Let's Invent a Stat: Ranking Every Draft Bust of the S80s

[Gustav 6,510]

Maybe this is why Devise sold all his picks--what was Toronto thinking? We'll break it all down here.

 

 

Why I do this, I don't really know. This article started as an analysis of draft classes over time, where I set out to track draft busts across each season and see if we've had any trends worth thinking about. I found out pretty quickly that the results of that analysis were inconclusive, but at that point I had a spreadsheet with lots and lots of data to look at. I wasn't going to waste that, so I thought up something different. With the S89 class in their last season in the VHL, we now have a clear evaluation of which picks have and have not worked out over the whole S80s. So with my data on draft busts, why not write an article about those draft busts? It's going to be a long one, but I promise that it will be worth your time. 

 

I don't want to formalize this as the official start of a series, but I've done things this way in the past and I think it's fun, so I think I get to draw special attention to the heading:

 

Let's Invent a Stat!

 

It's surprisingly easy to crunch the numbers when you get to decide what the numbers are in the first place. What I'll be doing here is creating a number that I'm non-creatively calling Bust Grade (BG) to rank exactly how much of a draft bust each draft bust from the S80s is. Our equation for this is:

 

BG = (DAD + GA + PA - DAL + (EXP/10) + ((1-(LEN/8))/10))/1.07

 

Of course, these are unfamiliar abbreviations, because I've also made them up:

• Draft Adjustment (DAD) = -0.2*Diff/12, where Diff = "Differential," or the difference between a player's draft position and their final TPE ranking within their class. The largest DAD from the S80s is -12, and we multiply this by -0.2 to make the number positive and also to limit its efficacy. So, a player whose final TPE ranking matches their draft position will have no points applied to their BG, while the player who dropped 10 spots down the list will live with 0.2 extra.
• Gain Adjustment (GA) = 0.6*(1-(Gain/1000)), where Gain is the amount of TPE earned after the draft. This number gets larger as that amount gets smaller, making a player more of a bust with less TPE earned. No player on this list earned over 1000 TPE after they were drafted (of course, because how would they be a bust in that case?), so every player has some contribution to their final BG total from GA, which increases to a maximum of 0.6 points.
• Pick Adjustment (PA) = 0.3*(1-(Pos/16)), where Pos = Draft Position. A player drafted 16th overall, at the end of the 1st, gets no extra contribution from this number, while a player drafted 1st overall would receive its maximum of 0.3 points. This is because a player who is drafted higher (and with larger expectations) should be considered more of a bust if they don't work out.
• Draft Allowance (DAL) = -0.4*(1-1/(1-0.12*(NUM/5)+0.08*(BP/40)))), where:
  • NUM = the number of busts present in that draft, and:
  • BP = "Bust Points," a system I came up with to assign points to a draft to gauge the chances of making a bad pick. Whether a player is a bust or not, they earn Bust Points for their draft through recording final TPE totals, Diff, and Gain that are below certain totals. Either 1 or 2 points can be added in each category, depending on severity, and most players who earned at least 4 Bust Points are present on this list. 
  • DAL, unlike the others, is a forgiving number. A player who is present in a draft with lots of busts (or disappointing player numbers in general) will have more DAL subtracted from their BG than a player who was a bust in a draft where just about all picks around them went great--essentially, a mistake made in a good draft is a larger mistake. Up to 0.2 can be subtracted from BG by DAL; with up to 0.12 coming from NUM and 0.08 from BP.
• EXP = "Experience Factor," which is just a flat 1 if the player was a recreate and a 0 if the player is a first-gen. This is divided by 10 to make it a difference of 0.1. A bust is a bust, but it's more of one if the builder has a reputation that would give more reason to believe that they would turn into something.
• LEN = Career Length. I wasn't going to factor stats into this quantitatively because it would just be too much to compare forwards to defenders (and especially to goalers), but we can at least use the length of a player's VHL career to give us a small correcting factor for how much they contributed to the VHL. A player who played for 8 seasons earns no extra points from LEN, while a player who never made it up registers an extra 0.1. 
• This is all divided by 1.07. I tried to make a high total approximately equal to 1, and it turned out that the highest grade was a 1.07. So, we divide all numbers by 1.07 to make a 1.00 the highest BG possible and give us a nice round number.

 

 

We've invented a stat! I'll note a few things:

• Who is and isn't a bust was aided by my analysis of Bust Points but ultimately up to my own opinion--my rule of thumb was to include anyone with at least 4, but I made a few exceptions. A prime example of this was @Pifferfish's Elias Lampi, who put up 4 Bust Points by recording a moderate career TPE total and dropping 8 spots in the TPE rankings in a loaded S86 draft. My spreadsheet says he's a bust (and he has a higher BG than some others in this article), but he was a solid player stats-wise and even won the Labatte in S91. Numbers aren't perfect.
• On the other hand, I threw out players who didn't work out if there was really no one good drafted after them. S87 and S88, for example, have no busts at all because they were very thin classes--those drafted early stuck around because they were expected to, and those drafted late were never supposed to be good in the first place. I'm not going to call players busts if there were no good options left on the board.
• I kept this analysis to the first round only. Beyond that point, anyway, picks that don't work out aren't usually huge mistakes.

 

 

Here's what BG looks like when it's broken down per pick. Perhaps you can guess what some of those picks were! According to my analysis, interestingly, London and Riga only messed up once, but both messed up big by making the worst picks of the decade.

 

 

 

We're just about ready to break down the list, but I have to note something else that's important. This isn't just a ranking based on BG, because I've passed all of these players through a different filter called My Personal Opinion. Things like stats mean a lot and aren't reflected in BG, and there's also something to be said for personal history--a recreate known for going inactive shouldn't be considered as much of a bust as one who has shown huge earning potential, and I think about this too. I actually really like BG as a general correlation, and it helped me a lot with sorting out where to put everyone on this list, but you'll notice that I go out of order a lot. In total, it's just a list of opinions, but I think they're more legitimate if I've tried to work them out with numbers.

 

 

On to our ranking of the draft busts, in reverse order: 

 

 

22. Robert Wilk | 
12th Overall, S81 | RW | 210 TPE | @Tomat0
BG: 0.40

 

Wilk showed lots of promise with an 84-point rookie season, but getting passed around to six different teams over a 7-year career is something special. It turned out that his rookie season would be the strongest in just about every category, and the decline that followed saw him failing to hit even 30 points in a final S88 campaign with the Stars. The S81 draft was a risky one to pick in, especially for the early part of the decade, but this was one of the picks that didn't work out.

 

 

21. Justin Adolfsen |

14th Overall, S83 | LW | 205 TPE | @NJDevils24

BG: 0.38

 

The S83 draft wasn't bad, but it was interesting in that its first two picks (Scotty Sundin and Brandt Fuhr, neither one a bust) earned significantly less TPE than many players who followed. In fact, Landon Wolanin (who would lead the class in TPE) was drafted just one spot ahead of Adolfsen. Though Adolfsen didn't go inactive immediately and got close to 700 TPE, he only broke 50 points once and recorded a net -70 rating in a 6-season career. Some of the picks that followed would have been much nicer for the Americans: Tomas Sogaard, Brian Kowalski, Hall-of-Famer Jake Thunder, and others.

 

 

20. John Richards |  

16th Overall, S86 | RW | 242 TPE | @John Cimarno

BG: 0.48

 

I debated including Richards on this list because the S86 draft was very binary--the first round was one of the most stacked we've ever seen, and the field was pretty limited after that point. Still, there were players after Richards who made something more out of their careers, and it's fair to say that Richards was the first and only real disappointment of S86's first round. Only earning 207 TPE after the draft, Richards also only made the VHL for 4 seasons, three of which were with different teams.

 

 

19. Tadhg Byrne |

16th Overall, S81 | G | 196 TPE | @teknonym

BG: 0.62

 

Byrne is our first player to never make it to the VHL, and it's with good reason as the Irish goaltender only earned 44 TPE after being drafted. This even looked like a good pick--Byrne's agent was doing 6-point tasks and max earning before disappearing over the course of a couple weeks. Interestingly, Byrne kicked around the E for all nine seasons after the draft, sometimes starting, sometimes as a backup, always as an inactive.

 

 

18. Baxter Arcanum |  

8th Overall, S83 | D | 223 TPE | @ctots

BG: 0.56

 

Arcanum is one of just a few players on this list to break 700 TPE over the course of a career, but makes the list after tapering off in activity from a highly active max-earning start. I'll admit that I didn't know off the top of my head who ctots' first player was, but I remember ctots being super promising as a first-gen and I took the liberty of going slightly out of order BG-wise because Arcanum could have been the next big thing in ways that Byrne probably wasn't. Arcanum would go on to play five seasons in the VHL, spent mostly with DC, and manage to win a Cup in S85 before wrapping it up with modest career totals. Other players who hit on their potential after Arcanum's selection include everyone I listed for Adolfsen from the same season, plus Calgary's twin powerhouses in Goncalves and Wolanin.

 

 

17. Wumbo |

10th Overall, S82 | G | 276 TPE | @Fire Tortorella

BG: 0.59

 

I started writing out @Fire Tortorella's name as "flyersfan" before realizing that his name hasn't been flyersfan1453 (I think that's the number anyway) in years and that much of the community probably has no idea that that was the case and also probably thinks of someone else entirely as flyersfan. Anyway--the builder who I still think of as flyersfan and the former creator of Hall-of-Famer Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen came back in S82 with fellow SpongeBob reference Wumbo, who wasn't a super top-tier prospect but who was picked up by a team who had found big success in the past with other mid-level goaltenders (remember Ajay Krishna?). There wasn't really a better goaltender available in S82, and Wumbo would in fact pull a Krishna run of his own by winning the Cup in S84. He really wasn't a bad player, but he'd go inactive with under 700 TPE and wasn't the long-term solution that the Predators had hoped for. After being shifted to backup as an inactive in S88, Wumbo returned to starting in a disappointing 10-win campaign in S90.

 

 

16. Maxwell Mathias |

15th Overall, S82 | RW | 260 TPE | @Underclass_Hero

BG: 0.72

 

If it weren't for drafting first-gen superstar Girts Galvins in the second round, S82 would have been a horrible draft for Warsaw. Yet another player they valued above Galvins was Mathias, who brought steady TPE from affiliate leagues and seemed like a sound choice as the GM of Oslo and a job-holder in the E. This wouldn't last too long, though, and Mathias topped out at 332 TPE. Making it up for just one season in S86, Mathias put up 23 points split between Davos and Riga before exiting the VHL for good.

 

 

15. Tater Tottingham |

6th Overall, S85 | D | 241 TPE | @Trunkxolotl

BG: 0.64

 

I'm not entirely sure what the expectations were for Tottingham, because this player ended up earning just about exactly the same as the agency's previously-represented Tater Tot. Now, that wasn't bad at all--786 TPE is hardly something to be embarrassed about and Tottingham put up some solid seasons. It's just that Malmo put a bit too much stock into the TPE totals on the board and overdrafted by a bit. Picks following Tottingham (who was traded before ever putting on a Nighthawks jersey) include higher earners Alfred Champagne, Sunglasses Joyo, and Nikolas Kauppi, plus the greatest goaler of the generation in Jesse Teno. 

 

 

14. Reid Johnson |

9th Overall, S85 | D | 232 TPE | @TopTiddee2

BG: 0.65

 

It's really not on purpose that this is another pair of players picked by the same team in the same season; I'm not too sure but I'd at least assign some of it to identical adjustments to BG being made by coexistence in the same draft. Unlike Tottingham, Johnson also eventually played for Malmo, but this would only happen after being traded back to Malmo from Helsinki in S88. All of the "Malmo could have drafted someone else" complaints still apply, but perhaps Helsinki (having traded for both) suffered a bit more. In any event, Johnson only played 3 VHL seasons and retired with under 600 TPE, receiving a fair ranking as more of a bust than Tottingham despite a lower draft position.

 

 

13. Cadmael Ixazaluoh |

5th Overall, S81 | D | 242 TPE | @Vice

BG: 0.69

 

The Legion were not wrong to draft Vice, one of the more promising first-gen prospects in recent memory (this article also makes me realize how "recent" or not this was, because I have a specific memory of talking to Vice on Discord in a place I only would have been 3-plus years ago). Ixazaluoh broke 600 TPE and spent 7 seasons on Toronto's blue line, and in that sense was valuable, but just didn't maintain that super promising first-gen activity for long enough to become a star player. Vice is back and better than ever with Davos' Johnny Tsunami, who could end up being a symbol of what might have been the first time around, but Ixazaluoh will have to settle for being one of S81's five busts.

 

 

12. Tyler Busser |

9th Overall, S84 | C | 309 TPE | @diacope

BG: 0.75

 

The to-be-banned user behind Busser had raised some concerns for GMs by S84, but that didn't stop them from accumulating a TPE total and earn rate well worthy of the first round. To be fair, this kept up right up until an abrupt retirement in S85, making this a really weird pick to try to grade and one that's probably logically worth placement higher up on the board. Only playing one season and being at the center of issues that came up during that time says a lot about the magnitude of a bust for a max earner, but part of me also wasn't surprised when this happened and I feel that Toronto should have known better--especially since higher-TPE and perfectly proven noncontroversial players were left on the board (why AK92 slipped to 13th overall remains a mystery). I would have graded this as a reach when it happened, so how much of a bust is it really? In this case, I'm happy to have the numbers to back me up. This is where Busser was ranked per BG, and I have not changed it.

 

 

11. Otis Boudreaux Jr |

9th Overall, S89 | LW | 230 TPE | @Ozzy Batty

BG: 0.75

 

Boudreaux was a very good pick and a very promising user as a first-gen, and one who I have lots of nice things to say about. Things just didn't work out for his first player, who looked at first like a solid mid-round pick in a thin S89 draft. Unfortunately, Boudreaux also never made it up to the VHL with the Stars, and only scored 11 goals across four seasons, each with a different team, before retiring for a do-over. It's ultimately more sad to see a player fade away than burn out, and the fact that each of the next four picks proved to be decently active plants him firmly in bust territory.

 

 

10. Milan Dvorak |

5th Overall, S82 | D | 283 TPE | @solas

BG: 0.73

 

I love solas, and Dvorak wasn't far removed from the reign of Chicago's franchise goaler Jean Pierre Camus in the S70s. Across an 8-season career, Dvorak wasn't bad defensively but also generally played for mediocre teams and never put up more than 50 points (including a disappointing 0-goal campaign with DC in S89). In a very Aron Nielsen-type career, he occasionally came back for welfare but as a whole was barely active for a bit, just barely cracking 700 TPE and going before a whole host of good players later on in the round. In the same way as players like Tottingham, he wasn't bad, just a bit of a reach--and worse numbers in the metrics that calculate BG push him farther up the list.

 

 

9. Montgomery Burns |  

3rd Overall, S89 | D | 300 TPE | @LastOneUp

BG: 0.79

 

Burns is closing in on a 400-point career this season, but in much the same way as in the early S70s, his agent left the VHL on short notice after building a player with a solid foundation for success. The S89 draft was terrible in general (and about to be heavily featured here in the top 10 despite corrections made for it being terrible), but very good players were available at #3 and Toronto mostly swung and missed. Even though my numbers (and I like to think my list) account for bad draft classes by being lenient to their players, having a pick at #3 overall is huge in any draft and there were seven players drafted after Burns who have exceeded his TPE total. Burns put up 82 points in S93, but apart from that has called four different places home in an otherwise nondescript career.

 

 

8. Eric Queefson |

2nd Overall, S89 | D | 337 TPE | @twists

BG: 0.75

 

A player who broke 800 TPE is probably not the first player who comes to mind when thinking of draft busts and how to rank them, but Queefson probably already deserves it a little bit for his name and a little bit more for having the worst career of any second-round pick of the S80s. He gets some forgiveness from S89 being a horrible draft pool, of course, and it's tough to rank someone with the highest TPE total on this list this high up on it, but he's also the highest-drafted player on it and it means even more than Toronto whiffing on the #3 pick that DC whiffed on #2. Queefson went straight up to the VHL after the draft and would not have made this list had he stayed active, but he retired in S94 after his first round of depreciation and hadn't done too much of note up to that point. Queefson was OK at times on the scoreboard, but his career totals and lack of dominance stand in stark contrast to his draft position.

 

 

7. Zyn Westwood |

5th Overall, S89 | D | 272 TPE | @Sullvino

BG: 0.84

 

There's a big difference between Westwood and Queefson in terms of BG here because it heavily weighs TPE earnings, and I'm up in the air over who belongs where. It's true that Queefson had higher expectations, but Westwood certainly failed harder, spending most of his time as a roster filler on rebuilding teams--how does a -85 rating last season sound for an early 1st-rounder? Curiously, Westwood's agent has created just one other player in the VHL (Aston Martin), joining just a season after I did and doing essentially the same thing in earning well until the draft, going in the top 5, and going not much further. Perhaps this is something that could be a red flag to GMs in the future, but the earning potential is there--the VHL of the future could see something great if that's locked in long-term at any point. It just...hasn't been done yet, and Westwood is a good example.

 

 

6. Pope Francis |

8th Overall, S89 | D | 297 TPE | @nurx

BG: 0.79

 

I gave this spot to Francis above Westwood for a few reasons. By the numbers, Westwood has a higher BG because he was picked earlier in the draft, but Francis was rated just as highly at the time of the draft and certainly had a more solid reputation as a former M GM and someone who was highly visible around the forum and Discord. Francis came into the draft asking to play only for teams who did not scout him, so perhaps it's fitting that what he gave his team was the return that teams usually get for not scouting. Playing only one season for the Stars, Francis would fill rosters for two more, on two other teams, before an early retirement with exactly 100 points to show for it. 

 

 

5. Astro Singh |

5th Overall, S85 | D | 273 TPE | @8Ovechkin8

BG: 0.96

 

Here's the highest BG out of anyone up to this point! Singh has the misfortune of only making it to a career total of 439 TPE in a stacked draft, dropping far down the TPE rankings list. That plus a short career and (technically, after many years on end) being a recreate leads to a uniquely high BG. Perhaps more uniquely, Singh was out of the VHL entirely after just one season after going inactive and being released in S87. Had he not been claimed by Vancouver in S91, his BG would be even higher and he'd probably be the highest-ranked player by number on this list. He's one of the more unique players on this list in general--I had the pleasure of getting to know 8O8 on a basic level over the time he was here and he was really nice, plus it seemed like he was excited to end up with London where I think I was still technically AGM. But playing for five teams over four seasons, in a career that technically spanned eight, and being drafted higher and earning lower than others who have already been discussed here, is a very weird combination of factors and one that's worth significant mention.

 

 

4. Harkat Mulds |

9th Overall, S81 | D | 359 TPE | @hylands

BG: 0.79

 

Mulds was second in TPE on draft day and the product of an agent who had put up as strong a showing as is realistically possible from a first-gen career. There was no reason to believe that this should have been as low as a 9th-overall pick (except that I think I remember hearing after the draft that there actually was for some reason that I don't remember, and maybe I'm making that up entirely so we'll just roll with it). In any case, a super-earning prospect that had the TPE total to warrant a top selection only earned 154 TPE after being drafted, finding a new home every season after S82 and never living up to the franchise defender dream held by the Legion. Interestingly, Mulds played for both Moscow and Prague (not terrible teams) on two separate occasions and put up a decent point total, so perhaps #4 is a bit harsh here and I should have trusted the metric a bit more, but I'm a bit too lazy at this point to move and reformat this paragraph.

 

 

3. Cobalt Burns |

4th Overall, S84 | D | 351 TPE | @Ledge

BG: 0.90

 

S84 was the class for lots of S75 recreates, and it was supposed to be a big deal because of this--I specifically remember Ledge talking about how loaded up it was going to be in some article. Ledge was also a former M GM and highly active member who was building what seemed like a very safe pick in that recreate class. Curiously, in much the same way that our aforementioned Johnson and Tottingham were traded early on from Malmo to Helsinki, Burns was almost immediately traded from Helsinki to Malmo a season earlier. I don't think either team intended to move draft busts at those times, but somehow none of those picks worked out. Burns was the most extreme example of this, though--he did manage to earn 600 TPE, and put up a surprising number of hits during a stint with Chicago, but being one safe pick out of many doesn't quite work in one's favor when you're also one of the only ones to turn unsafe. Ledge hasn't been back to the league since Burns, and having been in a couple draft classes and shared some of the same experiences with him, he's one of the players on this list that I miss the most.

 

 

2. Maximus Decimus Meridius |

4th Overall, S81 | RW | 281 TPE | @Beaviss

BG: 0.77

 

When making this article and thinking about who I would rank where, MDM was one of the only players that immediately came to mind and also managed to be the player who I thought would be #1 off the top of my head. MDM isn't #1 by BG score, and that's pretty understandable--he accumulated almost 700 TPE and was in a draft that had a bunch of shaky picks. That said, being a recreate who was drafted pretty early on gave him a high BG score anyway, and out of everyone on the list, this was always going to be the player who was ranked higher based on vibes. In the past, every single player created by Beav had set records for TPE and at least seriously challenged for the Hall of Fame. Just "being a recreate" isn't enough to quantify the ranking here when 700 TPE used to be a walk in the park, and Beav's withdrawal from the league during MDM's career was as shocking as any. He doesn't quite earn the title of the biggest bust of the S80s, but he easily qualifies as the most high-profile bust, and the vibes make this make a lot more sense than most newer members realize.

 

 

"But Gustav," you say, "if you thought all along that MDM was the biggest draft bust, then who is it really? What changed your mind?"

 

To that, I ask that you allow me to reveal the true biggest draft bust of the S80s...

 

Spoiler

1. Miervaldis Arpa |

6th Overall, S82 | G | 317 TPE | @diacope

BG: 1.00

 

The highest BG on the list goes to Arpa, and I think it's wholly justified. Remember when we had a diacope player make this list already at #12 and I said that perhaps Toronto should have been concerned and that there was some level of "unsurprising" that was attached to Busser's abrupt retirement? That's because the exact same thing had just happened with Arpa, and even earlier than with Busser. Arpa quickly earned 102 TPE after being drafted, and then retired before playing a single game in the VHL--the only player on this list other than Tadhg Byrne to never make it up and certainly the higher-profile one of the two. This was baffling at the time because it's not like Riga had much reason to doubt their selection--diacope's first-gen player had spent a whole career with Riga, and that was followed by a 1200+-TPE build with forward Kasper Kankkunen. Arpa was even Latvian, something that could have sent strong signals to the VHL's Latvian franchise that also happens to have a very good history with developing goalers. Contrary to Busser's selection a few seasons later, I like to think I would have rated this pick very positively, so it's a shock that it went as horribly as it did. I spend a lot of this list in disagreement with the way that BG laid things out, but I think it got the top spot right.

 

 

What do you think? Would you like to see me invent more stats in the future? This article was a lot of work, but it was also lots of fun. If you're curious, you can find my spreadsheet through this link, where I have all the stuff I talked about plus some (disorganized) info on every draft class of the S80s. I hope you enjoyed whichever parts of this you were willing to read, and I'll catch you next time!

 

 

4,900+ words/see you in a month

[Pifferfish 656]

@Gustav  you are a man after my heart. I love making up wierd algorithms to find interesting outliers and shit and this is the creme de le creme. IDK if Lampi is even close to a bust, for the team that drafted me I earned and did well, I believe my earning tapered after I got traded pretty abruptly, I was kind of saddened by this and it derailed my interest a bit. But when I came back I gave @InstantRockstarthe best I could at a hard time in my life, but I felt I was too far behind with Lampi, about to face the depreciation monster, overall happy with how Jørgen has turned out and wishing the best to LA after my unceremonious exit. 

[jacobcarson877 2,594]

The list kept going on and I kept not seeing London's and I was sweating trying to remember what pick I fumbled, and then it ended up being Dil's the whole time!

[Alex 3,279]

4 hours ago, Gustav said:

20. John Richards |  

16th Overall, S86 | RW | 242 TPE | @John Cimarno

BG: 0.48

 

I debated including Richards on this list because the S86 draft was very binary--the first round was one of the most stacked we've ever seen, and the field was pretty limited after that point. Still, there were players after Richards who made something more out of their careers, and it's fair to say that Richards was the first and only real disappointment of S86's first round. Only earning 207 TPE after the draft, Richards also only made the VHL for 4 seasons, three of which were with different teams.

Yeah, this was a weird one… I traded for the pick largely because, @kirbithan, @sadie, and them wanted to play together. Sadly it just didn’t pan out.

[Daniel Janser 2,244]

4 hours ago, Gustav said:

Maybe this is why Devise sold all his picks--what was Toronto thinking? We'll break it all down here.

CGY (and Chicago) so gold standard in drafting during the 80's they are not even on the graph...

[Daniel Janser 2,244]

I had another username in mind related to Arpa, but cannot remember which it was. If I recall correctly they were M GM for a while and kept changing user names...

[sadie 962]

this type of article is always really fun to read, especially when people invent their own stats! 

[Victor 11,070]

26 minutes ago, Daniel Janser said:

I had another username in mind related to Arpa, but cannot remember which it was. If I recall correctly they were M GM for a while and kept changing user names...

16z I think?

 

5 hours ago, Gustav said:

I started writing out @Fire Tortorella's name as "flyersfan" before realizing that his name hasn't been flyersfan1453 (I think that's the number anyway) in years and that much of the community probably has no idea that that was the case and also probably thinks of someone else entirely as flyersfan.

Still get a bit excited (but especially when I first saw him) when I see the new flyersfan and think it's the old flyersfan.

[Daniel Janser 2,244]

11 minutes ago, Victor said:

16z I think?

That is the one, thanks.

[STZ 5,401]

32 minutes ago, Daniel Janser said:

That is the one, thanks.

SixTeenZ

 

[Daniel Janser 2,244]

31 minutes ago, STZ said:

SixTeenZ

 

STZ's multi confirmed

[Spartan 4,589]

0 busts woohoo

[STZ 5,401]

52 minutes ago, Spartan said:

0 busts woohoo

Big celibacy vibes, brother

[Vice 416]

But I wasn't the worst bust. All that matters. Great article @Gustav !

[Grape 766]

2 hours ago, Spartan said:

0 busts woohoo

Too bad your S90 draft picks don't share the same fate

[JCarson 772]

I said it in a prior review, any time I see an article by Gustav I know a few things are going to be true.  First it will be a well written article, not going to hide it I am giving this a 10 out of 10.  Second it will be long, not sure Gustav knows how to limit things to about 500 words, why not use 1500 when 500 will do. Third and lastly, there will be some sort of analytics behind the article. This article again meets all three criteria and doesn't disappoint.  Would love to see a similar article but rating first gen players drafted in the 80's to see which ones panned out the best.

 

Well done, looking forward to the next article.

[Trunkxolotl 180]

Hey! I can send some light on what happened with my player. I was drafted high because I was earning at an extremely high rate before being drafted, and was fairly active on the site and in the community. But the trade + just RL stuff demoralized and I started becoming a more clicking earner after that. I was on pace to do / be better than my 1st gen, just sadly things happened

[Pifferfish 656]

53 minutes ago, Trunkxolotl said:

Hey! I can send some light on what happened with my player. I was drafted high because I was earning at an extremely high rate before being drafted, and was fairly active on the site and in the community. But the trade + just RL stuff demoralized and I started becoming a more clicking earner after that. I was on pace to do / be better than my 1st gen, just sadly things happened

I say you just gotta prove the haters wrong and be a top tier earner this go around. Hoping you the best on this run.

[Gustav 6,510]

4 hours ago, Trunkxolotl said:

Hey! I can send some light on what happened with my player. I was drafted high because I was earning at an extremely high rate before being drafted, and was fairly active on the site and in the community. But the trade + just RL stuff demoralized and I started becoming a more clicking earner after that. I was on pace to do / be better than my 1st gen, just sadly things happened

 

You're super far from the first (and the last) time this has ever happened--situations come up all the time that very understandably remove people from the VHL. The fact that I mentioned you in this article and you're still active enough to read it says a lot.

[solas 1,953]

top ten, you love to see it  

 

(Honestly, I remember being surprised that I was drafted that high with Dvorak. I had been planning to take a break post-JPC and tbh I probably should've instead of immediately recreating)