Shindigs

Now that's a pretty stacked looking team. Not sure if he was up or not in your group, but Murdock in net is looking to be a great sleeper pick for goalie despite technically being a rookie in most groups.

Yeah, this is the key thing. Not everyone wants/should be a max earner. It's about finding what's most enjoyable to that person, even if that might not line up with what you'd like them to want as a GM. Just have to work with what you have and make the best of it. It's completely pointless to push a player into max earning if that will just burn them out in weeks/months, when them doing Welfare+ would have made them *not* burn out and still earn very similar amounts. A consistent Welfare+ player out-earns an inconsistent max earner over a full career almost every time.

The irony of that being that they are literally the same thing. If you treat your players like human beings and go the extra mile to help them. Not only will they naturally be more successful, they will specifically *want* to be successful to repay you for what you've done for them. They will want to play for your team, because it's your team. Having the mindset that what's best for your players vs. what's best for your team are two different things is just so short sighted. Since sustained success requires your players to grow and thrive. Not to mention sharing the LR with people you know and respect is a hell of a lot more fun than a bunch of people you don't know, but who certainly have a lot of TPE. That's what I built Vegas on, I traded away all my 1st round picks to get 2nd/3rd/4th round picks letting me reach out to people who had all the potential in the world, but hadn't learned how the league works yet. What's the point in drafting as many 200 TPE recreates as you can? You won't teach them anything, they won't get better as time goes along, and you won't be able to significantly change their league experience. Whereas if you instead focus your resources on first gens that you actually can make a difference for (or lower earning recreates that may have had a similar experience to what's outlined in this thread) you can actually do something. My starting point for all my players on Vegas was always to explain how Welfare+ works, what the career trajectory is compared to max earning and pure welfare, while doing welfare+, and just let them make an informed decision on how much effort they "need" to put in to reach their goals for their player. For some players they end up only doing welfare+ one or two weeks. Then realize that they just don't want to put in any extra effort at all. For quite a lot of players they do decide that some version of Welfare+, be it 8 per week or 10 per week, is what they are comfortable doing. And some get hooked on earning and go full max earning. The most demoralizing thing for me when I was a VHLM GM, and still to some degree is, is that I kept seeing the same pattern repeating itself. With the slam dunk 100% players being the exception, so many of the players who I either worked my ass off to keep from going IA and stay doing Welfare. Or who I got invested enough to do Welfare+/Max earning would instantly fall off a cliff once they left the Vegas and went on to their VHLE teams. One of the primary ones being Town's player. He's literally one of the most prominent members in the SBA, but since all the jobs he holds over there to max earn don't actually give him any affiliate claims in the VHL he doesn't do point tasks here. He just does Welfare, but if you tell him about Theme Weeks/uncapped opportunities/Fantasy Zone/Predictions and the like that take 0 effort. He will do them, as long as you remind him to get his Welfare+PF in for the week, he does it. And as long as you give him build advice, he's more than happy to apply TPE that way. But he knows enough about sim leagues to not blindly want to apply TPE himself. Since that is a good way to completely ruin your player for their entire career as a Welfare earner. What this lead to after he left Vegas was him sitting in the VHLE for almost a whole season at 200 TPA with like 260ish TPE until he finally just stopped doing welfare at all. I was too busy dealing with my own players to keep close tabs on my alumni, there's only so much time and energy I have. So I have to focus it where I "should" be focusing it and trusting that his VHL/E GMs actually do their damn jobs and continue developing him. Well, they didn't. After I noticed what was going on I just reached out to him in DMs and asked if he wanted build help to apply all his banked TPE, and he was more than happy to. Was literally just waiting to have either of his actual GMs talk to him about it at all. (He'd also been traded without being told by the GM who traded him and only getting a welcome message from the new GM, who he though was his VHLE GM. He had to ask me about the specifics of the trade) After the new build and me slightly getting his focus back on the VHL he did go back to doing Welfare again and went on to having a 100+ point season int he VHLE the following season, and from what I can tell on Cologne he actually did get sufficient GM help to stay on top of things. Well, sort of, he was never told to claim the Christmas TPE or the Theme Week. But at least he's doing the weekly earning. Now on the flip side of that stuff, I do somewhat get it. Unless you've actually been a GM you probably haven't had the absolutely soul crushing experience of having a player completely ignore (or give 1 syllable answers) to any and all attempt to help them, no matter how heartfelt. Or players who will either a) completely ghost you or b) do what you told them in PMs/DMs but won't even show you the common decency of responding to said messages. You can only get your spirit crushed by so many people shitting on your best attempt to help them before you just shut down to protect your own sanity. At some point the likely outcome of dealing with a long-shot Welfare earner and putting your heart into helping them just becomes such a source of stress that you simply stop trying. I was approaching the point where that would be me, it was one of many reasons I stepped down as Vegas GM. Because if you *do* reach that point, you shouldn't be a GM anymore. You're no longer fit for duty in my opinion. We also kind of have an issue among at least some VHL GMs where they consider their VHLE prospects to be "not their problem" if you will. Part of that is not wanting to step on the toes of the VHLE GMs that by all accounts *should* be guiding them, which I can respect. But part of it is also the mindset that as a VHL GM all you do is compete, you don't develop. That's someone elses job and it's not what you took the position for (Not like you could use your AGM for it or anything). So that's certainly something I'd consider a pretty glaring culture issue in the VHL as well. To go back to the Town example, when I was guiding him on his build. I was asking him what his VHL GMs plans were for his player moving forward, to give more informed feedback on how he might want to build his player to actually be VHL ready (and able to fill the spot he's needed in) once he hits 300-400 TPE. Which was when I found out that neither of his VHL GMs had even talked to him about anything of the sorts at all, ever. That's a problem which would be so easy to solve. I get not having the time/energy to micro manage every single one of your prospects, but not even having a quick chat on how they could go about making your roster? Really? That's not a good look. Do we not see the value in a player that would effectively be a Welfare (with some uncapped) GM player for all intents and purposes, since you'd have complete build control, and he won't actively pursue FA? Isn't that pretty much exactly what you want when the cap is this tight? Seriously, a huge part of being a GM in a player league is that you're actually dealing with people. So if you don't want to do that, do you even want to be a GM?

I mean S89 1st, that's one hell of an asterisk.

With a special highlight on how you gave him 0 cups?

@Spartan Group is finished, Roster Post should be good to go.

G - Matt Murdock @ScottyP

@TheNeonShamanyour pick again

I'm always watching.

My man Saul Kotkakoivu is a BEAST

D - Pierre Emile Bouchard @Bulduray_1

1. Moscow didn't win. So yeah, about as expected tbf. 2. Pretty MID, only got a blind man out of it. 3. Not really, if you have changes you want to make in your life. Waiting 1 year between them will only slow your improvement. 4. Whoever sucks ass, so usually the Canucks. 5. Barring you starting the season like shit, like you do ever 3 seasons or so. You should win it. 6. It's likely going to be a battle between Lavelle and Pearce, kind of comes down to what the lines are and how everyone works together. You have so much forward depth it's likely you'll have one 90-100 point scorer on the 2nd line and one 110-120 and one 100 point scorer on the 1st. Only Simon knows who will be the chosen one.