFX to make up for the difference. 8. Concert, in the general sense, though I don't really stay out late anymore. I've been too spoiled by being able to rewind and pause, it's made live sports much less appealing. Not to mention concession costs.

Wherefore David? When our blades knew the ice And our sticks knew the puck When our meme were lit af And our posts shit Wherefore David? Where our city in mountains And our locker room in Discord Where our sticks were on the ice And our checks were from the hip Wherefore David? When our games were won And our rings were worn When our trophy hoisted Gone, like the trodden paths beneath freshly fallen snow Where have the skates gone? Where are my teammates? Where is the general manager? Where are the benches to bear us? The joy of the locker room to bring us together? No more, bright goal light All gone, the padded goaltender Lost for good, the meme of David I met a hockey player from a neutral country, Who said—“One vast and empty rink of ice Stands in the mountains. . . . Near it, In the snow, Half sunk a tattered jerseylies, whose logo, And faded purple, weep of old comrades, Tell that its designer well those passions read Which yet survive, memed on these lost servers, The glove that caught them, and the stick that deked; And on the barngate, these words appear: My name is James Teekirque, Wing of Wings; Look on my goals, ye defensemen, and despair!

I GMd for a league, years ago. It made me anxious just to look at the forums.

I cannot express what an honor this is. These eight seasons have been a wonder, and I owe that to my teammates, but most of all I owe it to you, @Alex. Thank you for having the faith in me to make me your first ever pick. Thank you for asking me to switch to LW and helping James Teekirque reach his full potential. Thank you for building these teams so I had the privilege of helping to bring the cup to Davos. I will always recall this time with the greatest fondness.

1. I'm too vain to go to the bracket. I need to know my stats. 2. Well, our success comes with ending a historical drought. 4. Really depends. Do they see it? Is it tipped? Is it well aimed? 5. Pittsburgh, as in all sports. 7. Evgeny Malkin. I have a thing for Russians with soft hands. 8. Hats. From different places, times, events. I just like hats.

Claim 3/3

1. We are the most dominant team in the league. There can be no doubt. 2. It's a careful balance. The cap keeps the league fun for the casuals, or the max earners would be too dominant. I wouldn't mess with it. 3. He'll be long time by then, so I guess he'll be a ghost. 6. I think I follow the Twitter account? I don't see it much. 7. I've never been all that big on Fighting games. 8. The Captain Picard Song.

I guess I should've have mentioned this in the article. I took this as a given.

The power forward - one of the most iconic archetypes in hockey. They can hit, they can fight, they can score. They're a goalie's worst enemy and a power play's best friend. General managers have wasted countless draft picks on massive, plodding players, praying that they can refine their technique and learn to skate at the professional level, hoping against hope that they're strong enough to bully adults, not just the 16 and 17 year olds that they've been playing against, despairing that those stone hands are because they still haven't adjusted after their growth spurt left them towering over their peers. Most of the time, these young players - let's not dance around it, these kids - never develop professional skating, or can't adjust to playing against others closer to their size, or are just plain going to be unskilled and uncoordinated for their entire life. They get a short look at their team's camp, play in a few preseason games, maybe even a cup of coffee at the professional level, but ultimately no one will hear their name again in a few years. But sometimes they're special. They make you wonder how someone so big can skate so fast. You can't believe that someone who hits so hard has hands that soft. And then they drop the gloves and beat the tar out of that pest that everyone hates. All the failed picks were worth it, because now we have a player that will own the ice. The power forward is usually a fan favorite. These beskated warriors represent the biggest crowd pleasing elements of hockey: hitting, fighting and scoring. Skilled star players love to play with them; they watch the skilled players' backs and don't drag down the offense. Opponents hate to play against them, their goalies screened, their defensemen hit and their pests punished. Indeed, no one represents old-time classic hockey quite like these centurions of center ice. Gordie Howe, Mark Messier, Maurice Richard - some of the most well known players of their eras, or even of all of hockey. Why then, I must ask, is the Victory Hockey League keeping them down? You read that right. Look over the top scorers this season. There are a handful that will drop the gloves regularly. Two have actually raised their Fighting attribute, the highest to a mind- blowing 53! Why do so few of our top scorers embrace the Gordie Howe Hat Trick and make significant investments in Fighting? Simple: the league is structured in such a way that anyone trying to maximize their on- ice performance will avoid spending TPE on Fighting. That is to say that the costs outweigh the benefits. Let's look at the sim benefits of fighting: Pride - Hockey players that fight tend to take pride in doing so, and users tend to take a similar view in looking at their simulated players. Unfortunately, STHS's inscrutable algorithm has yet to provide any indication that Pride improves a team's chance of winning games. Morale - Pride's humble sibling, Morale, on the other hand, allegedly does have some effect on the sim, and my understanding is that Fighting does improve morale. Morale is also so insignificant that three players deep into my VHL career, I have yet to hear anyone bring it up. Awards Consideration - Maybe the voters will take fighting into account for the Boulet or Wylde? That totals out to some tiny positive difference in the sim that we don't know how to measure and maybe a small positive consideration at the margin, if your player is contending for one of those two awards. There's a word for this amount of benefit: negligible. Now, let's examine the costs: TPE spent - This is pretty obvious. As with any attribute, you have to spend your hard-earned TPE to increase the Fighting attribute. Penalties - Mongoose, you might say, isn't the objective of fighting to rack up those five minute majors? How can that be considered a cost? Dear reader, are you familiar with the concept of Opportunity Cost? Opportunity Cost is the other things you might have done but no longer can because of the choice you made. In this particular case, if your top goal scoring forward is sitting five minutes for fighting, they are also very much not putting pucks in the net for those five minutes. Worse, they could get an instigator and leave the game altogether. I don't think it's a stretch to say that those costs far outweigh the meager benefits of investing TPE in Fighting. From the perspective of lost ice time, the argument could be made that investments in Fighting are actively punished. Personally, I view this as a failure of design in the VHL system. While there is a skill to building a good player and I would never want that element of the league to change, there is a difference between rewarding system mastery and punishing users for investing in a trap attribute. The former is an important aspect of game design. The latter is the sort of failure that punishes new users. I have a proposal for a change that would go a long way towards rectifying this design flaw: stop treating fighting like a normal attribute. We invest in attributes to improve our players' performance. Fighting does not do that, so it should not be an option to invest in. What does that mean? For starters, eliminate the Fighting hybrid attribute and restructure Grit. Next, instead of having Fighting be determined by TPE investment, let users set it to their desired level upon player creation. Since fighting does not provide tangible benefit in the sim, there is no reason to require TPE investment to have a high attribute and the users might as well be allowed to start with it wherever they like. Each offseason the user will have the opportunity to increase or decrease their Fighting attribute by 10 plus the number of fights their player had the preceding season, so a player won't go overnight from being a pugilist to a peacemaker or vice versa. This plan will do a few things. First, it will remove the new user trap that exists in fighting right now. STHS is a fairly inscrutable sim - we don't need to punish people on their learning journey. Second, it will introduce a greater diversity of builds to the league. The change to hybrid attributes already told us this is considered desirable, so this should be a welcome result. Lastly, it will make the league more fun. I know it's very easy for many of us to get very serious about the VHL - we all have that competitive spirit within us - but the ultimate purpose of this whole venture is for people to enjoy simulated hockey. As I said earlier, fighting is a crowd pleaser. We may not have a proper crowd here, but I think there are more than a few users who would love to see their players and others duke it out, if it weren't for the drawbacks. What I don't want to see is an increase in the number of Donald Brashear, Derek Boogard and Eric Godard type players, players who don't contribute to the game outside of fisticuffs. I don't think encouraging fighting will run a serious risk of doing that, either. While GMs may enjoy choosing to take on more fighters, they remain constrained by the salary cap - Opportunity Cost rears its ugly head once again - and no GM is going to choose to spend that precious cap cash on a player who can't improve their team's chances at getting the big prize. Likewise, the league doesn't provide much of a path forward for a user who only cares about pugilism. I can't imagine a user sticking around a very long time earning TPE that they do not spend, or even just doing the bare minimum to remain active without updating. At most, you might see a small uptick of such players in the VHLM, but they would be weeded out quickly. No, what this would encourage is a Renaissance of players who can contribute on the ice but aren't afraid to drop the gloves when their goalie gets run or their star player is taking a few too many hits. It would be great fodder for PTs and game recaps, allowing users to develop rivalries between players that can't help but challenge one another every time they meet. That's the sort of energy that a league like this thrives on, and it's the sort of thing we should be encouraging at every opportunity. This should be an easy decision. I have yet to hear of a disadvantage from anyone I have made this suggestion to. Current low levels of investment in Fighting mean there wouldn't even be that much TPE to refund. This is what they call a layup, a safe bet, all upside. If you are in Head Office, make the right choice, make the choice that makes the league more fun. If you are not, I encourage you to share this idea and help it get to the decision makers and make sure they see that you approve.

1. Yes. Don't ask me how I know. 2. People are fools that look to other names like Daniel or Donald. 3. I always wanted to win the Brooks, since I like shooters. That ship has sailed. 6. Sweet and bubbly with a gentle aftertaste. 7. I've always preferred graphics. I find it hard to pick up writing articles if interrupted and podcasts require too much interrupted time. 8. I'm confused as to why the VHLE is still there.

This might be controversial, but I don't care: David

1. I think so. We might even do it today. 2. In a word: Contrafilatinulous. 3. I didn't follow super close, but the Prague trade seemed... odd. 6. I've been in the same fantasy hockey league since my second year of university (14 years). 7. Gummy candies. The chewier the better. 8. I'm not really a dream car kind of person. If I got a "dream car" I'd probably sell it.

OVERVIEW Giorgiy Costanzov is something of an anomaly for contemporary goaltending, representing a style of play that truly died out in the 90s.. He lacks the mental fortitude one would like to see in net, yet he seems to succeed anyways. He is extremely undersized, small for a wing, let alone for what has become the biggest position in hockey, but is deceptively agile, often finding himself diving across the crease or attempting challenging poke checks to make saves that would be routine for a butterfly goalie. Anonymously, scouts have remarked at how peculiar their interviews with him have been. "He came up and introduced himself to me, he said, 'Name is Giorgiy, I am unemploying and live with parents.' I didn't know what to say," one scout reported. He has expressed numerous misgivings about his father, legendary Red Army goaltender Fedir Costanzov and described a bizarre punishment where he would be made to wrestle Fedir off of a goalpost before he could leave the house. THE BAD Does not have ideal size for a goaltender. Costanzov says he is 5'5", but reports say he actually measures 5'4.5". A stocky, short limbed build does not help to counter that concern. Not naturally athletic. Has a physique that suggests poor workout habits and low levels of off-ice commitment to his own improvement. Extremely neurotic. Some teammates find him extremely off-putting, and he has been known to lose it at the drop of a hat. After being pulled in the finals, stormed out of the arena yelling about "the summer of Giorgiy." You really wonder if he has the mentality for professional hockey - professional anything, really. I saw him eat poutine out of a garbage can. THE GOOD Deceptively agile and flexible. Manages to throw himself across the crease from any position. Literally made a save with his pants down. Not afraid to be aggressive in fighting the screen. Has been known to knock players right over on his way across the crease. Elite glove ability. Has been known to practice his trapper on golf balls. Always gets the high glove side, now matter how rough it is to see. Team owners love him. Was constantly getting called into the front office for private meetings. THE BOTTOM LINE Costanzov is a curious prospect. If he continues to overcome his physical and psychological shortcomings, he could succeed at the VHL level. Could he ever live up to his father's legacy? Seems doubtful.

That's right, Ghost. He was my stalwart. It's gonna be the summer of Giorgiy!