Why Do I Still Do This? [1/2]

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

I believe I joined the VHL in Season 24, since I think my first player was in the S26 draft class and I joined after the trade deadline. Funnily enough, the VHL wasn't the first hockey sim league I joined. I couldn't even tell you the name of the sim league, other than I want to say it was probably almost a year to a half year before I joined the VHL and they were in an early season number. The dumb thing was after I joined, I was told I couldn't play on a team for what would be a little more than a month (again, don't remember if they were in playoffs or off-season or what, just that I couldn't play). I quickly lost interest. Then, while I was perusing HFBoards, I came across a thread by Claudio32 advertising the Victory Hockey League.

 

I created a defenseman and was quickly claimed on waivers by @Jericho, who was GM of the Ottawa Ice Dogs (now known as the Lynx). We failed to win the Founder's Cup that season, but I was drafted by Ottawa in the Dispersal Draft as a late 1st round pick. During the course of this season, I showed the league to my brother, @Positivefan036, who thought the league was extremely dumb. I specifically remember him saying something to the course of "I have enough homework in school, why do I want to write more stuff outside of school?" Well, I think we know how that all turned out.

 

This media spot isn't about what happened with my first mediocre player, but why I'm still here today. I believe I joined this league in the summer leading up to my senior year of high school. Since then, I've graduate college, celebrated my 4 year work anniversary at my current place of employment, and recently got engaged last Friday. I've now been here for roughly 2/3rds of the league's existence, and with all the change I've gone through personally, I still enjoy coming here almost every single day. (Actually, if I'm being entirely truthful, there were a couple moments when I was a commissioner that I didn't enjoy coming here. Some of you seriously suck at not being complete dicks/assholes, but that's besides the point).

 

Why do I keep coming back?

 

1.) I enjoy winning Continental Cups.

 

The Founder's Cup is pretty cool, and I've won a good number of those, but I really enjoy winning Continental Cups. Since I've been here, I've won 7 of them, leading me tied in 13th with a bunch of other members in the all time list. All but one of my players, Bernie, have won at least one cup - Jim (1), Robin (2 - one of which I won as GM of Riga), Shayne (2), and Jeff (2). I've also won at least 1 cup in every season-decade. I'm hoping that Smitty will be able to continue this trend, and things are looking decent so far. I've never been one for individual awards. In fact, I couldn't even tell you if I've won one, because I don't think I have. While I enjoy individual success and have cared about it a little bit more with a couple of my players over others, at the end of the day, I am here to win championships.

 

2.) The Community

 

The community here is awesome. Along the way, there have been a couple of members I've had disagreements with (but more often they've just had disagreements with me), but overall, everyone here is pretty cool. This place has definitely changed over the years. Originally, it was primarily high schoolers and middle schoolers, and now, it's mostly adults with some high school/college aged people thrown in...I think at least. A lot of us have been here for a while, and as that thread about "Your Favorite VHL Memory" says, there are a lot of good ones. Looking back, a good portion of it was pretty immature, but still funny. We've even survived an attack on our old web site, forcing more than a handful of people to manually add information from the old site to this current one over what I think was a two week period. There were definitely concerns over if the site would shut down for good, but thanks to the hard work of a lot of individuals, we didn't. Oh, and I also enjoy having something to bug @Positivefan036 about too.

 

3.) I want a hall of fame player

 

I've done a lot of stuff in this league. I've been VHLM and VHL GMs, VHL and VHLM Commissioner, grader, Head Grader, mag writer (for multiple brief periods of time), and Board of Governors member. I was inducted as a builder into the Hall of Fame. As I said before, I've won multiple cups. The one thing that has eluded me so far is a hall of fame player. Robin was supposed to be the first one, but a couple of lack luster seasons (for a hall of famer, at least) in the middle of my career, as well as having to retire early as he was a GM player, and he fell short. Shayne was going to be the next one, but he ended up as a good player who won some cups, but nothing to write home about. Same story with Jeff, although he was a little more disappointing, because he was drafted 2nd overall and started out in the VHL with a ton of TPE. Smitty may be my last hope. I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, but I don't know if I have another TPE whore in me, assuming I keep up the max TPE earning ways that I have so far for his career. Like I said before, I care more about cups than I do individual awards, but I'd be lying if this isn't something that I hope I can get before I'm done in this league.

 

So yeah, that's that. I've had a couple spurts of inactivity, but overall, I've been on this site for a very long time now, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

6/3-6/9 and 6/10-6/16

[Motzaburger 1,590]

you do it cause "Yukon 2 gud"

[eaglesfan036 4,605]

16 minutes ago, Motzaburger said:

you do it cause "Yukon 2 gud"

That was me he coined that not him

[Motzaburger 1,590]

Just now, Positivefan036 said:

That was me he coined that not him

That was a Gritty mix-up. Didn't look at user name  

[Phil 5,133]

review:

Congratu-fuckinglations on getting engage @Positivefan036  SO happy for you!! Yea, it's been a while since you've been in the league! I'll be rooting for your player to get HoF status then!! Nice throwback article looking at why you are still kicking around here. It seems to mostly be the same reasons as me to be quite frank! Keep it up! 

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Just now, Phil said:

review:

Congratu-fuckinglations on getting engage @Positivefan036  SO happy for you!! Yea, it's been a while since you've been in the league! I'll be rooting for your player to get HoF status then!! Nice throwback article looking at why you are still kicking around here. It seems to mostly be the same reasons as me to be quite frank! Keep it up! 

 

Pst, wrong member

[Phil 5,133]

3 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

 

Pst, wrong member

 

HAH! I thought I tagged you, @flyersfan1453 muhaha. Sorry. But still.. congrats mang! 

 

@Positivefan036... stay gritty. 

[eaglesfan036 4,605]

56 minutes ago, Phil said:

review:

Congratu-fuckinglations on getting engage @Positivefan036  SO happy for you!! Yea, it's been a while since you've been in the league! I'll be rooting for your player to get HoF status then!! Nice throwback article looking at why you are still kicking around here. It seems to mostly be the same reasons as me to be quite frank! Keep it up! 

Thank you