Thunder

Wow, its gonna be like IRL.

1. Crazy to think Christmas is only a month away; are you ready for Christmas or have you even started yet? I have started but have a lot to do still. 2. End of season is very soon; Where do you think Vancouver finishes in the North American standings? pretty good chance of #2 3. Is there any team that you would like to play or avoid in the first round of the play-offs? No. It doesnt mattter who we play, we will win. 4. Vancouver already has no chance at winning the Victory Cup; is this a excellent or disappoint? Why? Its excellent. No need to worry about the curse 5. Vancouver still has a off chance at finishing first in the NA conference but will likely need help; do you think we can catch Calgary for 1st overall? I think its gonna be tough and it doesnt really matter to me what position we are in. 6. WRC is coming to my backyard this weekend with the Japanese Rally; do you follow Rally racing and will you be watching the Japanese Rally this weekend? Oh absolutely not. I do not follow women’s rodeo championship 7. Bonus: What do you call a turkey on the day after Thanksgiving? Soup

1. We’re in the final stretch of the regular season! Where do you think we’ll finish in the EU? First of all, thanks for letting me crash your press conference. I’d like to see Davos finish 4th or 5th just so you have a better chance to get eliminated from the playoffs!! 2. Who should be considered our “Most Improved Player” this season? Aleksanteri Kaskiniemi-Kekkonen for sure because with a name like that everything else he does has got to be an improvement. Not sure if I could ever pronounce it let alone spell it. 3. Are there any stats you’d like to see in the portal or index that haven’t already been covered? I would like to see give aways and take aways to be added because it is way too difficult going through the games to figure out if my player is a + or minus in that category. 4. Are you a part of any other sim leagues besides the VHL? Not at all. I could not spend more time writing things to earn TPE. This is enough and I’m enjoying this league, especially the people. 5. What does your player do in their free time? My player drinks a lot of alcohol and picks a lot of hookers during free time, i mean what else is there to do? 6. In your opinion, what is the most important part in making sure a sim league survives and thrives? I would say having people intelligent enough to deal with the ins and outs of running the games and knowing how the system works. 7. Do you prefer using the forum or Discord? Not sure about the question. I used Discord for the locker room and if there are things to do on discord. Never heard of it before joining. 8. What is your favorite video game of all time? Of all time??? Well, I really liked the baseball game and the football game on intelivision. Whenever my brother got liberty he’d come up for the weekend and we’d play baseball and football. The games got pretty competitive.

Lore

Who is Taavetti Jokinen? That’s an easy question. Taavetti Jokinen is the newest member of the famous Jokinen family. He stands at 6’3” and carries himself with 235 pounds of solid muscle. Like his Jokinen predecessors, Taavetti is an unassuming defensive defenseman who carries the team to wins and championships. Taavetti will likely be no different. Taavetti Jokinen started his career playing a few games for Las Vegas and was the #3 pick in the season 96 VHLM draft by Ottawa. Taavetti Jokinen is on the list to be drafted in season 97 and there are many teams who would like to select him. Unfortunately for those teams, there is only one team who will be allowed to select Taavetti Jokinen. Taavetti will only play for HC Davos. Considering that Taavetti Jokinen bleeds Davos blue and has yet to set foot on the ice for the Dynamo tells me that he is ready and willing to fight to the death for HC Davos. Taavetti will be a star just like his predecessors. 175 words

Claim week 2/4

1. With 50% of the trades at the trade deadline being vetoed or potentially being vetoed; is 50% a passing grade or a failing grade? Explain… We got Syko, that’s all that counts. 2. Mathematics can be very hard and one of the trades involved a mathematical issue with a team being over the cap. On a scaled of 1-10 how do you rate your math ability? Borderline 11 3. Olober Syko comes over to Vancouver for a 4th round pick and should take over the starting duties heading towards the play-offs. What do you think about the trade overall? Explain… Glad to have him. Didn’t realize he was taking over Soju. 4. Part of the drama yesterday was maybe a member taking the Sim Hockey league a bit too seriously. So again, on a scale of 1-10 how serious do you take you Sim League hockey & why? I live and breathe VHL. That’s all I think of. Wake up early just to say good night to PMB. 5. Due to the rules Vancouver Wolves are in a position not to be able to meet the conditions of the trade with Warsaw and currently within the league rules cannot be punished for not meeting conditions. Should Vancouver still do everything to honor the conditions or screw over Warsaw since it was on the Warsaw GM to understand the rules? Make it right 6. Part of the conversation or drama around Vancouver's pick stated that if Vancouver should win the Championship, it would be with a massive asterisks? Do you think this is fair? What size font? A little asterisk is ok 7. Also what is the correct spelling of Asterisk or Asterix? yes. Both are correct . If you are spelling both for a reason.

1. Were there any TDL moves that surprised you? I was very happy to see Olober Syko go to the Wolves. This is a good pickup that only someone as skilled as Frank could make this happen, even though the trade was a contentious move according to another all time GM great, Alex. Glad I dont understand the ins and outs of the trade. 2. Thoughts on our new acquisition Joseph Dubois? Wel…. My first thought is thank you for letting me crash your press conference. Now thoughts on Dubois…. I hope Dubois has a successful career with Davos except when playing against Vancouver. 3. What is your favorite VHLM team and why? I’m kind of partial to the Aces because that is who I started with when I joined VHL. And of course I like Saskatoon because I got to hold up a cup with them. 4. What would you like to see from your player in the second half of S96? I would like to see my player continue to help Vancouver go for the cup and I wouldnt complain if my player doubled in hits and shots blocked. I’d also like a fight. Just one fight would be nice. Especially to get some experience before Baby Jokinen gets in the VHL and @Ahma gets to have bragging rights that his player kicked the shit out of my player. 5. How is your experience in the VHL now versus when you were a first gen? If you are still a first gen, what have you learned thus far since joining? I can navigate through the forum a little better now. I’ve tried to outsmart the TPE earning and that has completely failed. 6. Which player do you believe will finish top of the league in scoring at this point in the season? I hope that Riley Martin wins it because he deserves it. He’s worked hard over his career and is having a great season. 7. Favorite ice cream flavor? It depends on the time of day, the occasion, and the outside temperature. With none of those factors in play, I’m going with Quaterback Crunch at Basket Robbin’s Best ice cream. But… on a hot day there’s nothing like a 49 cent vanillla cone at McDonald’s. 8. Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? I’m going with a horse sized duck. Wanna know why? Well it would be easier to shoot. I’d only need one bullet. It’d be really hard to step on 100 quacked horses.

Graphic Review I got another stupid trivia question wrong so now I’m paying the price by doing a graphic review. I couldn’t have picked a better graphic to review. Guntis Gavilrovs is my hero, so when I clicked on the title and saw that it was a Guntis graphic, my pissed off feeling changed to happy!! At first glance, I was immediately drawn to the title, Lore of Guntis. This caught my attention and looking further into the graphic I found it to be a unique graphic providing a storyline of two players named Guntis. It couldn’t have been done any better. The previous player on the left, pounding an opponent and the current player on the right pounding an opponent. The color scheme is really good as you dominate the left with black and yellow and the right with black and white. The fonts are diabolical and reach out to the viewer and you provide all the detail needed to explain the “lore of Guntis.” I also like the background of the bright lights dominating the screen. Overall this graphic is very good. I’m impressed. Score 10/10

It’s recreate time for @ScottyP. Rip Wheeler is on his last set of skates and a new player needs to be made. I’m here to help you Scottyp because that’s what friends do. Here are a few options for you. If you want to stick with the Yellowstone theme, you can go with Jimmy Hurdstrom, and that seems to be the most appropriate recreate for you. You’d have low expectations and there’d be no reason to expect anything from you so all your goals, assists, and other stats would be above any expectations. And of course there is Sand dan Glotka. Slow, damaged, and near death at times, but he’s got some determination and grit and he would be one to be feared as long as you don’t look like Glotka. You probably wouldn’t want to be a goalie considering Glotka’s lack of ability to get up very quickly. My favorite choice for you is Willie Soke. It would be a seamless transition from real life to the sims. Your player would be a drunk fool with one ambition of a big heist. Think about it ScottyP, when Christmas comes around, you’d fit right in as the bad santa. 201 words

Just never know how he counts cuz if he uses both hands he ends up short one.

If you should decide to read this entire media spot, it’s entirely up to you to determine if there is any validity to the outcome. I cannot be responsible for any screw up on my calculations, data collection, or even on the guidance I received during the gathering and computations to complete this report. With that disclaimer out of the way, I first need to thank @ucyXpher, @CowboyinAmerica, and @Steve, for giving me permission to dig into their player and see if I can come up with something interesting to determine what is making them successful in the VHL. I also need to thank @Scurvy and @Smarch. I evaluated their players as well, even though I did not let them know I included them in this report. Just to be fair to Scurvy and Smarch, I included Bollos de Trueno in here as well. All data was collected from the start of the season through games completed on November 1st. I processed all the information with the premise that certain attributes meant more to the success of the player than other attributes, thus I placed more emphasis on those specific attributes. I also came into this experiment with the thought that the difference in TPE between certain attributes affect the player also. With that being said, I can safely say that I have not cracked the code and I have not figured out what the best player build is. There are way too many variables, like other players, opponents, and team morale. Team morale is one that kept messing with my calculations because the morale changed for reasons I cannot figure out. An example is one day Riga is playing at a morale of 61 and the next day its at a 53, but won both games the previous day, and to make matters worse, they won at 53 to a team with 64 team morale. Now let me explain what I did first. I went through every game played focusing on data that I could not gather easily; for example, hits taken losing the puck, maintaining control of the puck, rebound shots, assists from rebounds, being involved in the goal but not getting credit for an assist. I also included shots right after face offs. These numbers were isolated to the individual player and helped with the analysis of each game to determine a pattern. In addition, I used their current TPE and changes to TPE to determine what affect there might have been on the player following the changes. The game outcome was not a factor with coming up with the assigned variable number for probability factors. I came up with a variable number based on a series of computations of the attributes and use that variable number to help determine consistency, or I should say to justify my reasoning for guessing the consistency and potential results. Once again, I failed and did not crack the code! Scurvy, before you flip me shit about having too much time on my hands and all that crap, just know that I gave up reading at night so I could collect the data and ended out going to bed with all these F-ing numbers in my head working out the information to try to validate the outcomes. While you were role playing Ninefingers getting it on with Ferro, I was doing something productive. Lucy Leitner Starting with Lucy Leitner, Riga Reign defenseman, she’s in her third season with the Reign. Lucy began the season on fire. She racked up points in 11 of the first 15 games, and through 33 games she has gotten at least one point in 25 games. She has had 8 multi-point games in this period and can easily be described as dependable. She doesn’t shoot as much as you’d expect, only one double digit game. Her defensive game is admirable as she has no issues blocking shots and hitting opponents. These numbers aren’t record breaking but they are dependable. As far as scoring goals, Lucy scored multiple goals from deflections and rebounds, and of her 8 goals, 4 of them have been on the power play. She seems to get involved more in power plays as she also has 4 assists with a team advantage. Her scoring TPE started the season at 81, and she bumped it up to 82 recently. It didn’t really change much, even though her puck handling and skating started out at 90 and 89 respectively, until she bumped up puck handling to 92 and skating to 90. Lucy’s passing attribute has remained at 64 throughout the season, but her defense started at 92 until she bumped it up to 93; however, her strength is now at 78, but still lower than the other 5 players I looked into. This combination of TPE amongst passing, defense, puck handling, skating, scoring, and strength may be keeping her from losing the puck when she is hit. She is currently at a .56 hit to being hit ratio, even with a 67 checking. Lucy tends to be one player behind in the passing process for assists. If her teammates would shoot from her passes, this would change!! Lucy Leitner is at .80 points per 20 minutes of play. Her puck handling/skating score is 1.02, which is consistent with the other 5 players. Her defense/passing score is 1.45, which is higher in comparison. She has a 70.31 score for skating/(scoring/passing), and a .95 score for strength/scoring. Her potential is at 50, which is a constant, morale is 55, experience is at 61, and her overall rating is 77, giving her a variable number of 3.86. This number should go down as Lucy applies TPE throughout the remainder of the season. Based on the overall analysis I predict Lucy to score 1 goal and 10 assists in the next 10 games. Also going to say she’s gonna light it up in the play offs, especially if that variable number drops a bit. Axle Gunner Axle Gunner is another star for the Reign. He’s on his second season with Riga. He’s a center who wins on average around 60% of the face offs. Through 33 games, Gunner has 7 more points than Leitner, and leads the team. Part of this success is Gunner’s face off wins. He’s scored multiple times off the face off. Gunner has multiple double digit shot games, and leads the league with 286 shots, scoring on 6.29%. Gunner gets credit for rebound goals, Gunner gets a number of his shots blocked, and picks up the rebound on occasion. On the special team play, Axle Gunner has scored 4 power play goals, 11 power play assists, 1 short handed goal and 1 short handed assist. Axle Gunner gets hit a lot too, but his strength is at 99 TPE, puck handling is at 92, and skating is at 90, therefore he doesn’t lose the puck very often. He’s at a .82 ratio of hits to hits taken through 33 games. Axle Gunner is not much of a shot blocker, only 12 thus far; perhaps his team is focused on offense, or its that he goes after the free pucks more often, with a 93 defensive attribute. During the analysis of Axle Gunner, his multiple point games went down after he applied to his build. He bumped up checking by 2 to 67, puck handling by 1 to 92, passing by 1 to 71, scoring by 1 to 89, and defense by 1 to 93. Gunner’s face off wins were not affected, his shots increased slightly, and his hits did not fluctuate. Whatever Steve has planned for his player’s build, its working. Through 33 games, Axle Gunner has 3 first stars, 4 second stars, and 3 third stars. Gunner’s PH/SK score is 1.02. He has a DF/PA score of 1.30, a 72 score for his SK/(SC/PA), and his ST/SC score is 1.11. Gunner’s potential, a constant 50, his morale score is 55, experience at 81, and his overall rating is 79, which is the highest of the 6 players analyzed. This gives Axle Gunner a variable score of 3.48. Based on my flawed evaluation, I predict Gunner to score multiple goals in the next few games and then have a drought for three to five games before scoring some points again. Antonia Bucatini Antonia Bucatini is an HC Davos phenom. She’s in her third season with the Dynamo and is a high dollar center. Like Axle Gunner, Bucatini wins most of her face offs, and gets multiple opportunities to score off rebounds from teammates. Bucatini wins over 62% of the puck most games, and has even had a few games winning over 70% and one game over 80% of the pucks. There is no direct correlation to HC Davos losses with the face off wins by Bucatini; however, there is a correlation with the likelihood of Bucatini not scoring a goal or assist when HC Davos loses. This likelihood does not mimic Bucatini not getting a point and HC Davos winning. In addition, Bucatini’s shots are fewer when they lose, and her missed shots are up. Antonia Bucatini is a dedicated offensive player with a .45 ratio of hits to hits taken, but like Gunner, her strength, puck handling, and defense give her a better opportunity of keeping the puck. In the defensive zone, Bucatini wins the puck most of the time but her teammates have a tendency to ice the puck after the face off. She has a third of her games with multiple points, and 13 of the 33 games with no points. In the first half of the 33 games, she had one streak of no points for 3 games and then lit it up by scoring 5 goals in the next two games. Her longest no point streak was five games starting at game 17, and I thought I would see another blast of points but that didn’t happen. Since game 17, she’s had only 3 two point games and 1 three point game. I suspect that this change occurred when her attributes were adjusted. Her skating increased by 1 to 90, puck handling increased by 4 to 92, and defense increased by 1 to 89, which dropped her PH/SK score and increased her DF/PA score. This is by no means an indication that Bucatini is not successful as she continues to contribute to her team with her dominating face offs, a a steady contribution of goals and/or assists. When Bucatini shines, she shines bright, earning first star 5 times and second star 2 times in the 33 games. In addition, her scores tell me that she is due to light it up and go on a hot streak, and based on her variable score a big hot streak!! Her points for 20 minutes is at .73, her PH/SKK score is 1.04, DF/PA score is 1.29, SK/(SC/PA) is at 72.0, and her ST/SC score is 1.13. Her experience is at 71, potential at 50, morale at 61, and overall is at 77. Her variable score is 4.40. Based on my evaluation of Antonia Bucatini, I predict that she will have an early breakout over the next few games and then slow to 1 point a game before some more multiple point games. Or… she will have a five game drought. See, its a flawed experiment! Logan Ninefingers The third center in this analysis is none other than my IRL bud, Logan Ninefingers. Ninefingers is in his 4th season with Vancouver and converted from a beefy right winger to a strong center. At the 33 game mark, Ninefingers and his teammate, Riley Martin led the Wolves in goals and assists respectively. It’s safe to say that Logan Ninefingers is having a killer season. His face off percentage is averaging over 55% and there have been several games over 65%. One of the things I learned with this analysis is that winning the face offs matter more often than not. Like Bucatini and Gunner, when Ninefingers wins the face off, the Wolves have a better chance of scoring. The Wolves dont ice the puck off Ninefingers’ face offs as often as Bucatini, but that still happens. Logan Ninefingers loses the puck from hits more often than Bucatini, even though his strength, defense, and puck handling are higher, but his checking is considerably lower. In addition, Ninefingers’ variable score is .07 higher than Bucatini, which could be a factor. Ninefingers’ hit to hit taken ratio is at .52. Logan Ninefingers is scoring at a whopping 12.57% and only 57 shots have been blocked so far, with another 137 missing the net. Ninefingers takes advantages of rebounds as his assists numbers are high due to his aggressive teammates scoring off his shots. Ninefingers has been a dominating force for the Wolves and has earned 1st star five times, 2nd star five times, and 3rd star twice. He has also racked up 4 power play goals and 11 power play assists. Logan’s points per 20 minutes is .93. I’m excited to see what Ninefingers’ season ending results are considering how he has several multiple point games thus far and only one streak of four games with no points. His contribution of the team capitalizing on his winning the puck is encouraging and likely to continue given his current build. Ninefingers could easily hit the 115 mark in points, especially if he gets his variable score to drop a bit from the current 4.47. His PH/SK score is 1.04. His DF/PA score is 1.34. His SK(SC/PA) score is 71.10, and his ST/SC is at 1.14. Logan Ninefingers has an experience rating of 68. His potential is 50, a constant, his morale is at 55, and his overall rating is at 77. Based on my evaluation of Ninefingers, I’m going out on a limb to say that Ninefingers will have a slow run over the next ten games. Just remember Scurvy, its flawed so you’ll probably knock em dead! I just realized that this is well over the 2000 word count, it does me no good to keep writing as I’m maxing on 4 weeks TPE. And since I am completely burnt out of continuing this experiment I am not going to write anything about Riley Martin or Bollos de Trueno. I failed. I could not crack the code. 2415 words

1. What do you think about this season Theme week: Lore? Not much. I was able to come up with something to write about so all is good. 2. On a scale of 1 – 10; how would you rank the Vancouver Wolves season so far? Borderline 11 3. Trade deadline is the end of the week so do you think Vancouver Wolves will make a trade? I trust whatever our GM and AGM do with this team. 4. Out of all the Lore in the VHL; Which one do you think is the most interesting? Why? The lore of lore 5. Election in the USA is happening as I write this so who do you think will be the next President? Vote for Logan Ninefingers 6. Riddle: What kind of ship has two mates but no captain? A sinking ship

Morning!!!

1. Thoughts on this season’s theme “VHL Lore”? I wasn’t really a fan of the theme but still ended out coming up with something stupid to write about to get my doubles week. After all, TPE is all that matters!! 2. If you had to put all your remaining TPE into one attribute, what would it be? I would have to say that it would be defense. I need to get defense up to at least a 95 and preferably a 96 or 97. Once I do that, I should be able to win a fight. 3. Historically, who do you think is Davos’ biggest rival? Since I crashed your press conference for the 2 tpe, I’m going to say that Vancouver is your biggest rival. And when Baby Jokinen @Ahma gets up to the big league, expect Bollos to seek him out!! 4. Besides Davos, which VHL/E/M team name/branding stands out most to you? I like Bratislava’s logo and I also like Halifax logo. And I would say besides Vancouver rather than saying besides Davos! 5. Are there any moves/additions we need to make for our squad as we approach the trade deadline? It would be very nice if you would spread out all your good players to other teams and pick up a team full of inactive so you lose more games. 6. What jersey number does your player wear? #22 7. In the Star Wars universe, would you be part of the Jedi Order or the Sith? Neither, I would be an independent who wants to be left alone to roam the universe looking for hot galactic space mamas. 8. Are you an introvert or extrovert? I am an introvert until I size up the situation and decide to be an extrovert.