No seriously Malmo is top of the league?

[Victor 10,940]

So I had a drink, get back home, oh look there's some games posted – OH WAIT, why do I care when all I'll get from looking at them is fucking heartache.

 

Look, I don't care about Moscow's results too much this season, I just want the guys to have productive seasons and that's largely happening. Our chances were always slim with the youngest goalie in the league and a defence which doesn't protect him too much, although I don't why the sim prefers to tease us by constantly outshooting the opposition and losing by one goal.

 

But elsewhere... I mean Riga just scored no goals in 2 games which obviously makes sense when you have like 2,000 TPE across the top 2 players (both forwards I might add). And Malmo... I don't know what I even said last week to get Malmo's knickers in a twist but apparently it's had the same effect as when I called out Devise for selling the farm and then Toronto went on to win two Continental Cups.

 

But honestly, why should I even give a fuck? Why waste my efforts on a sim engine which gives two cups to Toronto and is now presumably gonna let Malmo walk the league in its first season? Why spend any time wondering how Johnny Are-You-Havenk-A-Laugh Carison is the greatest goalie in the league ever since the start of the S65 playoffs with his mighty 531 TPE? What is actually the point of this league? Malmo has two (2) skaters over 500 TPA, and three (3) with more than 90 Scoring SO NATURALLY THEY ARE THE TOP SCORERS IN THE LEAGUE. Of fucking course they are, like anything would make any more sense.

 

I'm actually relatively calm. I've left before, I'll leave again, it's not 2012 so I'm not personally affected by what happens in this league anymore. And of course I'm only going to make a fuss when it's my teams getting hit. That's what people do and that's exactly why this can be easily discredited. But think beyond my personal bias. How did Vancouver miss the playoffs last seasons? How did Seattle win nothing despite having the best team in the league for two seasons' running? How does Veran Dragomir have one 100 point season to his name despite being one of the top 3 forwards for an eternity? How is Julian Borwinn still trying to hit the heights of his rookie seasons despite having over 900 TPE now?

 

Is any of that fair? Is any of it rewarding? Maybe it shouldn't be. But that's not something I want to put my efforts into.

[Beketov 9,025]

Honestly parity has been a longtime goal of the league and I think we’re finally realizing what parity truly can mean: random results. Ultimately the sim is random so if two teams are both good it’s gonna act random. Does that explain Toronto’s two cups and Seattle getting nothing or Vancouver missing the playoffs? Not really. Also doesn’t fully explain Malmo but my guess there is simply what we’ve known for a bit now: the first 500 TPE is more important than the next 1000. Their players aren’t monsters but they are good enough. Combined with some nice chemistry gets them success.

 

Maybe I should have signed with Malmo. Would have cursed them to the “middle of the pack” spot they logically should be in.

[Gustav 6,407]

4 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Maybe I should have signed with Malmo

Agreed

[diamond_ace 3,112]

5 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Honestly parity has been a longtime goal of the league and I think we’re finally realizing what parity truly can mean: random results. Ultimately the sim is random so if two teams are both good it’s gonna act random. Does that explain Toronto’s two cups and Seattle getting nothing or Vancouver missing the playoffs? Not really. Also doesn’t fully explain Malmo but my guess there is simply what we’ve known for a bit now: the first 500 TPE is more important than the next 1000. Their players aren’t monsters but they are good enough. Combined with some nice chemistry gets them success.

 

Maybe I should have signed with Malmo. Would have cursed them to the “middle of the pack” spot they logically should be in.

To be fair, I've been fighting against the league's efforts of parity. I've said on several occasions that I didn't care about bringing in parity and that it was weird that everyone wanted it so badly. Now that we're getting the weird results: MAYBE I WAS RIGHT. Maybe parity is overrated

[Devise 4,475]

23 minutes ago, diamond_ace said:

To be fair, I've been fighting against the league's efforts of parity. I've said on several occasions that I didn't care about bringing in parity and that it was weird that everyone wanted it so badly. Now that we're getting the weird results: MAYBE I WAS RIGHT. Maybe parity is overrated

 

The thing is, parity can often create organic narratives that while at times stinging to certain members/players usually come full circle or expand in ways that in essence, define the sport. See: The NHL. I also think the VHL oft enjoyed such enjoyed a long tenure with less parity that seeing it now is kind of an interesting study of how it works with the teams and player make ups we've had etc. That said, while in previous era's league parity was far lower, the top 3-4 teams in the playoffs were still rolling dice just as badly as playoffs are now, so I can kind of understand the perception that we went from just having wild playoff results to straight up, any team can beat any team regular season have fun trying to decide what compete and rebuild means now. 

 

I don't know if we have pushed so far into that other direction yet though. I think it's too early to say. That said all the evidence does suggest that any team can beat any other team at this point in VHL, rebuilding be damned. What was once thought of as "stat pad" teams are turning into hard points even if on aggregate those clubs still ultimately miss playoffs. 

 

@Victor As for Malmo, all silly rivalry jokes aside if Malmo is still in first place by 30 games played you need to up and shade Riga next season. Because clearly you figured out the secret to it all. I thought Malmo may win a few more games than people expected but yeah the sim gods have given JHC a magic that I guess all the other 800+ TPE goalies can't get? Hell you see Pepper and them even having bad games against rebuilding clubs. 

Edited May 12, 2019 by Devise

[diamond_ace 3,112]

2 minutes ago, Devise said:

 

The thing is, parity can often create organic narratives that while at times stinging to certain members/players usually come full circle or expand in ways that in essence, define the sport. See: The NHL. I also think the VHL oft enjoyed such enjoyed a long tenure with less parity that seeing it now is kind of an interesting study of how it works with the teams and player make ups we've had etc. That said, while in previous era's league parity was far lower, the top 3-4 teams in the playoffs were still rolling dice just as badly as playoffs are now, so I can kind of understand the perception that we went from just having wild playoff results to straight up, any team can beat any team regular season have fun trying to decide what compete and rebuild means now. 

 

I don't know if we have pushed so far into that other direction yet though. I think it's too early to say. That said all the evidence does suggest that any team can beat any other team at this point in VHL, rebuilding be damned. What was once thought of as "stat pad" teams are turning into hard points even if on aggregate those clubs still ultimately miss playoffs. 

Fuck narratives. Let's let the shitty teams be shitty again

[Beketov 9,025]

9 minutes ago, Devise said:

the sim gods have given JHC a magic that I guess all the other 800+ TPE goalies can't get?

I long ago accepted that STHS decided if goalies will be iffy or god tier at creation regardless of TPE.

[Devise 4,475]

1 minute ago, diamond_ace said:

Fuck narratives. Let's let the shitty teams be shitty again

 

How? Short of further expanding the VHL or overstuffing VHLM I don't really see the options? While it'd be cool to, with the larger player pool tier our players more like Jr, AHL, NHL, aka VHL, VHLM and some other form, player careers are far too short for that. Plus the way our drafting is set up wouldn't really allow for a clean transition to do anything like that.

 

Hell even if your talking like expand, in order to facilitate what you want you'd need to expand to like 14 VHL teams just to thin it out, which isn't clean at all and basically just robs teams of assets they used. But if you expand one team at a time like we have been chances are the expansion team going to be good and not deplete anything from others vital enough that you get what we have now with just another team haha. 

[eaglesfan036 4,602]

The season is still young and Malmo hasn't won anything yet, hold your horses.

 

I haven't looked at their schedule but have they played easier teams so far? This kind of stuff has happened before.

 

Also I know Vancouver played their backup against them, has anyone else so far? Too lazy to check.

 

Maybe Malmo will be good but the point is don't come to any conclusions yet

[BOOM 8,745]

2 hours ago, Positivefan036 said:

The season is still young and Malmo hasn't won anything yet... 

 

Except for the multitude of fans and admirers around the VHL.