Admin Victor 10,844 Posted June 18 Admin Share Posted June 18 Delete the E, contract the E, change the E, abolish the E. Expand the VHL, contract the VHL, rebrand the VHL... No, finally we have a theme week where we can focus on the real problem. Abolish the VHLM. To the five remaining members of a certain vintage, the VHLM means nothing. A mere stopgap between your last player and new and exciting beginnings in the VHL. It was often fashionable to not bother with the extra TPE you'd get from a trade deadline recreate by just doing it in the pre-season such that you didn't even need to really pay attention to the minor leagues because you'd have a VHL player at the same time and by the next season you'd have a new rookie VHL player. Yes, there was a time you could build a VHL calibre player in 8 weeks and get drafted and go straight to the big leagues. Halcyon days. The brainwashed and indoctrinated youth of today foolishly believe that they had character-building and cherished memories made in their early VHLM days. Once they take off their rose-tinted sunglasses they realise they can't name all the GMs in the league, any specific Founder's Cup winner or award winner, unless it's their player of course. Some lasting impact that is on your psyche. But that is actually secondary to the real problem the VHLM creates in the league which is too many drafts. We have a VHLM draft, a VHLE draft, and a VHL draft and it's all too much. So let's abolish the VHLM and make life easier for everyone. It's the bottom rung of the ladder and therefore the natural league to remove rather than the one in the middle or the one at the top. Common sense. Actually, scratch that. Abolish drafts. Let's bring in promotion/relegation. (the VHLM is still getting abolished) It is well known that the North American mind can not comprehend the concept of promotion and relegation but bear with me on this one. I have set out the two problems we have in the league being too many drafts and too much VHLM. By removing both of them you create a new system where 1) players have agency over where they go and 2) poor performance in the VHL actually gets punished. Imagine you are the Los Angeles Stars (shudder). Fundamentally, you suck. You suck now, you sucked when you joined the league, you sucked in the middle apart from 2-3 seasons where we pretended you didn't. For 20 seasons now the Stars have blighted the league with their underperformance but have been rewarded with continued existence. If we implemented promotion and relegation the Stars would no longer be in the VHL, they would be in the league underneath it either plummeting down further into the depths of sim league hell, or figuring out how to be a respectable franchise and making a run at promotion and a stronger, more successful return to the VHL. So how would this all work without drafts and without the VHLM? Well first of all given that the very concept of promotion and relegation is such a European model, the league underneath the VHL would have to be the VHLE. It just makes sense. So replace the M with the E in your mind as you read the remainder of the proposal. The VHLE would take over as the entry level league in our ecosystem. All new players, whether fresh recruits or recreates, would be pitched to by VHLE teams upon joining, and would get to choose which team to start their journey with. Unlike the mid-season VHLM joiners, this decision would be a lot more meaningful than where you spend part of a season – it will define your career. You could be convinced by a GM who is passionate about player development, who promises you will quickly be a desired prospect under their tutelage and ready to be sold on to some of the big fish in the VHL. Or a GM may sell you the potential of leading your team to promotion to the VHL and greater glories – a true rags to riches story. How would you stop all players joining the same team? The salary cap stays of course – higher in the VHL which would offer bigger contracts, lower in the VHLE where the money you can pay your players would be capped. You would need to get to a certain level of TPE before you could entertain VHL offers but once you hit that your 8-season clock starts and you need to decide – stick it out to hopeful promotion as the star in the VHLE, or jump ship and become a cog in a wheel of a VHL dynasty. This even encourages legal tampering! How fun! Of course this will never actually happen. I've been purposefully facetious throughout this article for that very reason. Hockey is associated with the NHL which has a specific way of doing things and the ritual of the draft is far too engrained into the culture to be overthrown on a whim. Do I genuinely think this would even work? For the reasons above I haven't given it particularly deep and critical thought and I'm sure there are flaws which could be picked apart. The biggest concern would be how money is used and how it is a sufficient incentive to be a real replacement for trades and draft picks (trades wouldn't be abolished but they would be rarer I imagine given they would be player-for-player). I do think there is something to be said for the storyline you could write by going from the bottom to the top with one team, and even more I do believe the threat of relegation would give an accountability to struggling teams which would drastically but I think positively change the dynamic of the VHL and GMing. I also really do think the concept of drafts takes away a lot of agency from players and makes your career a lottery – it's less about the decisions you make and more about what GM happens to pick you or happens to be in charge of a bad team in a specific season. Most importantly, I thought this would be a fun concept to throw out there. So on this VHLM theme week I implore you to abolish the VHLM. N0HBDY, tcookie, solas and 5 others 6 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spartan 4,280 Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 Scram Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Victor 10,844 Posted June 18 Author Admin Share Posted June 18 16 minutes ago, Spartan said: Scram Forgot key argument: take away some of Spartans jobs Spartan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twists 367 Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 56 minutes ago, Victor said: Forgot key argument: take away some of Spartans jobs This is a very important argument you failed to include smh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rory 1,877 Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 3 hours ago, Victor said: you sucked in the middle apart from 2-3 seasons where we pretended you didn't. Hey - we pretended WE didn't suck, rara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Victor 10,844 Posted June 18 Author Admin Share Posted June 18 24 minutes ago, rory said: Hey - we pretended WE didn't suck, rara That we did Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowboyinAmerica 2,844 Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 Taking this more seriously than it's probably intended (kind of my MO anyway): I hate abolishing the draft. It makes more sense when you have a bunch of people where that's literally their job to scout and recruit, but here when it's all volunteer GMs it rewards the Terminally Online and just becomes an arms race for who's active at the right time. (Because you can say all you want about people taking their time to choose, but that'll never happen in practice.) That's also something that annoys me about the current VHLM waiver process as is, tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Victor 10,844 Posted June 18 Author Admin Share Posted June 18 16 minutes ago, CowboyinAmerica said: Taking this more seriously than it's probably intended (kind of my MO anyway): I hate abolishing the draft. It makes more sense when you have a bunch of people where that's literally their job to scout and recruit, but here when it's all volunteer GMs it rewards the Terminally Online and just becomes an arms race for who's active at the right time. (Because you can say all you want about people taking their time to choose, but that'll never happen in practice.) That's also something that annoys me about the current VHLM waiver process as is, tbh. A fair point. Perhaps a solution would be automatic assignment to a team upon creation, followed by an effective free agency after a full season, where the player can swap teams at will. Kinda like how you would be developing in a school where you grew up, them have a chance to go to the college you want. The idea tbh isn't unserious - I think unlikely - but I like to think it's not unviable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tcookie 878 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) I think it's a super interesting concept actually. I don't think I would want the VHL to make such a drastic switch, but super interesting. I think incentivizing contract money so that people actually want to do more than just take the minimum for their TPE bracket, have a strong incentive to switch teams, etc. would be the toughest part. Edited June 19 by tcookie Victor 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattyIceman 1,174 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 European bias. David VanHousen 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil 5,113 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 On 6/18/2024 at 11:40 AM, Victor said: To the five remaining members of a certain vintage, the VHLM means nothing shoulda just tagged me tbh Victor 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil 5,113 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 On 6/18/2024 at 11:40 AM, Victor said: Let's bring in promotion/relegation. I wrote an MS on this YEARS ago! LET"S DO IT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Victor 10,844 Posted June 19 Author Admin Share Posted June 19 25 minutes ago, Phil said: I wrote an MS on this YEARS ago! LET"S DO IT Time for a breakaway league Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Victor 10,844 Posted June 24 Author Admin Share Posted June 24 Week 2 of 2 - still abolish it Spartan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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