der meister

Wow. Lost to Charles Cheese, Esquire.

1 - stay the course 2 - no idea. The batman who laughs? 3 - super important. Causing puck separation is huge 4 - I'm a sabres fan. The playoffs haven't been an option since November. 5 - stupid big. Like 4 rounds deep of viable players. Stock up. 6 - putting on velcro shoes

I'm going to preface this week's article with the following statement: I frequently find Theme Week to be unsufferable. That's not an indictment on those who organize this league that we all love so much, or a criticism of whoever made the original suggestion. I just don't care for Theme Weeks because I find them so constrictive. That said, I'm going to do my best with this article, and as I'm writing this before the actual article, I hope to learn something interesting while writing it. ------------------------------------------ This may feel like a copout to some, but I am interested in finding out a ranking of which of my players I'd consider the most Tough Guy-esque. The irony here is that the two toughest players I had are both too old to be in the portal, so pour one out for the legends Till Lindemann and Christoph Klose. 1 - The oldest player I have in the Portal archives is center Essian Ravenwing. Ravenwing was absolutely not intended to be anything other than a cerebral playmaker, and his stats would reflect that pretty nicely. Across 576 VHL games, Ravenwing amassed 685 points, with his highest total being a 127 point campaign for Riga, helping the Reign to a Victory Cup. In the Hits category, the Welshman put up a murderous 187 in his career, which equals out to an average of 32 hits per season, or less than half a hit per game. He also spent 71 minutes in the box, which averages out to 12.5 per season. 2 - The next oldest player in the Portal is defenseman Casey Jones. Jones was a weird one for me, because even though he finished his career with 580 points in 576 games, his best season was his rookie campaign where he put up 26 goals and 74 assists for 100 points and a Christian Stolzschweiger Trophy for Rookie of the Year. He also won the Sterling Labatte for the league's best defenseman, and a Grimm Jonsson Trophy for the league's top leader. Why he never replicated or built on his rookie success remains a mystery to me. His best individual totals in Assists, Points, Shots, Hits, Blocked Shots, and Penalty Minutes all happened as a rookie. His 410 hits average out to 71 a season, and his Sin Bin total equals an average of 41 minutes a season. 3 - Next we have The Terrible Trivium, a character straight out of The Phantom Tollbooth. Triv was the sniping winger we all love to create so often. Offensively, he definitely fell behind Ravenwing, finishing his career with 619 points in 576 games, or 93 points a season. But this is a theme week about toughness, and Trivium was not that. With just 60 penalty minutes in his career, he averaged just under 10.5 minutes in the box a season. Interestingly, however, in his final season he had 5 minutes for fighting, his only penalty all year. Two years prior, he racked up an enormous 17 minutes of penalties, with yet another fighting major. Finally, he averaged 28 hits a season, with a career high of 36 in his sophomore season. 4 - Back to the blueline with Ryuji Sakamoto. This was a player who was designed to be 1) fast, and 2) angry. I really wanted to capture the spirit of the character from the Persona 5 universe, and I think I did a pretty good job of that. His 424 points in 576 games is not bad, especially considering how many times he was traded. Offensively, his two best seasons were his final two, both with the DC Dragons, where he put up 153 points in 144 games. Sakamoto spent so much time in the box he had the official's number and the two would occasionally get lunch on the offseason. Sakamoto ended his career with 1,115 penalty minutes and 1,438 hits, along with 1,293 blocked shots. Having written all of this, I think the ranking of toughness is pretty obvious. From Buttery Soft to Chewing Nails: 1 - The Terrible Trivium 2 - Essian Ravenwing 3 - Casey Jones 4 - Ryuji Sakamoto

Yuck

Hey, VHL. I'm so glad it's Thursday. Nothing quite like approaching the end of another shitty week at work. As you may have seen in the status section, I am starting my own business, doing IT consulting in my area. I ordered business cards last night, built the site over the weekend, and am shopping around for business insurance. I really hope it takes off because I can't keep doing what I'm doing. Too much stress and mental health damage. Speaking of mental health damage, thanks a lot, Simon. We were doing so well and now we can't even string 2 wins together. Shevchenko moved to center and has generated a lot of shots, but the shooting percentage is awful this year. Not really sure how to improve on that, but it's very frustrating. The curse of balanced scoring, I guess. I'm happy we're where we are in the standings, don't get me wrong. I had just hoped for more individually at this point in the season. 45 points in 44 games is good, not great, and I want Shev to be great. In the end, though, team success is what really matters. It's a virtual team sport, after all.

Man...even scoring a goal brought Shevchenko's shooting percentage down. 1 goal on 17 shots is terrible, my dude.

Nope. Do over.

Shev enjoying some press box snacks or what? Jesus.

American Gretzky

2 wins, 3 apples. Good enough.

Could have been worse

See qripll's post

Well one monkey off the back at least

The VHL season is just over a third done already, which seems impossible. One team that has to be thrilled with how it's gone so far is the Toronto Legion, who are sporting an incredible 22-3-1 record. They hold an incredible 14 point lead on the North American standings over both the Vancouver Wolves and Calgary Wranglers and the Legion's 93 goals scored rank second in offensive potency behind only H.C. Davos Dynamo's 98. The Legion also have the VHL's stingiest defense, surrendering a paltry 43 goals so far. The next best is Moscow's 51. Rumor has it D.C. uses performance-enhancing drugs whenever they play the Legion But what is the secret to the Legion's surprising start and massive success? Let's take a look under the hood, like the guys on Car Talk on NPR. That was such a fun show. Anyway. Offensively, the Legion are led by defenseman Andrew Skilton. In fact, Skilton is tied for fourth league-wide with 38 points and the only Legion player in the top ten. His 33 assists are second in the league behind Mina of Davos, who has 34. But as impressive as the 6'6" Skilton's season has been - well on pace to break his previous career best of 81 points - the Legion's true strength may just lie in their depth. Every skater on the Legion has double digit points, including rookie winger Inker Belle, who has 12. As expected, every skater is also a plus player, with the lowest being a +13, shared across three players. Tied for second behind Skilton in team scoring at 30 points is Spanish Moon Moth. And Konstyantyn Shevchenko. And DB IV. AND Raimo Tuominen. That's right; FOUR players, including both centers, have hit the 30 point mark already. Just behind them is winger Toby Kadachi, who has 10 goals and 29 points on the season. That segues nicely into the next stat: the Legion have 5 players who have already reached double digits in goal scoring. That covers every forward except for the rookie, Belle. There's a two-way tie for the lead in that category, with Tuominen and Moon Moth both at 17 goals. Winger Dorji Khan has 11, and Shevchenko has 10. To add yet another layer to the argument that Toronto's record is the byproduct of incredible depth, every skater except for defenseman Walter Fitzroy Jr has at least 1 game-winning goal. I would be remiss, however, to not mention the incredible goaltending put on by both netminders this season. Backup Toddly Bobbly is 3-0-0 with a shutout, a 0.971 save percentage, and a 0.67 goals against average. Starter Dalkr Vidarsson is 19-3-1 with a league-leading 6 shutouts (tied with Deadpanda of Moscow), a 0.941 save percentage, and a 1.74 goals against average. Both the save percentage and goals against average are the best in the league amongst all starting netminders. Vidarsson is never out of the play Ultimately, this is just the opinion of one person: me. And I obviously would have a bias here, as I'm a member of this squad. But honestly, when I started looking into the numbers under the hood, this is an incredible start to the year. Our team management must be over the moon with how things are going so far, and I hope we can keep it up.

Keep it up, Belle!

This year has been awful. I've had illness after illness after illness - most recently, a positive COVID test this morning - and an ungodly amount of stress. I'm so tired and burned out, but I have to keep on pushing forward, because my family needs me to do just that. Today I took a step toward trying to make the situation better, by registering an LLC with the state to start my own IT consulting business. I've got a ton to do - website build, open a bank account, order business cards - but I hope this is the start of something big for us. Still waiting to hear on the indie pub submissions, and in case you missed it, I just started Avowed on my channel. It's really fun, but the COVID makes it impossible to record. Again. The VHL league standings are truly something to behold. I'll probably talk about this in media as well, but Toronto is 22-3-1. Three of those 4 losses came to the D.C. Dragons, and the most recent to the London United. Combined, those teams are 25-25-2. How we lost 3 times to D.C. is beyond me. You'd think we'd just get lucky at some point, but nope. No offense to them or anyone there, but the odds of that seem infinitesimally small. As long as we keep winning as often as we are, I guess it doesn't who the losses come to, but it's still weird as hell to look at.

First loss to not-DCD. Huh.

1) The consistency for sure. 2) I was always a big Gambit fan, but it's gotta be Nightcrawler 3) A dragon, obviously 4) BASEketball for sure. So stupid lol 5) absolutely, or else drop the cost of things 6) I don't have gum often so I guess mint

For the holiday raffle game of my choice victory, I chose Avowed. Today, the series starts on YT!

We have 3 losses this year. ALL OF THEM ARE TO DCD!

Shev so quiet in game 1 I thought he was a healthy scratch

...i can't even.

More wins.

1 - So far so good, as long as we don't face D.C. for whatever reason. 2 - I don't BBQ often, but when I do, I like slicing potatoes and onions, adding butter, salt, and garlic powder, then putting them in a foil wrap. 3 - Us losing to DC twice 4 - I'm inconsistent. 3 minutes to 4 hours. 5 - Leave it for now, but use my suggestions if/when we falter 6 - Not really, but Lucy seems cool.