Mid Season Check In

[jacobcarson877 2,076]

Feels like I haven’t written anything in ages, which is somewhat true, after 2 or 3 multiweek podcasts, a couple of VSN article weeks (that doesn’t count in my head as writing) and putting off writing all week it feels like an eternity. This is probably the least active I’ve been at least day-to-day that I’ve been since Landon Wolanin was created, and I really have missed being around all the time. A lot is changing in my personal life, with my degree ending, and figuring out moving home and then promptly moving out again assuming I can afford to. Hopefully finding a big boy job and making up for a ton of lost time with the people I love that I quite frankly haven’t spent enough time with over the last 4 years that I’ve been doing university.

 

I’ve been experiencing something of a golden week this week, and I suppose last week as well, where most of my final projects are done and I’m waiting around to start studying for my last ever final, since my brain cannot under any circumstance remember anything, I study before 48 hours before the exam. I’ve been checking in on VHL stuff at like midnight after rushing around all day trying to pack as many memories as I can during the day, and most of that has been catching up on my wondering why Helsinki is so good, and why London isn’t that level of good. I know this has been a really busy month for the United in general, with everyone having their own personal crises happening all simultaneously. It has been nice to have a space where we can all vent a bit and sit back and enjoy the hobby we all love in whatever capacity we can.

 

I’ve also been trying to keep up with the flurry of activity surrounding the Marlins. Tons of new waivers, tons of action, a Marlins legend in VLG getting the new Hounds GM job, I can barely keep up. It’s been nice to keep some form of attachment to the VHLM and the new members coming into the league still, and it is really sweet to see how much they love and respect me still even after abandoning them. But I’m really glad I did, I don’t know whether I saw this level of life craziness coming or something but there is no way I could’ve given the VHLM my best for the first half of this season and Arce has absolutely rushed it so far turning what should have been a miserable season into one full of excitement.

 

I feel like the team that has felt the brunt of my absence is the Wranglers actually. I miss having casual conversation with my teammates and I miss being good again, not that we aren’t having good performances, and not that I can apply any more TPE, but I am a firm believer that good vibes bring good results, and so I need to start dumping some good vibes back in that chat again. Landon has been doing pretty well, catching up from an awful start again. I have no idea why Calgary hasn’t been top of the league considering how much we’ve been shooting and how great our stars have been doing. Leandro seems to be taking a brunt of the nonsense, shooting up a storm but having so few goals to show for it. This should mean that we have lots of scoring to catch up on, and hopefully make our way back up the standings. We’ve at least decided to stop going 1-1 every day which is nice.

I should be making a pretty smooth transition back to being my usual self here again next week, maybe less in the evenings but more during the day as I get back into working and socializing with my friends and completely out of studying. I do have some fun VSN plans with my newfound love of podcasting, I’ll be going through the teams one by one and doing an in depth rundown of each of them. And of course next week is Theme Week so I’ll have to find some good way to handle that as well. So basically there should be lots of words coming from me in the next week weeks, I’m excited to actually dive into S88 for what feels like the first time, even as we are halfway through the season. It’s time to get London and Calgary into playoff contention status.

I may as well try to get another week’s worth of PTs out of this, so we’ll talk about some of the decisions I’ve made this season and how I feel about them. I’ve stacked up our backup starts at the beginning of the season, with 6 starts having been done as of writing this and the last 2 on their way soon. It has made Jesse Teno look worse than they are, having only played tough competition, but the numbers should all even out by the end of the season. Siyan Yasilievich got off to a hot start, was horrific and is now crawling back. It seems like offense only goes wherever Sock Monkey is, which is pretty funny considering she was one of the final pieces of the puzzle this offseason. Otherwise, every change I do seems to have no effect, simply switching Sock Monkey back and forth between units to even out the scoring. Special Teams have been surprisingly great, which is funny because that and 2nd period scoring have been my weakness as a GM since I started. I’ve always run great possession and shooting teams but for whatever reason I can’t get my team to have the puck this season. We’ll see how it goes down the stretch as there is still a ton of season to go. Marcel Janser has brought us a lot of stability compared to Skuin, who was a bit of a powerplay specialist on a team with 2 powerplay monsters. Finding a partner to get Yasilievich going is definitely important and I need them to find some chemistry pretty quickly here.

 

Excited to see how we can take the rest of the season and that’s it for me!