Rebranding the Minor Leagues

[AJW 2,157]

Maybe don't take this seriously, or maybe do? But my rebranding topic of this theme week is the rebranding of the minor league system in the VHL: The VHLE and the VHLM. Both leagues have been around for over 10 seasons now. The VHLM being introduced first way back in the first seasons of VHL history. In fact the VHLM is older than the portal and therefore we do not have access to the indexes before S35. The VHLE on the other hand has been around for only a short period of time, entering the history of our league in S80. In my eyes the VHLE was created to hold the influx of players created during Covid, and it served its purpose at first. Many people have been on the fence of this third league since it's creation including myself. I enjoyed my time in the VHLE with my player due to personal success in a Cup and Playoff MVP. Many others who didn't experience this success may have seen their time in the VHLE as a short stint of playing amongst slower TPE earning players while developing towards the VHL. Now don't get me wrong, I am only one person and I can't live out all your player's experiences, but just from word around town I feel like the VHLE is not a hot topic.

 

With that being said, I will of course suggest deleting the VHLE and expanding the VHLM. I feel the VHLE served its purpose and now times have changed. The VHLM went through a struggle bus of players a few seasons ago only to have a banging come back season in S92 from our recruitment team's YouTube ad. Now these players are in or moving up to the VHLE, making the most of it with each other and the rest of their veteran TPE earning team mates. Want to see the stats? I do too, so I looked it up:

 

VHLE: S93/S94 - S90/S91/S92 - S89 and older

 

Cologne: 3-7-5

Vasteras: 5-9-2

Oslo: 5-6-2

Stockholm: 3-5-3

Rome: 5-6-1

Bratislava: 1-4-3

 

Total: 22-37-16

 

VHLM: Rosters (F - D - G)

 

Ottawa: 8-4-1

Halifax: 9-4-1

Las Vegas: 10-3-2

Saskatoon: 7-4-2

Houston: 7-4-1

Philadelphia: 4-3-1

Mexico City: 5-2-1

Mississauga: 6-3-1

Miami: 6-2-1

San Diego: 4-1-1

 

Total: 66-30-12

 

I chose these two stats to show how current VHLE player career lengths look and then also how the state of the current VHLM rosters look. As you can see from the VHLE numbers, per 6 teams, they average just shy of 4 S93/S94 players. This is great and these members are solid earners who are new to the league and will want to work hard for their ice time. Then you see how depth develops as per 6 teams, 6.1 players are in their 2nd to 4th season since creation, which is fair and the length of a normal minor league career. And then per 6 teams, 2.6 players have played 5 or more seasons since creation. I don't see how a league which can be considered to be competitive, but also a league beneath our major league, is averaging player career lengths this long with slow development. It is long in my eyes to have 2 or more players on your team in their 5th+ season while also players in their 2nd-4th seasons are still only earning welfare and practice. Some of these players are IA as well, what's the point of giving them ice time? The VHLM has an inactivity rule that states a player must be released if they have not submitted an update in the last 3 weeks. This is good and how we should treat all underdeveloped players. With this here is my expansion idea.

 

The VHLM with 10 teams averages 6 forwards, 3 defenders, and 1 goalie per team. This is bare minimum and I can tell you from personal experience GMing the Houston Bulls last season that being on a minor league team with a full roster is a lot more fun. I would keep the TPE Cap at 400 TPE and I would also allow players who only want to play 8 seasons in the VHL to bank after 400 TPE, even for the few that pass it before the cutoff date. This would result in the VHLE players coming back down to the VHLM and the first order of business would be to release/retire the IA players. I think it would be fair to extend the TPE IA rule to 4 weeks from 3 weeks. If you are not checking the forum/portal to submit an update at least once a month then you are not going to see success with your player. I would also like to keep the 4 seasons of play maximum rule, players should only be allowed 4 seasons in the minors before they either graduate to the VHL or become IA/retire. The point of the minor leagues is to push players to the VHL, this comes from having life on teams and pushing each other to explore and grow more for their player. Having maximum potential rosters with the VHLE players (including all players even IAs) joining would result in the current VHLM roster averages changing from 6.6-3-1.2 to 11.2-5.2-1.9:

 

VHLE: Rosters (F - D - G)

Cologne: 8-6-1

Vasteras: 10-4-2

Oslo: 8-4-1

Stockholm: 7-3-1

Rome: 8-3-1

Bratislava: 5-2-1

 

Total: 46-22-7

 

Total of Both Leagues: 112-52-19

 

These numbers averaged to our current 10 VHLM teams would result in each team having a roster with around 11 forwards, 5 defenders, and 2 goalies. This is almost full capacity, but also very amazing. To balance this out I would expand the VHLM by two teams to go back to our once before 12 team league. The average roster size of 12 teams with the number of total players of both leagues would be 9.3-4.3-1.5. These numbers again include IA players so the averages would decrease if my rules are implemented. Either way the rough data shows each team in a 12 team league with a 400 TPE cap would hold a roster of around 9 forwards, 4 defenders, and 1-2 goaltenders. Is this not what we want from our minor league system? As stated in the first sentence, take this as seriously as you want. Maybe the VHLE will get deleted one day, who knows? I know that another recruitment drive is soon on the horizon, so we will see how the VHLM and VHLE respond to that.

Edited April 8 by AJW

[ace_five_ 421]

I haven’t been in the league long, so I didn’t see all the changes it went through with covid/expansion etc.. Going solely off of these numbers it seems to makes sense to me to make the change. This also gives the chance for new players, like myself, to play and interact with more veterans of the league. If you are in the M and you end up with half a team of IA or minimum earners, you’re probably less likely to have success going forward because there isn’t as much encouragement and motivation as there would be with players who have spent 1-2 seasons max earning. On top of this, being on the same team for 2-3 seasons as you work toward the VHL as opposed to 2-3 teams before you get there can build more team chemistry and relationships within the community as well. 
 

I know you weren’t being 100% serious with this idea, but it’s a great jumping off point into the question on if the VHLE is completely necessary anymore. 

[Enorama 2,038]

8 hours ago, AJW said:

Some of these players are IA as well, what's the point of giving them ice time?

 

This is actually something we have moved away from in a major way since retracting the E to 6 teams. Last season we had 0 inactive veteran players, this year we have two per team because the GMs voted 4-2 that they wanted them this year. I personally think we can be completely healthy with 0. 

 

The actual issue with any "delete the E talk" stems from the cap question you mention. We've been over this many times since even before the inauguration of the VHLE, but there basically has to be one of two outcomes here. 

 

Either: a)we keep cap at 400 as you suggest, but we don't think there's any appetite for brand new players to play against a good chunk of players at 300+ TPE, or b) we move the cap to 200 or 250 and the VHL supports the excess, but right now the excess is big enough to require either expansion or raising the cap, which comes with it's own issues as well. 

 

The long and short of it is as long as there is some form of recruitment effort, deleting the E would most likely require either expansion or forcing new players to play against too strong of opposition early on, neither of which have been at all appealing based on multiple discussions. 

[AJW 2,157]

13 hours ago, Enorama said:

 

This is actually something we have moved away from in a major way since retracting the E to 6 teams. Last season we had 0 inactive veteran players, this year we have two per team because the GMs voted 4-2 that they wanted them this year. I personally think we can be completely healthy with 0. 

 

The actual issue with any "delete the E talk" stems from the cap question you mention. We've been over this many times since even before the inauguration of the VHLE, but there basically has to be one of two outcomes here. 

 

Either: a)we keep cap at 400 as you suggest, but we don't think there's any appetite for brand new players to play against a good chunk of players at 300+ TPE, or b) we move the cap to 200 or 250 and the VHL supports the excess, but right now the excess is big enough to require either expansion or raising the cap, which comes with it's own issues as well. 

 

The long and short of it is as long as there is some form of recruitment effort, deleting the E would most likely require either expansion or forcing new players to play against too strong of opposition early on, neither of which have been at all appealing based on multiple discussions. 

First bullet makes sense then, I didn’t know a vote was held to determine that. New players sucking against developed players could be a problem too 100%. I know when I jumped to the VHLE I was garbage and it wasn’t great watching until I got up to everyone else’s TPE range. Also I was thinking about seasonal caps of 1st season 200 - 2nd season 300 - 3rd/4th season 400 TPE, but then that brings in having to bank every season in the minors, and I know that’s not something everyone will love (me probably included).

 

I’m honestly really excited to see what recruitment brings in because they seem very hungry to get us rolling. I feel like both the M and the E can be very good very soon with the results of our last recruitment drive. Lots of S93 players moving up to the E next season as well. I’m sure the E won’t go away so I hope us M GMs and the M community can keep pushing studs up your way.

[Victor 10,949]

1 hour ago, AJW said:

I’m sure the E won’t go away

Plans were being put in place tbf, albeit not agreed, pre recruitment drive. More difficult to justify now but it will always be the first port of call if the pipeline dries up, as was always intended.