jacobcarson877

All is well in the world once more!

1. I think the CGY/SEA rivalry has more to it, but MOS/DAV isn't far off! 2. I think it's really hard to line match us. We have enough firepower that if they try to cut off one line, the other comes swinging. That game it seems as though they couldn't stop either unit. 3. I think I'd prefer HSK. I think they're not quite as cohesive as a group yet as RIG is. 4. I always try to make sure River is alert and ready, but it's mostly just messing with OCO. 5. Under-ripe banana, some day old rice, and a boatload of ground beef. An avocado cubed in there, and some sriracha for kick. 6. I leave the pranking to Grape, he's never been traded to WAR, so he must know how to play the line at this point.

And this is why Jacob will never pick up sports betting

Weird year for us, but you gave Jillian a run for her money for sure!

Is Darren a doctor by chance?

Honestly I'd rather write 3 vhl.com articles than a Media Spot. I find it so much easier to have three 150-200 word ideas than a 500 word idea.

Can confirm, Molly looked at the sim results before picking her winners.

We have reached the halfway point of Jillian Woods’ career, so lets dive in! She opened her career up on a stacked Menace roster with three 100-point scorers, a fellow top rookie in Maverick Goncalves, and a 108 standing points finish. Woods would carve a role for herself as a strong goal threat with a secondary playmaking agenda. She was a shooting machine, and generated many rebounds, deflections and cover fire for the guns blazing offense. She followed up with the opposite of a sophomore slump, with the goal scoring turning up a notch, and enough assists to warrant a Valiq win, and enough of an overall uptick to secure the Dustin Funk. She made five 100-point scorers this time around in her second straight Victory Cup winning offensive engine. In her third tour, she continued her trend of sending a constant barrage of ripping shots, driving much of the goal scoring on her unit, topping 30 goals. While the deflection, rebounds, and slap-passes were down, the goal scoring showed all-VHL potential, and truly resembled her style. Finally, with the conclusion of this fourth season, things have hit a bit of a stall. She’s ripping more shots than ever, but less and less are finding meaningful homes. Once again, the Menace secured the Victory Cup, and her teammates continue to be league leaders in offense, and Woods and co. are able to keep pucks out of the net, even short personnel. So what should we expect going forward? Well, there is by all technicality a choice this offseason. With Jillian’s contract structure, she has a mutual option. Moscow is a place where she has been given every opportunity to participate in the playoffs, and she has done everything she could to force management to give her the top job. She has run her own units, been given the top minutes on the power play, and she’s seen some personal success too. There’s going to be a lot of change in Moscow, with longtime cornerstones Jarmo and Obuz hanging up their skates, underrated depth winger Catia joining them. Chippy goal-scoring Pombo has yet to sign an extension, the protege quarterback River has the first contract decision of their career, and the awards regular Maverick shares the same contract structure as Jillian. Depending on how the dominoes fall, there is room for the best or worst Menace team in decades. So what does Jillian want? Well, sticking with Maverick means always being in the awards picture, and likely always having a playoff agenda. Securing River leaves a lot of security and flexibility in roster construction. Pombo packs a serious scoring punch, and could be hard to replace. With Kazuma ready to take the next step, there are some massive shoes to fill either of Jarmo or Obuz’s sheer dominance. Management will need to find a second center to ensure enough depth to continue this contendership. I don’t anticipate Jillian being the first to claim her spot. There’s simply too much at stake for her career to play her hand first. But, if the future is secured for a couple seasons, there is also the possibility that she declines her mutual option and instead chooses to sign a longer extension. It’s a fantastic environment, with a proven HOF-calibre management style, but every season is important in the back half, particularly if you have HOF intentions. These past two seasons have raised the stakes, and this offseason matters. It might be the most important offseason of her career.

1. Jarmo has been a fantastic cornerstone of the franchise for the last 8 seasons. Being able to score goals, generate offense, and contain the other team's best players has made Jarmo a player that will be incredibly hard to replace. Being able to fight for a spot on an always talented Menace roster, and continue to put up franchise-leading numbers is a feat that truly only one has been able to do! 2. Well hopefully, since our final game is against Malmo, we can score a million goals against them and square away any final milestones. The fans can get some legendary memorabilia, and we can all rest up for next season! 3. I do worry about the morale game, even if others don't. Having won with London from the wild card spot, with arguably a very wild card team, it just makes sense to me that the early momentum plays a part. Whether or not it evens out the on-paper skill difference is probably why the overall series wins even out a decent amount. 4. Woods is definitely a flip phone kind of gal. So definitely no social media, and honestly, probably not much TV for her either. I feel like she might listen to some hockey podcasts or radio shows, as background noise, and perhaps might have some private choice words for those with awful takes. 5. I've never really been one for arguing online with opposing fans, but I do have some ideas. Seattle to me is the Bruins equivalent. At least up until recently, they were old and washed and were going to be on the decline, and then well they make the playoffs, and make a decent dent. You question their methods, and then they still figure it out. Very frustrating to argue with, because you're right, the team doesn't LOOK good enough, but then they show up and how do you counter that? And then there's Malmo, which feels like the Canadiens for me. For the longest time, they had a good team, with some very obvious flaws. You call out those flaws, and the Malmo fans show up to worship the ground their players walk on. And then those weaknesses get exploited, and they're up in arms about how the sim is rigged, or nobody sees the team like they should. 6. The best way to assert dominance in hockey is to get a lead, and keep playing aggressive. Hits talk, fights talk, but at the end of the day, pucks in the back of your opponents net control the emotions in the game. The fans know it, the players know it. So Woods will be looking to make sure that the score is always in Moscow's favour.

you will be missed

fraudulent organization

I don't think I know this autocorrect! or did they replace the one for elderly male association and get rid of the social distancing?

My take on stats has always been that Simon offers a range of team values across a season that is relative to the total "talent" a team has. From that, the points, hits, whatever, are generally proportionally assigned based on relevant attributes compared to those other players you are on the ice with. Thats why big trios tend to have less monumental individual success than big duos. You might end up as a unit on the top end of Simon's magic distribution, but if your teammates are just as good as you, the stats will be split 5 ways instead of 2 or 3. So good teams still do better overall, but are less likely to have the top scorers in each category, since they're likely sharing the load.

Banger

This has been the longest that I have gone without GMing in well… years. Ironically, I was way better at managing my time in University than in College. But, College is coming to an end, and once again, it appears as though I will be without gainful employment, so it’s back to planning some VHL projects to fill my itch for analysis and spreadsheets. Thanks to a resurgence and renewed commitment by the entirety of the Board of Governors, we’ve managed to put together some moderately exciting ideas, that while I can’t share, I can say we are at least working on things. Pairing that with the JST hopefully making a triumphant return this offseason, Jacob may be back on the upswing in activity! I’m hoping to be able to take some of the fun things I’ve learned in my Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning program and find some fun new insights about our league, and try to figure out all of the ways to realize that nothing matters. It’s great to see some new and new from the past names floating around the forum, especially after a slower recruitment period over the last few seasons. I’ve tended to lean in opposition of big Youtube drives, based on their lack of fantastic long-term member retention, but considering the work that Recruitment has been doing for more organic and sustainable channels, it’s only fair to let them have a couple big days here and there. With Leandro stepping down from Calgary, it’s got me thinking about GMing again. Wow surprising I know. I thought that with the E being dissolved that the increase of overall players would help drive more engagement in the M, but I really struggled to get new blood in my Locker Room, and spent most of my time in people’s individual DMs reminding people to earn. Between that and vastly underestimating how much College was going to be super inefficient when it comes to time. The league was super grindy, I had a million players to figure out how best to give minutes, and nobody outside of the goaltenders were living up to the expectations we’ve historically had for M players. Overall, it just didn’t hit the spot. Which sucks, because I was really hoping I would be able to get some San Diego level experience. So who knows whether I’ll apply for something again soon. I hope to build some nice sheets and tools to help support me if I ever do, and maybe I’ll just take the AJ avenue and just become a super fantastic AGM for a fantastic visionary of a GM. But either way, I want to get back into doing projects of all kinds, and hopefully the VHL can gain some benefit from that. I hope to get to interact with new, and new old members, and enjoy the back half of Jillian Woods’ career. Speaking of whom, Woods has been fine. Just fine. She looks like she’ll hit 80ish points, which of course is lower than the 100 and some odd she’s done in the past, but also will probably end up being somewhere in the top section of defenders. Moscow has done a fantastic job this season, and obviously the results are coming!

One too many passers can ruin a team unless they have a Jesse Teno. A tale as old as time.

the toughest guy

What a fantastic stint, that inspired me to realize I wasn't able to keep up with your talents in the GM chair! You kept the best of the Ricer era (which was fantastic!) and found your own way to improve it. I would love to see Ricer back in the seat and find his own ways to build on your work!

bars

yes

Here are some Guys, and I will decide whether they are or are not tough. First off, A Red Guy. This player is a goaltender, who played for New York, and did pretty decent. Tough to survive New York, but not exactly a tough player. Next is QuantumPiGuy CKTigerstar. This player has never earned or applied TPE. They never played a game. I hear Quantum mechanics are tough, and although they do have CK in their name, they never applied any. Fake tough. Next is Bald Guy. A short and squat defender, who played around the league for 3 seasons and randomly summoned to DC for an 8 game stint. 110 PIMs in 217 games doesn’t scream tough. They only got above 100 hits in their final real season, so never really showed what it takes to be tough. Bill Nye the Puck Stopping Guy never made it to the VHL, but did have some pretty decent VHLM seasons as a goaltender. Tough to score against, but not tough. Bill Nye the Science Guy also never played any games, but at least applied some TPE. Only offensive vision and deking though. Anti-tough. Goalie Guy applied 5 TPE, all to leadership. It does take guts to lead, and that is tough, but Goalie Guy was not tough. Guy Fieri, goated, but not tough. Guy Lambert, our first forward to actually play a full career! Had 4 seasons with at least 100 hits, and one with 248! 760 total hits is moderately tough! Guy LaGuy and Guy LaDude both didn’t amount to much, and both applied mostly offensive TPE in their limited time. Should’ve been tough, weren’t. Guy LeGrande played a solid amount, got a ton of TPE and managed to be very not tough. Highest hits in a season was 61. Anti-tough. Guy Lesieur is much of the same. A ton of TPE, and overall, very few hits to show for it. They even had as low as 11 hits in a season. PIMs much the same. Very not tough. And finally, I think I may have found a tough Guy. Guy Saskamoose played a ton of games in Riga and Malmo. Two seasons above 200 hits, with 3 more above 100. Some major PIM and SB seasons in there too. 1000 hits, 1000 shots blocked in their career. Still managed to get 462 points across that span too. I would say, as far as Guys go, this really does seem to be as tough as they get. Shoutout to all of the Guys out there in league history, and I hope that people like Guy Saskamoose and Guy Lambert can inspire the toughness in the next generation of Guys. But also the earning and activity of players like Guy LeGrande and Guy Lesieur can inspire the overall earning prowess of what a Guy can be. Perhaps one day we will see a Guy capable of being so tough that they are deserving of an entire Theme Week dedicated to their glory. For now, as much as we found our toughest Guy, there is still work to be done.

Look at me being pro-active about my earning again! Just kidding, I’m actually just playing with the Statistics page while in a nice Friday afternoon class. But, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate @Banackock on becoming the greatest goal scorer among non-cheaters in the hybrid era. Tying Landon Wolanin’s 331 goals, but in 550 games, instead of Wolanin’s 576. He should have no problem also becoming the greatest goal scorer of the hybrid era among cheaters as well. And by cheaters, I of course mean 9 season players. With 6 goals to go in 26 games, Targaryen should be cleaning up a career that I honestly had not anticipated, due to my lack of checking, to be as good as it has been. We shall see whether it will be enough to get on the HOF Ballot, but I for one, think this is a feat, or at least should end up being a feat, that should be recognized and celebrated!

I didn't even know we had an automated post for this cool

1. Honestly nothing, I think it was more of a case that too much was going right before and we're settling into the kind of team that we actually are. Which is still the top EU team, still in contention for the Victory Cup, and still capable of having individual league leading performances. 2. Honestly, I don't expect much to happen at all. There really isn't much spare talent kicking around, and most of the fighting over it happened before the season started. Maybe we'll see some flash sales from Vancouver and Seattle, but that'll depend on buyers having the room to buy. 3. Well I certainly will, and I plan on doing something like I always do, which is skirt the line of what technically counts as the Theme but isn't at all what the Blues meant. 4. I think I'd probably split Checking into Hitting and Stick Checking. That way I we could still have dominant defensive players who would be able to do so separately from Hitting, which is prone to discipline. 5. I would get Gold Drafting set up, I would bully Josh into giving us a Portal API, I would set up farm teams in the M, and create a Co-GM job that gets paid 2 Capped/Week to get practice on the Farm Team's STHS, while helping with the culture and logistics of the whole franchise. I would drop Welfare to 2TPE and Pension to 4TPE. I would introduce some Goaltender Hybrid Attributes, assuming I couldn't get us a new sim engine. 6. I try to mind my own business but there is always one person who makes choppy video calls on speakerphone literally the entire flight, and the person on the other side sounds like they're running through a nursery that is on fire and also stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. That's unacceptable.

purposefully trying to keep things vague, because those inspire the best content in my opinion! - Prospects - Predictions - Teammates - Highlight Reel - Personality - Leadership - Anticipation - Growth - Portal - Forum - Inspiration - Goaltenders