diamond_ace

With Sonnet not continuing in his role as Houston Bulls GM given the promotion to VHLM Commissioner alongside me, the position was technically open as soon as the regular season ended. While we could wait until after the playoffs, it might be better to get the new GM into the role early, so there's time to take stock of things with the team, and figure out where to go from there. Taking from our pool of applicants in the general thread, the candidate in question has been approached and after a few questions, has been given the job. Congratulations: @VHLM GM @VHLM Commissioner

@TacticalHammer

Pierogies are amazing. Also, PNC Park's bathrooms aren't terrible, as far as stadium bathrooms are concerned (they have to be pretty good, they have to be able to flush that entire team every night)

Now I know how Esso felt getting this tag the last 2 seasons...

Looking forward to having you with us next season

So basically, you're 2000-03 me. The bold part anyway, down to the exact sport that caused me to start to run.

Mockba

The VHL stands a few sims away from the playoffs. Right now, there are two true races - five of the playoff seeds are relatively set. It's mathematically impossible for Calgary to finish anywhere but the NA 1 seed, Seattle the NA 2 seed, and New York the NA 3 seed. Riga and Helsinki have not officially locked in their seeds, but with Riga being 6 points clear at the top, and Helsinki being a further 6 points clear behind them, it seems unlikely that either will be moved - Riga will likely be EU 1 seed and Helsinki will likely be EU 2 seed (despite being right there in the race one sim ago). Malmo is eliminated, and while DC is technically capable of overcoming a 6 point deficit, it's harder to do so when they have to pass 2 different teams - relying on 1 team to slip up is fine, relying on 2 teams to slip up is significantly less likely. This leaves a race between Vancouver and Toronto for the final NA playoff spot. There's a bigger and more complicated race in the EU, but we'll get to that one in a bit. This race is between two teams with their own interesting storylines going into these final games. Toronto, after having been out of the playoffs for every season since Peace has taken over, seemed like they had a spot locked up early in the season. They've been comfortably in the playoffs most of the season, at one point even as high as second in the conference. Some might say that by all rights, Toronto should have had this locked up a long time ago. Others might say that by roster composition, their current positioning is more accurate to where they should have been. Regardless of which camp you're in, it's got to be heartbreaking for Toronto, a team that's been in dire need of a playoff appearance, to be dragged back into the race after seemingly having a berth secured. Vancouver, on the other hand, has arrived at this point rather unexpectedly. Having been a contending team both the last two seasons, but not quite managing to win the cup, Vancouver made a big play before the season in acquiring free agents Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen and Gritty. This did not go as planned. I'm not privy to any discussions held behind the scenes, so I can't speak to the motivations of either free agent or Beaviss in signing them, but it's unlikely they expected they were joining a team that would later trade away both Julius Freeman and HHH. I'm not interested in dwelling on that particular aspect of this in more depth - it does pertain to the topic at hand, but there are reasons I'm leaving it be. Nonetheless, it's a team that at one stage looked like attempting to contend, and at a later stage looked like attempting to tank. They even traded away Werbenjagermanjensen right before the deadline, and he's ended up on a much stronger team in Calgary. Theoretically, I would assume that both Toronto and Vancouver would prefer Toronto to make it in, at least from a management standpoint - this could be wrong, but based on the trajectories of the teams, it's a guess I'm willing to make. Unfortunately, the games are not played in the minds of management, they're played in the sim, and Toronto has a 1 point lead but is on a downward trajectory. This could go either way. Another interesting thing to note is that Toronto and Vancouver are currently sitting in 9th and 10th place overall, and they're 4 points behind 8th - it's a big enough gap given the lack of games left where it's probably safe to suggest that an EU team will miss out despite a higher total than whichever of these NA teams earn the final spot. The EU race is between 3 teams for 2 spots. Moscow has 71 points, Davos has 71 points, and Prague has 70 points. Moscow also has two games in hand on both Davos and Prague, so they're probably the most likely to get in, despite the fact that the trades of all three teams point toward Moscow being the team that least wants to get in, or has tried the least to do so anyway. This race is also among teams on different trajectories much like the one above. First, let's delve into Moscow. They traded Jet Jaguar and Killy Foilen to Davos, who looked to pick up a few more pieces to push them over the hump. In return, they recieved Milos Slavik, Michael Hall, and Derek Eriksson, and some picks exchanged hands both ways that have no bearing on either team's current roster as composed. For Moscow, adding two relatively young but not as developed players (Hall is in the minors and therefore also has no bearing on the roster) but losing two guys who were significantly more developed, including a league star in Jaguar, should have made them worse. This was only compounded later in the season when they traded away Moscow lifer Mat Tocco for Ryo Yamazuki II and Kazimir Komarov (Komarov is in the minors). The downgrade from Tocco to Yamazuki is fairly insignificant, and will likely be offset heading into future seasons with Yamazuki still around and developing, and Tocco on the later stages of his career, but as of this season alone, it is a downgrade. Losing Jaguar and Foilen and getting Slavik and Eriksson is a bigger downgrade. Nonetheless, call it a magic line combination or what have you, the trades have made Moscow better. They've performed better since making them. Davos is on the opposing side of the Jaguar/Foilen trade, and it's had the opposing effect. They picked up two guys who were at the time (and still are at the time of writing) objectively better players than those they traded away. This made them worse somehow. Then it became a sort of quicksand effect for Davos - whatever they tried to do to improve, it just dug them a deeper and deeper hole. Something of note as well is the flurry of trade activity prior to the season wherein Davos acquired Jerry Garcia, Jerry Wang, David OQuinn, and the free agency rights to Acyd Burn (who would later sign with them, as well as ACL Tear). Davos was primed to take the next step. It seemed to be working out for them early, but not quite enough to be cup contenders, hence the Foilen and Jaguar trade. This started a slight decline, but surely nothing of great consequence, right? Wrong. Acyd Burn was then traded to New York in a three team transaction that saw HHH from Vancouver dealt to Davos. Surely acquiring HHH, one of the best in the league, would sort the issue? Wrong again. Every trade Davos would make, every attempt to get better, to undo the damage done by prior trades, would just make it worse. Perhaps there was a little bit of the sunk cost fallacy at play here, perhaps there wasn't, we'll never really know. Nonetheless, the team that acquired all these weapons find themselves tied with the team they got a large portion of them from, having played 2 more games to get there. There's still time to right the ship, but it has definitely been sinking, and this team is performing worse as the season wears on. Finally, we reach Prague. Currently the lowest point total of the EU teams, but only by a single point, this is a team that hasn't won a playoff series in their history. Admittedly, that history has been only since S68, and the first two seasons were basically write offs coming out of the expansion draft. Their NA counterparts from the S68 expansion, DC, have also not won a series - in fact, both teams have made the playoffs in the exact same seasons, and gotten exactly as far by number of rounds. The only difference is that DC lost in 7 last season, whereas Prague lost in 6. To qualify for the playoffs this season, when DC look very unlikely to do so, would give Prague a leg up in that little friendly rivalry. How did we get to this point? The biggest thing of note was of course the loss of Brick Wahl and Joel Ylonen to retirement - these two deserved better in their final season, but couldn't put it together. Solomon Crawford was finally going to take over the goalie position, a prospect that had been somewhat concerning, as Crawford would represent a downgrade from Wahl, who had been one of the best goalies in the league. Ylonen, on the other hand, there was no direct replacement for - just the improvement of other players on the roster and the return of Blake Laughton from his gap year in Helsinki. Privately, the decision to start Crawford had a few players outside of the team concerned about Prague's outlook for the season, and it may have been a factor in the decisions of said players. The team was behind him though, and he would actually perform pretty well early on, despite the team's struggles. Prague had been bouncing back and forth between 5th and 6th in the conference for much of the first half of the season, and obviously neither one would do a great deal of good. With the expansion coming up and with it, the expansion draft (something I knew about ahead of time, and which played into the decision) Crawford was traded to Malmo. He was finally given the reigns and wasn't even performing badly, but the opportunity was there to acquire a slight upgrade (albeit an older player) in Virgil Ligriv. Since the trade, the goaltending has been comparable, if not marginally worse (it's hard to get a statistical output for Ligriv from just his time in Prague, without his time in Malmo being counted) but the team has markedly improved. This is a team that has gone 18-11-1 in the last 30. This is a team that's fought tooth and nail for this playoff spot, and momentum is on our side, but STHS is notoriously fickle. Will it be kind, or will it dangle the playoffs in front of us, only to rip them away expertly right at the last? Stay tuned for what will surely be an exciting final few sims for both conferences. 1736 words

It's where you stack up with the people from your draft class after the draft has occurred. Basically just checking up on whether you've risen or fallen since. You've risen 9 spots - aka if the draft was today, and it went straight TPE, you'd be drafted 9 spots earlier than you were.

18 35th Overall 32 41st Overall would be one hell of a draft if those were both the same team... oh wait

Finishing the group stage on a big fat 0-7. https://www.chess.com/live?#g=5046913975

And to no one's surprise, a big 0-6. This time vs @bigAL https://www.chess.com/live?#g=5043400595 @FrostBeard

https://www.chess.com/live?#g=5043078894 Ridiculously close this time, but yet another loss, this time vs @Garsh I swear I'm not 0-5 level of ability, 3 of the matches were close, just can't finish...

Ah, yes - "case and point"

Dark green team doesn't have a huge say in this sort of thing actually. Can bring it up in board though

@FrostBeard well i didnt expect to start out 0-4, but lost to cole here https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/5039685706?tab=report

You would somehow manage to avoid talking about the s20 draft in this

@FrostBeard got my ass handed to me by berocka, no real surprise there https://www.chess.com/live?#g=5038333743

Hello, and welcome to season 72, edition 4 of Under 250: The VHLM Report. In these series, we will be taking a look at the trends and topics from the past week in the VHLM. What twists and turns will our minor league hold? Stay tuned to find out! Speaking of other VSN content, make sure to check out the other great work from the greater VSN family! Here are a few handy links to check out, from our weekly podcasts to in-depth history articles, scouting reports, and more! Ringless | VSN Weekly Review | WJC Update | Deep Rewind The Review Well into the season now, and things are really starting to clear up for our teams in the VHLM. The standings are, anyway - there’s been an ongoing debate about what the playoff format should be after the expansion Miami Marauders have raised the team count to 12. While strictly on performance, the Marauders themselves should be worthy of a playoff spot, the conference they’re in is stronger than that of the Yukon Rush, who have fewer points but are in as things stand. This will surely have to be looked into at the end of the season, but for now, we have what we have. Standings-wise, things are fairly simple now. The Minnesota Storm have really pulled away as the top team overall, a total of 107 points at this stage is particularly impressive. The best of the west title seems to be relatively settled as well, and it will be going to the Saskatoon Wild barring a late-season collapse. In fact, the only real playoff race we have left at this stage is for home ice between the Las Vegas Aces and Mexico City Kings, and that likely won’t make much difference either way as they’ll just end up facing each other in a playoff series. The better team will prove itself the hard way out of those two. The Philadelphia Reapers sit in a sort of no man’s land, definitely contenders and will be favoured to get out of at least one series but will have to pull some upsets (or have upsets pulled elsewhere) to come home with the cup. Both the Mississauga Hounds and Ottawa Lynx are strong, competitive teams that just don’t quite seem to have enough to climb up into that top tier. Mississauga, in particular, were on the heels of Philadelphia last time out, but what was once a two-point gap has blossomed to 14. The Miami Marauders, Halifax 21st, and Yukon Rush have enough about them to always be a threat in a game, even if they come out on the losing end more often than not. Then there is the expected fall to the bottom teams, the San Diego Marlins and Houston Bulls, who are surely just playing for pride at this point. What does all of this look like in the ELO chart? Have things spread out similarly there, or is there still a cluster of teams in the upper-middle of the chart? Let’s take a look at the chart as it stands and see what effect the most recent games have had. One noteworthy thing that was mentioned in a previous edition of Under 250 was the placement of Las Vegas’ line on the ELO chart. They’re still only the 6th line now, but at least their recent upward swing has pulled them close to the lines of the Reapers, Hounds, and Kings, respectively. Plus, they’re now tied for 4th in the standings so having the 6th line isn’t as far from where they’d expect to be. In the same cluster of lines, but performing more highly in ELO compared to the standings, are the Mississauga Hounds. A clear 6th in the standings, well back of the Aces and Kings, surprisingly the Hounds find themselves above both in ELO. In fact, it’s only been within the last few games where Philadelphia’s line has pulled away from that of Mississauga. The steady decline in ELO of the Ottawa Lynx stands out as another particularly unusual trend - in the standings, they haven’t really moved. They’ve been in 7th for much of the season, and closer to 6th than 8th. Early on, they had been bouncing around with some of the teams in the cluster above them, but for a while now they’ve been pretty settled. On the ELO chart, however, their line has just continued to fall this whole time, and two unexpected things are true of the Lynx at this stage. The first is that ELO seems to consider them closer to the streaking Marauders than any of the teams above them, and by a good margin; the standings do not bear this out, but it’s interesting to note. The second is that they’ve dipped below the starting point of 1000, and trajectory-wise seem likely to be there for good. They’ve been fairly consistently above it all season, with a brief stop on the wrong side around the 36 game mark, but considering the angle the line has taken since about game 51, it doesn’t appear as though they’ll see the better side of 1000 the rest of the way. At the bottom of the chart, the Marlins and Bulls seem to be levelling out. This makes sense, as a loss by either of them would be expected, and therefore shouldn’t tip the scales a great deal, unless the margin is particularly high. Just above that, it looks as though Yukon may pass Halifax by the end of the season. This would be noteworthy since, despite their proximity in the standings, it was back in the single-digit game days when Yukon was last above Halifax in ELO. The gap has been tight but fairly consistent for some time now, but both are on trajectories where they may meet back up. The Highlights There have been some interesting trends in the last 10 games played for each team - strong showings as expected from the Storm, Wild, and Reapers, with 8-2-0, 8-1-1, and 9-0-1, respectively. The most surprising result is that of the Las Vegas Aces. Despite their nudge upward in ELO, their last 10 is only a modest 5-4-1. This is a team tied for fourth yet only going .500 recently. Among the teams outperforming the Aces in their last 10, surprisingly the expansion Marauders have put together a solid late run and have trended upward with a 6-4-0. The only other real standout in this particular category comes from the last place Houston Bulls, who despite only 5 wins in 62, have won twice in the last 10. In terms of individual performances, this season has been the Adam Syreck show. 133 points in 62 games is more than 2/game on average and is also 18 points clear of his next closest competitor. In fact, tied for second is Syreck’s Philadelphia teammate, Bob Helminen with 115, and it’s likely the two have worked together for a lot of those points. The highest non-Reaper is Lucas Brandt of Saskatoon, also with 115. In addition to topping the total points chart, Syreck also leads in assists with 81, although he’s much more closely followed there by Alex Letang with 79, Tyler Walker with 78, and King Kruul with 76. Helminen, on the other hand, is tied for the league lead in goals with yet another Reaper, Big Chungus - both have 55. Ike Bennett closely follows with 54, Lucas Brandt with 53, and Syreck pops up once more in 5th with 52. There are a few other stats with a runaway leader as strong as Syreck is in points, however. Fat Palloon has been the shot-blocking king this season with 190, 39 ahead of his nearest competitor. Big Chungus, who popped up a few times in the point charts, has done a lot of his work on the power play - his 25 power-play goals are 8 ahead of 2nd, and the rest of the pack tightens up behind him so strongly that 2nd is only 4 goals ahead of 10th. Lucas Brandt, on the other hand, has taken advantage of the extra ice space when his team has been down a player. Shorthanded goals tend to be rare to begin with, so Brandt’s 5 stands out among a field where only one other player has more than 2. Finally, the current point-scoring streak is led by Tyler Walker with an impressive 8. Defenz Mann has 6, and after that, there are 7 players each with 5, so in comparison, Walker’s 8 stands out. That’s all for this edition of Under 250: The VHLM Review. Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned next week for the inside scoop on all that’s going on in the league. Until next time! GMs: @Rayzor_7 @Sonnet @DoktorFunk @Ricer13 @MexicanCow123 @iRockstar @Dil @ColeMrtz @Spartan @Motzaburger @McWolf @DMaximus Players mentioned: @Spade18 @Advantage @Mike @twists @Caboose30 @Ferda @LefLop @Big Bob @UnkemptCL4PTP

You can technically combine both concepts into one player - Kerkko Hyvarinen

I'd be open to this, in any of my three capacities - Board, VHLM Commie, VHL GM.

That's funny, I don't see any Raleigh Ritchie on this graphic. not to mention the complicated situation with the actual Raleigh Ritchie pick on draft night, which speaks just as much to my own ability to find steals as it does your own, a situation with which you are already familiar cough cough

Clarke was a fantastic pick by you (admittedly made easier by the fact that it was Kyle, but still, other people had to pass on him). Perry was a pretty solid pick by me as well - inactive now, but lasted a good while - although to be fair, the guy I took an entire round after Perry (Ben McGirr) is still around. Some other solid late options on this list: Telker (by you), Yamazuki (by Esso).

1. diamond_ace 2. https://www.chess.com/member/diamond_ace