jacobcarson877

Hello @eraserfrog, welcome to the VHL! I am the AGM of the Pickles, a team in the Junior Showcase, a rookie/prospect tournament currently happening right now. Looking for a place to get into the groove and have some fun right away? This tournament is a great opportunity to get settled and show us what you can do while you wait for the VHLM draft! I can offer you a spot on our 3rd defense pairing with possibly some special teams minutes as well. If you're interested in joining our team, reply to this message with #SlicedToWin We'd love to have you! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Well, the playoffs ended later than expected for the Marlins and far sooner than expected for the Wranglers. As such, I’m stuck feeling confused, filled with both pride and disappointment, and for exactly the same reason. Obviously for anyone who knows anything about statistics, its hard to draw any meaningful conclusions about a small sample size, which is what can make playoff structures so exciting. Especially with hockey, which is more often than not a coin flip sport, where the odds of any given team winning is rarely more than 55-60%, especially between 2 teams that actually intend on competing. Even the worst teams will win games, and against top teams at that. Obviously over a larger sample size, such as a 72 regular season, the top teams, the ones pushing that 60%, will appear to be significantly better, and their record will show that. I remember reading a particularly interesting tweet, that I can’t find, but I did find out it was just an excerpt from an article, where the authors were looking to find out the likelihood that the “better team” or the higher seed actually moves on. The NHL and MLB were JUST above 60%, with the NBA at around 80%. The notable part, and the part they actually wrote a published article about was that in order for the NFL, NHL and MLB to have the better team move on 80% of the time, the NFL would need to be a best-of-11, NHL be best-of-51 and MLB be a whopping best-of-75. Obviously using a simulation engine narrows down some of the inherent randomness of reality, and generally normalizes the results. But even still, I struggle with the how to approach the playoffs with any form of sanity. As the 8 seeded Marlins took on the top seeded Aces, our goal was to avoid a sweep. I had to pull out lineup tricks and get bailed out by some incredible individual performances to pull out 2 wins against the Aces. I would argue that series should not have been nearly a coin flip, regardless of how satisfying it was to get a few wins. Follow that up with the Wranglers facing the Phoenix, and I see firsthand the opposite side of that argument. Although the Aces ended up winning the series, and unsurprisingly so, the VHL rolled the dice and got the less likely values. Objectively the TPE gap was much different between the VHL squads, but relatively, compared to the TPE cap of the VHLM, the talent gap for the VHLM series was far greater. The fact that both of the top seeds in the North American conference were knocked out by the 3 and 5 seed is rather confusing to interpret. Obviously, NA had 5 incredible teams, and the fact that any 3 of them would be eliminated by this point is not all that out of this world. But looking forward to next season, or future seasons beyond that, how does a GM respond to what was essentially a triple upset (Chicago over Seattle, Chicago over Calgary and DC over Vancouver)? If every series is roughly a coinflip, then suddenly we get all nihilistic and as such, just constantly putting together a decent team is enough to give you roughly the same odds as anyone else to win. If a team like Chicago, which is a great team by all accounts, wins, what happens? What do we all learn from it? What would cause them to win? It wasn’t a TPE advantage, on average or at the maximums. It wasn’t superior positional depth. It wasn’t build quality. I suppose it could have been a better goaltender, but ignoring a dreadful game 6, Ben Dahl had the better metrics in that series than Cole Pearce. The NHL is a copycat league as we all know by now, so is the answer just to have a 1000+ TPA goaltender and hope that the other team falls apart? I suppose Davos should be thrilled with losing their series then, knowing they have all the tools to win next season. The real answer as to what teams should learn from this playoff is really that in a coin-flip league, it’s not that your choices don’t matter, or that there is some hyper-specific thing you have to emulate. It is that the playoffs are fun, and exciting because of the crazy results. Why do people love March Madness, or the NFL so much? Because of the best-of-1 format, every weird bounce, missed call and insane play is the difference between a championship and utter embarrassment. We don’t remember the series that went according to the odds. No one is thinking about Davos and London losing to Warsaw and Moscow. Looking back on these playoffs as a Wrangler, we played the odds, flipped the coin, and got tails. If we come back next season with a strong roster and get put in the same position again, the odds won’t be any more in our favour. It’s the same issue that plagues Leafs fans everywhere. It isn’t all that baffling that they would lose any given series, as we know the better team only moves on about 60% of the time anyways. It only becomes baffling when the better team loses multiple seasons in a row. It is equally as baffling when a team like the 2021 Canadiens, with a very mediocre team on paper, continues to win. But one has to remember that every single series, the underdog team walked in with a roughly 40% chance to pull out a series win. Every single series is like that, so if you look at them as isolated events, it isn’t all that surprising that any given team wins any given series. I am a firm believer that the extra odds of being the top team is an important thing to chase, and should inevitably pay off, but before coming to an emotional decision, posing as a logical one, we have to remember that the odds in hockey are never in anyone’s favour in an overwhelming fashion. We know that we have a great team. We firmly believe that we put together the pieces that could have won us a championship. But so did 6 other teams in the league, and only 1 can actually win it. I know we have the core pieces in place to continue to succeed and will get reinforcements this offseason to maintain or improve our team’s strength. Our core is now at their max contracts, and entering our 3rd season, and with term on our deals, there is a lot that is certain in our futures. That is part of what is scary, knowing that there is not a lot of room to change. But we also know that we will be more than good enough to win for the rest of our primes. The only reason we have to be sad after this series is that we will have to wait for months to flip the coin again. It doesn’t look like the talent in NA is going anywhere, so even a first-round win won’t be overwhelmingly likely for a while. But hypothetically, if considering multiple playoff runs as one event, we should be overwhelmingly likely for success eventually. Now when it comes to the VHLM, the Marlins obviously have a lot to be excited for next season, with 3 of their top offensive players primed to make a return (pending announcement of the TPE cut-off), giving them an incredibly strong core to build off of right away. We also have 6 top-15 picks, meaning that we will have a lot of control when it comes to building a contender for the upcoming season. With the new rule changes about the number of draft picks one can have, and must maintain, lower round picks will also be increasing in value for a few reasons. Not only are these lower picks essential, as many of these players will return for a second season, which helps to compensate for the “loss” of pick hoarding. And also, these lower picks do not have caps, so they are now the hoarding commodity. Building a sustainable playoff team sounds as though it will both be easier and harder to accomplish. I had the minimum number of picks we will soon be required to have, and made the playoffs with it, but only because Houston tapped out, in my opinion far too soon. If everyone is able to compete every season, more deserving teams and players won’t make the playoffs, but also making the playoffs becomes an achievement. My only major concern moving forward, as someone with a very “potential-based” drafting philosophy is whether the drafts will be deep enough so support this lack of boom and bust. To maintain a competitive air, and provide enticing opportunities for all players, the drafts will have to be deeper than ever before. If we want actual roster players to be playing playoff games instead of bots, then teams need to be able to fill out their rosters without relying on buying players from a team that is tearing down to the bottom. I’m definitely very excited to give it one final chance in the boom-and-bust era and hopefully continue to build up the brand of the Marlins for when we can’t get away with just having a bunch of top picks. I know there are lots of exciting changes coming down the pipeline, and I hope to establish the Marlins as the new go-to team in this new era. I have always believed that roster depth is a key part of success in the VHLM, and it is part of why I have gotten a reputation in regard to my waiver pitching. I never really took the chance to weigh in on the idea of many of the recreates joining Mexico City and watching them have a lot of success so far in the playoffs. I knew they were far more talented than their regular season record said anyways, but I can understand the frustrations around their sudden rise to success. I know how excited my players were heading into the trade deadline, hearing about how all of these recreates were going to come and join teams to help with the playoff push. We had just lost a few D to inactivity, and so we were pretty desperate for some defensive help to maintain our playoff status. I also know how disappointed my players and I were watching every single recreate join other teams in a very minor role. Everyone values different things in the VHLM, whether it is playing time, team success or just vibes, but to think that we had offered none of those is somewhat disappointing. No amount of disappointment was going to make us a playoff contender however, and I know that Mexico having made it this far is only going to encourage the next class to do the same thing. Am I complaining without solutions? Absolutely I am, and I’m not even certain who I’m complaining about. I think recreates have every right to join whatever team they want on waivers just like any other player. If they want to name their players after ice cream desserts, they may as well, because that’s funny and makes for good storylines. Do I think recreates should be forced to join teams like the Marlins just to even out roster depth? Not at all. All I hope is that in the future I can get a couple of recreates to get my team hyped and fill out some core roster depth. Somehow, I’ve made it to almost 2000 words here, so I’ll finish off talking about Landon Wolanin’s build and future. I’ve wormed my way up to 3rd in my class in TPE, despite a horribly late start and not a whole lot of carryover TPE. I never intended on making it this far and involving myself this much. There is still a lot of TPE to dump into this build, but unfortunately not a lot of improvement to be made. With everything being so expensive now, there isn’t a lot to improve throughout the season. I like to take the offseasons to invest in the super expensive things that I won’t want to do in the regular season, so there will definitely be more DF in my near future, but there is one attribute that I have left to build at some point that would be a prime regular season stat. Depending on how the roster looks in the coming seasons, Landon will soon be learning how to check. He has already made the VHFL list for a few people and would have been a good pick had I invested in checking sooner, but I don’t want to overload the team with checkers, and it will depend on who is joining the team this offseason. I think there is also a bit more offense to be had, but that will depend on Landon actually starting the season before the 20-game mark. 2000+ words, claiming randomly for the fun of it

I hate that this was my immediate question too

well that was anticlimactic . gg chicago

WHO WANTS SOME SWEET SWEET TPE?? Answer 3 for 2 or all 6 for 3! 1. With the Marlins being knocked out of the playoffs (sad), the final 4 includes Miami, Mexico, Philly and Las Vegas. Who do you think has the best shot at a championship? 2. The Junior Showcase Tournament is about to begin. What do you think is the most important aspect to showcase for the GMs looking to draft you? 3. What are you dressing up as for halloween? Or, what was your favourite halloween costume you once wore? 4. If you could have a second player, would you want them to play on the same or a different team than your current player? 5. What was the coolest thing you saw on the forum in the past week? 6. If you were commissioner for the day, what would your first change be?

So excited to be joining in on this awesome team and awesome tournament! Go Pickles!

Landon Wolanin is just dying to start the playoffs. There is so much hype surrounding this Wranglers squad, and knowing that a possible title contender in Seattle is already knocked out of the NA race is exhilarating. Even then, whoever survives the bloodbath in North America could still face an incredible EU team. There is no easy path to the cup this time around, and that means a lot of people are going to be fairly disappointed, but almost everyone has what it takes to win. Landon needs to get off to a hot start, unlike his regular season if the Wranglers hope to stand a chance against a great Chicago squad. He is hoping that his training while waiting to see the Wranglers’ opponent will come into play, as there is lots to be excited for coming into this week. Lets see if the sophomore postseason is just as exciting as the sophomore regular season was.

One day

So the best time to recreate is still at the trade deadline for all the same reasons as before. Your 9* season clock begins the season after your VHL draft. Regardless of what league you play in, the clock is ticking on those 9 seasons. The reason the number is now 9, is because most players will spend at least 1 season in the VHLE, still allowing for players to have the ability to play 8 VHL seasons. So long as you make it to 400TPE by the end of your first post-draft season, you still get 8 VHL seasons. While you can technically skip the VHLE (with the new 300TPE callup rules) and gain a 9th season, that seems to be rather circumstantial based on the VHL team situation, and not something you can really bank on.

The rules are incorrect for most of us yes, but only because of the players who played since the inception of the VHLE (which started in S80, hence the 80+ players having different rules) I think we are 1 season away from there only being 1 ruleset (as the 79 class will be retiring and everyone will be 80+)

Incredible name. Best of luck!

This may be one of the best Wranglers squads ever assembled. Ricer and company have committed to an identity, and have put in the work to be contenders for the remainder of the 80s. Prospect Progression The Calgary Wranglers have used up the majority of both their prospect and draft capital in order to assemble the core pieces represented in their current squad. There are still however a few active players who may see VHL playing time with the Wranglers in the coming seasons. First off is Larry Abass Jr, a strong 2-way winger who has been absolutely dominating in the VHLM for the past 2 seasons. Earning 10+ TPE per week, this player looks ready to either fill in as a depth forward next season for the Wranglers, or mature a bit more with Stockholm. Next up is Lorenzo Cobberson, who has been slowly chugging along the last few seasons. While not the highest earner, they have continued to get their welfare pretty consistently, and will be looking to build towards their ceiling with the Oslo Storm for a few seasons. They are currently a depth piece on a stacked roster, so look for them to earn more of a role as the seasons go by. Finally, there is Michael Shotter. An undrafted free agent defensive prospect, currently with the Miami Marauders. Earning close to 10 TPE per week now, Shotter has a strong chance of making the team in a couple seasons as a strong depth option. A really exciting storyline and hopefully a valuable piece for the Wranglers. Contracts & Cap This is where it begins to get messy for the Wranglers. Having one of the best earning young cores in the league does come at a cost, and that is financially. With 3 forwards and 2 defensemen set to be earning max contracts next season, decisions will have to be made as to how they will stay compliant. Will they take the Seattle route and simply run with less players? Will they move one of their big name players? Luc Tessier retiring gets one contract off the books, but will the team have the room to resign franchise player Saku Kotkakoivu? After S86 the books look rather stable, with Jokinen coming off and their younger players growing into that money. Daniel Janser, Landon Wolanin, and Leandro Gonclaves are locked up long term up front and AirRig GoodBrandSun is also locked up for multiple seasons on the back end. Ben Dahl has lots of term in net, but has had dwindling activity over the last few months. Draft Decisions The Wranglers have an interesting few drafts ahead of them. With so much of their future already certain, the Wranglers will need to maintain a supply of depth options to fill in around their established stars. This late first round pick in the upcoming draft may be their last opportunity for a while to bring in a long-term talent. There are still lots of questions as to where they may go in the draft with that pick specifically, but there are plenty of talented players in the S86 class that could fit the bill. A lot of that decision will be made my players like Sax Justice and Phil Strasmore, and whether they think they can continue to solidify themselves as core players. There is also the wildcard pick of a goaltender, depending on the story of Ben Dahl. Future Philosophy The Calgary Wranglers are going to continue to be a dominant 2-Way team. Their forwards are continuing to load up defensively, and their defensemen continue to grow offensively. This is going to be a tough team to play against, and the Wranglers hope to outplay their opponents, particularly on the shot clock and the possession timers. Committing to these identity players for a long time gives us an easy look as to what the team will look like for seasons to come, which is mostly the same. Crossing that 900TPA threshold for their young core and seeing results like the ones they have seen in the S85 regular season is a great sign for future success. As Janser, Wolanin, Goncalves and GoodBrandSun continue to pile on the TPA, they only become a better deal, so this is really where their developmental practices begin to shine.

I'm sure if I copy and pasted it into a Media Spot I could get away with it, its definitely 500+ words and definitely league related? I'll keep it on the backburner for a while haha

Few thoughts as the other unnamed party directly involved - My relationship with Dil and Ricer is strong and will be fine after all this. - I was put in a position where if my relationship wasn't as strong with either of them, it truly could have been a conflict somehow where I wouldn't be fine after this. Having to choose between lying to a mod to back my team or ratting out my team to a mod isn't a spot that I'd like to ever be in again. - As a GM, I was very generous with trivia, knowing that my forum expertise was much higher than most and people from outside my team would come to me in confidence for trivia help. At first I was very cautious about it, helping slowly, but as we know over time people began just sending the direct link to the answer, and then eventually just the answers. At that point, instead of wasting everyone else's time when they get the question, it only makes sense to keep track of the answers somewhere for quick access. I get why these happen, and I know for a fact that they have been happening for forever, and will likely happen again in another month without a change in the rules explicitly or constant moderation. - I've voiced my concerns about the effect this will have on our welfare+ players, who we desperately need more of, who have been getting 2 easy trivia TPE for the entirety of the time I've been around. Trivia isn't as simple as just exploring the forum, and for our newer members, or those of us not constantly on the forum, the questions made available are simply too difficult in my opinion to be viable usages of time. Those players are often hesitant to write, outside of maybe a press conference, so the "other options" aren't really viable. - When we redid the trivia system, as has been mentioned here before, there was no explicit banning of sharing answers. My interpretation at the time was because we were constantly adding questions and there were going to be so many questions that by the time someone had begun compiling the answers, there would simply be more. In my opinion this was actually working rather well, I'd usually get questions about the same trivia question for a couple weeks then I wouldn't hear about it again. Maybe others don't feel its working well however. - I can understand answer sharing being wrong, and could be convinced to really go for it without the threat of punishment if a few things happen. Trivia questions have to get easier for first-gens. Seriously it is 1 TPE stop making me count individual rows in a spreadsheet that wasn't updated since S43. The questions don't have to be interesting. Honestly if we could keep it just to things on the portal or just on the forum that would be a game-changer. We don't need to uphold some divine standard showing how good we are at finding information. Also, we need a written standard of what is and isn't allowed. I had a very productive chat with Spartan, Josh and Sam today on this topic and everyone kind of had a different idea of what was fine. And honestly, that's okay. But at some point, if we're going to start throwing around punishments, it can't be subjective, or else its going to look like targeting people individual people of power aren't great with. - There was obviously more to the story with Calgary and the conversation with Ricer and Dil that isn't my story to tell, but I am hoping that the seriousness of the conversation and the urgency was carried forward to other GMs across all of the leagues as well. This was more than just a friendly reminder, with a tone of far more than I expected. If the same energy was carried over to the other teams then all is fine in my mind. - I can understand where people are beginning to feel as though a lot of the recent changes (some of which I'm thrilled about and some I haven't been and that's okay) have been very anti-TPE earning. It is harder than ever to earn TPE in an era where your TPE goes way less distance. Obviously we know it has to go less distance or else the hybrid attributes would be useless. I understand we have to uphold a standard and the Updaters do a great job with that, but watching those "easy" TPE sources like trivia and fantasy zone take the hit over and over again doesn't feel great. - Obviously I am not privy to a lot of the high-up conversation about changed and such but I do find it somewhat concerning that the commissioners didn't know this crackdown was happening. This definitely feels like something that should have come from them first, then enforced by the mod team afterwards, with threat of punishment, instead of this weird other way around that has happened now. - I definitely feel like I have far more questions now than I have answers, and I hope over the next few days we get a LOT more clarification on what is going on with trivia and its future. It is obviously a broken system that has been encouraging borderline cheating for literal years, and unless we get meaningful changes (which I would be very excited for) I don't see any of the events of today as a win for anyone. THE END

We are reaching the point where most teams are full at the forward position, including both Mexico and Ottawa. I also feel your disappointment that new creates don't share our passion for our teams, but it would be unfair to project that disappointment towards a new player and a competitive team with open roster spaces to accommodate new talent.

just so you know, regardless of the team you choose to join for the remainder of the season (regular season ends tomorrow) you will be entered into the VHLM draft this offseason, meaning that realistically you are just joining a team for the playoffs.

With 3 games left for Calgary and 4 left for San Diego, this roller coaster of a season is coming to a close, and it appears as though it is time to update the world on how things are going for both teams. In my second season of rebuilding the San Diego Marlins, we pulled together at least a .500 season. With Mississauga going for a perfect 0-72 season, that sure helped, but considering how talented our conference was, and how often we played the other conference’s powerhouse, the Miami Marauders, I am thoroughly satisfied with the result of this season. We were in every game, and we’ve made progress building our brand as a haven for first-gens and a go-to destination for development. Calgary has been rolling pretty well since the second week or so of sims. Janser has been on an absolute tear, and has really been allowing us to have 2 dominant offensive lines. Landon was probably the hottest player of the second half of the season, skyrocketing up to 83 points after putting up 1 in his first 10 games. The Wranglers look ready to claim the top seed in the NA Conference, although Vancouver is still in the hunt. There is a lot of confidence in this team and anything short of a deep playoff run would be a disappointment. There is still lots of room to grow for both teams, and lots of excitement to come our way in the seasons to come.

NICE

I feel like I just had a stroke

Forward group is all full here in San Diego, but other GMs should be here pitching to you any time!

nice

true