diamond_ace

So the second round is happening right now of the VHLM playoffs, and the top four teams in the regular season all won their first round series to advance. That leaves us with Ottawa Lynx vs Halifax 21st and Saskatoon Wild vs Philadelphia Reapers. Since it's a theme week, I have to actually write about things that are relevant and take it somewhat seriously, rather than just rant about what Kefka the character would do in a theoretical hockey game and/or hockey lifestyle. So of course, since Kefka is on defense, I'm going to just analyze the defenses of the four remaining teams. This should please @Renomitsu and @GustavMattias at least, since they talk about defense often (and I'm actually a fan of defense as well, I just rarely write a serious article so it doesn't show as much). First series, since it's the one that involves me: Philly vs Saskatoon. Philly has two capped guys, Boone Jenton and Edward Vigneault, plus a lot of strong nearly-capped guys (Kevin Low, Brandon Leblanc, Condor Adrienne, and Duncan Jeffers). Assuming the pairs are strictly TPE (which they probably aren't) that gives Philly a pair at 400, a pair at 356, and a pair at 267. It's a testament to how the league has changed that a pair at 267 is the third pair - there have been contending teams, even cup winning teams, in the past where that would be the top pair. Philly is admittedly a bit of an outlier, in that they're the strongest team in the league and specifically built for this, but it's still a bit more than one might expect. Saskatoon has a top pair that can just about match Philly's - Anthony Amberback isn't quite capped, but at 196, he's close enough (and the cap plays into this as well, because Jenton and Vigneault are actually well over 200, but can't apply it, so they're playing at 200 level and essentially matched by Amberback). So the Saskatoon top pair is 396, which is comparable enough to 400. It's the second pair and third pair where the comparison looks increasingly unfavorable to Saskatoon - and to be honest, part of that is on me, as a member of the second pair. I'm with Fylo Gibbles, who has 136, and I have 113. That's a 249 TPE second pair, lower than Philly's third pair, although not by a lot. Still, that skips completely over Philly's second pair; it's not a great look for Saskatoon that our third pair is similar to Philly's second. Then Saskatoon's third pair in DWin Championship and Titus Laclass are a combined 159, which looks more like a single player's total than an entire pair. We're a fun team with good chemistry and a solid locker room and all, but based on the defense, this is I believe where our run ends. Philly in 6. The other series is between Ottawa Lynx and Halifax 21st (still the worst name in the league). Looking at Ottawa's defense, they actually seem to have less than either Saskatoon or Philly, implying they were probably brought to this stage mostly by their forwards and goalie, but that's not what the article is about. Their top pair would be Ambrose Stark and Brendan James Lawn, which combine for 334, lower than both Philly and Saskatoon's top pairs and also lower than Philly's second pair. This is definitely not the fault of Ambrose Stark though, as he is capped. Brendan James Lawn at 134 is a perfectly viable second pair guy, but for a semifinal team he's not really what you'd look for in a top pair (like I said though, Ottawa makes up for it on their offense - they have 7 capped forwards and another two at 197 and 194, so don't take this as a knock on either Ottawa or Lawn). The second pair starts off with Cody Parkey at 133, which would fit right in with Saskatoon's second pair or Philly's third, and David Lindberg at 99 is still a decent contributor even if not quite on the level of Lawn and Parkey (meaning the second pair combines for 232). Ottawa can just about finish a third pair off, with the more minor contributors of Derek Bohne and Vilnis Balcers each at 56, combining for 112. I'm Saskatoon's fourth best defenseman and even I have more TPE just by myself than these two have combined. Balcers I know is still active to an extent, so that could help them out, but Bohne is long gone. Halifax is in an interesting position in that 3 defensemen show up on their page in the portal who aren't playing, and I've had to write their section multiple times because of it (and you know I'm going to use some words to vent about that to balance out the effort). Their top pair (of guys actually on the roster) is Guy Legrande at 172 and Lance Flowers at 147, combined for 319. That's the worst top pair of the four teams remaining, but still not a bad pair overall. It would be better if Flowers, much like Lawn of Ottawa, could be on a lower pair and Legrande could be paired with a capped guy. Halifax's second pair, Hugh Chan at 137 and Papa Gage at 121, is a 258 total pair and is better than Halifax's second. With a 26 TPE advantage on their second pair and a 15 TPE disadvantage on their top pair, Halifax compares pretty equally to Ottawa through the top two pairs. The third pair, however, definitely goes to Halifax. Boheem Bismarck at 101 nearly balances out Ottawa's entire third pair on his own, and then when Brooks Polak at 56 is added to the pair, while 56 is not a lot it's enough to give Halifax a clear edge on the third pair. 157 is a good bit over 112. Based solely on defense, I'd give this to Halifax in 7, since the edge they have is down at the third pair. However, the series will not be determined on defense and Ottawa is already up 3 games to 0 (based on the index and the portal - sorry for the spoilers for those who only follow the games when they're posted as individual threads). It'll probably be a sweep but since this is a defense article and Halifax does have the better defense, I'm going to throw them a pity pair of wins and say Ottawa in 6. 1081 words 2 weeks plus theme bonus

Join Saskatoon. I have a player on Saskatoon. @Peace offer for him

The recent version of you, no - but on the whole, I don't think it's necessarily out of the realm of possibility

It is pointless. Agm is meant for whatever the gm decides it's meant for. I don't know where you got the idea that it's meant to help members become gms - it helps to an extent, it's part of a resume, but it is in no way a requirement or a direct stepping stone. Up until about 3-4 seasons ago, no one even had them. You were close to getting a position, you were one of a final group of 4 for this position and a final group of 5 for the previous one, now that you're trying to tell us how to do our jobs, I'm not so sure how close you are really. We don't need gms who will undermine the commissioners.

We are not obligated to pick an existing agm to be a gm, considering we did not make them agms in the first place. You were among the final group to be selected, I can tell you that much - but if you're trying to tell Banana and I how to do our jobs, that's not a good look for you tbh.

those are picked by the gm...

<--- Probably Varys - too smart and it sometimes rubs people the wrong way, but in general not a bad guy

You can always stick around for the Mysidia twins

We had to have been absolute shit for my ultra defensive guy to lead the team in points

Wait I actually led the team in points?

You don't need to worry about offense, I've been saying I've been overrated for a while now. For at least some weeks, it felt like I was the only one who realized it (and that maybe I was actually better than I thought, if everyone else kept saying how good I was). That is definitely a factor though, the safe pick. Sometimes it's better to go for a guy who's expectation is about 700-750, when my absolute floor is probably still about 550-600, than a new guy who could crack 1000 but could just as easily disappear at 100. I did just put in a lot of updates though so I'll be up over 100 once the update queue is cleared

I haven't earned like a madman since about S45, to be fair. I was surprised I was such a hot commodity heading into the draft (for the people who knew I was going into it, which I didn't keep secret at all but somehow people still didn't know?) because frankly throughout all of Lawson's career I was never an Eno or anything like that. So many people got mad about how they missed out on a guy who's not even that big a TPE guy...

I'm not one to pull a guy from a commitment

Should have just blindly tried to convince you to play alongside me rather than reading through the thread first, in the amount of time it took to read the thread you took a spot somewhere else

46W56470436410713 Doubles Free Free 5 tpe

Kefka Palazzo, the mad clown, the king of destruction and the evil mastermind behind the World of Ruin, is finally starting to get accustomed to this whole "hockey" thing - so much so that he's decided to build himself a home near Saskatoon's arena. So near, in fact, that it's in the eastern parking lot, the one typically reserved for the season ticket holders with box seats, the lot with the underground parking garage built in that leads directly to some of the reserved access corridors of the stadium. The fancy lot with the heated sidewalks and the food truck lot on the bottom floor where the other lots have a small and sparse array of vending machines. While other players usually see fit to buy a local house if they think this is a long term location for them or somewhere they'd go back to after their careers are complete, or sometimes just rent a nice upscale apartment in the cultural district on rotating 6 month leases for flexibility in case of trade or free agency, Kefka has shown his complete insanity once again by building his own home, from scratch, inside of a parking garage. He's not even much of a builder either, since he had to "borrow" stadium maintenance and force them to help him with the build, compensating them with signed memorabilia, most of which was signed by far better players than him, and promising not to kill them if they helped him out (a promise that most were expecting him not to keep, although to this point he has not killed any of the maintenance workers). So what does this place look like, exactly? Well, anyone familiar with Kefka's tower that he last called home on his previous world will immediately recognize the concept. When Kefka was in Vegas, he took the couch, bed, and television from a hotel room at the Bellagio and dropped them down to ground level outside the hotel via a system of ropes and pulleys. He stole an entire sandwich vendor from the Reading Terminal Market near Philadelphia after Saskatoon's last match at the Reapers. He "borrowed" the entire San Diego Zoo, dug a tunnel under his designated area, and built an entirely new floor to the parking garage under what was until recently the bottom floor, rehoming the zoo in the extra space (with a setup in the corner for poker and blackjack, this time not stolen from the Bellagio, but rather from Binion's, including the original table from the first World Series of Poker). He set up a perimeter area around the home with desks swiped from the immigration office in Halifax, the original location of the 21st pier. He built a replica spaceship designed based on one that was launched from Houston, as well as a drink dispenser that served the bitter chocolate beverage first popularized by the Aztecs on his trip to Mexico City. He planted a cherry blossom tree grown from a sapling at Kariya Park in Mississauga, stuck the gavel from Ottawa's Canadian federal government's sessions out the top of the roof, and reinforced the whole thing with a moat built from Minnesota lake water. Buried in the moat are several flecks of gold such as those found in the Yukon gold rush. It was a monument to chaos and nonsense, built right out of the scraps of his travels to all other VHLM locations, yet technically it was livable (it helped that the maintenance guys helped hook him into the power and water supply of the arena).

Is it bad that not only have I already seen the video, but I also knew the place existed before the video happened?

I should make a player name that's just a pile of Ls and Ys and make him Welsh

We picked up over half our team through waiver claims at the deadline, and since of course those players weren't there for most of the season, they couldn't have had an impact in the standings. We were a 26 win team, but the team as constructed at the end of the regular season would not have been a 26 win team throughout the entire season. We were a better team than Vegas at that exact time, I've said it before and I'll keep repeating it until I'm blue in the face. Werbenjagermanjensen, Gritty, Svoboda, we only had those guys from the deadline on. Our regular season performance was basically Dahlberg, Rift, and the leftover Rasputinov from the season prior. We were better than Vegas and deservedly won the wild card, hence the fact that we won it 2 straight and didn't even need a game 3. Yukon, on the other hand, that was an upset. That was an upset that never should have happened, and as the larger point of your piece, I agree with your assessment of that series. Just saying everyone always remembers the Vegas series wrong because people like to assume that the full season standings are indicative of the end of season team. Either way though, good to see this get a deep rewind, and I like these articles (and the SB Nation videos they're based on).

Fuck narratives. Let's let the shitty teams be shitty again

To be fair, I've been fighting against the league's efforts of parity. I've said on several occasions that I didn't care about bringing in parity and that it was weird that everyone wanted it so badly. Now that we're getting the weird results: MAYBE I WAS RIGHT. Maybe parity is overrated

Johnny Havenk Carison Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen @Matmenzinger

@Thranduil has been over 12 hours again so @Matmenzinger go ahead and pick

EFL really needs to stop having weeks with bonus TPE so I can write for here again