Advantage

rebuild on my bottles of empty whiskey dreams and shatter memories of a foregone pint glass.
 
I mean - let's go drinking again

Well since this week’s VHL Magazine is cancelled, and without realizing it I typed up my article, I thought I would share it with the rest of the Victory Hockey League, as it is topical with the VHL Finals underway.  For those that do not know, I run the By The Numbers article in the Magazine, and this week’s edition was to focus on Playoff MVP and who I felt were the main three candidates as of now.  Therefore, here are my top two candidates for each team:
 
26 – How can I not start off with the Playoffs leading goal scorer and point producer, Tom Lincoln?  The veteran forward, who was one of the top scorers in the regular season, has continued to dominate opponents with an impressive eleven goals and twenty-six points in fourteen games.  Additionally, he has recorded three game-winning-goals and has really helped the Americans take advantage of special team’s situations, with eight points and thirteen shots on the powerplay, leading the team in both categories.  If the Americans can knock off Riga in the finals, look for Lincoln to be perhaps the leading candidate with how dominant he has been offensively, especially if he plays a big role in the finals.  Fellow forward, Unassisted, could also compete with Lincoln for the top scorer for New York and he has a physical element to take into consideration, so it may be an interesting debate.
 
21 – Bobby Digital has had a very interesting playoff campaign.  Not only does he lead all defenders with twenty-one points, but he has also recorded thirty-one hits, twenty blocked shots and a rather ridiculous forty-two penalty minutes, none of which were fighting majors.  Digital has really broken out of late and has made himself a candidate with his tremendous play.  I have to say though that I am unsure if he can keep up his production against a tough Riga team given his unmatchable forty percent shooting percentage.  With that being said, if he can maintain a pace within a few points of the top forwards on New York, he could figure into the voting records given his all-around play as a defender.
 
12 – Riga has only played seven games so their top candidates don’t really seem as impressive, but I am a firm believer that the Playoff MVP should come from the winning team in almost every circumstance.  Therefore, Shawn Muller has to be a favourite to be one of Riga’s top candidates.  He currently leads the team with twelve points in seven games and his veteran presence could be very welcoming for a young Riga team.  I expected to include Sandro Clegane on this list, but with how poor his playoff performance has been, it would take one of the best goaltending performances of all-time to bring him back into the conversation.  Something I just don’t see happening against a very offensively gifted New York Americans team.
 
11 – Pietro Maximoff is probably the favourite for Playoff MVP if Riga wins.  While he doesn’t have the hits that Jordan Maverick does, and he isn’t exactly breaking away from the rest of the team in points, we can all agree that he is their most talented player.  Therefore, I think if Riga has any chance of winning, they will need to count on Maximoff to carry them.  He has the most shots on the team by over double of what Muller has (92 shots versus 41 shots) and also has recorded two game-winning-goals.  While Maximoff is a very disciplined player, it does mean that he can stay on the ice more often and could play a huge role if Riga does in fact knock off the Americans in the finals.

Or we are rebuilding?

Or we are rebuilding?

Solas is at 200 tpe already and is a center so he may be my main target.  I always liked the guy too.

Yeah a couple options.  Solas and Draper..if we get Draper I can always switch to center or he said he may be interested too.
 
Anyone else people like?  I already told Jericho I wont take him just cause we already have that elite franchise young d

Mag 315 
 
8 - Bobby Digital is having a really solid start to his playoff campaign.  The Americans find themselves tied with the Wranglers 3-3, and will be going on to a seventh game.  Digital has recorded one goal, seven assists for eight points to go along with his twelve hits and seven blocked shots, in the six games the Americans have played thus far.  This puts him currently first in points for defensemen, just two ahead of elite defenseman, Black Velvet.  Digital, who is generally more known for his defensive ability, may just be breaking out and finally coming into his own as an elite defender.  If this is the case, he could very well play a massive role in the seventh game against the Wranglers, and if fortunate enough to move on, the rest of the Americans playoff campaign.
 
6 - A rookie is currently leading the VHL playoffs in goals, and he has gotten to that total in just five games.  Max von Hohenzollern has continued to build off his tremendous regular season with a stellar start to his playoff run, with his Express knocking off Davos in just five games.  Max recorded six goals and three assists to lead all rookies in scoring thus far as well.  Of course, the reality is that as the competition goes up with Riga, Max could have trouble adjusting and may find himself struggling against a far more developed squad.  With that being said, don't be surprised to see him continue to play well.  Hohenzollern really stood out from the pack this regular season and easily lead all rooks in scoring, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him continue to find success offensively.
 
.899 - If the Wranglers want a chance to beat the Americans in game seven, they really need their veteran netminder to step it up.  Ariel Weinstein, who by all accounts is one of the league's best goaltenders, has struggled versus the Americans in the playoffs.  With a playoff worse 2.89 GAA and .899 SV%, Weinstein could prove to be an x-factor if he stands on his head in game seven versus the offensively powerful New York Americans.  The only consistency Weinstein has shown is his inconsistency.  In games two and three, Weinstein surrendered just one goal total but in the other four games, Ariel has allowed a terrible seventeen goals.  Therefore, if Weinstein is on, the Wranglers may have the upperhand with the clearly superior goaltender.  If not, it could be curtains for the only remaining Canadian team in the playoffs.
 

Editor:
STZ

GFX:
Solas
STZ [Moment of the Week for 590]
 
Writers
Toast
Smarch
ADV
DT (Whatever his name is this week)
Philatio
 

All 3 of you rooks ended up having decent finishes.  Snatch finishing with 50+ points and 150+ blocked shots.  Taker with 43 points and 300+ hits and DeGrath finishing with a .914 SV%.  Honestly, given how the three of you started, this is pretty damn solid.  Looking forward to building on this next year!
 
@Molholt @STZ @Smarch

I heard it and have never denied it.  

8 - Felipe Rodriguez has really been on the rise of late with a league best 8 game point scoring streak.  The defender, who is generally known more for his defense, has vaulted his point total to 48 in 54 games and is searching to end the year at the illustrious point-per-game mark.  Rodriguez's rugged two-way player has greatly contributed to the success the Bears have had this year, as they currently lead the Victory Hockey League in overall points.  Along with the 48 points he has recorded, Rodriguez also has a +44 rating with 148 hits, 58 blocked shots in over thirty minutes of ice time per game.  When asked for a quote on his play, a team representative had this to say: "Felipe is the glue to our defense.  Kyanon gets a lot of the attention and for good reason, but I think Felipe brings another dimension to our squad and his work this year has contributed greatly at even strength and on special teams."  At this point in the season, the Bears currently have the best combined PP and PK with a 109.71%.  The next closest team in that regard is the Calgary Wranglers who sit with a 107.30% combined rating.  Rodriguez has been one of the teams leading penalty killers and his vision on the point, especially of late, could help him get to the point-per-game mark and keep his team in first place in the Victory Hockey League.
 
97.25 - I love PP+PK ratings and have used them in mag articles quite a lot, especially back in the day.  I will use it again here and look at a team who has been playing really well this year, but not when they have a PP or when they are on a PK.  The New York Americans currently sit with the third most points in the league and have been easily one of the feel good stories of the year, but they could be so much better if they worked on their special teams.  The Americans have the second worst PP in the league with a 13.08% which is only just above the Stockholm Vikings in that regard.  Additionally, the Americans sit sixth in the league in PK with a 84.71% kill rate.  Combined, New York is seventh in the league and dead last among teams that play in the North American Conference, with a 97.25 rating.  Why? That's the tough question because they have gotten a ton of offense from players like Tom Lincoln and Unassisted.  Ultimately though, both players are already around or above 100 points and neither play has more than 18 of them coming from the power play.  I do wonder if at least offensively, they struggle more because of the lack of offense that gets generated by their defense.  Their highest scoring defender is Bobby Digital who has two goals and forty-five points this season.  Then again, they have forwards playing on the point for their PP and bots playing on PP2, which may be the greatest contributor of all.  Either way, it is holding this team back from their true potential.
 
49 - Pietro Maximoff has leaped over some impressive talent to take the league lead in goals with 49.  The Riga forward surpassed Sleeman, Lincoln and Unassisted recently and could very well be on his way to his best season yet.  Not only is he first in goals but he also finds himself in the points race as well, as he sits fourth and is just nine points back of Unassisted, and just two points back of Skovsgaard and Lincoln for second.  Maximoff has really ran his teams offense this year, with the help of Shawn Muller who currently has 41 goals and 90 points.  These are Riga's only players who are above the sixty point mark, and it wouldn't surprise me if they are the Reign's only players to hit the PPG mark this season.  Maximoff, who had a great season last year will look to finish this year strong with an outside look at possibly scoring 70 goals, a mark rarely hit in the Victory Hockey League.  If he can do so, the Kevin Brooks Trophy looks very likely to go to him and perhaps the Riga Reign can put a further clamp down on first place in the European Conference.

@STZ  will finish mine tonight after work

With the recent posts that we've had regarding Banackock's approach to the GM role, it made me have a look back and consider how my four seasons as New York GM went. It certainly didn't go perfect (No GM role ever does), but is was a stint that looking back, I felt I performed well but also know that there were some decisions I made where maybe I didn't make the right ones. So for this article, I'm going to analyze my two best moves as a GM along with my two worst moves as GM. 
 
Best Moves
 
Season 47 Free Agency
 
 
The Season 47 Free Agency class fell at pretty much the perfect time for the New York Americans team that I had just taken over. Prior to then, we’d been a team that had made strong pushes in the prior two regular seasons with a team that included the likes of Reencarnacion, Ruutu, Caprivi and Kyanon, but just didn’t have the star quality that we needed in the playoffs to progress to the Continental Cup Final. The Season 47 Free Agency class was filled to the brim with these elite players that we needed; ones that would only be around one season due to forced retirement, but in the right environment ones that could absolutely make their presence felt immediately. We suffered an unfortunate retirement in Nicolas Caprivi leading into the off-season, so grabbing a Center was an absolute must, and we were honoured to bring in one of the greatest centers of all-time in Green’s Thomas O’Malley, who wound up the second highest point scorer in the VHL that season. We were also able to bring in my good friend Streetlight and his player Lloyd Light, who we moved to offense and he was also a huge contributor, coming sixth in the VHL in points and also dishing out a lot of hits in the process.
 
While I definitely cannot take a lot of credit for this (along with Green and Streetlight for agreeing to join, the majority of credit should go to Advantage for building the team that made New York an attractive destination), it was big for me to have my first off-season go as well as it did to get my reign going in the right direction.
 
Trade for Bobby Digital
 
 
Heading into Season 53 with the impending retirements of Phil Hamilton and Biggu Kyanon, there’s a case to be made that Bobby Digital will enter that season as the third best defensemen in the VHL behind Jeff Hamilton and Black Velvet. Considering how good Digital is set to become, I think the amount that I gave up for him back in Season 49 (his rookie season) would have to be considered an absolute steal:
 
To 
(S49) D - Bobby Digital
 
To 
(S48) D - Cian Mercer
(S48) D - Dope Fiend
S51 NYA 1st (C Chris Fekete Jr.)
S50 NYA 3rd (Pass)
S51 NYA 3rd (Forfeited)
 
At the time of the trade, while I was thinking that rebuilding may have to come into effect in Season 50 considering the age of our main roster, I was feeling fairly positive that the Season 51 draft class was not going to be particularly strong (the class actually ended up being even worse than I thought it would) so I had no qualms with discarding the pick. I’m also fairly pleased at the attention that I paid in order to acquire Mercer and Fiend. They were players that were at the time inactive, but young enough that, if they chose to, could return and make a decent player. Neither had been offered contracts by the Legion (the team that drafted them), so I made sure as soon as the season started to offer them as much money as I could without sacrificing their VHLM rights to ensure that I would get them so I could use them as extra leverage in this deal.
 
Worst Moves
 
First Trade
 
 
 
The problem that was generated by the success that we had in Free Agency prior to Season 47 was that it (combined with a lot of salary raises through TPE barriers and Reencarnacion entering his fourth season) put us into a pretty difficult cap situation, although one that I was aware was going to occur prior to signing those players. I had confidence that I would be able to get rid of players like Golden Jedtsson and Gifford Shock for not terrible value, and it looked like that was going to be the case with Shock as Riga contemplated giving up the pick that wound up being Vincent Adultman, but due to their own success in Free Agency decided against it. That left us in a bit of a difficult situation in regards to how to get cap compliant, and unfortunately that led to this shitshow:
 
To 
(S45) G - Ariel Weinstein from QUE
S47 NYA 1st (D Sam Weaver) from NYA

To 
(S43) D - Golden Jedtsson from NYA
(S42) D - Joseph Roy III from NYA
(S46) D - Olivia Diamond from NYA
S47 STO 1st (D John Sleeman) from STO
 
To 
S47 CGY 1st (RW Jonathan Stark) from STO
S47 COL 2nd (RW Kasey Morgan) from QUE
S47 NYA 2nd (PASS) from QUE
S49 QUE 3rd (D Robert Lee) from QUE

Stockholm Vikings GM: Benoit Prévost
Quebec City Meute GM: Clinton Chevy
New York Americans GM: Chris Miller
 
It’s worth pointing out that this is how the trade is posted in the trade tracker. There’s one inaccuracy in that we didn’t give Stockholm that S47 NYA 1st , we had given that to Quebec seasons prior. At the same time though, that’s decent players going for not just barely anything in terms of draft picks, but draft picks that I knew full well weren’t going to generate anything.
 
The problem with the negotiations was that me and Brovy had agreed on a S47 1st (the one that turned into Weaver, which was one pick higher than the one I got), S49 2nd and S49 3rd for Jedtsson and Roy two days prior to the draft and I took his word for it, he said he just needed to confirm something with the other GM. Then, literally a few minutes before the draft, I was given this offer instead, except Shock instead of Diamond (I changed Shock to Diamond knowing that Diamond intended on retiring). Knowing that I’d struggle to get another team to take these players off my hands for much more value, I just took it so I didn’t hold up the draft. Now in the grand scheme of things, the original deal wouldn’t have been much better (the second I was after ended up becoming Sebastien Laine), but that would have at least been a potentially decent trade piece for a veteran instead of S47 players who were already inactive. So yeah, not a good first trade and kind of my first lesson to not necessarily take people at their word.
 
Rebuilding around One Draft Class
 
 
 
While I would say that I got good value for all of the players that I traded in my Season 50 rebuilding season, looking back, I would have done some stuff slightly differently that would have likely lead to an easier rebuild for Mr. Power. The mistake I would say I made was just going all-in on the rebuild in Season 50 and trading all my players for Season 52 draft picks. While obviously players like Ruutu, Francis York Morgan and E’twaun Delicious would have to have been traded in Season 50, what I probably should have done was held on to players like Reencarnacion and Humbert one more season so that I could acquire some picks in Season 53 draft as well.
 
 
Extra Tidbit – Article for Next Week will be the 50 greatest players of 2016
 

I copy and pasted it from the trade tracker, guess I overlooked that. Technically I guess they put Miller as the GM since he didn't officially hand over the reigns till after the S47 Draft, but every move made during that off-season was made by me, so I was essentially acting as the GM.

So were almost a playoff team now, go from not winning a game to making a playoff appearance haha

This. You won't see GM's breaking the bank for backups unless the cap goes up slightly to accommodate. For the 8 games they are supposed to play, it wouldn't be worth the 2 Million+ to sign them or whatever their TPE is.

as a gm, I would never draft/play a backup goalie and take useless cap space tthat could fill another position player 
@Advantage talked about it in the pajodcast

It seems like they updated my attributes, and then we got two W's
 
Tryin not to get too excited lol 

7 - Phil Shankly is a rookie, and for that reason, you always have to be cautious before predicting someone a likely standout candidate.  In this case, they weren't wrong, except for the fact that Phil Shankly is standing out for all of the wrong reasons.  The rookie forward has an abysmal 7 points in 30 games and is just a +6 on a team that has a computer player in the double digits for positive reasons.  Shankly was the undoubted number one overall pick but this was certainly not an ideal start, with many of his fellow draft class mates having decent seasons, or at the very least far better years than Shankly.  The one good number for him is that he is over 130 hits but with also 52 PIM, it will be interesting to see if he continues to cost his team more than he helps.  I expect Shankly to improve and believe there's just too much talent around him to hold him down all season.  With that being said, I do wonder if they maybe hog the puck too much for him to succeed this season.
 
.911 - Speaking of New York Americans, Ilya Kopralkov is not having the kind of year many felt he would have. Kopralkov is a veteran tender who looked ready to break out on a great team this season but failed to spark much of anything as of this moment.  With just a .911 save percentage he is becoming the poster boy of someone who is being carried by a strong team.  With a 1.60 GAA it's becoming clear he can thank his team more than anything as they have limited opponents to very few shots.  Luckily for Kopralkov, he should be in a good position to win a lot of games and potentially improve as the season goes on.  With that being said, the Americans need him to be playing at his absolute best if they want any chance of going to the finals.  As it is now, they may have trouble making the playoffs as the Americans see themselves just five points up on the defending NA Champions, the Toronto Legion.  While I think it will be a tight battle all season long, Kopralkov will become a key piece if the Americans are to do any damage at all.
 
8 - The Stockholm Vikings have only managed eight points so far this season.  You read that right...eight points.  They most recently picked up their first two wins against the Davos Dynamo and Quebec City Meute, and perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that they have struggled so much.  A lot of the teams recent draft picks are in the VHLM, and even with Snatch, DeGrath and Domi in the VHL, the team really has no nucleus around them.  That should definitely change after next season's draft with the team owning two first round picks and multiple second round picks, and with some of those VHLM prospects likely making their way up to the big squad.  The Vikings look to be the favourite to lock up first overall pick and take someone with the potential of a Franchise Cornerstone.  Hard not to forget they also have Brock Dragonslayer who should make his debut with the Swedish club next season.  With all that being said, the Vikings have the least amount of points in the league by four points and even the Titans who only have twelve, have three more wins than Stockholm.  It will be a tough season in Stockholm but we see that changing in the future.

We won 2 games..omg.

Here we come boys.. Save us a seat!!!

I just shit myself 

Good game computers

FIRST WIN!!! 
 
...Second shutout