Las Vegas Aces on the Rise?

[McLovin 393]

The Las Vegas Aces of the VHLM have had an interesting last couple of seasons. After struggling to climb out of the basement of the standings, and then recently with back to back to back first round eliminations, it's perfectly understandable to be speculative over the title of this media spot. However, I do genuinely believe that the Aces have what it takes to finally be a major contender in the VHLM for S92, and here's a few reasons as to why I think this

 

The first and foremost reason is just the size of the VHLM to begin with. They are almost an entirely rostered team, and that alone is a very big step above many teams in the VHLM. While this isn't going to turn into another recruitment team bashing post, the number of players in the league as a whole does hurt some teams, and benefit others, especially Las Vegas in which a majority of the active players are personal friends and family of the GM. With this personal connection in mind, chemistry on the team is naturally a lot higher than average, and being able to rapidly build TPE for your team while you actually can be face to face with some of your players definitely helps.

 

A little branch off from that, there's the actual skill of the players themselves to be considered as well. A lot of them are nearing the VHLM TPE cap of 200, and history has shown that depth doesn't matter if you don't have all-star talent playing those top minutes. It's why Las Vegas was eliminated by Philadelphia despite having a much better record than them in the regular season. Head to head matchups against better skilled players always defines a series, and usually in favor of whoever stacks their top lines better. With the Aces now bolstering a few players of this same caliber for next season, it's very easy to see why management of Las Vegas is optimistic for next season, and even beyond. A very strong team has been built here over the last few seasons and it provides the Aces with a unique opportunity to not need to bend over backwards as much to field a competitive team.

 

All in all, the Aces, despite a rocky start to GM McLovin's career, have a very promising future, and once a few things are tweaked and improved upon, the team has a very, very strong chance of becoming a contender for the Founder's Cup Championship. Whether a new recruitment drive ends up bringing new players to the league in the upcoming season or not, or whether Las Vegas can retain a lot of their players as a good number of them have started to go inactive, the Aces definitely have their work cut out for them in the coming months, but definitely keep an eye out on this team, and it's players as we enter the WJC and full offseason. They're going to make strides, and I can't wait for the day that they get to raise the Founder's Cup over their heads after months and months of hard work and dedication to the team, and the league as a whole.