MubbleFubbles

https://anchor.fm/mubble-fubbles/episodes/MiniFubbles-Ep--25---Its-Called-Tutorial-Video-because-e29gdql

Player Information Username: MubbleFubbles Player Name: Tutorial Video Recruited From: Returning Age: 16 Position: C Height: 80 in. Weight: 250 lbs. Birthplace: Canada Player Page @VHLM GM

Don't worry, I've got it saved with video commentary, just waiting for a point where I can use it for TPE haha!

Player Information Username: MubbleFubbles Player Name: Retire Speedrun WR Any Percent Recruited From: Returning Age: 50 Position: G Height: 80 in. Weight: 250 lbs. Birthplace: Greenland Player Page @VHLM GM

Yeah I did enjoy listening to the Buruku one at the time, gave it another listen now, still very good!

So off the back of my research into the effects of the E on player progression, I've started up another project which is focused around seeing if there is a specific point after creation where players lose interest in the league by gathering how many weeks a player updated in and the week gap between a players creation and last update (also the latter will probably not prove useful as there's a surprising number of players who decide to make a single welfare claim a year after going inactive and not even being on a team) . This is also an interesting project because this is the first time I've been using scripts to input the data I need rather than manually typing and copying/pasting functions. It's having mixed results so far, it took a while to create the right scripts and pulling data from the drafts becomes a bit awkward around certain periods (For example, Season 73 and 74 Drafts had four more second round selections than usual which doesn't really corroborate well with how I'm trying to pull the data) and it's not going particularly quick (it's based on Importhtml and ImportXML functions which sometimes work alright, but too many can lead to problems), but at least automating the process to a certain degree has freed up a bit of time to do other stuff at the same time.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mubble-fubbles/episodes/MiniFubbles-Ep--24---Where-Did-All-The-Bullshit-Go-e29auiv

Here's the Podcast Topics I Cover: Draftee who I think of most when I think of the theme (Mo Probert) GM candidate who I think of most when I think of the theme (JB) Players snubbing teams that drafted them

1) Do you think we will have more than 15 Wins in the second half of the season, any reasons why you think this? I'm going to say yes we will have more. Our schedule seems to lean very heavy into giving us games against opponents who have signalled that they won't be competing (We have 12 combined games against the bottom three teams in the league, we only played one of those teams once in the first half, the rest we didn't play) 2 Will we have more or less than 16 losses in the second half, why do you think this? I'll say less for the same reason as before in that the easier schedule should theoretically lead to less losses. 3) Will we have more than 80 goals in the second half, why? For similar reasons as above, I think we will break 80 goals, probably closer to 90, especially if teams are back-ending their backup games. 4) Will we have more or less than 92 goals against in the second half, why? This'll likely depend on our backup's performance as I think they play five games to end the season. I'll go with around the same just because we've got two more games to play since this question was asked than games played before it. 5) We sit fourth in the conference, do you expect this to improve, decline or stay the same, why? I think it will be around the same, but potentially more convincingly fourth than we currently are, ten points is a tough gap to catch up to 3rd/2nd, but also not unmanageable. 6) Which player on London will have the best second half of the season, why? I think Teno has done very well to keep within touching distance of the top goalies despite a tough opening schedule, I can see them climbing up the rankings significantly in the second half of the season to potentially the point where they have the best save percentage in the league.

So I’ve covered this data quite a bit in other VHL.coms, but I’ve never really fully put it out there as to the complete results of my look into the topic, so today I’m going to change that up by adding in the complete results of my research thus far. So we’re going to be looking at two different comparisons, the first will focus on how many players from each draft class surpassed 400 TPE versus how many got stuck between 200-400 TPE, then the second will ask the same questions but solely for first gens. I’ve covered this stuff in other articles looking at the topic but for those who haven’t seen, here is the reasoning behind the sample sizes: - The Season 63 Draft Class is considered the starting point as this was the first season we put in a dedicated recruitment drive, pursuing both Youtube and Reddit as advertising avenues. - The Season 78 Draft Class is considered the end point for being affected by the VHLE since the players from that draft class would have the window from creation until their draft plus two full seasons prior to the E’s implementation to surpass 400 TPE, which is a reasonable expectation whereas there was a good chance for Season 79 players, particularly those selected later in the draft, to have been playing in the VHLE in Season 80. - For similar reasoning, the cut-off point is Season 88 as the Season 89 class is not yet at a point where comparing 200-400 TPE players to those over 400 TPE is a fair comparison as there are players like Otis Boudreaux Jr for example who earn a high amount of capped TPE per week but have yet to surpass 400 TPE. - My definition of a first-gen is in it’s purest form, a player belonging to a member who has never previously created a player in the VHL. So let’s cover the first comparison, looking at comparing players who exceeded 400 TPE with those stuck between 200-400 TPE from each of the draft classes between Season 63 and Season 78, draft classes that reasonably would not be affected by the VHLE. As you can see, prior to the VHLE, we always had over half of our players who surpassed 200 TPE go on to surpass 400 TPE. However, there is a notable drop-off towards the end of the period, with the Season 75-78 classes hovering around 56-59% of players over 200 TPE making it past 400 TPE whereas the vast majority of the classes before that had surpassed 60%. Part of this could be put down to the massive recruitment of Season 75 having an impact on proceedings. A more cramped league maybe led to less opportunities for game time for players who maybe weren’t elite earners, thus leading to more people losing interest? Now let’s compare this with the same comparison, but for the classes that will have been affected by the VHLE, Seasons 79 through to Season 88. As evidenced, there is a lot more consistency in the percentage of players that make it past 400 TPE, with all of the first eight classes surpassing 69% for graduating over 400 TPE, a mark that only six of the sixteen classes hit between Season 63 and Season 78. It’s worth noting on top of this that Season 86 through to Season 88 all have scope to improve their scores, as each have significant amounts of actives between 200-400 TPE that could still graduate over 400 TPE (Season 86 has 6, Season 87 has 5, Season 88 has 9). Now let’s go back to the Season 63-Season 78 draft classes, but instead look solely at the first-gen performance. As you can see, the percentages as a whole go quite a way down when we only consider first-gens. It’s especially noticeable towards the latter end where Season 77 and Season 78 are the worst years for First Gens over 200 TPE graduating over 400 TPE, but there are still particularly good seasons, Season 73 in particular being the lone example of the percentage of First Gens over 200 TPE surpassing 400 TPE being greater than the classes overall performance. Now let’s look at the same question for Season 79-Season 88. While there are good examples in this class, such as the Season 84 class having the highest First-Gen 400 TPE conversion percentage of any class along with Seasons 81 and 82 having good scores for drafts with more First Gens than usual, there are also some rough examples. For example, unless some players come back from inactivity, Season 87 will have the worst results of any of the classes as, even if the two active players between 200-400 TPE in that class surpass 400 TPE, the class will still be the worst performing class of all the seasons I’ve collected. Another element of note though is that the number of First-Gens for each class is also way down in comparison to the classes that would be affected by the VHLE. Between Season 63-Season 78, only five of the sixteen classes had below 20 First Gens surpassing 200 TPE. However, in the ten draft classes between Season 79 and Season 88, six of them have below 20 First Gens surpassing 200 TPE. So one thing that would be natural to ask based on this data is “Does the VHLE help or hurt with regards to player progression?”. One of the answers to that is that it would be misleading to say it is hurting progression as, if anything, the numbers as a whole of players who surpass 200 TPE graduating past 400 TPE are better following the implementation of the VHLE. I think though it would also be fair to say that the VHLE may not specifically be helping in that the VHL seemed to struggle with progression during the periods where the league was at it’s fullest, so would other ways of handling the issue of limited playing time, like a VHL expansion for example, have had just as much of an effect on progression as the VHLE has had? That remains unclear. 1000 Words plus, claiming for 2 weeks.

Updated for Week Ending September 3rd

After I made my visualizer, I updated an old chart that I’d made for the recruitment team, which basically looked at how many new players each of the classes that I had done a visualizer for (Season 81-Season 90, but minus Season 85 as I’d skipped that year) were created each week. I saw it in my google sheets account recently and figured I’d update it and use it as something to accompany a media spot for this week. Here is the chart: Couple of things to point out about the numbers: 1- The reason why there are different end points on the chart is largely down to the length of the offseason that the draft recruitment took place in. So for example, Season 84 is the longest because we implemented the hybrid attributes in the Season 82 off-season, which led to a slightly longer off-season. Conversely, Season 81 had the Season 79 off-season, which lasted just eight days which is much shorter than recent off-seasons have been. 2- Season 84’s numbers are actually slightly lower than they should be, but not by a huge amount. This is because I’d removed players from my visualizer for that season who were removed as part of the hybrid attribute mass-retirements, which accounted for a few of the earlier creates in that draft class. One of the things that I knew going in when I was making the chart but something the chart definitely helps illustrate is the effects of YouTube. Even an ad that doesn’t do maybe as well as we’d hoped can trigger a big upsurge in our draftee numbers. Obviously very few of our YouTube ads will have anywhere close to the success of the Season 82 class (where we worked with RobTalksHockey), but there were still more than significant boosts from YouTube at the start of Season 81 and Season 86, along with boosts in Season 83 and Season 89. It’s not just the initial peaks though as, following those peaks, recruitment gets a boost in the weeks after from new members who find the YouTube video a couple of weeks later. One thing I’d be interested in seeing, but maybe don’t have the time to look into, is how these classes compare with the rest of the classes since Season 63 (since that was the first draft class when we had a lot of success with recruiting). I think it would also be worth continuing to look into what we could do to help the experience for new members entering the league as I still believe the league can continue to improve in this area. From data I’ve gathered from all draft classes between the Season 63 and Season 85 classes, we have 24.1% of all players created surpass 200 TPE and 16% of all players created surpassed 400 TPE. To add another graph that I don’t have the time to discuss really, I figured I’d just post it to end out the media article. This graph shows what value you’d get if you take the amount of First Gens that surpassed 200 TPE in each draft class and subtract from it the number of Recreates that surpassed 200 TPE (so a positive number means more First Gens surpassed 200 TPE than recreates, a negative means more recreates surpassed 200 TPE than First Gens)

It's been nearly two years now and I need to get to the bottom of why Clue hasn't been getting it done on the ice, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and check with Chat GPT on the matter. So yeah, I should have been Chess or Monopoly instead, well fuck me I guess.

Don't have the activity at the minute to consistently update rankings, but maintaining a visualizer doesn't take as much time so I'll keep updating that without job pay. High Framerate Version At https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/14869881/ Done for up to W/E October 15th

- I would like to do a survey towards new members but focus solely on how they pick up learning new information. So for example, I'd like to ask questions about how easy it was to find the current help topics/videos on the forum easy to find, how useful they find the topics/videos, how helpful the welcome PM was, etc. I still believe making information easy to access is something that the VHL can continue to improve on, but I'd be interested in directly seeing what new members thought of the current setup and any suggestions they'd have. - I've been constantly putting off a draft ranking article of the Season 82 draft class, but instead of ranking based on player's total performance, ranking what the team got with that pick. So for example, Bo Johansson would typically have been a good pick, but that pick would fall down the rankings in my idea for the article as it would be based on what Toronto (the team that picked Bo) got out of picking him.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mubble-fubbles/episodes/MiniFubbles-Ep--23---When-Will-First-Gens-Get-Back-To-First-Overall-e284q64 A little low battery ramble on why first gens were going first overall and what we'd need to see someone go first overall in the future

The main reason I bring it up is that there has been two instances in the last ten seasons where a team broke the Louth rule and didn't go on to play the catch-up backup games the following season (Morgan Karlsson starts 67 for NYA in S81, but starts the standard 64 in S82. Augustus Kennedy starts 66 in S86, only starts 63 the following season so only missed one start but started two extra the previous season) so when the rulings aren't announced publicly and the starts don't fit the usual "extra starts next season" punishment, from the outside it looks like the original cases have been missed.

The draft just happened so may as well write about some of the stuff that happened. Doomsday Goes 1st For The 1st time Good to see a great member like Doomsday get their first ever first overall selection. This draft actually had a fair few former first overall picks from different eras (Enorama from Season 63, Hybrid1486 from Season 22, Nykonax from Season 71, .sniffuM from Season 43). Doomsday actually got pretty close to first overall in the past when they were picked 2nd overall in the Season 41 Draft behind Niklaus Mikaelson. GM’s Back To Picking Themselves Remember that Season 85 draft where we had three GM’s given the opportunity to draft their own player but declining to do so (Vancouver passed on John Jameson, Prague on Matt Murdock, Helsinki on Halvar Torbjorn)? Well it looks like we’re back to the norm as both the General Managers with players in this draft (Toronto and Seattle) picked their own player. Some Solid First-Gens, But Not Many Active Ones? It was nice to see Catia Goncalves able to get picked at seventh overall despite this draft having quite a few top recreates, but this draft was definitely lacking in first gens overall. Going off my data from the visualizer, we only had nine active first gens in this draft class, which is maybe a little concerning given that is the same number of first-gens we had in the Season 80 class hit 200 TPE in their career, and that was our worst season for first-gen development since recruitment became a big focus (S63-Present). There is at least a valid reason for this lack of recruitment for this season’s class (the recruitment team faced a lot of turnover during the recruitment window for this class), but at least success was seen in other areas as this class saw a fair few members who had previously created return from hiatus. Let’s Sign Them All This Season? The last few seasons of drafts have unfortunately had a few situations where General Managers haven’t offered contracts to their draftees by the time the season starts. This previous season saw the long-standing VHL rule on the matter (that players not offered a contract by that time will enter Free Agency) actively applied for the first time since the portal’s introduction, so hopefully GM’s will now be more alert to fulfilling their responsibilities and offering their draftees the contracts they are due in a timely manner or risk losing them for free. Will Chicago Get Issued With A Louth Rule Penalty? My last podcast (posted with four games left in the season), I pointed out that Chicago had broken the Louth rule and this ultimately led to Chicago playing their backup for the final four games and ultimately losing all four games despite heavily outshooting Warsaw in one and being pretty much level for shots with their opponents in their final two games. However, I still haven’t seen a punishment posted for Chicago breaking that rule heading into this season, so I’ll be interested to see if they face any repercussions or not for not playing their goalie enough last season.

High Frame-rate version at https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/14122927/

0YC558381U2901642 Free Week Donation 5 TPE Doubles Week

For those who don’t listen to podcasts, I haven’t been as active on the site lately because changes in my personal life have made it, so I don’t have nearly as much access to my PC as I once did (I have still been posting, but most of them have been in the BOG so most won’t have seen them). While I don’t like posting on phone, I have at least kept up with what’s going on in the VHL world through close to daily checks. But yes, you won’t have seen as much content from me as my previous six day a week access to a PC has gone down to around two days a week, so naturally I don’t have the time to post as much as I once did. Because I knew these changes were going to affect long-term activity, I stepped down from Draft Rankings nearly one month ago now so that’s why there hasn’t been any update and I’ve not heard anything about anyone taking over as a new Draft Rankings updater. If anyone is interested in taking over, I could show you how I’ve done it and what I use to update it and maybe someone with more skills than me has a way to improve upon my current systems to make it an easier update. The Board Game Clue On Skates is entering it’s final season in the league now. It’s weird, I set myself up with the name The Board Game Clue On Skates with the idea that I wouldn’t get disappointed with any underwhelming performances because that would fit the canon, but with the amount of TPE invested into the player, it’s a little difficult not to feel a bit underwhelmed by the performance overall as I’ve never even remotely threatened for any award. It’s performed much better in the playoffs than in the regular season, though I do hope they fix the issues they’ve had with having to re-do the portal after accidentally setting wildcard games to seven series as I’m missing 8 games of playoff stats as a result and over a point per game across those 8 games (4 goals, 5 assists). Depreciation just took a huge dump on me but that’s pretty much all on me, I hadn’t realised I forgot to claim $1M from my Season 89 donation, so didn’t think I’d have the money to buy a Jagr for my eighth season, but would have done had I claimed it and done my S90 donation in a timely manner, so probably would have only lost 367 TPE instead of the 462 TPE I did wind up losing to depreciation. I’m still at 949 TPA though so hopefully I’ll be up round 1000 TPA come playoff time and help contribute to the team’s success. Once the season is over though, I’ll probably take a break from creating players until I get to a point where I know I can be properly active with content creation as while I continue to like and observe the league (and will continue to do so even without a player), I know I wouldn’t get any fun out of having a player built around welfare.

As someone who has seen many many sim leagues come and go, the idea of a sim league being older than some of it's members still feels absolutely insane, happy birthday VHL!