My Favourite M Season (Season 55 as GM of the Aces)

[MubbleFubbles 1,279]

I guess for theme week, I will talk about my favourite season in the VHLM which was managing the Las Vegas Aces in Season 55. Here’s a few of the things that happened:

 

- Came in this season to take over from Robbie who, if I recall, lost the job because of some decisions that they’d made roster-wise (If I’m recalling correctly, I think they ran into some trouble either for not playing some members of their roster more than they should have or alienating some members of their roster, although this also probably wasn’t helped by Robbie being Robbie).  

 

- The team that he had left me had some good solid members and players there like Advantage’s Dexter Lane, Kyle’s Luka Volkov and Turner’s Slava Aleksei. But the team had a few big weaknesses. One was the lack of goalie (Robbie’s plan had been to keep their own goalie down in the M for this season while they were GM, but they decided against that once they got fired). The other was that (following the draft as well), the team was WAY too pass-heavy. The three best forwards on the team were all pass-first forwards along with the two best defensemen. My concern at the time was making things fun for members and making sure they had a good experience so this didn’t particularly bother me though. 

 

- We didn’t have a first rounder in the S55 draft, but in spite of that we picked up quite a few at the time well-known members in the league. The best value pick we got was probably getting Sergei Komarov, who was GooningItUp’s third player at the end of the fifth round and a very key piece for the franchise in the Founders Cup victory the following year. Our earliest pick was at the end of the second round where we picked the now perma-banned Anderson’s player Rudi Ying, who would go on to make a perfectly rational post where he reasoned that my mother had dinosaur breath. We got Jericho’s Mr Shakedown in the third round, which I thought was going to be the high value pick since we were streaming Overwatch together at the time, but I don’t think they ever actually updated them. 

 

- Our fourth round selection in the draft was probably the most interesting, which was Trifecta’s player Elijah Mikaelson. Pretty much immediately after the draft, Bushito (GM of the Storm) offered me a first rounder next year for them, and I was all good with that. Following the trade, Trifecta changed their player name to “VHLM Forever” with the idea that they would be in the VHLM forever. This was at least partially true as they never made the VHLM, but also maybe a little misleading as they retired their player the season after. Funnily enough they said they were going to be in the VHLM forever with one of their last players Star as well, so when he told me that, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly surprised they were retired the next season

 

- The regular season was expectedly rough and we only scored 117 goals in the season (for comparison, last season’s Los Angeles Stars team that only recorded 5 wins scored six more goals). However our defense was pretty good despite our lack of goalie for the first portion of the season and we did finish with 19 wins, probably the most memorable one where we defeated Oslo Storm in a shootout having only had three shots the entire game. The good thing was though that we signed a good bunch of additions over the trade deadline. Most importantly saw us being able to replace our BOT goalie with TheLastOlympian’s Shawn Brodeur, along with bringing in a pair of defenseman who would go on to do very good things in the VHL, dermeister’s Casey Jones and Beaviss’ Keaton Louth. We did however have a bit of a setback as mid-season call ups were a thing then and Calgary called up Luka Volkov, although funnily enough had I been more invested in the rules, I could have had the callup denied as it took place after the deadline for call ups, which was the trade deadline

 

- In this five team version of the VHLM, everyone made the playoffs so we had a wildcard series best of 3 against the bottom team in the league that season, the Yukon Rush. Oddly, the index says completely different to what actually happened, the index schedule had us winning two games to one, but the game links show the correct score, which was a more comfortable 2-0 series victory. 

 

- The most memorable part of this season though was the Semi-Final series between the league-leading Oslo Storm, who’d finished the regular season with 69 more points than the Aces and had scored 191 more goals than us (Also somewhat interesting was that I would be GMing against my own player Aackckqz Ky). Things started off better than expected, going 1-1 through the first two games of the season and us matching Storm’s shot count, a far cry from the team that only put up three shots against them earlier in the season. Despite being heavily outshot in Game 3, we held on for a 4-3 shootout win. However we could not follow up with another win in game four despite our best offensive performance against Oslo to date, coming up short in a 7-5 loss. 

 

- Game Five though is where things get even more interesting. Las Vegas retakes the lead in the series after a 4-2 win, and it’s clear at this point Oslo were starting to sweat. They did go on to win Game Six however it was at this point that Oslo started to make demands that the entire series got re-simmed over roster issues, which lead to a 61 post thread in the game threads (the joys of pre-discord forum activity). The reason for this demand was roster issues. Quik’s (who had just returned from twenty seasons away from the league) future HOF player Mats Johnsson had not been added to the Storm in the league file despite having been added to the team. In addition, rating updates in the sim had been very lacking at this point as players who joined at the trade deadline at 30 TPE (at this point in time, recreates had to bank recreate TPE) were still at 30 TPE despite players like Louth and Jones having earned lots of TPE in that time. The resolution saw Mats Johnsson added to the sim (although rather unfairly at the TPE level of their most recent update, despite other players on both teams last being updated at the deadline) for Game 7.

 

- Ultimately, these changes did not go on to help Oslo as they’d hoped and they were eliminated from the playoffs after the Aces won both the series and game seven 4-3. We then went on to the finals to play Saskatoon, who had several good players, including future Hall of Famers Ay Ay Ron and Gabriel McAllister. While we did take them to overtime twice, we were ultimately no match for the Wild, who wound up sweeping the series. All in all though, it was a very enjoyable and memorable time and it’s definitely my most memorable season I’ve had in the VHLM.
 

[jacobcarson877 2,439]

modern VHL needs better names

[Thunder 1,074]

Mubbles you’ve been around!!!