Claimed:VHLM's Growing Pains - Europe Surging, Brampton Struggling [Final 6/6]

[Renomitsu 934]

VHLM’s Growing Pains – Europe Surging, Brampton Struggling

 

European Overlords

Just as many pundits predicted, Europe is having a renaissance season in the VHLM – the Storm, Red Wolves, and Royals are all tied for points at 16 (although Bern has one fewer game played), while the Watchmen struggle to remain relevant, 9 points behind. In inter-conference games, Europe has simply dominated the competition, racking up a 19W-9L-2OTL. And yeah, a 63.3% winning rate is pretty – but it’s the way Europe, particularly Bern, has surgically torn apart some of the North American teams that really impresses me.

 

 

North Americans do have some pretty good performances against the Europeans from time to time – take the Brampton 6, Bratislava 1 match or the Saskatoon 6, Bratislava 1 match from days 7 and 6, respectively – but it’s mostly the top two NA teams picking on the single rebuilding European team. What’s alarming for the Americans as a whole are complete and total blowouts like this Yukon 0, Bern 9 beauty of a shutout posted by the the Royals, with Zach Parechkin putting up a totally absurd seven goals in a single match; the Blades getting blanked by the Storm, 0-3; or even Saskatoon getting subjugated by Oslo, in which Wesley Babiy posted a hat trick. Now, it’s worth noting seven of Bern’s games are against the anemic Yukon Rush (44 of their 53 goals come from those seven games) – but they’ve also beaten the Red Wolves, had a very close loss gainst the Lynx, and lost to the Storm.

 

Anecdotal evidence isn’t the best way to prove a point, so let’s take some seasonal data from the minors. At the moment, the minors have three teams that have posted one-hundred points or more from goals and assists: the Royals, Red Wolves, and Wild, with the Storm just underneath the threshold at 94. Saskatoon, ostensibly the most competitive team in North America with Brampton just behind, has put up an impressive performance thus far, even going 3-3 against Europe’s three clear contenders. They’ve been able to compete very closely with the Wolves and match the Storm blow-for-blow (2-2) in spite of their lopsided matchup noted earlier. Brampton, on the other hand, is narrowly eking out wins against the Watchmen, with a 4-3 overtime win and a 5-3 victory on Day 2. When it comes to the other three teams, however, Brampton’s 0-2-1, and they’ve even taken a 2-1 overtime loss to Bratislava.

 

One simply needs to look at the rosters for most of these teams for a good indicator of their success this season: as covered in the two most recent VHLM Mags, the Europeans have superior player quality and quantity in most cases. Shots for and shots against are two metrics we can use to compare team competitiveness:

 

 

 

Together, our three European powerhouses have a +492 shot differential, even with the Storm have played over half of their games against the America-dominating Wild. In goals for, three of the top four teams are European (with – you guessed it – the Royals, Red Wolves, and Storm in the top four).

 

In spite of all of this scathing analysis, it’s necessary to provide some context as to why there’s such a disparity between the regions this season. The VHLM Pick Tracker shows that Ottawa, for example holds a huge number of draft picks: seven in the first two rounds of S46, and another three in the first two rounds of S47. Even Brampton, arguably a top-two team in North America, holds three firsts in this season’s Dispersal Draft, and Yukon owns three firsts in the S47 draft. The Red Wolves have thrown all of their bargaining chips into the ring this season, as they’ve only retained two draft picks… for the next two drafts. They’ve the depth and talent to make it deep this season, but the Red Wolves of near-future seasons will have to pay for it.

 

In short, Europe is dominating – but we haven’t seen some matchups play out all the way. As more teams play the Wild, Bern plays a few more games (particularly against their European competitors), and the Red Wolves and Storm get their punches in against some less powerful teams, we’ll start to see more relevant standings.

 

What’s up with the Blades?

The next topic that deserves some attention is Brampton’s struggles to this point in the season. Under new GM Kel, the Blades had just a couple of picks in the first two rounds, selecting defender Saul Hackett (121 TPE) and S45 prospect Maxime Deschamps (107 TPE) in the draft. With bright young faces like Chris Fekete (G, 11 TPE) and Zach Voss (D, 50 TPE) joining the roster in the past couple of weeks, it’s likely the Blades will have a mid-season resurgence if they can weather their early struggles.

 

The Blades just haven’t been performing statistically, however. As shown in the above graphic, they’re at a paltry +6 in shot differential this season – an alarming statistic for a team that may be competing for the North American title this season. With two solid defensemen bringing up their first line, they’re still in the bottom half of the league in Goals Against and last in Penalty Kill % at 2.73 GA and 71.88%, respectively. The only category they can claim the top half of the league in is PIM, at 8.00 minutes/game – and that’s not exactly something to write home about.

 

The Goals Against will settle down as the season progresses, with Fekete gradually gaining steam as he puts some practice time in and becomes better acquainted with the league. But it’s concerning that Brampton’s top two draft picks aren’t producing as they should; some small part of it can be attributed to not having support on their team, but Brampton isn’t hurting for players. They have a few solid forwards (e.g. Lee Sang-Hyeok and Jefferson Jackson), as well as a handful of defenders (Ken Anderson and Voss), among others. The question is, even if Fekete becomes a force to be reckoned with in goal, will Brampton’s skaters (defenders and forwards alike) be able to capitalize on it?

Edited September 15, 2015 by Renomitsu

[Hybrid1486 577]

This guy is legit

[Renomitsu 934]

Glad to see you enjoyed the article! =]

 

I'm hoping to highlight the league as a whole & give some insight into a specific team every week, if possible.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Renomitsu

[Tylar 219]

Content: 3/3 - Your articles are always a good read and interesting. I love your charts and statistics. Probably some of the best media spots to grade cause its so interesting. Europe is definitely a lot better this season although there's some competition in North America but not really. Europe is going to beat up on each other all season much last North America last season. Ottawa's basically been rebuilding for like 3 seasons so that doesn't help NA's really. There is always sucha a difference season to season in VHLM between whose tanking and whose going for it. The Blades once you turn into a bigger beast than you already are will probably be fine later on in the season. 

Grammar: 2/2 - Couple typos
by the the Royals= by the Royals
loss gainst the Lynx = loss against the Lynx

Appearance: 1/1 - Very lovely.

Overall: 6/6

[eaglesfan036 4,598]

Great article! It's nice to see these in depth VHLM articles when I don't pay as much attention to it as I used to

[Renomitsu 934]

Ha! I'll be doing plenty of writing about the VHLM for the mag and in media spots - maybe I'll get a few more reads once I analyze a bit more of the major league.

 

It's rough to see my team struggle in the regular season, but we have some promise for the future. Give Voss & Fekete a little more time, and hopefully we'll see the fruits of our labor. Europe is absolutely dominating the stats in most cases, and the past couple of days' worth of games has shown that even more comprehensively.

[ChrisF 105]

Nice article man, enjoyed it thoroughly

[CowboyinAmerica 2,887]

Claimed