@Corco good luck in Mex, but on more of an informational thing: the league is significantly deeper now. That's one of the changes. Most teams have a 3rd line, 2nd round picks are what used to be mid-1sts and now it's relatively common to find viable players in the 4th and 5th rounds, although you can probably tell all that from the sheer number of expansion teams. You probably don't recognize half the VHLM, and a third of the VHL (Prague, Moscow, Malmo, and DC - oh and I finally got my Prague team I'd been ranting about for 30 seasons). Back in the day, a pitch from a VHLM team to a returning member selling a third line role would be unheard of - in this case, the first two Cs are me and Bek, and we can afford to not throw one of us out on the wing because that's what teams are like now, there are enough new guys on the wing who are active that we can afford to stack the middle. Teams all over the league are able to do this now. Mexico, for example, the team you went with, has four guys at 140+, which back in the day would have been something in the neighborhood of 2nd or 3rd place. Now, they're one of the teams that can actually afford to give you a decent spot out of the gate, because that's just the depth we have now.