96 VHL Draft Review (Pure vibes)

[Dabnad 173]

Before we start, I will extremely emphasize that I have sadly not been able to pay attention to the VHL as of the last 2 weeks, meaning that I’m basically just going off vibes, numbers, and stats. 
 

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the Shaw Show! This week is an extremely important week, as yesterday was the S96 VHL Entry draft! So today, I decided to actually do a media task, so I will be reviewing each top eight pick (yes this is so I can talk about Narnia Shaw), look at the needs, wants of each team and understand where each team is coming from in regards for their pick. Without too much yapping, I’ll get started!

 

1. Prague Phantoms - D - Pan Daffleck - @OrbitingDeath

The first overall pick was as expected. Pan was pretty much what everyone expected. Pat is a great player from a great man, already reaching 412 TPE, and being an instant player for the Phantoms. Daffleck is a beautiful player, a quality defensive defenseman, however, when you look at his statistics, you can often find some disappointment for the quality of the player Daffleck is. This old man from Macau has simply put 8 points in 72 games, and 0 points in 11 games in the playoffs. While this looks extremely disappointing, a stat you have to have to pay attention to is +/-. While only recording 8 points, Daffleck has +17 in the regular season! To understand how absurd this is, you have to understand that Daffleck being a +17 means that he lets in such little goals that there were 17 more goals scored when he was on ice, compared to when he wasn’t, while only recording 8 points, this stat is absolutely ridiculous! This can show the impact Daffleck brings to each and every team, as soon has he touches foot on the ice. Honestly, there’s not much to talk about this pick, the man most expected to go #1 went #1, to a team that’s been in a rebuild.

2. Moscow Menace - D - River Harrington - @kirbithan

 

Okay so first of all, Moscow having this pick is crazy, having the best record in the leauge, however, they did get bounced early, so maybe they did need this. This pick being traded may have the largest implications on the draft, as we look at essentially River Harrington being traded for Narnia Shaw (who we’ll talk about later), and Kurt Bachman. For now, let’s take a step back and look at what River going to Moscow, and what this means. River is a high quality offensive defenceman, someone who can carry your blue line, and for a team like Moscow who needs a win-now player, Harrington will fit perfectly on the second pairing for now, maybe even getting a promotion into the first pairing in the near future. Harrington going to Moscow has put some large expectations on both Harrington and Moscow to win, and honestly, Harrington might be the favorite to be the rookie of the year, with the crazy statistics he puts up. River had 80 points in 72 games in the VHLM, and is an extremely promising player for the VHL. The league should be scared cause River is going to be a top defenceman for a while.

 

3. D.C. Dragons - C - Brandon Petan Jr. - @sadie

 

Wow look it’s a forward! Those actually exist, who would’ve thought? Honestly, there really isn’t much to be said about this specific pick. D.C. needed someone to build around, and they took the best player available, by a bit of a margin. Brandon will now be one of the building blocks to the future of D.C. The future looks extremely bright for this team, they have an extreme load of prospects coming up, and I think that D.C. has an incredible future coming up as long as they’re smart about what they do and how they go about rebuilding. Otherwise, there really isn’t much to talk about this team, it’s a simple pick, hard to mess up, and the right pick at the time. How it’ll work long term? We’ll get to know in the future.

 

4. London United - D - Alagsantere Groenvold - @VattghernCZ

This is another one of those, pick with your eyes close type pick. There really wasn’t another option for London here, the 4th highest TPE. While Groenvold isn’t really in the same tier has the top 3, they definitely don’t deserve to be grouped with the rest of the players. He’s on his own tier of the perfect 4th overall pick. While not quite top 3 material, he is by far the best of the rest. Groenvold is another successful defenceman on both sides of the ice. He’s one of the players that you can build your defensive core around, and maybe even build you team around depending on how he pans out in the future. Once again, can’t complain about this pick, London did exactly what they needed to do, and there really wasn’t any doubt they weren’t gonna do this. Simple, yet effective pick for a great player.

 

5. Moscow Meance - G - Deadpanada - @Alex

Oh look, it’s another non-defenseman! The last one until pick 9. This is an incredibly interesting pick my Moscow. They had two picks in the top 5, with the first they picked a star defenseman, which was perfect as he comes in instantly, making them a better team, however, you can look at this pick and be confused, after all why would a team that was just first in the league decide to pick an up and coming goalie, when their star goalie still has 5 seasons until they retire? Well the answer is simple, money! Moscow simply has no more money to pay Syko, meaning that they’ll need a new goalie, and fast, because next year 7 members of their team are hitting the UFA market, and one is retiring. This means that this amazing core that just topped the league may have to dismantle by as soon as next year, and we’re already seeing a key piece that might have to leave if there aren’t any salary maneuvers. Their backup, Joseph Reed, is simply a bit too old to rely on fully. In this case, Deadpanada is an amazing goalie, who will definitely blossom soon, however, a lot of pressure will come on him as soon as he goes up. This year might be tough for Moscow, however, there isn’t much to do about except take the position of need, which in this case is looking like a goalie. This pick can definitely be a make or break, depending on how Deadpanada develops, but the position that Moscow is put in is incredibly interesting, and could definitely be it’s own article, cause they have decisions to make, and it looks like they’ve been forced to make one.

 

6. Warsaw Predators - D -Slava Kovalenko - @OblivionWalker

Okay so I’ve already talked about Slava a lot in my other article, if you want to learn more about the player, go check out my article about teammates vs skill, great analysis about how points are found in the VHL. For this pick, I will mainly be focusing on the pick itself, and honestly, there’s not really much to say about the pick. It’s a great pick, you pick a top pairing defenceman that will be coming up pretty quickly, he’s defensive focused (read my other article for more analysis for points), and a great shutdown guy. Honestly, no complains here, nothing extraordinary or crazy in this pick, but something which does interest me is this Warsaw team in general. Looking from afar, it’s a scary team, and with Slava coming in it’s only gotten scarier

 

7. Warsaw Predators - C - Joel Jakobs - @Plate

Oh look! It’s another forward! This is one of the more interesting picks to me from Warsaw. This pick has shown that Warsaw wants to build around their skaters, and they’ve chosen a center. Jakobs is a great player, scoring 95 points in just 72. He’s a strong passer and scorer and could never be the wrong pick, however, was he the right pick for Warsaw? In my opinion, there is definitely a world where Warsaw goes for a goalie here. Looking at the team roster, their goaltending duo consists of someone retiring in 2 seasons, someone who’s mainly on welfare, and a prospect who is also on welfare. Out of these three, is there really someone you want for the long term? You could argue that the goaltending in this draft isn’t that crazy, with all goaltenders being on welfare, but C. M. Michaels is still getting 12 or so TPE per week, which should work out well. Joel Jakobs in no way is a bad pick, in fact, he is an amazing pick, however, I don’t know if that’s exactly what Warsaw needed, though there are some good goalies coming up in the S97 draft, so let’s see if they decide to pick a goalie then.

 

8. Helsinki Titans - D - Narnia Shaw - @Dabnad

First of all, steal of the draft, best player in the league and should’ve gone first overall. No complains best player. Absolute goat. On a serious note, this is a pretty solid pick for a team that doesn’t necessarily need a goalie, this is the only player they should’ve taken. With You’re not Fucking retiring disappearing, there really wasn’t another high quality skater left in the draft, so on any level, Shaw was really the only skater left with 200+ TPE that was still active. Much like Slava, I have covered Narnia before in previous articles so if you want to see my analysis between how Narnia Shaw plays feel free to read my article about skill vs teammates (two plugs in the article goes crazy). Other than that, really not much to say about Shaw except the fact that’s he’s just him. (Crazy glaze I know)

 

 

Well, that’s the end of my analysis on this draft, for now at least, I might make another version of this in the future when we see how the careers of some of these players work out, however, I am not well known for actually doing what I say (for example, expansion teams in Asia). Some interesting parts of this draft is how strong the defensive core of the draft is. We could be seeing an all-time defensive draft, with a majority of the top players being defensemen, and many other being goalies. In the first round there were like 2 forwards drafted, which is absolutely absurd. The future of the VHL forward is going to be a bit depleted, so it’s going to be fun seeing how teams work around such a lack of forward talents. I also do suspect that there might be a large influx of players switching from defensemen to forwards as their teams require it, especially on the older side, when money isn’t an issue. All together, the prevalence of defensive players in the league today is really absurd. I could make a whole post on it, but as mentioned before, there is a high chance that some of these offensive defensemen may be open to turning into forwards, such as players like Narnia Shaw. This draft is probably going to be one of the most interesting for now, as it is also the first without the VHLE in a while, meaning that this draft has as large an effect on the VHLM as it does the VHL. Lastly, this draft is going to have an huge trade tree at the end of it, especially due to the Harrington - Shaw/Bachman trade, and honestly, the winner of the trade can be historic. 
 

Before we end off, I’d like to wind down and remember that there is a lot more that goes into a pick than what I’ve mentioned up here, you have locker room morale, activity, GM choices, player styles, and many many more factors which go into even considering a player, let alone picking one, so take this draft review like it’s from someone just using numbers and data, not the whole picture. Other than that, there’s really not much more to say, other than this is a draft to look out for in the future, and it’ll be interesting to see how it progresses, and how we can see this draft evolve into an historic one if the cards play out right. I’m excited for this draft more than anyone, mainly cause Shaw’s in it, but I’m more excited to see how the draft will work out.
 

For now, that’s all from me, and this is Narnia Shaw, signing off, until next time.

 

2138 words

Week ending 06/10/2024 - 27/10/2024

[Plate 386]

I was not expecting Jakobs to go 7th at all. My read on the draft was the highest I'd go was 9th to London, and even the Warsaw gm apologized because I was someone on his radar but I was not interviewed. We'll see how it pans out for them but I'm planning on staying for the long term.

[OblivionWalker 245]

Lee > Plate.

[Plate 386]

The beef is starting I see

 

[OblivionWalker 245]

7 hours ago, Plate said:

The beef is starting I see