The Rise of Italy in the VHL

[Oatex 278]

I noticed this trend for one reason, and one reason only - my player is currently listed for Italy as his birthplace. As I was doing the trivia, which involved birthplace HOF'ers, I saw some countries had very few players created for them in general. The Dominican Republic only has 7 players made for them in history. Thats equal to about one being made every 13 or 14 seasons. This brought my own selection of birthplace to my attention. I wondered how good Italy has done in the past. Lets look further into it.

 

After doing a bit of research on my own a couple of minutes ago, I surprisingly saw that there are only 40 players who were born in Italy that are currently retired. When I looked at earning and how well they did in their career, I noticed that there were only 3 of the retired players above 1000 TPE, and 8 above 500 TPE (one being Alex Bridges III). This means that 7.5% of retired Italy players hit 1000 TPE, and 20% got over 500 TPE.

 

I then looked at CURRENT players that were born out of Italy, and I was shocked. There were 8 players currently active since S89! This is about 1 player made every season. In comparison to the retired players, who had one player made every 2.3 seasons, this was a huge leap for Italy. I also noticed that of those 8 players, 2 of them were above 1000 TPE, this means 25% had above 500 and 1000 TPE.  

 

Its pretty impressive to see how well Italy has been doing within the last 10 seasons, and I wondered why all the sudden have they increased their performance off the boat?

 

The next thing I wondered was, is this a trend in the VHL in general? Do people want to make better players overall? Lets figure that out too.

I'm going to select a random country, Denmark, we'll go with that. Ill analyze their past and present, and compare them to see if Italy is just producing hockey machines all the sudden, or if this is a trend in the VHL in general.

 

Starting off, Denmark has 31 retired players. The data also showed 5 of their players were above 1000 TPE, and 7 above 500 TPE. This means that 16% of Denmark players hit 1000 TPE, and 22% hit 500 TPE. This is better than Italy's stats over history, so now lets check their current players, which will prove if Italy is in its prime right now, or not.

 

The stats showed that theres were only 3 current players born out of Denmark, and none have surpassed 300 TPE yet. This is interesting because over history, Denmark had about 1 player every 3 seasons, and there has been 3 players in the last 8 seasons for Denmark currently active. This means that my data has been accurate so far.

 

With this data, I can come to a pretty suggestive conclusion that Italy is indeed producing a mass amount of talent right now, and are on the rise as a VHL manufacturing country. There is most likely no reason, and I can always do more data examples with new countries - so stay tuned for those.

 

Word Count 541

 

[Victor 11,055]

This is our Renaissance.

[Triller 1,691]

It seemed to be a racing trend.  Everyone all of a sudden got super into F1 racing.  Then came the Italians.

[Daniel Janser 2,229]

Sometimes there are just countries being picked for no apparent reason... like in S91 where a lot of Greenlanders were picked all of a sudden

 

for example there are only 3 San Marinese (or whatever they are called) players ever created. Two of them (Idaho and Atreides) surpassed the 1000TPE bareer, the former even becoming a HOF player...

Edited December 31, 2024 by Daniel Janser

[BOOM 8,861]

[Victor 11,055]

8 hours ago, Triller said:

It seemed to be a racing trend.  Everyone all of a sudden got super into F1 racing.  Then came the Italians.

Lol no

[Triller 1,691]

2 hours ago, Victor said:

Lol no

Alrighty

[CowboyinAmerica 2,924]

Yeah Victor and I did it pretty randomly and independently. The nerdy backstory for mine: There's a character on an actual play podcast I listen to with the last name Primavera that I thought was fun. So when recreating I was thinking through pasta-related names I could roll with, and if I'm doing that then of course the player has to be from Italy.

[JCarson 771]

Whatever the reason behind the trend this is an interesting review of a player and an aspect of their backstory. I expect the less linked to actual hockey nations the more the trends are just outliers and not statistically relevant. Regardless of whether the analysis is statistically relevant or not it was relevant to this player.  Good for you in pursuing aspects of the VHL that interest you.  Keep up the great work, I like the article so will give it a 9 out of 10.