The WSH Project: An Semi-Realistic Mearger of the VHL and the SHL Part 1: Introduction and Juniors

[Will3 465]

I love sim leagues. I have participated in a great variety of leagues of weird things from Rugby to Quidditch. No matter how many leagues I am talked into joining, my favorite leagues are always the hockey sim leagues. The Victory Hockey League is where I first started this ongoing adventure and remains the most important league to me. The Simulation Hockey League is another fun league that I have had much success in. Seeing what has happened to spring football lead to an interesting thought experiment, "What would happen if I were to merge the two best sim hockey leagues into one super leagues?" So I did. Over many pages of paper and much work with the old thinking cap, I merged the VHL and SHL into a ginormous league which I called  called the WSH or World Simulation Hockey. These write-ups are a part of a three part series detailing my opinions and logic that helped me develop the technically possible but practically impossible sim league of my dreams.

 

Rules

A thought experiment this complex needs rules to simplify things. The rules I followed to reasonable combine two different league are as follows.

 

Rule #1. Only one team per city. No sim league has two teams in one city so my merged league can't either.

 

Rule #2 Major clubs erase minor clubs in the same city with the option for the major club to take on the minor club's branding. This rule result in an issue that will be explored later.

 

Rule #3 Best branding remains for cities that have a franchise of equivalent levels of play. I will explain my feelings the informed the identities I choose.

 

Rule #4 Brands not chosen can be considered for use with different cities and leagues.The purpose of this rule is to reduce the amount of new brands I have to create. No good ideas should ever go to waste.

Introduction to Minor Leage Teams

With the rules firmly established, I set to the task of fusing both leagues minor/junior leagues into a unified league. A quick explanation of each leagues and it's teams will serve as perfect a point of reference to compare against the end results. The VHLM is a ten franchise league split into two divisions, East and West. The clubs composing this league is listed below.

 

VHLM East

 

Halifax 21st
Mississauga Hounds
Ottawa Lynx
Philadelphia Reapers
Miami Marauders

 

VHLM West

 

Houston Bulls
Las Vegas Aces 
Mexico City Kings
San Diego Marlins
Saskatoon Wild

 

 

The SMJHL on the other hand is a sixteen team league divided into Northern and Southern divisions of eight teams each. Those team are listed below.

 

SMJHL South

 

Carolina Kraken 

Colorado Raptors

Detroit Falcons

Main Timber

Nevada Battleborn

Ottawa Highlanders

St Louis Scarecrows

 

SMJHL North

 

Anchorage Armada

Great Falls Grizzlies

Kelowna Knights

Newfoundland Berserkers

Quebec City Citadlles

Regina Elk

Vancouver Whalers

Yukon Malamutes

 

Results and Explanation

 

With all of the pieces on the board, I set out to my task of finding my reasonable mearger. The end product of my labor was a league I called the WSHJ or World Simulation Hockey Juniors. The WSHJ is a twenty-two franchise league split into Eastern and Western divisions of eleven teams each. A massive list of all teams is below.

 

WSHJ East

 

Carolina Kraken
Detroit Falcons
Halifax 21st
Maine Timber
Miami Marauders 
Mississauga Hounds
Newfoundland Berserkers
Ottawa Lynx
Pittsburgh Forge
Quebec City Citadlles
St Louis Scarecrows

 

WSHJ West

 

Anchorage Armada
Colorado Raptors
Great Falls Grizzlies
Houston Bulls
Kelowna Knights
Mexico City Kings

Nevada Battleborn
Regina Elk
San Diego Marlins
Saskatoon Wild
Yukon Rush

 

The creation of the Pittsburgh Forge was an answer to the biggest problems I had to face. As per Rule 2, two minor clubs had to dissappear. The Vancouver Whalers  (because of the VHL's Vancouver Wolves) and the Philadelphia Reapers. (because of the SHL's Philadelphia Forge) The loss of the Whalers created no problems but the loss of the Reapers did. When I boiled down the teams to available cities in compliance with Rule 1,  I discovered two problems. The first problem was the fact I had twenty-one cities. The second problem was that western cities outnumbered eastern twelve to nine. To help fix both problems, I had these two different Philadelphia brands swap leagues so that the Reapers were the major club and the Forge were the minor club, then moved the Forge across the state, inadvertently doing the inverse of ancient hockey history history. A long time ago the was a NHL franchise in Pittsburgh that relocated to Philadelphia for a season before disbanding thirty-six years before both cities would receive the iconic clubs we know today. Relocating a Philadelphia team to Pittsburgh is strangely poetic, to me at least. Of corse several other location in the Eastern part of North America would have worked but I feel my reasons for doing so are sound, After having an even number of teams, I still needed  even divisions so I had to misplace St Louis in the Eastern Conference. The was a snap judgment call on my end that does work.

 

Now to explain the reason for the branding I chose. Ottawa was a toss up between the different brands.The Lynx are the slightly stronger brand and thus won out. Also I do have other plans for the Highlanders branding. In the Vegas area, Aces may be the high card, but the victory belongs to the Battleborn. For San Diego, Tidal branding would have won out if the proper name for the ocean wave and not a name born of an incorrect notion was used. That bothered me more that it should have. Something I will have to rethink in the end. Yukon was the only team I rebranded completely from the original brand because name and logo given seemed.  to be a legally distinct brand from a certain basketball college. Also the Rush were a successful VHLM team that was moved to the VHLE and later contracted that many have wished to return.

 

Conclusion

 

I feel like I have achieved what I hoped to accomplish with this experiment so far. I discoved challenging problems and found ingenious solutions towards building a technically sound but far too massive fusion of my two favorite simulation sports leagues. As my conclusions will not be the same as others, open discussion on what can be changed is always welcomed below. That or rant about my choices, either one will work. Next week, I will start the mearger of the major teams to create something massive.
 

Edited April 11 by Will3

[Banackock 8,054]

How about an affiliation? Come on, SHL… 

[Will3 465]

I have taken a lot of criticism for keeping LVA over NBB at least in the SHL forms. What did you think?

[Zetterberg 863]

3 hours ago, Will3 said:

Yukon Rush

I support this fully

[Mysterious_Fish 386]

3 hours ago, Will3 said:

I love sim leagues. I have participated in a great variety of leagues of weird things from Rugby to Quidditch. No matter how many leagues I am talked into joining, my favorite leagues are always the hockey sim leagues. The Victory Hockey League is where I first started this ongoing adventure and remains the most important league to me. The Simulation Hockey League is another fun league that I have had much success in. Seeing what has happened to spring football lead to an interesting thought experiment, "What would happen if I were to merge the two best sim hockey leagues into one super leagues?" So I did. Over many pages of paper and much work with the old thinking cap, I merged the VHL and SHL into a ginormous league which I called  called the WSH or World Simulation Hockey. These write-ups are a part of a three part series detailing my opinions and logic that helped me develop the technically possible but practically impossible sim league of my dreams.

 

Rules

A thought experiment this complex needs rules to simplify things. The rules I followed to reasonable combine two different league are as follows.

 

Rule #1. Only one team per city. No sim league has two teams in one city so my merged league can't either.

 

Rule #2 Major clubs erase minor clubs in the same city with the option for the major club to take on the minor club's branding. This rule result in an issue that will be explored later.

 

Rule #3 Best branding remains for cities that have a franchise in both leagues. I will explain my feelings the informed the identities I choose.

 

Rule #4 Brands not chosen can be considered for use with different cities. The purpose of this rule is to reduce the amount of new brands I have to create. No good ideas should ever go to waste.

Introduction to Minor Leage Teams

With the rules firmly established, I set to the task of fusing both leagues minor/junior leagues into a unified league. A quick explanation of each leagues and it's teams will serve as perfect a point of reference to compare against the end results. The VHLM is a ten franchise league split into two divisions, East and West. The clubs composing this league is listed below.

 

VHLM East

 

Halifax 21st
Mississauga Hounds
Ottawa Lynx
Philadelphia Reapers
Miami Marauders

 

VHLM West

 

Houston Bulls
Las Vegas Aces 
Mexico City Kings
San Diego Marlins
Saskatoon Wild

 

 

The SMJHL on the other hand is a sixteen team league divided into Northern and Southern divisions of eight teams each. Those team are listed below.

 

SMJHL South

 

Carolina Kraken 

Colorado Raptors

Detroit Falcons

Main Timber

Nevada Battleborn

Ottawa Highlanders

St Louis Scarecrows

 

SMJHL North

 

Anchorage Armada

Great Falls Grizzlies

Kelowna Knights

Newfoundland Berserkers

Quebec City Citadlles

Regina Elk

Vancouver Whalers

Yukon Malamutes

 

Results and Explanation

 

With all of the pieces on the board, I set out to my task of finding my reasonable mearger. The end product of my labor was a league I called the WSHJ or World Simulation Hockey Juniors. The WSHJ is a twenty-two franchise league split into Eastern and Western divisions of eleven teams each. A massive list of all teams is below.

 

WSHJ East

 

Carolina Kraken
Detroit Falcons
Halifax 21st
Maine Timber
Miami Marauders 
Mississauga Hounds
Newfoundland Berserkers
Ottawa Lynx
Pittsburgh Forge
Quebec City Citadlles
St Louis Scarecrows

 

WSHJ West

 

Anchorage Armada
Colorado Raptors
Great Falls Grizzlies
Houston Bulls
Kelowna Knights
Las Vegas Aces
Mexico City Kings
Regina Elk
San Diego Marlins
Saskatoon Wild
Yukon Rush

 

The creation of the Pittsburgh Forge was an answer to the biggest problems I had to face. As per Rule 2, two minor clubs had to dissappear. The Vancouver Whalers  (because of the VHL's Vancouver Wolves) and the Philadelphia Reapers. (because of the SHL's Philadelphia Forge) The loss of the Whalers created no problems but the loss of the Reapers did. When I boiled down the teams to available cities in compliance with Rule 1,  I discovered two problems. The first problem was the fact I had twenty-one cities. The second problem was that western cities outnumbered eastern twelve to nine. To help fix both problems, I had these two different Philadelphia brands swap leagues so that the Reapers were the major club and the Forge were the minor club, then moved the Forge across the state, inadvertently doing the inverse of ancient hockey history history. A long time ago the was a NHL franchise in Pittsburgh that relocated to Philadelphia for a season before disbanding thirty-six years before both cities would receive the iconic clubs we know today. Relocating a Philadelphia team to Pittsburgh is strangely poetic, to me at least. Of corse several other location in the Eastern part of North America would have worked but I feel my reasons for doing so are sound, After having an even number of teams, I still needed  even divisions so I had to misplace St Louis in the Eastern Conference. The was a snap judgment call on my end that does work.

 

Now to explain the reason for the branding I chose. Ottawa was a toss up between the different brands.The Lynx are the slightly stronger brand and thus won out. As much as I love the Nevada Battleborn, them being my first team in the SHL, the Aces is the better team name for the city it is in with multiple meaning and the most interesting logo in the VHL. For San Diego, the Marlins are an easier identity to connect with that a misnamed ocean wave. Yukon was the only team I rebranded completely from the original brand because name and logo given seemed to be a legally distinct brand from a certain basketball college. Also the Rush were a successful VHLM team that was moved to the VHLE and lated contracted that many have wished to return.

 

Conclusion

 

I feel like I have achieved what I hoped to accomplish with this experiment so far. I discoved challenging problems and found ingenious solutions towards building a technically sound but far too massive fusion of my two favorite simulation sports leagues. As my conclusions will not be the same as others, open discussion on what can be changed is always welcomed below. That or rant about my choices, either one will work. Next week, I will start the mearger of the major teams to create something massive.
 

 

 

I have an issue with this. I prefer the San Diego Tidal over the Marlins. So please fix. And the logo is better

[Will3 465]

1 minute ago, Mysterious_Fish said:

 

 

I have an issue with this. I prefer the San Diego Tidal over the Marlins. So please fix. And the logo is better

Rebrand to the San Diego Tsunami then we will talk.

[Mysterious_Fish 386]

5 hours ago, Will3 said:

Rebrand to the San Diego Tsunami then we will talk.

The tidal was just made

 

9 hours ago, Will3 said:

The creation of the Pittsburgh Forge was an answer to the biggest problems I had to face. As per Rule 2, two minor clubs had to dissappear. The Vancouver Whalers  (because of the VHL's Vancouver Wolves) and the Philadelphia Reapers. (because of the SHL's Philadelphia Forge)

COuld have done what u did here and just make a new name

[Will3 465]

I didn't know. The tone of that statement was wrong and I apologize. The problem is that I can't do that for franchises of equivalent levels. I didn't explain myself well in this article at all. Might have to rewrite it entirely.

[Doomsday 4,130]

This is an awesome idea, and I can't wait to see the rest of it!

[mattyIceman 1,214]

You could have started with the top league first then moved your way down.  That may have cleared up a thing or two, or a dozen possibly

Edited April 14 by mattyIceman

[Will3 465]

There is a good reason I started with the bottom. you won't have to wait long for that explanation.