Three Things I’ll Remember the S50’s for

[Tagger 2,722]

 

So I was reading Hybrid’s article about how nearly all of the players who created between Season 50 and 59 are retired and the latter part of the article talked about members reminiscing on that era. That got me thinking; what came to my mind when I thought about the S50’s and, in short, I’m so glad we’re out of that era and in the current era we’re in now that has the VHL looking better than I’ve ever seen it. If you want some perspective on why I feel that way, here are the things I remember most about the Season 50’s:

 

Season 51 Draft

 

I don’t care that this draft had a player who made it into the Hall of Fame, this is undisputedly the worst draft class ever to be seen in the VHL. Why? Well, after that Hall of Famer (which was goalie Apollo Skye), you had Robert Jelen selected second overall who only put up 140 points in six VHL seasons and ended his career with only 150 TPA. That wasn’t a case of the GM picking the wrong player to pick at this position though because he was actually the only viable candidate. Third overall pick Chris Fekete Jr. played two seasons in the VHL for the Dynamo, accruing 21 points and 58 TPA. His career was so memorable that no one ever pointed out that his name was spelled wrong in the index and I honestly thought he was a goalie till I did research for this article. Fourth overall was our best first-gen of the draft Brent Hardy who had 57 TPA and he never played a single game in the VHL. Fifth overall pick Shaka was the only other player selected in this draft who saw any VHL game time (he had a surprisingly high 33 point season for Calgary in Season 53), but he only had 43 TPA. To put those career TPA totals into perspective, projected first overall pick of the Season 65 Draft Carles Puigdemont already had 21 TPA more than picks 2-5 in the Season 51 Draft accrued combined over the course of their career. Given that this took place during a rebuild at New York, I was very lucky to have been able to trade our first in this draft away for a Bobby Digital in his rookie season, a player who earned over 900 TPE and ranks in the top ten for players with most assists as a New York American.

 

The Two Player Rule

 

For its 50^th anniversary, the league wanted to do something special to mark the occasion and the decision was made to allow any member to create two players. Ten members were selected by lottery to be allowed to create second players for each of the Season 52 and 53 draft classes before the process was opened up to any applicant for the Season 54 draft. So surmise how successful this rule wound up being, well not only was the two player rule brought in during the S50’s, it was also abolished in the S50’s at the same time that the league contracted ahead of Season 58 (although GM second players were allowed to remain, a curious decision given that GM second players had the most controversy surrounding them during the two player period). One of the reasons for the change were that it was being seen as having a detrimental effect on some members who obviously wanted a second player but found the workload of maintaining a second player too much. When you consider though that the drafts during this period were still struggling for actives after the top end of the second round, you’d have to say it was a necessary addition for the era (although it is worth pointing out that the rules original intention upon implementation wasn’t to specifically save these weak draft classes, that is what it wound up doing). People have stated that they would like to see the two player rule come back in some form, preferably without the requirement to do point tasks for both players and while re-implementing the rule is no longer necessary to fill up rosters, maybe there will come a time where it will be re-introduced.

 

The Worst of the VHLM

 

During the S50’s the number of VHLM teams in the league were cut from eight to five. That wasn’t really what I remember the most about it though and didn’t stick out the most, at least to myself personally. While obviously a five team VHLM would be crazy nowadays, a look at the Season 51 index where half the teams are predominantly bots and even the good teams weren’t actually good (Moscow Red Wolves for example had the second best regular season record, but only one player from their roster that season eventually crossed 200 TPE) will show why the league had to take those kind of measures to ensure a somewhat decent developmental experience for members. Unfortunately though, the VHLM experience I remember the most was the one I had with Aackckqz Ky, the last player I had before creating Preencarnacion. It took four days upon my creation for a GM to actually make me an offer despite creating at the trade deadline (where obviously GM’s should expect players to be created) and then a further five days after signing to be added into the VHLM sim, so it took nine days after creating Ky that I was actually in the sim! The worst parts of this were that it wasn’t just myself as several new players were not getting put into the sims or being offered contracts around the same time and even after waiting as long as they did, they were put in wrong (I remember a goalie made by Molholt entered the sim with 1’s in every category) and it wasn’t like the GMs was overlooking members who hadn’t made an impact on the league previously as three of us (myself, Jericho and Molholt) had all had Hall of Fame players at some point in our VHL career. That led me to putting up a long post in my own Thunderdome forum (If anyone was wondering who YEAH! was, that was my previous username) and I believe is the only Thunderdome topic I’ve ever made in the VHL.

 

 

1061 Words, Using for Weeks Ending 2/17 and 2/24

[Hybrid1486 577]

7 minutes ago, Tagger said:

Season 51 Draft

 

I don’t care that this draft had a player who made it into the Hall of Fame, this is undisputedly the worst draft class ever to be seen in the VHL.

Even worse than S22? I hope so, I need that boondoggle off my back....

[Victor 10,536]

30 minutes ago, Hybrid1486 said:

Even worse than S22? I hope so, I need that boondoggle off my back....

I feel like S22 got a bad rap anyway. I mean it was shit but we've had worse.