Beketov

I fully believe all the corruption back in the day is why so few leagues survived very long. Simmers almost always cheated for their teams, people wrote MS' for other people and ripped sigs like it was going out of style. The leagues would fold in a season or two and then you'd recycle shit you had done before into the new leagues. The VHL probably survived it all because we all matured around that time and stopped fucking around with the rules so much.

I'll admit I thought the same when I saw the recruiter and the birth location but I'm going to give this the benefit of the doubt instead of the witch hunt for now. Welcome!

Yet I'm the only person who's ever received a season long ban It is amazing actually how much shit went on behind the scenes back in the day. Our activity levels may not be as insanely high as they once were (let's be honest, we're all much older with much less free time now) but at least our morals have come a long way.

I still resent that decision.

Don't worry, you're well on your way to beating me and I've been around since season 1.

Sadly this site is more designed for major websites (check out early apple sites, it's hilarious) so it doesn't archive every page on things that don't get a ton of views like the VHL. Works great for seeing the main page but individual posts rarely work.

You can also see (sadly again it didn't archive the actual posts) that the last game simmed was the final game of the Season 1 playoffs where Vasteras defeated Calgary for the cup.

As we mark this, our 10th birthday, in the VHL I decided to go back and see what things USED to look like back when the league first opened. With the help of a Website called the WayBack Machine it's possible to look back on what sites looked like on any given day that they were archived so I did that for the original VHL link. Sadly we do not have a snapshot of the ORIGINAL design; the first archive taken however is still very early: October 11th, 2007 to be exact. Some teams had already moved at this point and a few of the images (the banner is the obvious one) are broken but if you want to take a look into the VHL's past at what so few of us remember nowadays this is a nice way to do it. So, I present to you, the VHL as it original was, or at least as close to that as possible: https://web.archive.org/web/20071011014830/http://z11.invisionfree.com/vhl/index.php Personally I had alms forgotten about that original skin or how corner some of our old graphics and logos were. Sadly you can't dig into too many of the actual tops without an account (and I doubt the sign in page works anymore) but it's still interesting to see where this whole thing came from. Especially fun is that it shows the accounts that were active when the snapshot was taken. One of note that I've noticed is @Quik (not in the original one posted as I scrolled through a bit but I saw him somewhere) who recently re-joined our ranks. Aside from him though, I don't see any names that are still around. You can also click the "112 Captures" link at the top if you want to see other dates. It was capturing straight through to November of last year when the link died (not consistently but still) so it's a fun little trip through time.

Man, the amount of former VHLers I had on MSN was crazy

Continuing my trend of trying to do these in order is the next obvious one: Though everything that happened immediately after it I would rather forget I would be remised if I did not mention one of my favourite memories from the VHL which is being the first player ever drafted in the league. Robert Sharpe, goaltender, first overall to the [doomed] Amstel Tijgers (no that isn't a typo). It was a terrible drafting decision to be honest since, you know, Scotty was the obvious choice but that's beyond the point. We're 55 seasons in, that's 55 different players that have ever been drafted first overall (56 if you count the S1 supplementary draft) but I'm the only one that can say I was the first player ever drafted. It hasn't happened since then (the Sharpe curse I call it) but that's beyond the point. Regardless of how good or bad the decision was to draft me first it's still one of my favourite memories that can't be taken away.

I felt bad for @Higgins after how many shots he faced in game 1. I don't feel bad for him anymore haha. i agree with @Devise though, wasn't expecting a sweep. Hopefully you guys got that out of your system now

Though it heavily favours current players I can't see how here is any other way. We would otherwise need he inflate their TPE realistically and update attributes which could go against the original build of the players. Doesn't make a lot of sense.

My only player to ever get two cups. That Calgary team definitely helped out. Probably one of the better locker rooms I have ever been a part of.

That was the first cup team I was on with Miller, have you already forgotten about me

That Amstel Dynasty tho

Though it's completely unnecessary I'm going to do my best to write these memories in the order they occured, let's see if I can manage haha. Obviously the earliest one is simply the first day of the VHL, probably not many of us left that remember it. I was in a league being run by Zimmers at the time (and everyone was pretty sure he was rigging like mad) when I saw a post go up stating that the guys behind the ESHL (and the later failed OHL) had just opened a new league. I popped over expecting the usual affair and saw the VHL for the first time. It had a different feel to it for sure. You have to remember that until this point using NHL games as the sim engine was the norm so STHS was a huge step forward and it showed with just how popular the league was from the get go. I don't know how many members we got that first day but it was absolutely huge. It's hard to even pin it down to an exact memory but just the overall feel of the league when it was still fresh for everyone (and there were a fuck ton of us) is impossible to put into words. Was an absolutely fantastic day that a I still remember 10 years later.

Well written good sir, fun to see feedback again. also, thanks for not pointing out that I can't count, though I guess I'm doing it now anyway. I updated my emblem to say 32/35 when I still had 4 guns left to gold. I did end up finishing the Oni 2 games after recording this so it's accurate now at least. 2 more guns + 1 kill (I need 1 more EMC kill) left and I'll finally be done the camo grind! I barely remember what a normal gun feels like.

I definitely choked a potential Labatte by having a shitty second half to the season but I think eliminating Sokolov from contention based on +/- seems unnecessary. Every other contender was playing on a top team so naturally their +/- would be better than a player who's on a rebuilding team and playing on every line. At the end of the day I was still 5th in D scoring and was massively above everyone else in shots blocked. Do I necessarily think I deserve the award: probably not. Like I said, I played like shit in the second half, but ignoring a huge lead in a major defensive category seems ill-advised.

Wouldn’t have been with Holik in net Still though, nice to see Sokolov finally get a multi-point game again. Kinda disappeared points wise the second half of the season.

4 for Sokolov

The 1000 TPE special! even though I never actually called it that in the episode this CoDCast gets me to 1000 TPE for the first time. Yes, I know that’s sad since I’ve had so many players but I’m still proud of it. Anyway, we play around with a shitty pistol trying to get camos done while answering questions from @Kendrick and @Phil *For Holik

To be fair that's why I worded it as "since the league began." Don't want to exclude any of you new bloods with our old man talk. Great to have you here.

Touché