fromtheinside

welcome to the team BB

hey its me, fellow teenager here.

Well now that the season is officially wrapped up, I suppose it is time for some reflection. Going into this season, Scotty Sundin already achieved his main goal which was getting to the big leagues for S83. Mission achieved. It was a lot of hard work, but Sundin was able to make the jump and join his fellow rookie teammates for what ended up being a hell of a first season in the Windy City. If you look at the stats, you can see that an extra season of grooming may have been optimal. Both the Board Game Clue on Skates and Bo Johansson opted to spend a year over in Europe to fine-tune their games before coming over to Chicago. On paper, it seems like that was the right call as they both put up superior numbers to Sundin's, but at the end of the day, everyone on the team chipped in and played their best. All of these players have some experience under their belt now and going forward they will be mentoring the next wave of young talent to come up to the Phoenix. This team is just getting started, and the best is yet to come!

claiming week 2/2

On paper, and in many sportsbooks across the world, Chicago was heading into their NA Wild-Card matchup with the DC Dragons as major underdogs. DC had made major moves this season to bolster their roster and had planned to be competitors in this year's playoffs. After a somewhat disappointing regular season, the Dragons would be forced to play a best-of-five versus the Chicago Phoenix in order to get to the NA Conference Semi-Finals. On the flipside, the Phoenix exceeded many expectations this season. Coming off of one of the most dismal season's in franchise history, Chicago continued rebuilding this season with their sights fixed on the future. However, the Phoenix surpassed pretty much every projection set out for this season, but despite that, they were still considerable underdogs for this series. But although things often look good on paper, that's why you have to play the games. Chicago came flying out the gate and never looked back. They would go on to sweep their best-of-five series convincingly and now they are looking to shock the world one more time as they take on the NA powerhouse, the Seattle Bears in the NA Semi-Finals.

Hello everyone, I have been around now for a decent amount of time. My first-gen was made in season 74 and I am currently in my rookie season on my second player. Over the time I've been here I have gotten to know a decent amount of people in community, whether that be players, management, league staff, mods, updaters, or anything in between. There's a ton of great people in our community and over time I have shouted out a lot of them, but for this specific theme week, I wanted to mention some people I've never really publicly recognized before. So without further ado, here are a few people I'd like to chat about! @JeffD/ @MubbleFubbles / @Shindigs (My Chicago family) So right off the bat, I am clumping these three individuals together, because we are all currently linked together via the Chicago Phoenix organization. First off, Jeff is our general manager, and I was lucky enough to get to know him a bit over the winter while we got addicted to the same MMORPG. I normally don't like playing games online with others, but Jeff has such a chillness to him, and was super easy to get along with pretty much immediately. I really enjoyed our time playing Lost Ark together, and even though he is a filthy Boston Red Sox fan, I still think he is pretty great. As fate would have it, Chicago was in a great position to draft me this past offseason in the VHL Entry Draft. I was hoping to end up in Chicago, and sure enough I got my wish. I am committed to making Chicago a successful team and a lot of that is because of the respect I have for Jeff. As for Mubbles and Shindigs, these two are both teammates of mine and I knew they were solid users, but until I actually got to Chicago and got in the locker room, I had no idea the extent of their awesomeness. When I was still working as an AGM under Cow for NYA, I had scouted both these guys for their draft class. They both seemed like slam dunks, but they both said they would love to play together, and for us in New York at the time, it wasn't something we could accommodate so we passed them up. Thankfully Jeff was able to draft one and then trade for the other shortly after! Mubbles is an analytical god and is hitting us with all these amazing stats of our sims and players performances. It really is nice to have an extra layer of data to look at to really see where the team is thriving and where improvements could be made. Shindigs is also an absolute madlad. He's in on engaged with almost everything on the forums and recently he even got into the BoG. I really respect how much thought and passion both these guys bring, and it really helps me stay motivated to keep my own activity up. On top of that, they are both just class dudes and have been great teammates. @Dil I may have said this in a couple of other more closed conversations in the past, but I feel like Dil does a ton of work for this community and a ton of people aren't even aware of a lot of it. We have hands-down the best portal (that I am aware of anyways) in all of sports sim leagues and none of that happens without a ton work on the back-end coding and making everything run smoothly. Granted, it isn't solely Dil, but he does do a ton of work and often times doesn't get the praise he deserves. Aside from all the coding he does for VHL, he's also just a super kind hearted fella. I've slowly gotten to know him better over the past handful of months and I am really glad for that. I don't have a ton of reasons to direct my attention to gen-chat, but I will always have time to yuck it up with Dil, he's good people. @rory Rory is probably one of the more polarizing figures in our community. Rory has been known to stir the pot at times, and certainly has never shied away from offering up their opinion on many a topic. But honestly, that's what I love about them. Does Rory like to "TROLL" sometimes... yeah I think so, but it's an online community, and sometimes you need a little excitement to liven things up a bit from time to time. Rory and I had a really interesting process we had to work through when I drafted Tavish DeGroot during their draft class. Despite some heated player negotiations, we managed to come out of it still on good terms. Outside of all the VHL stuff though, I really love that I can goto Rory and talk restaurant drama with them. We both work in restaurants and rory we both really understand each others pain when it comes to work bullshit, so we have a bit of a bond there lol. I always love just shooting the shit with rory about hockey, VHL or anything really. Also rory is a NYA Superfan, which is dope. @Moon Moon is a guy I've gotten to know really well over the past year or so. We chat almost on a daily basis. Outside of VHL-related stuff, we talk about all sorts of things. Hockey, baseball, ROMANCE, pretty much anything really. Also Moon and I share the bond of both being raised as dope ass 5-pin bowlers. Unlike cowards who play ten-pin bowling, five pin bowlers are the true elite athletes of the sport. It's nice to have Mooner around to chit chat with, even if he doesn't know what or where Mount Olympus is. Well that is it this theme week. There are lots of great people out there in the community if you take the time to go out there a talk to some of them. Of course it isn't ALL good, but there's definitely good people out there. Cheers VHL! (I will be claiming this for two weeks)

CHICAGO PHOENIX PRESS CONFERENCE ANSWER 6 FOR 2 TPE; 3 FOR 1 TPE 1. What are your thoughts on the series with DC? Can we finish them off? Well I am a little late to the party on this one, but yeah I would have thought we could, and it turns out we did! Bring on Seattle! 2. Who is the goofiest member on the team? Ironically probably me. Shindigs and MubblesFubbles are both pretty knowledgeable lads and are pretty on top of things. I'd same I'm more of a goofball than those two lol. 3. Do you believe leadership has an effect in the sim engine? From what I've been told over my time here in VHL, no. Many people have told me that it does absolutely nothing for you. 4. How gnarly is your playoff beard so far? I've always been shite at growing facial hair, so my playoff beard is sadly not up to par. Shame!!! 5. Do you think we are the dark horse for this season? Why or why not? Absolutely we are a dark horse. Who expected Chicago to make it this far already in their rebuild? Beating DC is already a nice achievement when considering where we our in our team rebuild, but let's keep it going! 6. Who is your favourite player thats not in the playoffs? I'll go with Brendan Telker! Had some great moments with him in Malmo! He is a really great guy and a solid teammate to boot!

Cheers JB! Obviously Yukon was a blast when you were first coming up... but honestly I had a great time in San Diego with my recreate! You're a great GM my man.

Cheers buddy, I always got time for anything you write! You're probably the most well-spoken person in the league, I could learn a thing or two from you haha.

it was my honour bud hahaha

sure was haha my bad it was late and i was out of sorts.

Game Recap: Game 525 featured an all-Canadian matchup as the Toronto Legion travelled to the west-coast to take on the three-time defending Cup champs, the Vancouver Wolves. After three dominant seasons, the Wolves finally entered rebuild mode this season and at this point they are only playing for pride. The Legion on the other hand, are finally hitting their stride and seem poised to make a run in the playoffs this season. The action in this one came fast and furious in the first. The two clubs combined for three goals in the first 2:10 of this game, and when the dust had settled, the Legion took a 2-1 lead into intermission. It would stay that way all the way until the final moments of the third when Sting Chameleon would add an insurance marker to secure the 3-1 victory for the Legion. Oskar Lindbergh was stellar when he needed to be, making 26 of 27 saves in this one.

Review: Game 534 featured a battle between two of the toughest teams in the European Division this season. The Helsinki Titans hosted the Warsaw Predators, and with just a couple of days left in the regular season, this game had major playoff implications! Jonathon Ori opened the scoring half-way through the first but the lead was short-lived as Brendan Marner was quick to answer, scoring less than two minutes later to tie things up. In the second frame, Nezuko broke the deadlock with power play marker at 14:19. The lead would stand going into third, but not for long. Just 1:51 into the third period, Zach Kisslinger II scored his 35th of the season to tie the game once more. It would stay even until 12:27 when Gus Nasherov scored what would be the game winning goal as Helsinki downed the Preds by a score of 3-2. With the win, Helsinki is just one point back of Warsaw for fourth place in the EU conference!

Well after a few seasons of doing my best to help out MexicanCow, I decided this week I was going to step away from my position as AGM of the New York Americans. Quite simply, I don't have the passion that I think is necessary to do an ample job there. I'm not a big believer in taking on a job and half-assing it, and unfortunately the past couple of weeks, that's exactly what I have been doing. The players and fans (especially the SUPER FANS) deserve better then that so sadly I this is it for me in The Big Apple. I really hope that New York can turn things around and make themselves a contender in the near future. Who knows what the future holds for the Americans, but as far as I go, I will be focusing on my player and being the best I can be for Chicago in the foreseeable future.

guilty as charged!! lol nice writeup!

I was just creating a talking point and needed to do a .com on Sunday.. I'm not being critical of your job.

We our well on our way through yet another VHL season and as part of my mid-week routine, I took a few minutes the other day to fill out my VHL/E/M Fantasy Zone picks. The whole process took me about 5-10 minutes or so. I go look at some player stats and league standings and then form my decisions for the week. Now nothing is guaranteed, but if you you are top of things, this is a prime avenue to gain quite a bit of TPE and it's all uncapped. Over the course of a season, this adds up quite a bit. So much so, that it begs the question... is there too much uncapped TPE tied into VHL Fantasy Zone? Measured against other forms of TPE gaining, there could be an argument made that maybe the TPE payouts could use some refining. For comparison's sake, look how much the VHFL payouts are for the course of an entire season. There's a lot of variation there. So I ask you, the VHL Community... does this need to be changed? I am genuinely curious to see what users in the community think about this. Please feel free to comment below and let me know what you think. Cheers!

you're a legend Telk!!!

claiming for week 2 of 2

Up to this point in the VHL season I would say while some results have been as expected, there are a fair amount of surprises as well. I quickly will go over things that have caught my attention thus far. Starting in the North American conference, the Bears are dominating, which I feel isn't too surprising. Toronto has done well too, and again, that's kind of to be expected. Both these teams have decent rosters. Now here's where things get weird. Chicago is currently in third, riding a four game winning streak currently. Chicago is a rebuilding team, and while they have a great young core, I did NOT expect them to be in a playoff position this soon. Behind them is the DC Dragons, who quite frankly I thought would be a top notch club this season. I figured the would round out the top three in the NA conference and the rest of the teams would just exist. The rest of the standings are pretty much what you'd expect in NA. Over the European conference, Riga sits atop the standings with a sterling 29-5-6 record. Riga was widely considered to be a cup contender this season, so that comes as no surprise. Behind them is Moscow, who is always competitive, but I figured the likes of Prague, London, Warsaw and Helsinki would all be closer to them. Helsinki is a real shocker to me sitting at a 19-19-1 record. I feel like a huge part of this is because the EU conference is so overwhelmingly better than the NA conference right now. Things are very uneven in that sense. It's a shame of a couple of these strong EU teams are going to get screwed this season, because there's quite a few well-built teams, especially considering how hard it is to get active players and fill out a roster these days. It should be interesting to see how things play out down the stretch and into the playoffs!

I feel like I was exactly like @Shindigs when I broke into the league as well. Good on him though, everyone should participate at their own pace. He's a beauty!

As it is Sunday evening and I have yet to do my main point task for the week yet, I figured now could be as good a time as any to kind of ramble and voice my thoughts. I'd like for this to be an open discussion also and hear other user's thoughts. Currently, I am on my second player in the VHL. My first run was on Scotty Kaberle, and the experience was a fun one for the most part. There were some low spots for sure, but overall I thought it was a pretty solid run and I would say I look back at Kaberle's career fondly. I broke into the community as a chipper first-gen who wanted to get in on anything and everything. For a few seasons I did VSN, and while that was a fun experience, eventually I became too busy with real-life responsibilities to keep providing VHL-related content at that pace. Then at some point in the ladder-half of Kaberle's career, the VHLE was announced. I originally thought it was a good idea as it could be a place for all the inactives to congregate, and that would leave the VHL to be where the top TPE-earners would compete at the highest level. However, that's not really how the league was envisioned by its founders, and for better or worse, we now have three leagues in our ecosystem. It was a real game changer. After watching how the E played out in its first couple of seasons, I decided that personally I wanted to forgo my player having to play in the E. So around Christmas time, I decided to retire my first-gen a season early to get some extra uncapped TPE opportunities around Christmas time that would inevitably put me over the top when it came to getting to the VHL TPE cap floor and also exceeding the VHLE cap ceiling. So Scotty Sundin was born, and I spent a season and a bit in the VHLM once again. I got to play under @JB123 which was cool because he first came up under me in Yukon (rip Yukon ) We had a pretty good playoff run but it was for naught. I was lucky enough to go first overall in the VHLM dispersal draft after I was drafted by @Moon in Houston. The full season in Houston was a blast, we had a a pretty loaded team. We dominated the regular season, but lost the finals in game 7 in what was a crazy series. Overall though, it was good times playing with Boom and Rhynex, and then also getting to meet new guys like Eagle. The VHL draft rolled around and I was once again taken first, this time by Chicago. I was (and still am ) thrilled to get taken by Chicago. I've gotten to know @JeffD a little bit through gaming with him and Beav over the winter, and I am really happy to play under him on the Phoenix. I am even more excited about the core we have in place there. I think we could have a special team in a couple of seasons down the road. But for whatever reason, I can't help but find myself growing more and more disinterested with the league these days. And it kinda feels like it's not just a me thing. Granted, my social circle in the community these days has been smaller, it feels like a lot of people are sort of checked out. It might be different for everyone, I'm not sure. I thought with the new hybrid attributes, things would feel a bit more fresh this season. But that freshness of that wore off for me after about a week. Personally for me, being on the BoG has been a pretty dejecting experience and the whole system feels kind of pointless. At the end of the day the commishes of the three leagues just do whatever they wanna do for better or for worse. Bringing up valid criticism on a number of things just falls on deaf ears so it kinda makes you wanna give up on trying to improve the league at all. Aside from the BOG specific stuff though, the VHL (as in the mother league) seems like such a barren wasteland these days. It feels like there's way less people actually making it to the VHL as an active member anymore. As a GM or AGM,. finding enough active bodies is such a challenge, nevermind keeping an active locker room. In Chicago, we are lucky enough to have a fantastic LR, but I know that isn't the case everywhere. Then there's VHL gen-chat which is a whole other can of worms. More and more I realize that isn't a place for me. Whether it's the onslaught of annoying users, or the over-policed feel of the whole place, it just ain't for me anymore. Once in awhile there's a few cool peeps in there worth chatting with but more often then not, I avoid that place lol. Anyways, this is just a rambling mess but hopefully it will be therapeutic for me to get it all off my chest. Although I mentioned I feel like I'm becoming disinterested in the VHL, I don't plan on going inactive during this player's career. Getting picked in the first round is a sign that a GM put some faith in you to come through for them, so I feel like I have a duty to make good on that for Chicago. I also urge anyone else who is in a similar situation to do the same. We need more actives, not less. Maybe this is the "burn-out" I've been warned about by so many people throughout the seasons I've been here. I don't feel burned out, though I am finding it challenging to find things to write about for point tasks. For now, the grind continues. I'd love to hear what other people think, even if it isn't similar to how I am feeling. I could use some insight for sure. Until next week, cheers VHL. claiming for two weeks

Review: Well there's some good and some bad in this graphic from my point of view. Overall, the colour scheme is solid. The backdrop to the image looks great and I love the effects over top of the player render, it looks great. Additionally, I like that you added in the Bears logo in the top right corner to help eat up some empty space. It's a simple thing to do, but so many people make these graphics and don't bother and it really takes away from the final result. But you opted to put it in and I think it's awesome. My only qualms with the graphic is the name and font choice. It's just awfully plain. While yes, it is nice and readable, it could use something to make it a little more visually appealing. Whether it be some sort of stroke effect or outline to the font, anything would be an improvement. Also the alignment of the font seems kinda weird. Either have the whole name across the bottom in one row, or if you want it to be two rows, have the Hulk and Hogan line up better, that's just my personal preference though. Overall though this is a pretty solid graphic, nice work. 7.5/10

NEW YORK AMERICANS PRESS CONFERENCE For Week-Ending of May 08/22 1) If you could rebrand the New York Americans, what would you call them and what would you use for a logo? 2) How satisfied are you with your player's performance up to this point in the season? Are you doing better or worse than you expected? 3) The NHL playoffs started this week. Who do you think is going to win the Cup, or who are you cheering for? If you aren't a hockey enjoyer, what other sports have you been watching? 4) Today is Mother's Day. Anything special planned for today or is it just just another Sunday for ya? 5) What's your go-to for fast-food or are you a health-freak and only consume things that aren't garbage for you? 6) Earlier this week was May 4th, also known as Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You. Star Wars is one of my favourite movie franchises. What is your favourite movie franchise or just a couple of your favourite movies?

NEW YORK AMERICANS PRESS CONFERENCE For Week-Ending of May 01/22 1) What team in the VHL do you think has been most surprising for better or for worse so far this season? 2) If you could visit any American city for a weekend trip, where would you go and what would you do while there? 3) If the VHL were to expand, name two cities you think would be good choices for expansion. 4) What is your more recently played song or name a song that you've been listening to a ton lately. 5) I just finished binging the final half season of Ozark. Are you watching any TV shows currently, or what is a recent show that you've really enjoyed. Or if you aren't a TV person, name a movie you've watched recently. 6) What is something you are deathly afraid of? How long has this fear existed for?