MubbleFubbles

I don't mind saying that I was the one who suggested the draft as a topic for that seasons Theme Week and while I wasn't necessarily intending on them limiting it to that specific draft for the theme week when I suggested it, I did use the strength of the Season 66 Draft as a reasoning for it, and I don't really see any fault in doing so. By that point (only a week before the final cut-off for that draft before the Season 67 new players came in), the Season 66 Draft had enough active prospects to ensure that the draft would be twice as big as any draft of the last 25 seasons, so it was a hugely significant moment in the VHL and in addition, I figured a draft theme week would be a good way to capitalize on that and potentially encourage members to make graphics or media spots that potentially focused on this large number of new members that had been brought in.

(Was originally going to submit this as my media spot next week, but plans have changed, so enjoy this 1000+ word VHL.com article) When it comes to submitting Point Tasks in any sim league, it can feel difficult to approach how to actually create something that fits the criteria needed to get the TPE reward, especially if you’re looking to submit a Point Task for the first time, so I’m making this media spot to hopefully encourage those who ever fall victim to this mindset to offer ways that they can power through and go on to make a piece that meets the criteria. For Media Spots Break It Down! Particularly for new members, it can feel a little intimidating the idea of writing 500 words about a league that you know little about, but a way to lessen the impact of that is breaking a Media Spot down into pieces. Instead of saying to yourself “I’m going to write a 500 word piece talking about the VHL European Conference”, say to yourself “I’m going to write 65 words for each of the eight teams in the VHL European Conference” and you’ll probably find that you can easily make that limit, especially when combined with the next idea Say What You See! While obviously we also like to see members add a little bit of opinion to their pieces, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with referring to the current standings and statistics and relaying it back through your media piece. Let’s use a segment covering Chicago’s goalie Alexander Minion so far this season as an example: “Chicago’s goalie Alexander Minion has had an incredibly good start to the season, with a 0.939% save percentage, a 1.7 GAA and 5 shutouts, leading the league in all three of these categories.” That small segment there was 33 words which, if you refer back to what we talked about earlier about breaking up covering standings into 65 words per team, is over half of the word count that we need for one team, and that’s just covering one player. Offering up enough interesting information, you may find yourself at a point where you don’t need to cover all eight teams to make the 500 word limit or in fact can claim it for 2 weeks because you made a piece that went over 1000. For Graphics Have Fun! I feel like graphics is a point task where if you bring it up to someone as an option, quite a few people will immediately say “Well I can’t do graphics”, and that’s an absolutely fair assumption to have out of the gate if you haven’t the first idea about graphics. In reality though, while you may not be aware, you are actually capable of doing VHL graphics for a very simple reason; we look for effort rather than the end result. While a first attempt at a graphic will never come out looking like something that’s going to blow people’s minds with how great it looks, if there are key things that can be pointed at and a reviewer can say “This element of the graphic took some time and effort, good job”, you’ll get the 6 TPE no doubt. So a good thing to do with your first graphic attempt is to just get a graphics program (For free options, I use GIMP but I know quite a few people use Pixlr.com) and experiment with making a graphic. For sample points for what people will look at to what takes effort, try and do all the following: - Cut out a player image from a google image to use for your graphic - Change your player’s jersey colour - Change the player’s jersey logo - Add a background - Add text - Experiment with effects such as lighting If you do most of these, you should have yourself a graphic that’s more than good enough for 6 TPE and if you ever need any help with a particular facet of graphic making, there is always the graphics discussion channel on the discord where members can guide you on how to do certain elements! For Podcasts/VHL Radio All You Need Is An (Up-To-Date) Phone! I think for podcasts, while some of the reasons people shy away from them is that they are nervous about the performance element that comes with the territory and how they’ll be perceived as a result (which I can completely understand, I didn’t do podcasts for my first seven years in sim leagues primarily because I was concerned about how people would react to how I sound, but I’ve only ever seen positive reactions to people podcasting so don’t let that deter you), I think another element that puts people off of podcasting is that they don’t know how to do one or think that recording one is beyond their means. Luckily over the last few years, the process has been made much simpler with the Spotify For Podcasters App (originally called Anchor). All you have to do is download the app, press the record button, stop recording and then add a title and the app will do the rest for you and publish a podcast that you can link to for your 6 TPE. If you’re after advice for content, I’d refer back to one of the points I made for Media and say what you see and subsequently give opinions based on what you’ve seen. For VHL.com Graphics Simple Is Enough! Some people who look at the VHL.com graphics section might be put off from submitting a VHL.com graphic based on the quality of some of the other submissions as some of them would easily qualify for the 6 TPE graphic section, let alone 2 TPE. However, the bar for a VHL.com graphic to be eligible for 2 TPE is a lot lower than those submissions would imply as the requirement is to merely make a simple VHL related graphic. For the most part, finding an image of a player, changing the logo on their jersey, adding text and maybe a couple of other simple elements (E.g. A solid colour background behind the text) will be enough to qualify for 2 TPE. For VHL Trivia If You Have No Clue, Just Ask! If you are a new member in the VHL, you will find a lot of the questions that you receive in the VHL trivia will not be immediately answerable, but that shouldn’t put you off from doing them! If you take your question to the 2-Trivia-2-Hunt Channel on the VHL discord (or alternatively you can also ask in your team’s locker room), users will be around to provide you with links that will help guide you to your answer.

There’s been a significant amount of users in the VHL and many of these users will have changed their name over the course of their VHL stint. For many, this stint under a different name will be so brief it’s easy enough to adapt to the new username (For example, I don’t think you’ll find many, if any, people calling Josh by his original username “Reives”) and there are others that were under their original username long enough that it takes a while to get used to their new name but you eventually get it (Prime example for me on this one was moving on from calling Will “Draper”), but there are some members that for whatever reason, the new name is just never what I come to first when I think of them, so for this Retro theme week, I’m going to look at the members that I can only ever think of under older names. Scoop / Streetlight So this is an interesting one as while most instances will be recalling to the name that I first knew them by, this is not the case with scoop as I’d predominantly known him under another username for about four or five years prior to joining the VHL, so surprisingly the first username I saw them use in the VHL during my time here, Streetlight, stuck relatively quickly. I think this could potentially be in part down to the fact that we did podcasts together while they were under the Streetlight name, so it made it easier to make the adjustment to that name. However, even after being their GM In the VHLE this last season, the name Streetlight will still always come to me before Scoop. OrbitingDeath / Green I think for this one, there are three reasons why the name Green will always come to me first before OrbitingDeath. One is that it was a nice snappy name, so it was quicker to say than their current name. Two is that I was their General Manager for a season while they were under the Green name with Thomas O’Malley, but I think the third reason is the most obvious one, which is when there is a player in the league that is as dominant as O’Malley was, it’s difficult to remember the user under a different name than the one they used in that moment. Fire Fletcher / Flyersfan For this one, I think part of the reason why I remember them as Flyersfan (or more commonly Flyers for short) is that I can never remember who is on the end of the username at any given point with the changes it has had as I was still looking for Fire Hakstol in my initial search for him. I didn’t have too many interactions with Flyersfan during his time under the name (he was never my GM and vice versa), but I think the most obvious reason why I’ll always remember them as Flyers is because that was the name they were using for the entirety of their commissioner spell and I think when you have a role that big, you’re always more likely to remember them under the name they used then as opposed to name changes that took place after leaving the job. Honourable Mentions Baozi / Tfong – Still 100% will refer to them as fong, but also I’ll need to give it more time as this name change was more recent than the others on the list. Eaglesfan – Someone I was going to reference along with Flyersfan, but only just found out that they’ve gone back to using Eaglesfan, which is the name I always remembered them under.

Yeah Acyd is mistaken on this front and you are in the right, the VHLE players making a fixed $1.5M is just for players who have only a VHLE contract (usually the VHLE inactive FAs), if you sign a VHL contract with more money that takes precedent, so a $3 Million contract would give you $3 Million. Funnily enough, I actually brought up why I appreciated @Frank for offering bonuses to his VHLE players in this article As for the TPE limits, I would go with the VHL rulebook rather than the VHLE rulebook. I've been disappointed that the VHLE rulebook hasn't been amended in a long while as several inconsistencies and missing information has been pointed out in the past (they have incorrect definitions for call-up deadline eligibility and no current official wording for Inactive waivers). But given Sebastien dokis is still in the E at 400 TPE, I can assure you you'd be safe at that mark, although make sure you never do any award predictions since those auto-apply!

1. The Phoenix just can't stop winning! How long you think we can stay at the top of the league? Well if we keep playing as well as we have, for a long time yet! 2. Ryan Vidot is 2nd in league points with 34 in 24 games played. Do you think their play is the main reason Chicago leads the league in points and do you think they can overtake Ronan Lavelle for #1? I think they've definitely got a shot at overtaking and are definitely our main offensive outlet, I'd probably say our overall defensive efforts and discipline have been the main reason for leading though, as we've had the least penalty minutes and shots against in the league by a considerable distance. 3. Do you think the Phoenix should make any moves as we approach the deadline to ensure a better chance at a cup? I think we should hopefully be OK with what we have at the minute, if anything maybe just bring in a backup goalie closer to the TDL so that we don't lose any steam when we have our 8 backup games. 4. Do you have any good ideas for a future VHL player? I have something in mind for my next player, but don't want to spoil it! 5. How has your 2023 been going so far? Better or worse than 2022? Unfortunately my working life has gone sharply downhill since the start of the year, so I'd happily take 2022 back. 6. If you could be a pro in any sport besides hockey, what would it be? I would say soccer, if anything just cause there's so much money in it!

Back in this article, I was answering a @Garsh question about whether the implementation of the VHLE had affected the amount of players that got stuck between 200 and 400 TPE. That original article is exactly seven months old today so I figured I would revisit the topic to see how the draft classes that have taken place since that article and the classes that had yet to be given the proper time-frame to reach 400 TPE compare to the pre-VHLE classes. Once again, the sample size that we will be comparing the drafts that would have potentially experienced the VHLE with the average of the classes of Season 63 through to Season 78. From those classes combined, 253 of the 694 players that surpassed 200 TPE got stuck between 200 and 400 TPE, which is 36.5%. So the lower this percentage is, the higher percentage of players made it over 400 TPE, the current guaranteed standard for making the VHL. We'll start comparing that 36.5% with the two classes that didn't change their percentages from last time: Season 79: 31.3% (The one active player between 200-400 TPE at the point of the last article, Matty Live, did not go on to surpass 400 TPE). Season 80: 30.6% From there we will move on to the Season 81 draft class, which at the time of writing the last article, still had 4 actives between 200-400 TPE. Season 81: 30.9% (Three of the four actives that were between 200-400 TPE at the time of writing the last article have since surpassed 400 TPE, leading to an improvement on the 36.4% mark from the last article) Now we will finish off with the four draft classes that have followed: Season 82: 29.9% Season 83: 32% Season 84: 20.9% (Still two actives between 200-400 TPE, if they surpass this will improve to 16.3%) Season 85: 25% (Still two actives between 200-400 TPE, if they surpass this will improve to 19.4%) So as you can see, every draft class that has taken place since the VHLE's implementation has had less players stuck between 200-400 TPE than the average amount of players stuck between 200-400 TPE before the implementation of the VHLE. In particular, Season 84's 20.9% is the single best class we've had when it comes to getting players to surpass 400 TPE. In total, of the 319 players who surpassed 200 TPE from the Season 79-Season 85 classes combined, only 92 are between 200-400 TPE, which is 28.8%, which is 7.7% better than the conversion rate of the Season 63-78 classes combined. In addition, the first gen record of all these classes falls in favour of the classes that took place after the VHLE's implementation. In the Season 63-Season 78 combined classes, 46.4% of First Gens that got over 200 TPE did not go on to surpass 400 TPE, but that number is much better for the Season 79-Season 85 classes combined which has just 40.7% of it's combined first-gens that surpassed 200 TPE not surpassing 400 TPE. So in short, there isn't any information that suggests that the VHLE is causing players to go inactive and stop earning and, in fact if anything, is continuing to prove it has a place in the VHL ecosystem.

Week 3 Claim

1. Helsinki is off to a hot start. What do you think have the been the keys to our early success? It looks like it's mostly down to a really good conversion rate of chances. It's not often a team that eighth in shots can lead the league in scoring. 2. Earlier Helsinki made a trade with the DC dragons. How are you feeling about the latest addition to the squad? Ctots is very good people and I would like peak Ctots back please and thank you. 3. Do you prefer playing on your side or your off side? Why? I wish I knew enough about hockey to know what those terms meant, but I am also a Board Game, so I guess neither apply? 4. What do you think the biggest focus needs to be going forward? Wouldn't say it's necessarily a focus, but hopefully (and I expect they will because Rask is a good goalie) your save percentages get better. 5.Nils Godlander an off-season addition has been off to a Great start. How important is he to the teams success? Looks like they've been really key, a bargain having being acquired for a late 2nd round selection. Probably up there with Probert as best acquisition of the season. 6. what is a random fun fact you know? The UK Playstation copies of FIFA 2001 had a "scratch and sniff" feature where if you scratched at the top of the disc, it'd smell like grass.

Your 8th overall was Alex Young, so maybe it's a similar story given they were a G as well. Chekhov was one of the many 4th overalls.

Research table used: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13EvqPMdrxyn3pO3P2B-ayPlgimHCySFenybstnTiYB4/edit?usp=sharing (The players I've gathered are ones I remember having multiple high picks in the draft. If you can think of other members who could potentially challenge, lemme know and I'll add them in). STZ Drafts: 7 Average Pick Selection: 2.29 (1 1st overall, 5 2nd overalls, 1 5th overall) The motivation for this piece and research was seeing that Snübbed Analfist was STZ's fifth player to be selected second overall in the draft in their seven drafts entered, which is a very consistent record. STZ's highest ever draft selection was actually in their first ever draft in Season 30 when Ethan Osborne was selected by the Helsinki Titans. In fact their only player to fall below 2nd overall was Bryce Zhields in the Season 60 Draft, but they only fell to 5th overall. Tate Drafts: 3 Average Pick Selection: 1.33 (2 1st overalls, 1 2nd overall) There could yet be a member from the past that I've completely forgotten about, but to my knowledge Tate has the earliest average pick selection of any member in the VHL who has been in two or more drafts, with both of their first two players Lincoln Tate (S67) and Red Lite (S76) going first overall along with Brandt Fuhr (S83) going second overall. McWolf Drafts: 3 Average Pick Selection: 2 (1 1st overall, 1 2nd overall, 1 3rd overall) The closest challenger to Tate for earliest average pick selection who currently has a player in the VHL is McWolf, who has never dropped out of the top 3 in each of their three drafts since joining the league. Sterling Drafts: 6 Average Pick Selection: 2.83 (1 1st overall selection, 3 2nd overall selections, 1 3rd overall selection, 1 7th overall selection) While Sterling hasn't made a player since Season 46's Jeff Hamilton, it's difficult to forget how consistently Sterling would feature high up on the draft board in his VHL tenure, with his first draft in Season 2 being the only one he was selected later than third overall. In fact their average could have been even lower, as their lone third overall selection in the Season 37 Draft could have easily been a fourth second overall selection for Sterling as New York had both the 2nd and 3rd picks in that draft, but elected to make the first-gen Jakob Linholm their 2nd overall pick before drafting Tom Slaughter 3rd overall. Beketov Drafts: 13 Average Pick Selection: 3 (4 1st overalls, 2 2nd overalls, 2 3rd overalls, 3 4th overalls, 1 5th overall, 1 8th overall) It would have normally been crazy to think that the first member ever taken 1st overall in the VHL would go on to be the league's most recent 1st overall pick nearly 16 years later, but not when it comes to Beketov, as he's only gone from strength to strength over the last few years when it comes to player building, with three of their last four players going first overall (Matt Thompson, Papa Emeritus and Mark Calaway). The nearest member in average pick selection that I have to Beketov who has been in 10 or more drafts is Baozi, whose average selection is 4.5 in 10 drafts. CowboyInAmerica Drafts: 6 Average Pick Selection: 5.33 (2 1st overalls, 2 2nd overalls, 1 3rd overall, 1 23rd overall) While CowboyInAmerica's average is a bit off of the other members in this piece, it's worth pointing out that their average is heavily skewed by their first player (Bobby Krims) being selected 23rd overall in Season 28. Since then, CowboyInAmerica has had an average pick selection of 1.8, with Gabriel McAllister (S56) and Xavier Booberry (S80) being their two first overall selections. In a similar tale of a 23rd overall pick affecting averages, Slobo would have been at a 2.2 average, had it not been for their last player Tony Pellerin being selected 23rd overall in Season 49.

Week 2 Claim

G - Matt Murdock @Advantage

The board game clue on skates @Alex

D - Bo Johansson @Advantage

F - Sirdsvaldis Miglaskams @Alex

Congrats on two years, hopefully many more to come! As for my join date, there's no way left to find the exact date, but based on the information available, I would guess November/December 2009, although didn't make my first proper committed player till I think around June 19 2013

1. What place do you think Chicago will finish in the NA Conference this year? I think I'll have to see who we bring in before start of the season before I can give a proper gauge on that. It's going to be much tougher this season though as I think a lot of teams are geared up well to compete this season. 2. Do you participate in VHFL/Super Coach and do you like that the league runs them? I've done both and like them both as well, although I wouldn't mind more consideration for timezones when it comes to group assignments, there's already been one pick where I was nearly skipped because the previous pick was at 3 AM my time and I didn't finish work till 2:40 PM 3. Who do you think will lead the VHL in points this year? I think it will likely be someone from Calgary, could be any of Janser/Leandro/Landon really 4. What do you like most about the VHL? The community and the work they put in to make the league what it is. The sim engine is cool, but after a while it's difficult to just keep interested through that alone. 5. Do you follow professional hockey? If so, what team/league? I wouldn't say I follow it necessarily, but I do have favourite NHL team (Nashville) 6. Do you have a "bucket list" thing that you want to accomplish in life? I'd say there's things I'd like to do, but I also wouldn't neccessarily call it a bucket list. Like I would like to go Japan at some point, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if that didn't happen.

3FX95596VW864505F 5 TPE Doubles Week $1 Mill

F - Ronan Lavelle @McLean Hoover

Matthew Kai, Elfon Ashelf and Ian Smith Jack Todaro and Haydyn Chet Foreals and barry bigman Dirty Caufield Greg Santos Majestic Buffalo Dawson Thibert Ches Morrison Kiefer Leclerc John Smith Danny dimes Evgeni Shevkov Titomir Pukshuuter Laser Brewer George Patton Calix Pearce Cameron Elsby Whiskey Malone and Nicholas Corrigan Blake Bill Current Leaderboard 1: Matthew Kai 2: Calix Pearce 3: Cameron Elsby 4: Evgeni Shevkov 5: George Patton 6: barry bigman 7: Greg Santos 8: Elfon Ashelf 9: Kiefer Leclerc 10: Blake Bill 11: Nicholas Corrigan 12: Whiskey Malone 13: Chet Foreals 14: Dirty Caufield 15: John Smith 16: Majestic Buffalo 17: Jack Todaro 18: Titomir Pukshuuter 19: Ches Morrison 20: Ian Smith 21: Danny dimes 22: Dawson Thibert 23. Haydyn 24. Laser Brewer Ryker Quinn is new to the game. Or at least that’s all we ever saw them say as this lone status update from Titled7227 is the only communication we ever got from them and apparently they posted that two minutes after they last visited the league, which is pretty impressive in truth. They created their player on the 3rd of February 2022 back in the days of STHS attributes and received five offers from VHLM teams, with not a single one pressing CTRL+Shift+V as we see three white background offers, one black background offer and the “lesser spotted but nigh-unreadable on night skin” black text on both backgrounds on an offer from Philadelphia. Ultimately, Quinn would never sign for any of these teams as they had already left the league for good at this point and Quinn would be retired with the rest of those in Hybrid Attribute denial on April 16th 2022. As for their earning, they did do one practice facility claim, and that is huge, because that automatically propels them to being at least the 20th best player in the VHL Portal. I will also put them ahead of Ches Morrison, the player that was somehow created three minutes after their last activity on the site as Ryker Quinn at least viewed for six minutes and let us know they were new to the game. But I won’t go any higher as Titomir Pukshuuter at least stuck around for over an hour and Ryker Quinn isn’t an awesome enough name like Majestic Buffalo to let me ignore that fact, therefore Ryker Quinn is the nineteenth best player in the VHL Portal. New Leaderboard 1: Matthew Kai 2: Calix Pearce 3: Cameron Elsby 4: Evgeni Shevkov 5: George Patton 6: barry bigman 7: Greg Santos 8: Elfon Ashelf 9: Kiefer Leclerc 10: Blake Bill 11: Nicholas Corrigan 12: Whiskey Malone 13: Chet Foreals 14: Dirty Caufield 15: John Smith 16: Majestic Buffalo 17: Jack Todaro 18: Titomir Pukshuuter 19: Ryker Quinn 20: Ches Morrison 21: Ian Smith 22: Danny dimes 23: Dawson Thibert 24. Haydyn 25. Laser Brewer Next Week: Jon Webber

1) We are quickly approaching the beginning of Season 88, where do you expect us to rank in the European Conference? I think London will do pretty well this season, not sure where you will rank in the standings, but I do predict you will break the franchises goose-egg for playoff series wins this season. 2) Our New Gm has made a number of moves in the offseason, quickly provide your analysis of what has been done? I think London made good trades, Siyan and Igor are obviously terrific players, Sock Monkey and Adam Rage were also very good value pickups. 3) Provide a quick analysis of your expected performance this coming year? I'm still the highest TPA player in the league, so naturally I will finish with 72-80 points again haha 4) How much TPE are you expecting to earn each week this coming season? Hopefully around 160-180? Keep forgetting what the usually seasonal figure is. 5) Is there anything about your teammates that you would like to know? I would like to know where Shindigs is please and thank you. 6) Is there anything about yourself that you think your teammates should know? I'm not actually a board game. It's always tough for me to admit that, but they deserve to know the truth

Jack The Ripper This off-season has seen a lot of players traded twice, but only one player was traded three times this offseason and that was defenseman Jack The Ripper. Jack is set to make their debut in the VHL this season having spent two post-VHL Draft seasons each in the VHLM and the VHLE, but despite that they’ve been on more VHL teams this offseason than most players will play on in their entire career. Entering the off-season, Jack looked set to play for the Los Angeles Stars team that drafted them 30th overall back in Season 84 having accepted a one season contract extension to keep them on the roster for Season 88 (which is a key point we’ll be addressing later). However, Los Angeles decided to part ways with Jack just nine days after signing the extension and the defenseman was moved to the Malmo Nighthawks in exchange for the 47th overall pick in the Season 88 Draft (which was used on Perry Winkle, a player who, while starting their career very promisingly, hasn’t updated in a month and a half). Meanwhile, Warsaw were looking to find one more defenseman that they could fit within their budget to start Season 88 and decided that Jack The Ripper would fit the bill for them. This led to Malmo trading Jack four days after acquiring them to Warsaw but in the process gained a pick higher than they gave up to acquire Jack, sending The Ripper and their Season 90 fourth round selection in exchange for a Season 90 second round selection. However, this is the point where the extension that Jack The Ripper signed at the start of the off-season with Los Angeles becomes relevant, as while Jack The Ripper’s TPA count would have usually seen them slotted in the $1.75 million bracket (with the new rule that players playing their first season in the VHL will always be under the Rookie contract brackets), the offer that Los Angeles gave to Jack was $2.5 million and Warsaw, who presumably traded for The Ripper just looking at their TPA, only had $2 million left to spend on new players, meaning trading for Jack The Ripper put them $500K over the salary cap. This meant that Warsaw had to trade a player to get back under the salary cap and that player was once again Jack The Ripper, with Warsaw having to add a Season 89 second round selection to Jack in order to exchange them with Helsinki for Doug Britton, a fellow Season 84 draftee of similar capabilities. Ultimately the biggest winners of this trade saga were Malmo and Helsinki, as Malmo were able to move up a round in the draft while only technically giving up a 4th rounder and Helsinki were able to add a fifth second round selection to their Season 89 Draft pick collection for just a small TPE drop-off. There’s not really a loser in this trade as everyone ultimately wound up fixing one of the issues they were trying to fix, although the two other teams may have hoped they could have either gotten more or given up less in their trades than they did. While Los Angeles did trade an active VHL player for a pick that got them a player that likely will not make the VHL based on current activity, they had to make a trade to get under the cap and this achieved that. In the same vein, while Warsaw giving up two second round selections in this process would probably have to be considered an overpayment compared to what other similar/better players were going for this off-season, they entered this situation looking for a depth defenseman and they ultimately got one in Doug Britton who is under contract with the team for the next two seasons. The Eleven Asset Trade Between Malmo and Prague There aren’t many trades in VHL history that have seen as many assets traded between teams as the trade the Malmo Nighthawks and the Prague Phantoms made early on in the off-season, a trade which saw 6 players and 5 picks moved to different teams. The trade looked like this: To break down where the picks were in the draft, Prague essentially traded up one pick in the first round (#6 to #5) but subsequently traded down a couple of picks in the second round (#28->30) along with giving Malmo the #37 pick in the draft. It’s also worth pointing out that one of the reasons why there are so many players being traded to Malmo in this trade. At this point, there was no way that Prague could keep all of these players around as they were already struggling for cap space before this trade and all of the players Malmo acquired bar Kotkakoivu were set to enter Free Agency. In addition, Kotkakoivu (who is entering their final season in the league) was in a similar predicament to Jack The Ripper as they were signed to a contract that was $1.5 million more expensive than the salary bracket they belonged to (although unlike Jack, this contract was signed a season in advance), likely making them a less attractive option for a team like Prague who were running thin on cap space. It would also be fair to say that, while this first round had a lot of talented players, there was an indication that the top five players in this draft class were particularly sought-after, so moving up one pick to get to number five is more significant than it looks purely by the numbers. Where things get interesting though is after the picks used in this draft have taken place. With the fifth overall pick that Prague acquired in this trade, they selected the highest TPE player in this draft class Jacob Stone. Now this would ordinarily be the best choice available as who wouldn’t want the highest TPE player in the class right? But with Prague, this caused some complications as Stone only just made it into the 401-500 TPE bracket being exactly 401 TPE at the financial cut-off, which moved Stone from a $1.5 million contract to a $1.75 million contract. That extra $250K made a big difference for Prague as they only had $1.5 million of cap space available to sign Stone (a figure the Prague GM believed would be enough to sign Stone at the point of drafting them) and thus Prague had to make a trade to get back under the cap, which they did by essentially undoing part of this 11 asset trade, with Jacob Stone going to Malmo and Moritz Stauffer (the player who was selected with the sixth overall pick that Prague sent to Malmo) going to Prague. These weren’t the only assets that were acquired in this trade that would go on to move elsewhere though as Dabnad Shaw was traded to Los Angeles for the #26 pick in the Season 88 Draft, which Prague later traded along with the #32 overall pick to acquire the #22 pick from London, which Prague used to acquire goalie Olivier Gauthier. While the trade for Gauthier makes sense given Gauthier has a much higher TPE ceiling than the players selected at #26 (Dalton Canders II) and #32 (Brad Marchand), I do wonder if Prague could have just traded Dabnad Shaw on their own for the pick that acquired Gauthier as Shaw would have been affordable for London and would have been a good replacement for Branden Skuin who hasn’t visited the site since December. The final asset that Prague acquired from Malmo was also traded mid-draft, with the #30 pick being traded alongside a Season 89 Prague third so that Prague could move up to #29 to select BjorkaBjorn BjornaBjorkson, a high risk pick given that the member behind the player JardyB10 has given every indication to suggest they will stay in the VHLE for their entire career, but if for whatever reason Jardy decides to abandon that plan or maybe even accidentally goes over 400 TPE with successful off-season PTs, it could potentially pay off big time. All in all, Malmo definitely came out of this trade looking good. While it’s a little sad to see long-time Nighthawks player Shaw move on from the franchise, they got a very good return and managed to not only move up in the second round, but technically keeping their pick in the first round as well to get the best prospect in the draft in Jacob Stone along with three solid young players in McLaughlin, Torbjorn and Karppinen. As for Prague, like Warsaw in the previous saga, it’s difficult to look at this set of trades and not wonder if they could have approached this trade and the other subsequent trades in a different way that could have benefitted them more. It’s good for them that they got the assets that they clearly wanted in the second round in Gauthier and BjornaBjorkson even with the risks attached, but I think it would be fair to say they could have either given up less to get to a point where they could select them or received more for the assets that they did give up. 3 Weeks of claim starting from W/E 4/9

Brian Payne @Alex

Thanks to those who voted me for the Elmebeck, appreciate it! Just figured I'd share what I put in the BOG MVP Award voting thread, just to show that their achievements this season weren't ignored: