Ledge

Credit to @ZP16 for giving me the idea for this with his article about a day in the life of Kankkunen. This is how Linus Zetterstrom spent his day this Friday, four days before the VHL Draft. 6:30 A.M. Zetterstrom is up before the sun in Malmo, where he is staying at his parents' house while he prepares for the draft. He gets dressed, brushes his teeth, and heads to the practice facility of the Malmo Redhawks in his "new" used Honda Civic. He still has ties with the Redhawks organization from his SHL time there before the S74 VHLM dispersal draft. There, he begins a workout, which involves intervals on the spin bike, pull-ups, pushing and pulling a weighted sled, and other muscle workouts. He also does a lot of stretching before and after. 8:00 A.M. Zetterstrom comes home to the delight of his golden retriever, Bella, who he takes for a run in the forest. After that, he has a quick breakfast consisting of a banana and a protein shake. Now it's his free time, so he goes to his basement and plays Rocket League with his friends for a while. Funny enough, his dad, who took time off work to stay with Linus while he's home, is still fast asleep. 9:15 A.M After his down time, Linus was driving back to Redhawks HQ for a hour ice session with a skills coach. He worked on retrievals, passing, moving around at the point, and conditioning. At this point in the day, Linus is hella tired and ready for a good meal. 10:30 A.M Since it's Friday, and a school day for most kids Linus's age, he was also studying. He signed up for courses in business, math, chemistry, English, and sports management at various universities. He spends four hours doing schoolwork on days off, so two hours in the morning. This morning, Linus did an hour in business and an hour in chemistry 11:30 A.M Linus's brothers, Henrik and Jesper, are home from from work and university respectively, and Linus's mother, Alice, is back from a trip she took with friends. The Zetterstrom family has a family brunch together, and everyone has a good time. Linus fills himself up with sausage and eggs. 1:00 P.M After brunch, and a lot of talk about the American election and how it will affect Sweden, Linus does another two hours of his schoolwork. One hour of math and one hour of sports management(he alternates sports management with English). Linus's ultimate goal is to use the skills he has learned in university to eventually become a GM after his playing days are over. He applied for a law course at a prominent Swedish school but has yet to be responded to. 3:00 P.M After his schoolwork is done, Linus jumps on his piece of crap laptop and does some draft interviews VHL GMs have sent. He is visibly hyped up as he answers the questions. After he completes those, he goes on a sketchy site called the VHL portal and he looks at the rosters and picks of the teams that sent him the interviews. He goes into so much detail and gets so drawn into it he spends an hour doing it. 4:00 P.M One of his friends calls and asks him if he's up for a little mountain biking. Linus, an ever-lover of mountain biking, happily accepts. They go through the stunning Swedish forests and hills, and they have a great view of the magnificent Baltic sea as they hop over little jumps and go down steep and rocky hills. Linus has a great time 6:00 P.M Before he has dinner with his dad, his mom, and Henrik, he jumps on a zoom call with his Canadian agent, @Ledge_and_Dairy to discuss the interviews and the draft in general. Ledge advises him not to have preferences, since almost anyone can take him. Linus agrees 7:00 P.M Linus enjoys his final dinner with his family for the last time until the next holiday. He will catch a flight at the airport in Stockholm at 9:00 and prepare for the draft in Las Vegas with his friends and teammates. He hugs his mom, shakes hands with his dad and Henrik, zooms Jesper at his university for a quick goodbye, and takes an Uber to the airport. 7:45 P.M Linus is waiting at the airport and is very bored. He passes the time playing among us on his phone, although the crappy airport Wi-Fi made him lag out multiple times. One time, he is made impostor, and the game immediately lags out. He curses and throws the phone on his seat in the waiting area. His Las Vegas Aces phone case cracks. He vows to get a new one once he lands 9:00 P.M Linus boards the plane and it takes off. He prepares himself for the long 17 hours that lie ahead. 11:00 P.M His flight makes it first stop, in Paris, France. He buys a little Eiffel tower souvenir because that's how frickin bored he is. 10:00 P.M (American time) Linus lands in Atlanta, Georgia, the second to last stop for his flight. He buys an Atlanta Thrashers keychain to but on his bag. 1:00 A.M Linus lands in Las Vegas, jet lagged and extremely tired. He taxis over to a Vegas hotel where he is supposed to meet Jiggs @JigglyGumballs but Jiggs is obviously fast asleep. Linus gets his room key and becomes dead to the world as soon as his head hits the pillow. Just going to put this in here in case it gets confusing: the times are probably messed up somehow, especially with all the flights and time changes. Excuse me if I did something wrong, because I'm too lazy to do the research and get it all spot on. Anyway, this should get me to 172 TPE, which jumps me a little in the draft rankings. Maybe I've written enough here to get me to 1,000 words. 1,016 words

Riga with the rebuild

Rush is worth more than this

I'll give it a go

Review: This is great stuff for draft eligible players, lots of useful tips! I like the images, and the short little paragraphs. Maybe make your subtitles bold or something next time. 9/10

Review: As someone who can relate to the draft hype, I also think it's pretty exciting . Credit to Miami for knocking the Aces out, I'm not salty at all(not). Some nice content, maybe space out some of the paragraphs and use some subtitles 8/10

Imagine the 8th seed winning the championship.....

Now I don’t feel so bad about losing to to the Marauders

Well, oof. Never thought we would be beaten by this team. I blame Mexico and their cocaine @Spartan

I thought I would do an article about what I do for TPE because I can't really do a playoff recap yet. But I can assure you, it will come. At the start of each week, I, presumably like every single other member of this league, claim practice facility, a free 2 TPE. Practice facility and claiming welfare are what inactive or careless users do, and I try to avoid welfare at all costs, and I strive to be the most active forums user(although I've only been on the leaderboard like twice). Practice facility is obviously supposed to be your player 'practicing', but having experience as a hockey player myself, I don't think it's realistic how much players in this league improve each week. It's inaccurate, and it doesn't matter. The league has to have some differences from real life. That's what makes a lot of it fun. I then go and do my team press conference. Jiggs does a great job with them, and for me it's basically another free 2 TPE. The questions usually take me two minutes at maximum, so another one I can get done quickly. Also, it's a great way to get to know your teammates, as Jiggs sticks some personal questions in there too I also get both my reviews done within the first hour of Monday morning. It is literally the easiest thing you can do, just put some comments about a media spot and give it an out of ten rating. Another free 2 TPE. So now, we're at 6 free TPE for me within half an hour. It's great for my player's development, but I think it might be a little too easy, and I think there should be more ways to earn that are more difficult and there isn't an easy alternative. Alas, my opinion matters not. Onward. After I get all the easy stuff off the board, I usually get into the first thing where I have to actually put some time and work into: a VHL.com article. I don't like making graphics, as most of the time you spend cutting or carefully putting colour somewhere. I like writing much better, and am more than happy to have someone else do my sigs. Anyway, for the short articles, I usually shove some random crap together that pops into my head. I don't use my big idea because I save that for my big article, my media spot. Bottom line, VHL.com takes me about fifteen minutes and gets me another 2 TPE. The comes the big kahuna. The grand finale. The media spot. That gives me 6 TPE. For a 500 word article. Sweet. I usually have about 0.8 good ideas for a media spot per week, so I'll either steal an idea from someone else and add to it or just be lazy and claim welfare. The big problem is that you have to be dedicated and have enough details for your idea for it to work for 500 WORDS. So sometimes I find myself writing a media spot and I decide to put the article into a word counter to see how much longer I had. And I have, like, 300 words total. So I copy and paste it and turn it into a VHL.com article, that only requires 300 words. And truth be told, I actually came up with enough words for this media spot! Hurray! 6 TPE for me! 578 words

Review: It sure looks to me that Akerstrom is ready for the VHL. Good luck in Helsinki next season. Nice picture of Josi, whenever I see Josi I think of Akerstrom now. Nice paragraphs, nice boldness. 9/10

1. Kind of unsurprised, but they gave us a run for our money. Glad we’re moving on though 2. Yukon, no doubt 3. I think you get more pressure to perform, and you’ve just got to handle that pressure. 4. Just treating the games the same as we treat regular games is the way to go. We have to keep our success going 5. Gotta be the first goal. 6. Among us, Miracle on Ice, the Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Review: I don’t know how you can write such long articles, it’s a skill I haven't developed yet. Good paragraphs, although first two are a little long. Nice use of boldness, and some great content here. 9/10

We are currently concocting a scheme to steal it from you

Thought the Lynx were gonna sweep for a second

Linus Zetterstrom was drafted in the 4th round, 39th overall, by the Las Vegas Aces in the S74 VHLM Dispersal Draft. Since then, he’s been consistently earning TPE and writing a butt ton of media spots for some reason, probably because he doesn’t like making graphics. Zetterstrom is now 140 TPE and is a top prospect for the upcoming VHL Entry Draft. Today I will look at his attributes, like what he’s going goof at and what he’s not. Here we go: Checking: 42 TPE I don’t know why I wasted two TPE on checking. Not that it’s unimportant, just that checking isn’t a huge part of Z’s game and and I wasn’t going to keep upgrading it. I guess you live and you learn Fighting: 40 TPE Fighting is useless. It just gets you penalties and keeps you off the ice. I saw and still see no point in upgrading it. Discipline: 45 TPE I basically upgraded this because at the start of the season, Z was getting a butt ton of penalties. Jiggs pointed this out, so I upgraded discipline and now Z is fine. Newbies should always upgrade discipline to 45 if they don’t want a bunch of penalty minutes. Skating: 65 TPE Very important skill, especially as you’re starting out. Z has always had sublime skating, and it’s a massive asset in this league. It has so much to do with the the game, and if you have good skating, you will be a good player. Strength: 41 TPE One of the things Z has to work on. He is as strong as a wet noodle. And even though strength isn’t one of the more important aspects of your game, you should still upgrade it. I’m starting to now Puck handling: 57 TPE Puck handling is stick-handling, and it’s decently important. Z has pretty good puck handling, so that helps him make more passes Andy take the puck off guys. A good skill to upgrade, but shouldn’t be the focus Face offs: 40 TPE Z is a defenceman. He doesn't take face offs. Centers should have this at 70, and wingers should have it at 60. Defenceman don’t need it Passing: 70 TPE So there I was, happily upgrading defense and skating, when I look at my stats and see some zeros. This is early in the season. So, I figured, why not upgrade passing A LOT so that I get some assists and power play time? So I did. And here I am Scoring: 45 TPE I started upgrading scoring around the same time I started upgrading passing. I wanted points. So I gave scoring 5, which wasn’t a terrible idea. Z finished the season with an astronomical 2 goals. Whoopee. Passing is more important for a pass-first defenceman Defense: 80 TPE Z’s bread and butter. Now I actually have to save up TPE to upgrade defense now. It is a huge part of the game, for forwards and defenceman. Everyone should upgrade it like crazy Penalty shot: 40 TPE Another useless attribute that developers put in to troll newbies. DON”T UPGRADE PENALTY SHOT unless you’e the best player on your team and the GM puts you in the shootouts. Then give it 5. But no more than that EX: 40 TPE This shows up on my player page but not my player management page. I hope it’s useless because I can’t upgrade it. I also don’t know what the hell it is Leadership: 40 TPE An important real-life attribute that is useless in the sim engine. Why bother when you can upgrade defense. Wow that was longer than I expected it to be. That’s great. Hopefully it’s over 1000 words so I can claim it again. See ya Only 624 words. I overestimated myself

Linus Zetterstrom Linus Zetterstrom Scouting Report As an obscure Swedish defenceman entering the VHLM Dispersal Draft, Linus Zetterstrom was only being scouted by one team: the Las Vegas Aces, now champions of the Western Conference. Now, Zetterstrom is catching the eyes of lots of VHL scouts, with his 2 goals and 20 assists in 68 games. His -2 plus/minus may be a deterrent, but his 32 blocked shots and 85 hits more than make up for it. Strengths: Defensive play: Zetterstrom is a beast in his own end. It is his top priority in practice, and it shows in the game. He always has his head on a swivel and doesn't leave anyone alone in front of the net. He is great at retrievals and always makes a crisp good pass. And with his active stick, and always playing the body, Zetterstrom is hard to beat on a rush. Skating: When scouts saw him in Sweden, his smooth skating quickly caught their eyes. While he is not the fastest skater, Zetterstrom is known to be quick and he has almost perfect backward skating. He is almost never caught with straight legs on the ice, and he's always ready for a pass. Attitude: His former teammates are always praising him for being a positive force on the bench. "He's always the guy that's shouting encouragement from the bench, and the guy that's comforting you after you made a crappy play" said a teammate from the U18s. "He was definitely deserving of being a captain that year". Weaknesses: Physicality: Zetterstrom has never been the guy with the big hits or or the massive penalty numbers. Although he's a tough character in corners and in front of the net, physicality is definitely an area of focus for him. He's sometimes too soft on checks or doesn't finish his check when rubbing a guy out. Strength: Even though he spends a good amount of time in the gym, Zetterstrom is still pretty slight at only 6'0 and 184 pounds. He is never the biggest guy on the ice, and however he makes up for that, being a little stronger would go along way in a league as tough as the VHL. Scoring: Zetterstrom is a pass first defenceman. This is exhibited every single time he steps on the ice. But scoring is an important element of the game, and Zetterstrom isn't exactly adept at it. His shot would be classified as 'decent' at best. Again with the strength, he doesn't have the hardest shot either. He only has 2 goals this season.

+10 Linus Zetterstrom

There has been tons of speculation recently about expansion, and both @Spence King and @fyrefly have written extensive media spots on it. Fyrefly in particular argued that expansion isn’t a great idea right away. But it is possible, so i’m going to enter a name into the hat: the Montréal Voyageurs, or les Voyageurs de Montréal. The name ‘Voyageurs’ is registered deep inside Quebec, dating back to when French explorers such as Samuel de Champlain ‘discovered’ Canada. Ever since Champlain and his crew established Quebec City, ‘Voyageurs’ has been a term that describes traveling Frenchmen. In the VHLM, and in the VHL, too, there isn’t a French Canadian team, which is astounding, because Quebec is the second populated province in Canada’s. Heck, even Yukon Territory has a team. And I’m aware that there was once a Quebecois team called the ‘Meute’ or something, but that name couldn’t be used again, because the Mississauga Hounds is too similar. Anyway, the team could share ice at the Bell Centre with the Montreal Canadiens or the Place Bell with the Laval Rocket. My point there is that a stadium is not an issue. And as seen in previous expansions articles, filling the GM positions should not be hard at all. In further argument to prove that it’s a good name, because I should have already clarified that it’s a great city, the Montreal Voyageurs were once a team in the American Hockey League(AHL)in the late sixties . I’d like you to know that I did not copy the name off that, I just googled the name to make sure that I wasn’t violating any copyrights. And since that team folded over fifty years ago, I think I’m fine. P.S. I just wanted to say f**k autocorrect for trying to turn ‘fine’ into ‘inevitable’. 300 words EXACTLY

Review: Good job spreading news about something that’s so underrated in the VHL, checking. There aren’t enough rough and tumble guys anymore, so we should recognize the remaining few. Nice images and paragraphs, and the logos next to the names are a nice touch. 9.5/10

Review: Love to see my guys get some recognition, although it hurt not being mentioned(kidding! I’m a third pairing guy). Nice image of the Knights, and great paragraphs. Really good article overall. 9/10

1. It’s been great, if a little expected. Our team is a great bunch of players. We has this coming 2. Amazingly(not), all three podium teams were teams I was cheering for. I thought the tourney as a whole was cool 3. Halifax. And we need lots of luck to beat them, because they are downright scary 4. Usually some of us go to a restaurant, and usually avoid bars, because of the whole non-alcohol thing a couple of guys and me have. Also, getting to bed early is a must, since we have games every day. 5, Dog, no question. I have a golden retriever and he’s a blessing 6. For personal reasons, I won’t share too much. Although I’ll have to agree with @Crstats23, there is something about @NickSunderbruch that doesn’t scream wholesome.....

Holy crap 3000 words! You should find some hobbies lol