Thoughts about the future of VHL teams by an armchair expert. part 1

[hedgehog337 3,480]

Wassup everyone. It's ya favorite GM (at least based on the ASG GM vote where I'll be voted in for like 287th time in a row). And also an armchair expert who like to predict things here in VHL. And being wrong all the time. It's time for another armchair type of an article. Let's talk about all 10 VHL team's future. And by future I mean about the next season, not S72. If you want to see a writing about the distant future; go and bug @CowboyinAmerica about the ''window of contention''. And I'm not even sure if we will even consider about doing that. But you know it's a lie when he's talking about how ''less active'' he will be, yet by the end of his career he's going to break another TPE record. So yeah, go and bother him. 

 

As for this article - this season we had 7 teams that definitely had the eyes on the ultimate price. One of teams is gone already as they didn't manage to make the playoffs. Which makes it more weird,  their GM had to be Devise(!) of all people. Anyways, if you think this will be the rare case of an unlucky GM who had to be an odd man out - watch the next season. With no expasnion and another huge influx of members coming in, we could expect even more contenders in S68. Right now, I'm going to put teams in sort of a tiers. Like good future, bad future and so on. 

 

 

We've just only begun.

 

 

GM: @Banackock

 

Self explanatory. After the last playoffs, Seattle decided to start from the scratch with the hope that this rebuild will finally get them a championship. Also, they managed to get some older decent players from NY for almost non existing price to make them above the trash tier. Some players like Lando Baxter still have some value and they could be sent to a contender for a minor or multiple secondary picks. They do have problems with the S66 draftees, though. The activity of Dangles is inconsistent and Spade is still trapped at his real life job. The only bright spots at this moment are Clayton Park and an unexpected last round steal in Thomas Kennedy. However, by looking at their draft pick tracker we can see that Bana is banking heavily on the next draft class. So their success at rebuild definitely depends on how good he will be at finding S67 gems. I don't expect them to contend until like S69 (speaking about the windows of contention hah) so we won't talk about them a lot in two seasons or so. 

 

 

Getting closer.

 

 

GM: @Victor

 

This section will have two teams in it. And spoilers ahead: both of them are expansion teams. So first of all, Moscow. They had a rough last year, but even there they had some bright moments. Like Kyson Blake's RoTY. Things became even more bright this season - the second best offense in the league. They definitely have the potential - Jaguar and Volosenkov might become the next big one-two-punch thing. And these are not the only S66 players that are active:

 

Beau Buefordsson, Owen May, AJ Axelssen, Dean Clarke, Devin Gabella, Edward Vigenault, Mat Tocco. Just look at that. So many more or less active S66 dudes this team has. They just can run four unique lines with all of them. There's also David Clarkson who's still around.

 

Older players like Gebauer, Nano, Baillie and Weyed are solid too. Expect Victor to search for possibilities in the trade and FA market. But don't you think it's all positive and rainbow in Russia. I must say, their roster is too huge. The Menace GM will have to make the roster clearance in order to bring some superstars in. And don't you think this will be that easy. Some of low TPE players are inactive and don't hold a big value to any team in this league. They are lucky some of them are going to FA, like aforementioned Blake and von Moltke. But what about others, like S65 duo in Matthews and Matteo? Or Tannahill - he just broke the 200 TPE mark...and went south. @gregreg smh. I'd say, Victor will need to have more than one buyout chance to clear all that mess he's going to have next season. Other than that, their future is still good. It's just they can't hold on anymore - S62-64 active guys are becoming older and it's definitely the time when make things in EU more spicy. It's not like Riga or Davos will become that much better, the same for Helsinki.

 

 

GM: @Advantage

 

The rival of Moscow that also happens to be the most recent expansion team. They had a nice start this season, but it didn't last for long. And just like Moscow, they have the momentum to become the buyer. The young S66 guns that are lead by Jerry Garcia and Rusty Shackleford are rising and grinding (other notable names would be Blake guys a.k.a Laughton and Gaudette and LPLL reincarnation in Morpheus Destructious). The S65 players looks more active than Moscow's ones. Some older ones like Moose and the AGM Materazo are included too. So it seems like Malmo is more ready than their Russian counterpart, right?

 

Well, maybe. However, the Nighthawks still has some flaws that needs to be adressed as soon as possible. Someone has told us that Malmo has the younger roster, but let me argue about this. At this moment they actually do have two S61 players. And if Mikka Pajari still has it and will serve as the solid 2C in his last two seasons. Kovalev on the other hand...eh. Which is more important, they are not the future and soon will become the past. But that's not the only thing to worry about. Advantage will really need to think about the goalie situation soon. Carison is enjoying the best times of his career, but he's a S62 guy and it's going to be hard to consider him as the starter caliber player in two seasons. The possible replacement in Jaundice has recently slowed up in practicing. Looks like he won't be something more than a backup tier who might not even be a better one than a bot goalie. I'd say this team really needs superstars to become a relevant contender. Otherwise, Advantage will need to pull a Devise magic to get Malmo into the promisd land.

 

With all of these problems, Malmo still should be considered as the next big thing alongside with Moscow. We may see an exciting showdown between these two at the end of this decade.

 

 

Healthy future, not much issues.

 

GM: a guy who made Kallis Kriketers...BWAHAHAHAAAA

 

Yeah, tooting my own horn here. But there is a reason why I'm doing that. Riga has a tons of active S66 draftees:

 

1. Apollo Hackett;

2. Aron Nielsen

3. Arnor Sigurdsson

4. Hunter Hearst Helmsley

5. Mikko Aaltonen

6. Chico Smeb

 

Damn, that's a lot of quality here. And while majority of them went to welfare recently, they're still earning TPE. So I can't complain about this. Can't forget about the guaranteed callup in Alexander Rodriguez and more draft picks. So yes, the future should be nice in Latvia. Also, I'm not talking about S65 players very often in this article, but my bias will make me to mention a S65 draftee: Anthony Matthews. Some of you thought I would end this on a high note, right? Haha no. Even when it comes to my team, I'm still going to dig some issues and put up on the plate.

 

Remember I was mentioning about the one-two punch stuff when I was typing things about Moscow? I didn't do this without a reason. If a GM can find the right guys to put in one line - he got himself a deadly line that is going to be a nightmare for the opposition. This league currently has a couple of them. Hell, even I had two already in my GM career so far. Krīgars&Locke and Edwin&Cast. This proved to be a winning formula for me most of times. And this is one of the issues I may have in the future. The next one-two punch for Riga? Preencarnacion and Cast are no young anymore and the S68 (last season for both) is not so far away. One of them could be HHH - a rapid TPE earning pace could make him a superstar soon. But what about a winger? Well, there's a problem for me to solve. The next young forward with the best scoring potential seems to be Aaltonen. But can he reach his maximum before it will be too late? Not being able to make this happen might put our team in ''just a good team'' tier. Which would suck for me since I'm not taking losses lightly.

 

Other than that, I see no other big flaws that could derail the Reign's future so far.

 

 

Between beginning and peak.

 

 

GM: @Bushito

 

 

Nothing much to comment about their current status. This is the first contending season after the rebuild and obviously there is some time before they're reaching a maximum. This is your classic young-mixed-with-veterans type of a team. I'm wondering why people are not talking much about this team, but I guess they're just prefering action over talk. Or their members are not that active, including Bash himself. Anyways, they became the best NA team in regular season. Can't complain when you're not forced to play in round 1. As I said already, their future looks fine. Both Bash players, Fish, Fizzlebeef and more S66 call-ups (Frostbeard, Doyle and Dissanayake) in addition. So the young depth is here, just add some superstars (or extend) and Calgary is on the roll again.

 

But of course, I can't do things without mentioning some negatives. First of all, Bana has decided to take Kovalchuk to the FA market. That potentially could leave the Wranglers' defence in a questionable position, provided that he joins the other team in an upcoming off-season. Can't be 100% sure about Ironside, either. The offensive lineup looks nice and that could be enough to re-sign, but he also may search for more promising places. Another question is about Starload. Not his potential FA status. It's just @DilIsPickle is currently the Americans' AGM and is definitely helping them during Spade's MIA. Will Bush take this lightly? After all, the Wrangler's player is basically helping a rival NA team.

 

So yeah, some problems here. But the FA and trade markets should have some star gems so it's not like this team couldn't replace current big players. And maybe they won't have to do it in case if both pending FA's will re-sign. At this moment, I don't see this team going downhill anytime soon.

 

 

Middle of the road

 

 

GM: @ShawnGlade

 

Kinda weird description, ain't it? Like, this is the first season Davos makes the playoffs since S62 and already middle of the road? Well, the current roster def looks more they've been competing for more than one season. S60 Dragomir, S61 Harding, S61 Jokinen; these are some oldies. And I'm not saying they don't have young promsing players. Codrick Past, Charlie Paddywagon plus callups for Batz and Draper. And how about them S67 picks? So it definitely doesn't mean that the Swiss team will be burned out soon. But at some point Shawn will have to make some tough decisions in order to keep his team in contention status. The main core is from S64 and they will head into the prime years next season. And it will be damn hard to keep them in one team, considering that they also have more high profile players in Rylan Peace and Ryuu Crimson. I won't even be surprised if their GM is going make a big splash in the trade market following this season.

 

Ok, now about their negatives. Oh, you thought I'm going to name them? The thing is, I already did it in the first paragraph. Other than having too much prime players, they don't have any other big flaws to cover. Expect them to refresh a roster in one or two seasons to keep the window of contention [AGAIN this phrase!].

 

 

Part 1 of this is done. Part 2 very soon, as always.

 

6x4=24 TPE goes to Kallis.

 

11.06 - 17.06

18.06 - 24.06

25.06 - 01.07

02.07 - 08.07

 

 

[Matt_O 896]

Scott Shawnigen is still getting slept on. I know he hasn't updated since January but he dropped 92 points for Seattle, including 40 goals, at 340 TPE, more points than guys like Beau Louth, Rylan Peace, anyone on New York (where he was traded from), Veran Dragomir, and many others. Sad to see no one mentioning him

[Banackock 7,974]

“Don’t vote for Bana and Hedge again wah”

[hedgehog337 3,480]

5 hours ago, Matt_O said:

Scott Shawnigen is still getting slept on. I know he hasn't updated since January but he dropped 92 points for Seattle, including 40 goals, at 340 TPE, more points than guys like Beau Louth, Rylan Peace, anyone on New York (where he was traded from), Veran Dragomir, and many others. Sad to see no one mentioning him

 

Shawinganen had a nice season on a rebuilding Seattle. But he def isn't their future and will be dumped out as soon as they're gon get enough active young players.

[ShawnGlade 1,010]

[CowboyinAmerica 2,840]

14 hours ago, hedgehog337 said:

 And by future I mean about the next season, not S72. If you want to see a writing about the distant future; go and bug @CowboyinAmerica about the ''window of contention''. And I'm not even sure if we will even consider about doing that. But you know it's a lie when he's talking about how ''less active'' he will be, yet by the end of his career he's going to break another TPE record. So yeah, go and bother him. 

 

 (Enjoyed the article)