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Horcrux

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Posts posted by Horcrux

    Taking a break

    in Archived Media Spots

    Posted

    11 hours ago, JigglyGumballs said:

    So hey, been a while eh? This is probably the least secretive secret I've ever had the pleasure of keeping, but I'm officially announcing that I am taking an indefinite break from the VHL. In the last two seasons or so, it was kind of obvious that I hadn't been paying the most attention in the VHL. Heck, I didn't even do a waiver offer in the entirety of last season. Literally going against what the VHLM is supposed to do. Keep in mind that this is in no fashion a type of flex or something. It shouldn't be something to be proud of honestly. I'll be the first to admit that in these past two seasons, I've completely mismanaged Las Vegas, leading it to be a shell of what it once was by the end of my tenure. All of this is just me emphasizing how hands off I've been in terms of this sim league.

     

    So why have I been like this? Did I just lose motivation? Is it because of the amount of changes as of late? To be frank, motivation has just been one factor as to why I've been absent. The main reason is simply because I'm too busy in life. I'm in my senior year of high school with no real idea of where to go with my future. Sure motivation has been a factor for a while. I've just felt like I've enjoyed spending with my friends irl than being in the VHL, leading into my decline. But the fact that I've had a large focus on my future is the main reason why I've been gone, and will be gone from the VHL moving on. I know some people are content with a minimal presence in the VHL, and most people have work, along with a good chunk having school. Yet they're able to leave time for this sim league and contribute greatly. For me, it's not really the same situation. Life is simply too busy, and my motivation has taken a toll because of it. I really don't expect anyone to pity or sympathize with me. This is just a little bit of a vent at some of my regrets as of late. I regret not being a better GM and not being able to uphold my job of retaining new players. Honestly my tenure has been nothing but a meme. Call me a bitch if you want to, but I've always been hard on myself when it comes to the VHL. I always have high standards in what I do, what I can contribute, and the inputs I try to put in. Especially when I was still relatively new. So when things get busy and I don't hold up to the same standards I set myself to, I decide that it was time to set back.

     

    Now I won't disappear from the VHL completely. Yeah I'm taking an indefinite break, but in reality, I'll be lurking a lot more. Kinda like how I am now. II'll check in every now and then, maybe like a few posts, bring out the popcorn on any drama. And by break, I don't mean any specific time. I might be back literally days after this post. Maybe it'll take me months. One way or another, I wanna come back when I feel comfortable in being able to max earn and go back to how I used to be. I still love the VHL, and this community has been one of the best I've had the pleasure of being in. I just hope that when I come back, I can fully commit to this place like before. So until then, I bid all of you a farewell.

    sometimes taking a step back and taking some YOU time is important. the league will still be here ❤️ take as much time as you need take care of yourself and kick ass in school 

    How this East African 'Princess' came to love hockey

    in Archived Media Spots

    Posted

    On 11/16/2021 at 1:01 AM, AostheGreat said:

    Seven years ago, Adora Happysmile Rainbowfist was 10 years old and had little chance of getting involved in sports of any kind. Her father owned a small family restaurant in Adi Kuala, a small town in the Debub, or Southern, region of Eritrea. The expectation was that she would eventually take a job in the family business, get a good education past secondary school, or do both so that she could live a quiet, peaceful life. 

    “My father is a good man, and he wants the restaurant to succeed. He took over the business after his father became ill. He takes a lot of pride in his work and he wants his children to do the same. Even if that is outside of the restaurant. But he likes it when family stays close together.”

    The only sports that she interacted with were the games held at the town’s soccer stadium and athletes training for the Eritrean national cycling team. Rainbowfist herself had some notion that she might one day be on the women’s cycling team, but says that it would be a long shot.

    “I remember riding my bicycle all around town as a small child. I knew that the national [cycling] team was good, and I had thought about trying to make it, but I only ever heard about the men, even though both the men and the women were goodt. It kind of...what’s the phrase? Turned me off of it. I started to feel more and more like riding my bicycle was something that made me alone.”

    Then, she says she saw a video on the internet that changed her entire life.

    “I saw a group of men playing this strange sport that I had never seen before. They wore what I thought were magic boots when I first saw them! They would glide across the floor like they weren’t even touching the ground.”

    It was a short video about the Ice Lions. An ice hockey team operating in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. But Rainbowfist, or P.A.R. as she likes to be called by her teammates (short for Princess Adora Rainbowfist), says that the speed and movement was not what she enjoyed most about the new game she had found.

    “What I loved most about hockey when I first saw it was how all of the players were constant in talking to each other. No one was ever alone. There was always someone else there. A teammate to help or an opponent to stop you. I was jealous of them for having that group. Even though all of them were men, which was the thing that had drawn me away from my bicycle, that communication stood out to me.”

    She showed this video to her family at dinner and she says that she got mixed reactions.

    “None of them said anything. It made me so nervous! A few days later, I talked about it again and he actually talked about it. My father said that she couldn’t play because there wasn’t a place to play anywhere nearby, but I showed him the roller skates I had found and told him that I could play anywhere.”

    [Interviewer] “And how did he react?”

    “He chuckled and just said ‘That computer of yours is going to kill me one day’ but he said that he’d get me a pair of skates.”

    From there, it was a rapid climb for the young girl. She told stories of how would get yelled at by neighbors for skating all over town at such high speeds and how she would race groups of boys on their bicycles. Reportedly, none of those races turned out in favor of the bike. At one point she even, again reportedly, set up alongside a car and tried to race it between stop lights. Rainbowfist told us that the driver of the car yelled that she only won because he was afraid to hit someone else on the side of the street. Spending so much time on a bicycle at a young age lent itself to strong leg muscles, which allowed her to skate so quickly.

    It was clear that she had found something that she was passionate about. After the roller blades came a hockey stick, then a worn pair of hockey gloves. But after a few years of saving up some money on the side, her father surprised her with a plane trip about 1600 miles (2600 kilometers) to the south.

    “When my father tells me that he bought the two of us a trip on a plane to Nairobi and had saved up enough money for ice hockey skates...I cried so hard and I embraced him. I just said thank you over and over again. He just told me ‘Anything for my princess.’ That’s what he called me. I was so happy.”

    The father-daughter pair flew out of nearby Asmara International Airport. When they landed in Nairobi, she had a surprise waiting for her. Ben Azegere was there to greet her and her father at the airport, ready to take them to the rink and get started. Azegere is the captain of the Ice Lions, who practice on a small rink and started with very little in the way of equipment. Since that time, though, they’ve been able to raise enough to get more and better equipment. It would be enough to provide P.A.R. with her first real taste of playing the sport that she had fallen in love with from  afar. Rainbowfist could not believe her good fortune.

    “Seeing Ben there, and he had Joseph [Thuo] and Arnold [Maina] with him, it was a great feeling. You know, already I had many people ready to help get me into this sport for real.”

    We were able to catch Ben Azegere for a quick interview over the phone and he said that he saw something that he had never seen before. A perfect hockey mind.

    “I bring [P.A.R.] to the rink and bring her skates [for her to use until she got her own] and it takes a while for her to get used to the ice...because she spent so much time on wheels and the skates we had were not meant for her feet. After she adjusted and got her own pair of skates, she began to skate much quicker than anyone else. I also noticed a lot that she was seeing the ice different to everyone else. This was what stood out to me most. She would look at how her own team was placed across the ice and make good passes, but she could always see where everybody else was going before they made it there. She was big for a girl of her age, but she was still small compared to the rest of the team, so it took a sharp mind and a lot of speed to play as well as she did.”

    P.A.R. and her father spent two weeks in Nairobi with the Ice Lions, during which time, she selected her role as a shutdown defensive defender. She took mentorship from Azegere and others on the team with an open mind and laid the foundation for where she is today.

    On her last day in Nairobi, the team decided to have a sending off party with P.A.R. and her father. They walked around the city and ran into someone that became a key figure in Rainbowfist’s hockey life. The team ran across an Austrian woman named Klara Riedl, who was in Nairobi on extended layover for a business trip. Riedl says that she has always had an interest in hockey. So when she met the 13-year-old girl who could apparently play against men and raced cars on her roller blades...needless to say, Riedl tells, she was intrigued. She offered a deal. If Rainbowfist could prove her talents on the ice, Riedl would help cut through some of the red tape and allow her and as much of her family as wanted to move from their home in Eritrea to Innsbruck, where Riedl lives with her husband, Max. She also offered to help the family financially while they settled in the new country.

    The Ice Lions called an impromptu practice on the spot and played a scrimmage. The Ice Lions had a full team of 21 players, and to allow for Rainbowfist’s talents to truly shine, the teams for the scrimmage were set so that her team would be outnumbered two-to-one in total numbers, had her side play shorthanded the whole game, and made her stay on the ice for the full 60 minutes. Essentially, it was Adora Happysmile Rainbowfist against the best hockey team on the continent.

    She beat them 41-4.

    Every single one of the 41 goals had her name on it in some way, whether it was as the goal scorer or the playmaker; she ended the game with 41 points.

    Reminder that Adora Happysmile Rainbowfist is a defensive specialist.

    The very first thing that Riedl did when the Eritrean family got to Innsbruck was to introduce P.A.R. to a local hockey coach and get her signed for sessions on full ice and practices. Supposedly, Riedl and the coach she had brought with her had forgotten that P.A.R. was only 13 years old, and still needed to be in school. As Rainbowfist herself tells it, there is no hyperbole in those stories.

    “Klara’s husband offered to take my bags when he first saw me. I thought that it was a kind gesture, but then Klara stepped forward with this huge man beside her and my father immediately stepped forward. ‘Who is this man?’ Klara says that he is a hockey coach and that he will make me better. In just a few minutes I have a pen in my hand and my father and I are signing up for hockey practice.”

    Rainbowfist arrived at her first scheduled practice and things were not what she expected.

    “No one else was there. It was just me and the coach that I saw when I got off the airplane and someone else, a skating coach. I had gotten into this because of how I could talk to people and have a team around me, and my first experience was just me and two intense and mean guys. I was close to asking to stop entirely because of it.”

    “But, I told them about it and they brought in a few young players to practice with me. I think a few were from the national team. I still don’t know how Klara was able to get them to do that.”

    For the next two years, close to the only things that Rainbowfist ever had in her schedule were school and practice. She would wake up at 5:30 am and run skating drills for an hour before going to school, coming back to the rink and having another practice that lasted until well into the night. However, she says that it was never too much.

    “There were times when I slipped into feeling like I had to do this. I had wanted to play hockey for so long, and then I almost started to feel like I had to. But my coaches, after I told them about what I liked about the sport, did a good job of doing things that I liked. They made sure that I was always buying in.”

    From there, Rainbowfist spent two years with an Austrian Junior team out of Innsbruck that played in one of the lower tiers. When she turned 17, her team encouraged her to try and move up and make herself eligible for the VHLM draft. The deadline to declare for the draft was fast approaching and if she wanted to play in the upcoming season, she had to make it official sooner rather than later. P.A.R. was certainly good enough to go in the draft. She was projected at the time to be the 48th ranked prospect in the draft and she was on the younger end as far as age goes. In all likelihood she would get selected somewhere in the 40s. Rainbowfist says that she was hesitant at first, but eventually her teammates won her over.

    “I thought that it was a bad idea. My family had already moved from Eritrea to Austria, and the league has teams all over the world. Me travelling so much after that big of a move seemed like a not good idea. And I had found a place where I felt so much joy. Playing on that team was special. I said no at first. But they kept trying. They told me that they had dreamt of one day playing in the league. Each one of them had a team that they wanted desperately to play for, which was so odd to me. The teams in the minor league were on the other side of the world. It seemed so crazy to me. It took the whole season for them to convince me. I actually declared for the draft the day after our final game before the tournament for the championship.”

    “But I’m here now. Watch out VHL. I’m coming for you.”

    was a fantastic read. love her name. Welcome to the league ❤️

    Rule changes regarding playoffs, draft lottery, double-shifting restrictions + VHLM Draft Lottery

    in VHLM

    Posted

    8 hours ago, McWolf said:

    2 - Revised double shifting

    Last season, we made a new rule that prevented double shifting, which made sense to me and d_a at the time, but ended up giving way too much ice time to bots during the whole season. We are revising this rule and making it so teams can't double shift players among their top three lines and pairs - like last season - but only during the playoffs. This means that teams with less players can play them on each of their lines and use that to their advantage in waiver negotiations. However, teams with more players will still be at an advantage when the playoffs start, so we're still encouraging GMs to get as many players as they can, instead of relying on the good old 6 forwards, 4 defensemen core.

    cohen baron GIF

    This is a fantastic idea, Im glad you chose this route. well done 

    WJC - Europe wins Silver

    in VHL.com Articles

    Posted

    Ariane Leblanc who spent the past few weeks being General Manager for Team Europe in the World Junior tournament, has now solidified herself as a Silver Medal champion. Team Europe today had a medal Celebration where the VHL Commissioner and the World Junior Commissioner were in attendance to award the team the Silver Medal. In attendance was Ariane’s Girlfriend as well as family members of the players.  Assistant General Manager Sam, and Coach Venus, were in attendance as well who were all smiles and jokes. Europe played hard, fast high scoring hockey and took every team to task. Unfortunately their Kryptonite was Team Canada who proved Hungry and dominant. 

    Via Grande (Translator)

    “I'm proud of Canada, they played a hard style of hockey. Lots of shots, their speed made us draw penalties and we just were not good enough on the penalty kill to make it happen. All props to them, I'm proud of my team. Everyone worked their butts off to put us in a position to win, let's face it Silver is not a bad color” 
     

    She gave a playful wink and went to join her players as they celebrated. There was a lot of standouts in the team, who dominated their way through the round robin section securing a second place finish. A last minute change to the line up before the gold medal game saw less shots, but a closer game. 

    Via Grande (Translator)

    “I don't regret the line changes. I was trying to spark the team to play harder, get creative and try to throw Canada off, unfortunately it didn't work but what can you do? That’s hockey. I had a blast being apart of this and it was one of the highlights of my life.” 
     

    WJC Press

    in S80 WJC

    Posted

    QUESTIONS

    1.) going into the medal rounds, who do you think will end up with the gold?

    2.) who has been a standout player in the tournament

    3.) how has your player performed? are you happy with the performance?

    4.) Have you had fun this tournament?

    5.) With the draft coming up. do you think this tournament helped your stock?

    6.) name 1 show you have been watching during the WJC

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