Expansion Thoughts; Will there be a Tenth team Soon?

[Advantage 2,769]

Expansion Thoughts; Will There be a Tenth Team Soon?

 

I returned here a couple of seasons ago for a few reasons.  One was that I missed the league that I called my main sim league for about seven years of my life.  I had been an active and contributing member in the league since roughly Season 17 and it was weird to feel so distant from it, especially while friends like Devise were still fairly significant parts of it.  Another reason I returned was that I felt things like the new League Portal gave the Victory Hockey League a very fresh feel that really resonated with me.  It felt like the league had finally made the considerable changes needed to no longer feel stale and old to the average member.  Finally, and really this was the biggest reason I returned, was that the league was the most active I could ever remember with draft classes consisting having multiple rounds of active players and recruiting not really letting up, in an effort to growing the league.  Due to this activity, we have recently decided to expand the VHL once again, this time to just nine teams.  Therefore, given its theme week and the fact that this was a pretty major announcement, I wanted to spend some time to share my thoughts.

 

First off, I remember being pretty skeptical last time of the rebuild.  It was especially a bit crazy to do two teams last time, but at the time everything was split up and the league wanted to even it out.  Ultimately the move was done far too early as we really weren’t having consistently strong drafts, with the odd super draft and the rest mainly just having enough actives to fill one round with depth players and semi-actives being taken afterwards.  At the time, it was a bit of a mixed reaction, and I feel this season’s expansion announcement is being met with a similar one.  Albeit, I believe it is for different reasons with most of the dislike seemingly being for the locations and not the fact we expanded as a whole.

 

Well I hope people get used to it, cause I have to think that if we have a couple more successful drafts in a row (and every indication seems we will), that we will be expanding to a tenth Victory Hockey League team once again.  It just makes too much sense and while I know some are disappointed that we expanded because of the fact that teams don’t have three full lines of players, I for one don’t really care as much about that as I feel two lines has always worked well as long as we have the number of actives needed to keep the league sustained.  Where would that team go? I’m not sure.  Ultimately, Sweden could return but we could also see a move to a more obscure location like Shanghai or Tokyo.  It wouldn’t really surprise me either way, but alas this is purely speculation and not really what we are here talking about.

 

My thoughts on the VHL Expansion Announcement is that it will be nice to have a team in Russia again.  I’m a little annoyed that I wasn’t talked to about GM’ing as I was promised the next team back when my Express team was stripped from me during the retraction, but ultimately Victor is a good choice.  He isn’t an incredible GM or even one of the league’s best ever, but he is an attractive member for us old guys to play for, and I feel he is a great leader for any team regardless.  If he surrounds himself with the right people, I could see Moscow having a lot of success, assuming he wants to GM in the long term.   So good luck to Victor and I hope things work out this time around for Expansion, and maybe we will see a tenth team soon enough.

[Victor 10,525]

55 minutes ago, Advantage said:

He isn’t an incredible GM or even one of the league’s best ever

[Beaviss 4,949]

1 hour ago, Advantage said:

Expansion Thoughts; Will There be a Tenth Team Soon?

 

With the recruitment stuff I have saved up.............yes