RomanesEuntDomus

Claim 3/3

1. I don't really have a singular event, but the season has been fun overall. 2. I'm actually quite pleased, seeing a team that was utterly hopeless last season coming into its own and being somewhat competitive thanks to a bunch of new young players who came in is a nice thing to witness. 3. I am somewhat skeptical that it will work out, as almost all of these kinds of "third rail" leagues have failed in the past, but I'd definitely give it a try with my new player. 4. Peanut M&Ms 5. The Cologne Express 6. Take a long vacation in some for away place where Covid doesn't exist

Claim 2/3

1. I enjoyed the break from the media but not from the TPE! 2. Just sit down for a bit, wind down and talk with some teammates, don't rush into the shower or to media appearances or anything. 3. Political comments that split the fanbase. 4. I'm not a huge fan of these hard caps but it could spice things up for sure. 5. I mean... What isn't the issue with this guy? 6. One of the Reinharts is adopted.

Your Team, Your Award Chances & You The VHL has seen many great players compete for Cups, Awards and Hall of Fame spots over the years. But a question almost as old as “Who is the best player?” is “How much did the team that player is on factor into his stats?”. It is a question I’ve concerned myself a lot with in other leagues as a member of the Awards and Hall of Fame committees over there, and that has recently been re-ignited for me here in the VHL by a couple of articles. The main two were the Unofficial Regular Season Awards by @DMaximus and VHFL is Broken. Here's Why! by @Spartan, so thanks to these guys for their interesting write-ups and the discussions they spawned. I was particularly interested in these discussions because my player featured quite heavy in them, as a prime example of a player who put up some very impressive stats, but who did so on very weak teams so the big question is how much of that is actually earned by individual performance, and how much comes from the circumstances the team finds itself in. One main argument that is being made is that being on a bad or rebuilding team inflates your defensive stats, especially your Shots Blocked and… yupp, that’s definitely the case. Be it my player Robin Galante Nilsson, the previous record holder Viktor Alexei Kamenov @BigTittySmitty or even players in other leagues that use completely different engines, like Lyle Odelein III in the SHL - the combination of getting shelled every night and playing a lot of minutes because those weak teams tend to not have much depth surely inflates your defensive stats and, by extension your Fantasy value. The same can even apply to a players offensive production, although it’s rarer and not as reliably predictable as the defensive numbers. I would add a few caveats to that however. First of all, being on a bad team is usually not very fun, so shouldn’t we at least leave those players with the satisfaction of having put up some nice individual stats? And from a fantasy perspective, if players from weak teams didn’t have the chance to provide value through their defensive production, would there even be a point to picking anyone who isn’t lucky enough to be on a good team? And lastly, those defensive stats like Hits and Shot Blocks do serve as a bit of a counterweight to other stats that can look pretty bad for those players on a superficial glance, most notably plus-minus. Now I don’t think +/- is a rather useless stats overall and its only real use is when comparing players within a team, but some people probably still look at it when evaluating players and things can’t look great there for players on a bottom-feeder. So their SB-prowess might at least allow them to balance that out somewhat. Okay so much for my defense of my own pl… I mean, the players who happen to be on bad teams. But now what should be the Awards implications of that? Now I do think that the team a player is on should definitely play a role when evaluating his stats, as does the performance of his teammates. Let’s face it, SB is largely a team based stat and if one player puts up over 200 SB and another only puts up 80 even though they have similar builds, then this is probably a stat you shouldn’t value too much. So yes, giving a player an Award just because he hit and blocked a lot on a bottom-feeder would not be the right approach. At the same time, I don’t think being on a bad team should disqualify someone from the Awards discussion completely. So we need to find a good middle ground here and I think one way to do that would be to compare those kinds of players to their teammates. Did someone just put up a lot of blocks and hits but did not stand out in any other way? Or did he also lead his team in other categories, especially the offensive ones? If it’s the latter then I think that player definitely deserves to be in the discussion as we are then talking about someone who basically had to do it all without getting much help - which to me sounds like an Awards candidate for sure. Talking about offensive production and points, this stat is where you can start looking at this whole discussion from basically the opposite angle. Gunnar Odinsson @BOOM, the player who is leading the league in scoring by a good margin at the moment, has put up those numbers playing on the best team in the league. One could argue that just as much as being on a bad team can boost someone's Hits and Block-totals, being on a very good team can boost your goals and assists. And how many people are really gonna hold that against Gunnar when Award season rolls around? Not many I would argue, in fact I’d expect the argument to be close along the lines of him being one of the main reasons Malmo was so great this season, not the other way around. Just as with the defensive stats, I think the way to go here once again is teammate comparisons. Did someone who scored a lot of points stand out compared to the rest of his team, or was he merely part of an offense that performed very well overall, and him being on the ice might not have made as big a difference as the raw numbers indicate. In Odinsson’s case, this comparison works in his favor: As of today, he sits at 97 points and is leading his team in +/- and game-winners, whereas the second best scorer on his team “only” has 81 points and the third sits at 67. Another player who stands out when looking at things this way would be Jivere Zolnek @Sixersfan594 whose 80 points don’t look that impressive compared to Odinsson, but who outscores the next best forward on his team by 20 points and his best linemate by 26. He is a guy who I think might be flying under a lot of people's radars but who deserves to be in some awards discussions. Even more impressive in that regard would be former 1st Overall pick and S76 classmate of both Odinsson and Zolnek, Red Lite @Tate. His 85 points are an incredible number compared to the rest of his team, as the next best scorers have 53, 43 and 38 points. So Lite doesn’t just outscore the next best player on his team by 32 points, he actually has twice as many points as all his teammates except one, and the same is true in the goals category as well with Lite scoring 40 and his next best teammates at 22 and 20). Lites numbers might open up another discussion however. He is playing on a rather weak team as well, so just as with the defensive numbers for Defenseman, could there be a case that being the only really good Forward on a weaker time inflates your offensive numbers and allows you to do better individually than someone who is part of a deeper offense? This would probably be something for a follow-up article to get into, but in my experience there is at least some merit behind this argument. I remember seeing quite a few people fighting for the top-scorer spots over the years who did so as the one true good player on a weaker team. And I remember one of my own players, Max von Hohenzollern, being one of the league's best scorers one season even though he had a pretty average amount of TPE, and he mainly managed to do so due to the fact that he got a lot of ice-time on a rebuilding team and much of the offense went through him. Given this information, It’s gonna be interesting to see how the voters will judge Red Lite’s performance this year once the Awards season rolls around… Another player who has been doing super well this season has been Alex Letang, the leagues top-scoring Defenseman, but everyone knows how good he is already and I figure he will feature in a lot of Awards themed articles over the next few days, so I’m gonna talk about him too much. The teammate comparison method treats him very well however, as he doesn’t just lead all the leagues Defensemen in scoring, but also his teammates where he has a pretty impressive 10 point lead on the two best forwards on the Los Angeles Stars. The two Forwards, Pistil Stamen and John Merrick, both still feature in the league's Top-10 Scorers flag, but due to the fact that they are being outscored by one of their teams Defensemen and that there isn’t much separation between the two, I don’t think either should factor into the Awards discussions this season The same goes for Brendan Telker whose 81 points are good for 4th in league scoring, but who has been playing second fiddle to Gunnar Odinsson this season. Alright so far for far some of my thoughts on the Awards both in general and for this season, thanks for everything who read this far! Words: 1550

The other one then, 350 or whatever it is now . As I said I don't quite remember all the details but there were just a few of those intricacies of rules and player management where it was tough to find info on early on. I mean as much as I prefer the longer careers, I know it's not a change that would be realistic just because the whole fabric of the VHL works differently and everything is geared towards the shorter cycles. It's just something I wanted to bring up because it might be the main thing why I never got into the VHL as much as the SHL, and maybe it's like that for others as well. Especially for everyone who doesn't do every single PT it can feel like you've just started becoming a useful player and boom, you are already hit by regression and on the downswing again. But I recognize it's also sort of a personal preference. Maybe I just wasn't seen as a newcomer but yeah, I don't think I ever found my way to any of those so maybe others didn't as well.

This seems like a great idea, I hope you won't get overwhelmed with all the comments and will be able to find the good stuff that could make a difference 1. Even as someone who is pretty experienced with sim leagues, some things werent very well explained at the start. I don't quite remember all the details but it was tough to find info on stuff like the 175-TPE cutoff, draft date and location and a few more things. The Portal makes updating easy but the same isn't necessarily true for understanding all the rules. Also it was hella frustrating to find out that as a returning member I wasn't eligible for the Pension-program anymore, although that's not really a recruiting issue 2. It's probably not something we can change much about but shorter player careers tend to be worse for retention. It's something I have been witnessing with the VHL or other leagues like the GOMHL, where the members cycle through their players rather quickly in comparison to say the SHL, and it feels like this leads to shorter average stints in the league. Every time you retire a player, it offers an "organic" opportunity to take a break and maybe step away from the league for a while, or maybe ever. At the same time, the fact that you can have a new player every 8 seasons or so means that you go through the same progression cycle more often in a shorter amount of time, which can become boring and burn people out. It's another thing that would probably be too complicated to touch, but in my opinion careers in the VHL have always felt a bit too short to really be fully rewarding. 3. Are there rookie help or draft class channels on Discord? If so I never found my way into one, and they are something that has been great for retention in other leagues I've been on. Having a place to talk about stuff with your fellow rookies who are in the same boat as you, or to reach out to a specifically trained rookie mentor, can be super helpful in early player retention.

1. Seeing as I'm a Defenseman... Definitely a goalie problem! Also, don't look at my plus-minus please. 2. Cologne Express, I have quite the connection to the franchise and its great to see them back! 3. No chance unless its a really small one. Those things are huge and I'm not that big of a meat eater anyway. 4. I don't think it would make sense to be a buyer, but if the right opportunity arises then why not make a move or two. 5. One of the Reinhart so that I can know how its like to have a twin. 6. Rhyperior because he is strong and hard to get around and because he was my best Pokemon in Pokemon Go!

1. Some details about a party are better left private... 2. Oh boy are we gonna have this one every week now? Or does everyone have to get over a ppg for that? I don't think he should get too down on himself, he was already over that mark a week ago so can easily get back there again. 3. A doggooooo!! Loyal and adorable, sounds like me! 4. It might be juvenlie but a few days we saw him take a lunchbox out of his bag that his mom made for him... Some teasing might have occured. 5. It's great to have a veteran presence both in net and in the locker room, someone who has seen it all and has already gone through some of the things that you are currently going to and give you some advice. 6. In honor of his recent retirement, how about old man Emerson as a Silbernack Gorilla?

1. Probably not at that level but I'd still expect us to do quite a bit better than last year. 2. You tried! 3. Selling counterfeit hockey equipment. 4. You know all these players who insist on being the last to leave the ice? Well Robin tries to always be the first! 5. Quebec City 6. Kinda tough to say since they are basically the same player, gonna give this to Jerome though so that he can feel better about not scoring quite as much yet.

G Thadius Sales

F Dominic Gobeil @OrbitingDeath

F Cabe McJabe @Esso2264

F Isau DaMoose @OrbitingDeath

D Robin Galante Nilsson @Esso2264

D Chris Hylands @OrbitingDeath

Review Great stuff, shame I missed these these past few seasons when I weren't in them myself . It's very cool to not just see people honored for this season but to also get some historical perspective and be able to compare yourself to the greats of the past. Formatting worked very well, maybe the article could've used a graphic or two to spice things up a little though. 10/10

Review Very interesting read. I would say I stand somewhere in the middle of the Discord vs Forum debate, I'm not as negative towards Discord as you, GoB or some others seem to be, but also think that a lot of channels and servers on there aren't particularly useful and actually add unnecessary noise and stress to your sim league experience which can become quite overwhelming. The smaller, more private Discord servers like team channels however can be a real treat however which I think don't really take a lot away from the site, because the things they provide are often stuff that the forums aren't able to offer, no matter if Discord existed or not. Formatting is very neat and clean and I didn't find any errors that had an impact on readability. 9/10

1. Wait, Jerome brothers? Aren't they supposed to be called the Reinhart brothers? But aside from that: Yes! 2. Getting into a fist fight with someone who refused to wear a mask in a very crowded space. 3. der meister 4. Not a fan of superheroes, sorry. 5. Us! Right? Right?? Okay, probably not. Warsaw then. 6. I was a bit too afraid to focus on my scoring abilities early on, could have done more in that regard with more confidence.

Tagging @der meister because reasons

Wolves kickstart their rebuild through the Draft as Galante Nilsson picks up some Awards The Victory Hockey League has just celebrated their 14th birthday and is about to start their 79th season, after the Warsaw Predators managed to take home the Cup last season. One team that is as far away from a cup win as one can imagine right now is the Vancouver Wolves however, who after being a decent playoff team over the last few seasons decided to kick off a major rebuild this year. After trading a lot of their veteran pieces the Wolves finished Season 78 dead last with just 53 points out of 72 games but as a consolation prize they got go on and select 2nd and 3rd Overall in the VHL Entry Draft that happened this weekend, picking up the two Reinharts Tyler and Jerome. These two youngsters should give the team a deadly one-two punch on the Wing, and they continued to add to their already big prospect pool with the later selections of Omi Aberg (12th Overall) who could one day center the Reinhart brothers, Rhys Trenton (17th Overall), the first Defenseman the Wolves picked up this Draft, as well as blueliners Pistol Pete and X Man (32nd and 33rd Overall). This youth movement, which is expected to continue over the next few Drafts, leaves the Wolves with a very young but certainly not hopeless roster. On such an inexperienced teams the Wolves will now look for leadership from “veterans” such as S75 player Sheldon Juniper and his S76 mates Napoleon Bonaparte, Green Gaming, Henry Tucker, Jivere Zolnek and Kid Frost on Offense as well as S76 players Javad Kamkar and Robin Galante Nilsson on Defense and the team oldie, S74 goalkeeper Markus Emerson Jr. One of those players that really emerged as a leader last season was third year pro Robin Galante Nilsson. The Swedish Defenseman played a big role in trying to get as much out of the season as possible for the struggling Wolves, and he was recognized for that in last season's awards proceedings. Galante Nilsson was nominated for the VHLs Best Defensive Defenseman Award but maybe even more importantly, he picked up two Awards and actually broke a record in the VHLs Unofficial Award Ceremony. There he was honored as both the league's biggest minute eater and the league's best shot blocker, claiming the new all-time record for shots blocked with 229 and coming within 3 minutes of the most games played record with 2398. With the Wolves rebuild being in full steam, it is gonna be interesting to see which role the team can play next season and which role Galante Nilsson will play in that process. The team isn’t as barren of talent as it was last season, with top picks Tyler and Jerome Reinhart joining the club right out of juniors for example, but it is probably still at least a season or two away from being competitive again. With Galante Nilsson entering his prime and turning some heads around the league, can the team afford to keep him, possibly wasting some of his best years, or would they be better served to deal off one of their best remaining players and even further embrace the youth movement that they have kickstarted with this draft? We will find out soon when the VHL’s Season 79 kicks off!

Damn I didn't even realize how great of a season getting shelled every night made me have

Yaaaaaay! Quick question regarding the triples week, is it 12 extra uncapped TPE regardless of your task or does it "only" triple the amount of TPE you would usually get, so it's 8 uncapped TPE for someone who does Welfare?

1. Death by Snu-Snu! 2. Nah, if you wanna become a great team you shouldn't rely on the lottery anyway. 3. Draft players with a real passion for the franchise. 4. Have fun & work hard - finding the balance between the two is one of the most important things in hockey. 5. Not being on Social Media 24/7. 6. Skating, because being able to be anywhere on the ice quickly amplifies all your other attributes.

Yessir