VHL March Madness: Second Round

[Gustav 6,625]

Welcome back to VHL March Madness, the game where I have three of you answer in the format of a March Madness bracket which players you think I personally feel have made the biggest impact on the league, and then I run through the list, make my picks, tell you why, and score your work accordingly. For those of you wondering, my real-life bracket correctly picked Florida as the champion (the first time I've ever managed that!) but ended up 3rd in my work pool behind one other Florida bracket and one that picked Auburn but followed the rankings pretty strongly and absolutely destroyed most of what led up to the finals. 

 

Theme week got in the way of this last week, and I intended to do the next two rounds in this article, but only got to the second. The rest will come in good time, but for now, here's the current state of affairs.

 

(16) Leif Reingaard defeats (9) Lazlo Holmes: I knew I’d have to do this to myself at some point, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d have to do it as part of a Cinderella run. Reingaard has been playing for longer and that is a factor, but he’s also recorded more points per game than Lazlo. If I might talk about my own player a bit before I can’t anymore, though, Lazlo is on pace to shatter his career-best goal total—he’s not putting up enough points to realistically win the Valiq, because apparently I can’t win awards that aren’t MVP, but progress is progress.

 

(5) Jarmo Ruutu defeats (4) Phillip Rave: Ruutu has only won one individual award (Beketov in S95), but he’s also scored more points at a higher rate than Rave and has had a few moderately good checking seasons that Rave never built for. All in all, it puts the Moscow lifer above the Malmo almost-lifer and sets up a matchup with Reingaard in the Sweet 16.

 

(3) Guntis Gavilrovs defeats (11) Red Panda: From memory alone, I believe our panel likes Panda a lot in this pool, and I actually do too. I’m consistently impressed by Gavilrovs, whose name has come up quite a bit in BoG voting, and I just haven’t seen that level of excellence relative to the position from Panda over time. It’s true that Panda has won lots of games with a pretty solid SV% (and also taken a championship), but Gavilrovs swept all three defensive awards last season and has always been pretty impressive defensively regardless of what anyone might want to say about some limited early-career offense. I think that’s just a little more impressive because those things are more individually focused, and I don’t see quite enough to make me sway away from that from Panda. So, even though I may be wrecking some brackets here, Gavilrovs it is for me.

 

(2) Riley Martin defeats (7) Mina: Mina has fewer points in more seasons, but there’s a positional difference here that shouldn’t make that the only factor. As for the rest, both of these players have won one Cup and no individual awards, so we’re even off the stat sheet. Going back on it, Mina has had a couple seasons with decent SB totals, but really nothing else that would suggest exceptional performance on defense. Meanwhile, Martin just recorded a career high in points and has been strongly physical for each of the past two seasons. Plus, even considering the different positions, I would call Martin’s offensive play as a forward a bit stronger than Mina’s as a defender. 

 

--

 

(8) Joshua Schwarzer defeats (1) Antonia Bucatini: The bracket’s format perhaps skews things away from 1 seeds since it’s unlikely that someone who’s played a whole career is leading the league in points still applied—maybe in the future I’ll start seeding by TPE if I keep the same criteria for winners. In any case, that’s basically the reason why Schwarzer takes the win here. Bucatini looks like she’s on track to have a better career, but that’s unproven for the moment and Schwarzer has played well enough that I can’t justify the “better over shorter time” line of reasoning for Bucatini. It is what it is, and March Madness wouldn’t be what it is without upsets.

 

(5) Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage defeats (4) Callum Gary Yannick Janser:  This was one of the matchups I was most looking forward to evaluating in this round, and both of these players are very strong choices as two of the league’s best defenders over the past few seasons. A few things stand out: Bocage has played one more season and has a slightly higher point rate, which isn’t enough to matter at all except that it includes more goals than Janser’s. The main thing Janser has going for himself is significantly more hits, which happens to be something I like a lot and also happens to have been reflected in winning last season’s Wylde. That said, Bocage won both the Labatte and the Valiq in S95 and also took home a Playoff MVP in Moscow’s S94 championship win. Overall, I think there are many more points in favor of Bocage here, and it’s the choice I’ll make even though I’m pretty sure it wrecks at least one bracket pretty substantially.

 

(3) Axle Gunner defeats (6) YaBoi Oven: Another solid player gets eliminated here with Oven, who’s put up a career reminiscent of fellow former Chicago defender Matty Socks in consistently playing great but never winning an award. It was enough to get Socks into the Hall of Fame eventually, and time will tell if the same holds for Oven, but Gunner has a huge award cabinet and the numbers to back it up. All in all, I consider this a pretty decisive win for Gunner, who hasn’t been held up to much of a significant extent yet.

 

(7) Kimi Raikkonen defeats (2) Felicia Hardy: I like Hardy, who will have a great career when all is said and done, a lot, but I don’t think there’s quite enough for me to override higher totals and a Cup on Raikkonen’s end with Hardy’s strong early career. So, Raikkonen moves on to a tough third-round matchup with Gunner.

 

--

 

(1) Logan Ninefingers defeats (9) Forum Content: Our first 1-seed to survive the second round, Ninefingers brings one more season, better offense, and more physicality to the table than Forum Content, who’s done well and consistently improved point totals up to this season but hasn’t built up as much of a body of work as the league’s highest-TPA player. We’ll see if Ninefingers can break through and use that to win some awards at some point, but for now it’s still good enough to move on.

 

(13) Martin Kemp defeats (5) Soju: I could see this flipping the other way, especially since Kemp doesn’t have too many standout seasons. That said, Kemp has a respectable point pace and respectable physical numbers over most of a career, and Soju mostly just rides on winning a bunch of games last season. So, I don’t find it unreasonable to advance Kemp here.

 

(6) Grimgor Ironhide defeats (14) Jebediah Big Ol Doinks in Amish: On first glance, Ironhide looks like the easy winner based on recording more points (and more hits!) in fewer games. That said, Jeb only switched to forward two seasons ago. Overall, I think I still like Ironhide better. He’s played with remarkable consistency since at least S94, and I would say that Jeb just took longer to reach similar production even when considering the position switch. That means Ironhide moves on to the next round to face…

 

(7) WWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWW defeats (2) Jillian Woods: I don’t intend to make “has won MVP” the absolute decider here, but W has also been around longer and played pretty well apart from it. Woods’ career is off to a great start and will probably eclipse W’s time in good time, but it’s not quite enough yet. Some credit has to be given for playing in New York anyway, where the championship drought has lasted longer than my time in the league.

 

--

 

(9) Raimo Tuominen defeats (1) Maverick Goncalves: This is a case of “the winner has been around longer,” but it’s worth noting that Goncalves is a very good player with an easy Round 1 win. So, Tuominen can live knowing that this win required some level of achievement. If we want to cherry-pick a bit, Tuominen has just as many 110-point seasons as Goncalves, as well as the highest single-season total between the two (120). Plus, he won the Funk in S94. Tuominen’s seeding is affected a little by being on the welfare-and-practice-facility diet as of late, but that doesn’t change anything about the stats already on the score sheet.

 

(12) Spanish Moon Moth defeats (4) George Richmond: Richmond has as many points as Moon Moth has played games, which would be a pretty solid mark if not for the fact that Moon Moth far exceeds it. Winning a Brooks and a Szatkowski over the last couple seasons has cemented Moon Moth among the league’s elite of recent memory despite having somewhat lower TPE than would be expected for that tier. The rest of the bracket will tell whether that’s enough to propel Moon Moth to a win, but I’d venture a guess that it’s one of the possibilities.

 

(6) Thor Reingaard defeats (3) Adi Dassler: Dassler just retired early, which doesn’t come as a surprise to those who have been around long enough to understand that his agent has a penchant for doing so. It’s part of the reason why Reingaard definitely wins this, which is a bit funny since these two are essentially the same player with different career lengths. Both have consistently put up 90-some points and a moderate amount of hits each season, neither has significant awards to consider, and Reingaard isn’t retired but already had done this for more time. Thankfully, that makes the choice easy.

 

(15) Dalkr Vidarsson defeats (7) Wayne Gretzky: I wasn’t too sure about this one because I consider Vidarsson somewhat of a less impressive version of W, a goaltender who has won MVP (which—let’s be conscious of this—has swung in goaltenders’ favor in recent seasons) but hasn’t stood out too greatly otherwise. In my opinion, the best goaler in the bracket was Lovstrom, who’s already been knocked out, but some have easier paths than others  and Gretzky doesn’t put up an incredible fight as a forward who’s started to break into 90-point territory but can’t claim anything apart from that. Vidarsson has one season of being the best the league had to offer—and yes, has been around longer.
 

 

This makes our standings as follows:

1. @sadie - 490. I noticed that the first round should have been 270 rather than 280 and adjusted for it as well. LINK
2. @jacobcarson877 - 420 - LINK
3. @Corco - 270 - LINK

 

You can also see the current state of the bracket HERE.

 

Join me next week, or (realistically) whenever I write the next one!

[BOOM 9,126]

I'm not dealing with more than one level of regression...sue me.