MubbleFubbles

Wayne Gretzky is not a rookie and quite frankly, Wayne Gretzky is insulted and appalled that you would force Wayne Gretzky to write about Wayne Gretzky’s first season in the VHL for TPE. Nonetheless, that is what Wayne Gretzky will do. After devastating the VHLE to a point that no VHLE fan will ever feel the same joys again, Wayne Gretzky goes into training or, as Wayne Gretzky refers to it, “asserting dominance”. From the moment he opens the doors to the Americans training facility, it’s evident that Wayne Gretzky is the king of the ice as players, coaches, physios, admin staff, the canteen workers and even the mayor of New York make sure that they are in attendance to show their respect with a guard of honour for the multi-time NHL MVP Wayne Gretzky. Most would be in awe of such a show of respect, but Wayne Gretzky just sees it as another Tuesday. Wayne Gretzky then goes upstairs to meet his subordinate General Manager. The General Manager goes out of his way to say he couldn’t be more excited to see Wayne Gretzky finally set foot on VHL ice, but this is not what Wayne Gretzky wants to know. Wayne Gretzky utters four words: “One point five million”. Wayne Gretzky isn’t amused and isn’t playing around, the contract Wayne Gretzky currently holds is the lowest possible contract offer a VHL player can possibly have. The General Manager frantically starts gesticulating and looking for reasons to blame such as the salary cap and the restrictions on rookie contracts. Wayne Gretzky is not here for excuses though, Wayne Gretzky is here for answers. “Wayne Gretzky is going to give you 100 goals and 100 assists per season from day one. These are not numbers plucked out from thin air, these are numbers born from facts and the facts show that Wayne Gretzky is the greatest hockey player of all time. Now the contract is agreed, so Wayne Gretzky will not make demands for you to change said contract but next season that contract isn’t there and you will want more Wayne Gretzky just like every other VHL team wants more Wayne Gretzky. My advice would be this time next season I’m adding an extra word to what I said earlier: “One hundred point five million” or maybe we aren’t having this conversation next season.”. With the meeting concluded, Wayne Gretzky saunters down to the practice rink, looks up at the General Managers window and pings three pucks from mid-ice into the roof of the net, the practice goalie looking devastated. The situation is now clear, the VHL is about to experience “rookie” Wayne Gretzky, and they aren’t ready for it.

Thanks, yeah I was hoping to do a lot more with it, but there not being that much time before draft made it a tight squeeze. Was hoping to have an interactive dashboard with charts to track TPE gain, capped TPE and tables for build and breakdown of TPE earning, but I can get that ready for next year. Also will use a fill aes for the capped TPE chart to give different colors for 6 TPE PT/Welfare/No PT

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/17588090/ Also, as a little something extra from stuff I've been learning through R coding, I've got a week-by-week capped TPE earning Cheat Sheet of the prospects in the draft.

The Best Singular Game Finals Performance Of All Time? Can we talk for a second about Gustav Mattias? Not the VHLM Commissioner to be clear but the Seattle Bears forward and PP Defenseman who just casually decided to have one of the best Finals games in recent memory during Seattle Bears victorious finals campaign over London United. In Game 1, Seattle Bears started off the series with a 5-2 victory and a lot of that is thanks to Gustav Mattias who played a contribution in all 5 goals, getting 2 goals and 3 assists. This was the first time since the Season 84 Finals between the Bears and the Warsaw Predators that a 5 point game has been recorded in the Finals (where both Max Torq and Hari Singh Nalwa got 5 point games). What made the performance from Mattias so special though was just how little time they were on the ice for, as they managed to accrue all 5 points in just 15 total minutes of ice time! I’ve not gone any further back than Season 84, but that has to be one of, if not the, best minute-for-minute Finals performances of all time. What’s even better for Mattias is that they went on to have an even more meaningful contribution in Game 7, where Mattias scored the game-winning goal, assisted by the two longest serving members of the Bears team, SEA-D3 and SEA-D1. Donations I just donated $15 for the upcoming season and I was kind of curious as to how much I’ve actually donated over the course of my time here in the VHL (excluding Charity Donations). Now it’s a bit difficult to figure out the exact amount that I’ve donated given that we actually changed currency in 2019 and my donations go all the way back to 2013, but just looking at raw dollar count, I’ve apparently donated $875 to the VHL over the course of my stay here. That was a lot more than I’d expected, I thought it would have perhaps been closer to the $500 range so it came as a surprise that it was that high. I think it does show though that donations don’t necessarily equal success, as one HOF player for $875 isn’t exactly a great conversion rate haha! Draft Talk LA lost their 17th overall pick in the VHL Draft after failing to comply properly with the backup goalie rules and honestly, that’s a huge loss for them. Why? Well guess how many players max-capped this week just gone? That’s right, 17 (although this likely increases to 20 once claims for Maple Dogwood, Lazlo Holmes and Tommy Shelby are approved). The lottery hit is fairly irrelevant as LA won’t mind which of Leandro or Jacob they get, but missing out on a potential max earner is a huge loss, but one that they ultimately deserved for prioritising BOTs over active members of the VHL. Here’s a quick look at the six players whose stock is increasing the most heading into the draft (the figure in brackets is how much higher their average capped TPE over the last three weeks is than their career average capped TPE): 6 - THE MIGHTY ICE WIZARD - (+2.52) THE MIGHTY ICE WIZARD will be a very interesting player to keep an eye on in this draft. Only two teams appear to have a desperate need for a goalie as things stand (LA and London) but a few teams could look at the ICE WIZARD max capping over the last two weeks and consider that an improvement on their currently planned prospect for the future. 5 - LaClapbomb Hitstick IV (+2.64) LaClapbomb currently sits 37th in total TPE in this draft class, but that position could be a little deceiving as they’ve been active every week since joining the league and, now that they’ve got a more consistent hand at claiming welfare, have seen sharp gains in their capped TPE. Being 1 of 29 players who have averaged more than 4 capped TPE in the last 3 weeks, Hitstick could well find themselves sneaking into a second round selection. 4 - Eugene Ryanheart (+2.67) Ryanheart had always been in the very solid 6-9 capped TPE range since joining the league, but they’ve exploded in the last three weeks with two max capped weeks and one 11 capped TPE week. It may not be enough to break into the first round as this is an incredibly top heavy draft with a lot of max earners, but this surge has essentially secured themselves a early-second round selection. 3 - kevin johnathen (+3.07) The best player from Costa Rica that the league has ever seen is becoming even better thanks to their last two weeks of earning which both hit the TPE cap. The Marlins AGM is currently in an interesting situation of being a far better earner than any of the defenseman with less TPE than them, but currently not being able to gain on any of the six defenseman ahead of them. I think players like johnathen are a good example of why London were so comfortable trading out of the first for a high second, because they can see how much talent there is potentially available at the top end of the second round. 2 - Nikita Yolishev (+3.40) I think if there’s a player on this list who could yet sneak into the first round, I think it could well be Nikita Yolishev. Their earnings were hurt early on by a one week TPE ban but since then Yolishev has gone above and beyond to make up for that, especially in the last three weeks where they have hit the TPE cap in each week. Based on their TPE, it looks like they will be the only player on this list playing in the VHLE next season, so it will be interesting to see how their development compares to the rest of the players on this list. 1 - Dorji Khan (+5.57) Dorji Khan joined the league at the trade deadline, but their 5.43 average capped TPE over the course of their career to date is not a fair reflection on their current earnings. Khan did not earn capped TPE over their first four weeks in the league, but they flipped the script recently recording over 10 capped TPE in each of their last four weeks. They may not be quite at the total TPE of a Yolishev or a Ryanheart, but over the last few weeks they have definitely proven they can be as good of an earner as they are.

4EN419335B579994F Doubles Week 1 Mill 5 Uncapped

Oslo Back In The Finals The Oslo Storm have secured themselves a place in the Renaissance Cup final yesterday, with their 3-1 win over the Stockholm Vikings sealing a 4-1 series victory over the Swedish team. It marks the first time Oslo have made the final since Season 88, which was the last of four consecutive final appearances for the Norwegian side between Season 85 and Season 88. It will be interesting to see who will join them in the final; the Cologne Express are looking to make their fifth straight Renaissance Cup final appearance but they currently find themselves down 3-2 in their series with the Vasteras Iron Eagles. The Spirit Of Competition It sounds like LA are potentially looking at having their chances of winning first overall in the lottery slashed after starting LAS-G2 for 19 games this season. Those 19 starts are 11 starts over the current threshold for BOT goalies to start when a team already has a goalie over 250 TPE on their roster, which they have in the form of the active Matthew McCagg. I presume they’ll probably face similar punishments to that of Warsaw and Calgary following Season 90 and Seattle following Season 92, but an interesting note is the recurring problems that LA have had following this rule in comparison to the rest of the league. There have been nine instances since Season 83 of teams in the VHL breaking the spirit of competition threshold by three or more games and LA alone accounts for four of those instances (Six games over in Season 83, seven games over in Season 86, three games over in Season 89 and eleven games over this season). I don’t think there is any maliciousness here, but there does come a point where you need to figure out a system for submitting lines that makes your team compliant with the rules, especially given LA also has two Louth rule violations in that same timeframe. Some Hidden Gems of The Season 94 Class Figured I’d use the end of this article the same way I ended my last one by talking about the Season 94 class, but while last time focused more on the top guys, figured this time I’d highlight some players who could potentially be good value for a team later on in the draft. Ty Duke is currently sitting 29th in total TPE, but they’ve been displaying some good consistency recently in submitting for press conferences and trivia to help them consistently get around the 7-8 capped TPE mark each week. Dorji Khan currently sits in 25th place in TPE and, while they didn’t earn any capped TPE in their first four weeks in the league, they’ve more than made up for that over the last month, earning at least 9 capped TPE in each of the last four weeks. I’m also interested to see how high the highest earning First-Gen Andrew Skilton goes in this draft. Skilton has max capped in each of the last seven weeks, but this is a particularly strong top-end class as there are ten recreates in this class that have hit the 12 capped TPE mark every single week.

The Ad-Free VHL Experience I was watching my girlfriend’s son playing games on their iPad the other day and, as someone who has never really done free mobile gaming, it stood out just how ridiculously crammed to the bit the games that he was playing were filled with ads for different games or apps. One thing that occurred to me though thinking on it was can the VHL use this as a selling point for other users to join the VHL? It might seem obvious to most of our current community since many of us have been here for years now, but maybe it’s worth thinking about how advertising our “game” as completely ad-free could be appealing to prospective members, especially since we’re advertising on youtube and I’ve seen some of the dogshit that gets advertised on there. Gretzky continues to Gretz Wayne Gretzky is still leading the VHLE in points and goals, this makes me happy. I am a little concerned though that recent sims seem to be trending downward for my player, so there is maybe a chance that Gretzky could slip up in the last few games and lose either of these two leads, but hopefully he can hold on to that lead over these last six games. One thing that likely won’t get taken away from Gretzky though is that he’s now the record holder for most game-winning goals in a season in the VHLE, with the 14 he’s picked up surpassing the previous best set by Legacy Gaming (13) in Season 89. It’s also good to see Oslo at the top of the standings given we started off around the middle of the pack, but we’ve just kept getting better and better and now put ourselves in a very good position to take home the King’s Cup (Had to look that up not going to lie) especially since half of our remaining games are against our primary rivals for the top spot, the Cologne Express. Further Look At The Season 94 Draft Continuing to look more into the Season 94 Draft Class as part of my visualizer project, it’s a solid class thus far and is especially good at the top end, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to have three full rounds of active players which I would say is the benchmark for a very good overall draft class. There have been ten players who have max capped every week and another 6 on top of that who have very regularly been hitting the TPE cap so a late first might generate significantly more value than it has done in season’s past. There’s a bit of a drop-off heading into the second round as there’s only 32 players in this draft who are averaging over four capped TPE a week, but there are definitely some players that are on the rise like Kevin Johnathen, Nikita Yolishev and Dorji Khan all hitting double digit capped TPE counts in recent weeks. The battle for first overall will also be interesting, while the edge in TPE earning is actually slightly more in favour of Jillian Woods right now (since Maverick Goncalves has had access to TPE opportunities that Woods hasn’t yet through joining the E one season earlier), it’s so close that it’ll really just come down to what position the owner of the first overall pick wants to select.

I guess I'm glad I got there first cause I raised $25 for charity for agreeing to do this (+$50 more for 2 other classes) so it would've felt a bit awkward if you'd already done it haha!

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/17588090/

User @Erik will receive a 2 week TPE ban (For W/E 21st and 28th April) for maintaining multiple accounts simultaneously. The user @ThomasSyster will be banned and his currently active player Jocke Jockesson Jr. will be retired.

So I’ve been here now for over 50 seasons so I’ve seen a fair share of rebrands and I can give quite a few thoughts on the ones that I’ve seen thus far. Before I begin though, one of the things I definitely like is how the VHL has shown restraint with rebranding teams over it's 90+ seasons. I remember the first ever player sim league I was in, it was called the International Sim League and it was a football (i.e NFL) sim and, while it went for 10+ seasons which was an incredible achievement at the time, boy did they not hold back with their rebrandings. I think only one of the six teams in that league stayed the same over the course of those ten seasons and funnily enough the one team that stayed was called the New Delhi Fighting Mongooses and their logo wasn’t even close to a mongoose (I think it was a green panther or something). Anyway, onto my thoughts. The VHLM rebrands have all been pretty great in my eyes, although I guess there’s a caveat in that some of them started off with logos that were either god-awful (Halifax and Las Vegas) or questionable given the team name (Mexico City), but all of the logos that came from those rebrands looked pretty damn good. I think the only one that I’m meh on is the Ottawa Lynx one which, look I absolutely get the idea behind it, but I just wish the Lynx was doing something rather than just sat there staring. The VHL rebrands I’ve been less sold on. I’ve covered them in other articles in the past so I don’t really want to re-tread old ground too much but I think the changes made to the Americans logo were bad and just didn’t fit the Americans and I still vastly prefer the old shield VHL logo to the current one. Which also brings up an interesting point, how many places on the forum do we even call the league by it’s full name anymore? I think the only place I’ve seen the full name used is the introductory PM, not even the welcome threads on the forum use the full name of the league. I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing “Victory Hockey League” actually written next to the graphic at the top of the site. Teams that I’d like to see a full rebrand for? I don’t think any of the current teams desperately need a rebrand but there’s a couple that stand out, funnily enough they are a couple of the more recent teams to join the league as well. First one would be LA, I did like that we didn’t copy too much from NHL previously, but LA Stars just feels like someone merged the concept of a star with the Los Angeles Kings color scheme just because the Dallas Stars and the Kings were next to each other on ESPN. The other would be London United, I did a whole article explaining what I’d change and what I don’t currently like with that one though, I don’t need to elaborate further here.

Got to blast out an article in the short free-time I’ve got since I’m going to be busy all day Sunday, so here we go! Gretzky On Top Happy to see Wayne Gretzky currently leading the VHLE in points and in the top 10’s in both points and assists. While the points chase is very close since there’s only one point separating myself and Nathan Ecker, it looks like Gretzky is crushing the Points per 20 standings, as Gretzky’s 1.12 is currently .12 ahead of the nearest challenger VHLE lifer Bjorkabjorn BjornaBjorkson. +/- for Gretzky was also initially low at the start of the season but has boosted up to 5th in the league and the highest of any player not on the Cologne Express. Think a big reason for the success is Gretzky’s 82 in puck handling, which seems to be the go-to attribute in the VHLE since the hybrid attribute changes. The Broken Everything Project I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed in how the whole project is going, not because I don’t think I’m doing well, but it’s just so unfortunate that the timing worked the way that it did. For a reminder for those who didn’t see, I decided to enter the VHL Draft with the lowest possible TPE amount (30 TPE) and only earn TPE following my draft with the idea to see 1) How low I’d fall in the draft and 2) How quickly I could climb up the rankings. However, I somehow managed to time this project with by far our worst ever recruitment class and I’ve already found myself in a position where I can justify my selection of 11th overall in the VHL Draft since I’m already 11th in the class in TPE. If I’d held out on the project a season more and joined the Season 93 Draft, I’d have been lined up against 31 players who’ve already crossed 200 TPE, which is more players than I think were even selected in the VHL Draft. I guess the aim from here though is how high can I eventually finish in TPE for the draft class and how well will I transition statistically to the VHL Season 94 Draft I’ve already done some prep for the Season 94 Draft since Jacob, Jacob’s Dad and Leandro all very kindly donated for a Season 94 visualizer, which I’ll start work on once the declaring deadline for the class is closed. The thing that I found particularly stood out about this class was how many players are coming into this draft recreating with max TPE. I’m pretty sure when I checked I counted 15 players who recreated with the maximum 50 TPE on top of their base level, which is an incredibly high figure given that the 8 players from the Season 84 class (where quite a few of the members in this class were also selected) who recreated with max TPE was already a very high figure. It’s a class that’s a little underwhelming in terms of depth, but there are 30 players currently averaging more than a welfare claims worth of capped TPE per week, so there should at least be two solid rounds of picks

@cLoWn been over 12 hours so skipped G - Matt Murdock

This is 31 minutes long, so claiming Week 2 of 2.

D - Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage @mattyIceman

F - Nikolas Kauppi @animal74x2

At this moment, I’m a frustrated god venting to anyone who will listen. I set foot in Europe just a few weeks ago and everyone was ecstatic to see their lord and saviour Wayne Gretzky set foot on the ice for my first two games of the season, but something’s wrong and I can’t quite figure out what it could possibly be. See, ordinarily, when I strike the puck I do so with the fury and fire of a thousand demons and I hear a familiar sound that is the stadium’s way of letting the audience know what they already knew, they’ve just witnessed perfection. Now through the years I’ve heard this sound so many times that the only person who can count how many times I’ve heard it is myself Wayne Gretzky because I am the only resident of this planet who knows the English name for the amount of goals I’ve scored, and atypically it is that of a horn. However, I scored 12 goals in those two games combined, yet was greeted with no horn, no fanfare, no adulation. At first I thought that this was maybe the European culture of hockey, greeting goals with as little fanfare as possible to be polite to the opposition fans or maybe the horn was like one of those dog whistles where only those with four legs can hear. However, when I asked a teammate where the goal horn was for the last two games, they looked at me confused. I mean I guess I can understand such a reaction, 12 goals in two games and I’m complaining about a horn of all things, I guess I can see the humour in that. But there’s one more thing about the European game that I’ve noticed and it’s something that has still yet to be explained to me. When I have the puck at the end of my stick, I transcend everything anyone has ever known about hockey previously. Since I’ve entered Europe though, the reaction is not one that I’m used to. There are no gasps of amazement, no cheers of adulation, they just utter a word that I’m unfamiliar with. “Pass” is what I assume would be how one would write the word using traditional characters, but it has yet to be explained to me what this foreign word means. In fact, when I enquire, they just yell the word louder which is incredibly frustrating as I can quite clearly hear what they are saying, am just unable to gather what the word could possibly mean. I can only presume this is the new thing that the kids are saying now.

F - Randy Bobandy @mattyIceman

D - Jacob Stone @animal74x2

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mubble-fubbles/episodes/MubbleFubbles-Radio-Ep--18---Davos-Best-and-Worst-Pick-of-the-80s-and-Return-Of-The-Portal-GOAT-e2h4d80 Do you like Davos? Do you like @Will? Do you like inexplicably heavy Saturday traffic? Then you may like this podcast!

F - Larry Abass Jr @mattyIceman

I wasn't there at the time when Wozniak was assigned to Riga so not sure how it all went down, but would Wozniak fall under the same bracket as a Max Molholt of a GM rule player who had to forfeit a pick to acquire the player as a GM rule player?

1HJ706000S040910S 5 Uncapped TPE Doubles Week $1M Store

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/17023423/ @JCarsonPart of your donation reward, wanted to leave it until everyone had retired from your class!