Down with the Meta, And How London Took Advantage of It This Season: A VHL.com article with double the required word count and an equally unnecessarily long title

[McWolf 3,112]

Finding a way to break the meta has been a hot topic in the BOG for a bit now. This season being the last one where the current meta (the good old 40 PA, 99 SC, 99 DF build that costs like 300 TPE so everyone can do it), and it honestly comes right on time. It might not be as obvious as the case of the Vancouver Wolves, back-to-back defending champions and sweepers of awards in that two-season span, but the London United have also been meta abusers this season. The players contributing to it the most - and benefiting from it the most as well - have been the rookies.

 

Since S2, there have been 27 instances of rookies scoring over 100 points in a season. From these 27, there had been, before this season, only two pairs of teammates:

 

• Sergei Komarov @Gooningitup and Casey Jones @der meister with the New York Americans in S57.

• Vyacheslav Smirnov @Banackock and Maxim Kovalchuk @Banackock with the Seattle Bears in S62.

 

Well, this season, the London rookies managed to do something no other team did in the 82-season history of the VHL: have three different rookies break the century mark. We have Matt Avens @Mr Bohannan, tied for 3th all-time in rookie scoring with 132 points, Nils Godlander @Moon, 5th with 131 points, and Zaza Colors @McWolf, tied for 13th with 111 points. Not only that, but our goalie was also a rookie placing well in the all-time standings. In fact, Cole Pearce @N0HBDY won 40 games this season, the 4th most by a rookie in the history of the VHL. And finally, our two defensemen, Rhys Trenton @DeeGoat and Juice Box @Siddhus are both at the top of this season’s leaderboards in terms of rookie defensemen, with 74 and 64 points, respectively. 

 

It’s not even that ridiculous to think that the All-VHL Rookie Team could be 100% London United players.

[der meister 2,937]

One cool thing about Casey Jones was that he did that as a D man. 

[JardyB10 4,834]

2 hours ago, McWolf said:

We have Matt Avens @Mr Bohannan, tied for 3th all-time in rookie scoring with 132 points,

That motherfucker.

[Eynhallow 412]

Let's see what happens to these "superstars" after the reroll.

[Spartan 4,004]

Smh on so many counts, with an emphasis on your title being so long it errored out in the update queue. 

[Dil 1,744]

Review: 4/13

 

Reason: Title not long enough

[NSG 495]

Ah yeah I love it when I finish tied for 3th

[Shindigs 1,771]

19 hours ago, McWolf said:

Vyacheslav Smirnov @Banackock and Maxim Kovalchuk @Banackock with the Seattle Bears in S62.

So this means Bana likes playing with himself, right?

 

Honestly though, long titles are just the best. I just wish the limit was slightly longer so we could hit the word count in the title of .coms

[Mr Bohannan 79]

In my defense and that's also a reason Im not keen hearing that I "abused" the meta is the fact that I just joined the league, never really played in VHL before so I had no clue about such meta even existing. All I did was focused on the stats that I felt were important to my player as a sniper. Obviously main focus was scoring, cuz sniper -dooh, then puck handling, skating and defense, cuz I was told defence helps player to perform well. Maybe it was meant to be as before in other leagues I've had either defence players or playmakers that actually focused on passing. This time I wanted to make that scorer, be on top of the tops with time and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my player doing that well. Also, it's not like I started to focus on these stats recently, I've been doing that since I joined and I cannot say that this "meta" was breaking scoreboards in VHLM or VHLE.

[Shindigs 1,771]

7 hours ago, Mr Bohannan said:

In my defense and that's also a reason Im not keen hearing that I "abused" the meta is the fact that I just joined the league, never really played in VHL before so I had no clue about such meta even existing. All I did was focused on the stats that I felt were important to my player as a sniper. Obviously main focus was scoring, cuz sniper -dooh, then puck handling, skating and defense, cuz I was told defence helps player to perform well. Maybe it was meant to be as before in other leagues I've had either defence players or playmakers that actually focused on passing. This time I wanted to make that scorer, be on top of the tops with time and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my player doing that well. Also, it's not like I started to focus on these stats recently, I've been doing that since I joined and I cannot say that this "meta" was breaking scoreboards in VHLM or VHLE.

On an individual player it's fine. No one really blames the players for building what works, especially since it's completely possible to "accidentally" build it, like you did. The problem is what it does to the sim engine when applied to an entire team, as well as how cheap it was, from a GMing perspective.

[animal74 1,611]

London Umetad