I'm Not VHLM Commish, But...

[Gustav 6,406]

...the VHLM has a problem. I'm not applying to be VHLM commish for some real-life reasons (running drafts isn't something I could ever guarantee I'd be there for with my current schedule, and I'm in the busiest semester I've had yet with probably at least a couple more at this level to come), but that doesn't mean I don't have my ideas. And they're strongly-held enough that I figured I'd get them out there before news of the next hire broke so I don't look like I'm saying "hey, [REDACTED], here's what you should be doing with your job now that you've got it." These are just my own opinions on how things should be run. I don't even have a reason to write this up this week (well, I do--hello EFL affiliate check!) but it's probably the best time to do it and it's something I feel I need to get out there as there is, and always has been, a lot happening that ideally should never happen in a league that claims to be retention-first.

 

The VHLM is only a very loose draft pick limit away from going full ancap. Debate all you want about real-life politics, but in this specific situation that is positively not a good thing. Let's get on with the Ninety-Five Theses airing of grievances personal vendetta explanation.

 

There's a problem with inactive players. 

All too often, a team will end up with a player at a high TPE level who isn't earning and/or just isn't even active. These players will, again, all too often end up sucking in huge amounts of ice time and putting up big numbers, season after season, until eventually their contract expires, or they come back around in the offseason to sign a contract and then just straight-up disappear for the next two months, taking time away from the new guys so the GM can feel better about themselves. This happens way too often to be ignored, and it's clear that a loose "if you're found to be using inactives over actives, you'll be punished" rule isn't cutting it (Minnesota got in trouble for this just this season--it was the first time I've ever seen that happen, and they're hardly the only guilty party). So, what I'm suggesting is this:

 

Any player with 150 TPE or greater, who has not updated in the past four weeks, will be removed from their team at the start of a season.

But, Gustav, this can be circumvented! GMs can have someone slow their earning and only claim practice facility every week once they hit 200, or get them on to claim it once three weeks before the cutoff every season!

Too bad! There's a reasonable response to that.

Any GM found to be circumventing this rule should be punished accordingly. Player audits should be done every offseason to ensure that "active" players are earning consistently.

AND

No player may spend more than four seasons in the VHLM. Have you been down for four seasons? Are you active? Cool, you get moved up to the VHL. You should have a respectable amount of TPE by that point--and, in fact, no consistent earner will be down for any longer than this (no consistent earner will be down for any longer than three, but I'm willing to give the player the benefit of the doubt). 

 

 

There's a serious boom-and-bust cycle that's directly hurting recruitment and retention.

Do you have picks? Cool, you compete. Do you not have picks? You sell everything you've got and hope for the best return. On top of this leading to some seriously messed-up standings every season, there's also a direct incentive to NOT offer to new players. Teams at the top of the standings don't want to bring in newer, lower-TPE players who they're theoretically obligated to put on the ice, and teams at the bottom don't want to accidentally get better and tank their draft position. I've got a bit of a two-pronged solution to this one.

 

Reduce the pick limit. Right now, VHLM teams are limited to three first-round and three second-round picks in each draft. Take this down to two each. This makes it more difficult to stack up a team by buying, and it also makes it more difficult to stack up picks by tanking. Sure, there can be some parity every season, and there will be a meta if this is the only change, but it won't be as extreme.

 

Change the waiver system. Every season, there are players who create and then proceed to see not even a single offer. There are always one or two teams who fill up their waiver spots right away--and that's great. There are also a few teams who don't offer to anyone, whether they're at the top and claiming they're "full" (while usually playing high-TPE inactives) or at the bottom and quietly hoping for some luck in the draft lottery. This leads to a few situations where, often later on in the season, players will create and go unsigned. One player going unsigned is too many. So, here's what I'd like to suggest.

Make the waiver limit larger, or even eliminate it entirely. There is no reason why a GM who has done a great job bringing in players should effectively be told that they can't continue to do a great job bringing in players. This can even make the standings more interesting as this might make it possible for a lower-level or mid-level team to climb above where they were at the start of the season.

OR

If, after 24 hours, a player has received no signing offers, they will be automatically assigned to the team with the lowest number of waiver signings, assuming said team has room on their roster. If there are multiple teams with the same number of signings, the team who gets said player will be picked from those teams at random. This, surprisingly, hasn't been much of an issue this season, even with the latest recruitment drive, but I can see teams, post-deadline, saying "no, I don't want to offer to this player because they're 30 TPE" and watching them get bored after receiving zero offers and quit. Oh, and also, if the team in question has no room on their roster by virtue of making use of inactive players, inactives will be removed to make room by commissioner discretion. Are you high up in the standings and getting assigned 30-TPE players and having your 200-TPE inactives cut after the deadline because you failed to sign anyone before then? Too bad, maybe you should have been less selfish early on in the season. Commissioners should also run random checks on ice time for low-TPE active players, to ensure that they're getting a reasonable amount of it. 

 

Again, the VHLM is meant to be retention-first. The VHLM claims to be retention-first. The problem with that is that the VHLM is not retention-first. It's time to make it that way.

 

prepares for thread to blow up

[Berocka 2,263]

I think the picks should be limited to a max of 3 picks in the first two rounds and a max of two picks in the first round.

Also a team should have a floor of 2 picks in the first four rounds. This way it limits people from tanking too hard or going to hard in for one draft.

 

This can obviously be circumvented using trades after the draft so you would need to keep a minimum of players from your draft. 

[Garsh 1,190]

I don't have any solutions to offer but I absolutely agree that the sell all our picks to compete in a season seems a bit at odds with what the M is supposed to do.  

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

PREACH

 

I still have no idea why the VHLM draft pick restrictions were ever removed. I want to say the limit was 3 first round picks in a single season, but it could have been as low as 2.

[Berocka 2,263]

50 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

PREACH

 

I still have no idea why the VHLM draft pick restrictions were ever removed. I want to say the limit was 3 first round picks in a single season, but it could have been as low as 2.

There are still limits a max of 3 firsts and 3 seconds

[Peace 1,528]

I'll be the first to admit I'm a culprit of one of the things mentioned in this article, as I'm sure other GMs are as well. It is an intentional thing, it is absolutely a strategy that I employed, add I can guarantee you that -- at the cost of competing one year and completely tanking the other -- it worked well for Saskatoon. Here's the thing, when you did it like I did, when you were a shit-tier team someone else had your entire draft stock. 

So... let me comment on this particular issue.  

 

3 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

There's a serious boom-and-bust cycle that's directly hurting recruitment and retention.

Do you have picks? Cool, you compete. Do you not have picks? You sell everything you've got and hope for the best return. On top of this leading to some seriously messed-up standings every season, there's also a direct incentive to NOT offer to new players. Teams at the top of the standings don't want to bring in newer, lower-TPE players who they're theoretically obligated to put on the ice, and teams at the bottom don't want to accidentally get better and tank their draft position. I've got a bit of a two-pronged solution to this one.

When I was GM of Saskatoon, this was absolute correct for the team I managed... alright, maybe not all of it, but the underlined part is. You see, when I felt we could compete, I completely sold everything I had in order to ensure I could get high enough to win championships. I did it in S63, sat at the bottom of the barrel for S64, recovered slightly in S65 and went all in again in S66. The process of my time in Saskatoon can accurately be summed by this line: Contender-Trash-Bubble-Contender. 

S63? Champion. 
S64? Trash
S65: Bubble
S66: Contender (we lost to Philly in a series that made no sense IMO)
S67: Trash
S68: Bubble
S69: Champion. 

Had things gone correctly for me in 66, I would have had a very obvious cycle as a VHLM GM, although it is very much obvious.

That was a strategy. 

A strategy I used to ensure I was competitive every third season while also being available to offer new players contracts.

The catch? You can see my post history if you want, but I'm confident I did my job correctly, so I will state I feel as if I was offering on most players. Aside from S69, which Saskatoon literally had no room, I was still engaging with new players and offering limited ice time or explaining going with another team would be a wiser decision. Some would respond, some would take a third line position and ~10 minutes of ice time, and others would completely ignore me and sign elsewhere.  

Throughout my time as a VHLM GM I made an offer to players when I could, I'll admit I missed a few, I'm human and miss notifications from time to time. Sure, they're right in front of you at the start, but when you've got seven chained up together during a recruitment drive it's human error you got six of those seven and forgot the unfortunate first guy who created. It didn't happen often, but I know it did happen, especially when another team picked up the slack and made an offer after it was brought to our attention on Discord. 

Every VHLM GM during my time as one is guilty of that.

There was one thing I never did, though, and that was intentionally playing an inactive over an active player. Hell, I would get angry at GMs who did in the VHLM GM Discord chat, and I'm sure those fights with 'target GM' are buried behind those closed doors. Saskatoon had a player that went through the minors to become a piece of controversy, Danny DeYeeto, although I proved numerous times during his time in SSK he was indeed active. PMs of Cran and I conversing on the forum, him logging in every once and a while to check the box scores and do what ever else it is he did, and him ignoring my Discord invites a few times. More truths came out later, and part of me feels a little guilty I was associated with the name. 

 

You make a lot of good points, Gustav, very well done. 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Peace

[Gustav 6,406]

1 minute ago, Peace said:

A strategy I used to ensure I was competitive every third season while also being available to offer new players contracts.

The catch? You can see my post history if you want, but I'm confident I did my job correctly, so I will state I feel as if I was offering on most players. Aside from S69, which Saskatoon literally had no room, I was still engaging with new players and offering limited ice time or explaining going with another team would be a wiser decision. Some would respond, some would take a third line position and ~10 minutes of ice time, and others would completely ignore me and sign elsewhere.  

 

And this is fine. I don't think it's as much of a problem for bad teams as it is for good ones. I've seen many good teams (not necessarily S69 SSK) just stop offering on new players when they did have roster space, presumably because they didn't want to take someone on who was lower-TPE. Of course that makes sense for the GMs from a winning perspective, and I'd even argue that that isn't an issue so much as the fact that that's currently tolerated (not officially but in the sense that punishment is much more rare than the transgression). 

 

At the moment I feel that it's impossible to run even a moderately successful VHLM team without abusing the system in some way that it should never be meant to be used. Just about everyone who has been a VHLM GM in recent memory (myself included) is guilty of something mentioned here to some extent. Whether or not there's any sort of malicious intent is a different question entirely--it's just the way the league happens to work right now and the rules have to change before management strategies ever will.

[DMaximus 1,046]

I like the topic. Thanks for bringing it up.

 

I would eliminate any inactive player, period. Not just at the start of the season. I think that's the best way to keep all teams engaged and trying to continually sign waiver players.

I love the suggestion of the auto-assignment of players if no offers are given. And there should be no waiver limit.

I'd set the maximum number of seasons in the minors at 3. After your player rights expire, you're no longer able to sign to a team. Eliminate free agents completely. 

Maybe do something like force teams to run 3 complete lines (9-4-1 or 9-6-1). If you don't have enough players, you must play bots. 

I'm not sure there's a need for draft pick restrictions if those other measures are put in place.

I definitely agree that there should be much more "hands on" commissioner audits of all rosters throughout the season.

 

I think there's been a large disservice to the VHLM because of the often repeated mantra that it's not about winning, it's about retention. Winning is one of the greatest retention tools possible. So if you're tanking multiple seasons, you're hurting the league as a whole.

[mattyIceman 1,213]

Yeah, these points all make sense.

 

There needs to be doorman ensuring that this new paradigm remains respected and intact though

 

Quote

"If you don't have enough players, you must play bots"

 

- No bots.  Enforce a trade with a team that has surplus or over-recruits

Edited October 8, 2020 by MattyIce

[Peace 1,528]

1 minute ago, GustavMattias said:

 

And this is fine. I don't think it's as much of a problem for bad teams as it is for good ones. I've seen many good teams (not necessarily S69 SSK) just stop offering on new players when they did have roster space, presumably because they didn't want to take someone on who was lower-TPE. Of course that makes sense for the GMs from a winning perspective, and I'd even argue that that isn't an issue so much as the fact that that's currently tolerated (not officially but in the sense that punishment is much more rare than the transgression). 

 

At the moment I feel that it's impossible to run even a moderately successful VHLM team without abusing the system in some way that it should never be meant to be used. Just about everyone who has been a VHLM GM in recent memory (myself included) is guilty of something mentioned here to some extent. Whether or not there's any sort of malicious intent is a different question entirely--it's just the way the league happens to work right now and the rules have to change before management strategies ever will.

There's a term for what I visualize what is happening. In the military world... for some countries anyway... bending, breaking, and testing vulnerabilities in any system or whatever is called penetration tests. I know, hue hue, but if the rules became adaptive to combat the exploits that appear, I think most of the issues would be resolved with decent efficiency.

[Gustav 6,406]

47 minutes ago, MattyIce said:

- No bots.  Enforce a trade with a team that has surplus or over-recruits

 

49 minutes ago, DMaximus said:

Maybe do something like force teams to run 3 complete lines (9-4-1 or 9-6-1). If you don't have enough players, you must play bots.

 

I'm not sure either of these sounds like the best idea. On one hand, you've got a situation that, while it incentivizes a team to go out and get players, also directly leads to active players being benched in favor of bot players. On the other hand, you've got something that's far too authoritarian for the tastes of most (including myself, the guy who just wrote the "VHLM needs more restrictions" article). Ideally, whatever policies are put into place will make teams want to take on new players in the sense that they make waiver signings more valuable and more part of a team's actual strategy to succeed and less in the sense that "if I don't make an offer here, I might get punished, so now I have to even though I don't care about the player".

[DMaximus 1,046]

7 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Ideally, whatever policies are put into place will make teams want to take on new players in the sense that they make waiver signings more valuable and more part of a team's actual strategy to succeed and less in the sense that "if I don't make an offer here, I might get punished, so now I have to even though I don't care about the player".

Doesn’t the “automatically put an unoffered player on the team with the least signings” fall into that same camp?

 

I think the way to make waiver signees more valuable is to shower them with TPE, so they are more attractive. I think the catch-up TPE is a great first step. We should go further and do something like give all first gens double TPE for all tasks for their first month. That way when a team signs a waiver player, they’re not just signing someone who might get to 100 TPE if everything goes great and likely hurt the team more than help it, they’re getting someone who could be a major contributor to the team. Plus it incentivizes activity from all new players and helps them learn the site, which is exactly what we want to promote. 

[bigAL 2,176]

Holy hell Gus, every idea you pitch here is on point. If you're refusing to be commissioner, you should definitely be hired on as a senior policy advisor.

 

I think the most true point here comes from commish hopeful DMax:

17 minutes ago, DMaximus said:

I think the way to make waiver signees more valuable is to shower them with TPE

Players who show up midseason or later often join, suck because of their low TPE, see their peers killing it with higher stats, and give up and leave. New players need more opportunities to earn, to learn what our site is all about, to practice writing articles, to incentivize following the league stats/standings. Having more activity for new members will make them more active - it's the root word of activity anyways.

 

I love all the ideas about inactives. Get rid of them when they get rid of us. Don't have new members be teammates with someone who's ahead of them in the depth chart but does none of the work. Filter them out before they make it to the big leagues and drag a competitive team down with their stagnant TPE. Reward the people who want to be here. 

 

I think one big bonus unintended consequence of forcibly removing inactives is that the VHL will become a more pure, competitive, and exciting league. The VHLM will filter out all inactives so the big leagues end up being entirely (mostly) active players. 

 

Inactive members are not part of our community - they are people who made a conscious effort that this place wasn't for them and left. Let's a) honour their wishes and cut them loose, and b) actively reward the new members who do stay.

 

Yes, winning is attractive to new and old members. But competing, having a reason to check the scores around the league, fighting for a playoff spot before clinching/eliminated two weeks into the season is more attractive.

 

TLDR: My vote for commish goes to whoever will be Gus' puppet

[DMaximus 1,046]

3 minutes ago, bigAL said:

New players need more opportunities to earn, to learn what our site is all about, to practice writing articles, to incentivize following the league stats/standings.

 

To riff off of this, I was thinking there should be some sort of "tutorial" new players can complete, that demonstrates different areas of the site. Maybe each section of the tutorial has a short quiz, if they answer correctly, they earn like 10 TPE. Have 5 of those sections, boom 50 TPE for a new signup, might be easier than doubling all tasks like I previously suggested.

[Smarch 3,150]

@chatfan036 look at those VHLM commishes not firing people for playing in-actives over actives in the VHLM. 

 

@flyersfan1453 wasn't the restrictions 2 picks in the 1st and 2 picks in the 2nd?

[eaglesfan036 4,599]

PREACH GUSTAV

 

Also, this is the perfect opportunity for me to plug my latest VHLM proposal of running a re-draft every season. This completely removes the boom or bust of teams and stops teams from the tanking competing cycle. 

 

 

[bigAL 2,176]

3 hours ago, DMaximus said:

there should be some sort of "tutorial" new players can complete

I'm surprised @Beaviss hasn't demanded this yet, it seems like a significant portion of his time and energy is doing exactly this on the forum and discord

[bigAL 2,176]

Also I love all the ideas coming from the peanut gallery. We should have auditions for commissioners regularly - it seems like a good incentive for people to acknowledge real problems in the league and propose real policy solutions.

[Beaviss 4,957]

1 minute ago, bigAL said:

I'm surprised @Beaviss hasn't demanded this yet, it seems like a significant portion of his time and energy is doing exactly this on the forum and discord

 

I've thought about it but don't know how to execute it properly so its on the back burner.

 

[Gustav 6,406]

9 minutes ago, Beaviss said:

 

I've thought about it but don't know how to execute it properly so its on the back burner.

 

 

What about a sort of one-time trivia thing where new people can take a quiz on how things work with easy questions ("What's the most uncapped TPE you can earn in a week," "How many teams are there in the VHLM," stuff like that) and get a small amount of TPE based on correct answers? You'd have to complete it while still in the VHLM with your first player, and someone would have to monitor it every week and make a payout post, but it could definitely work and serve some informational purpose.

 

If this were on Google Forms, too, they'd be able to see correct answers upon completion.

Edited October 8, 2020 by GustavMattias

[Beaviss 4,957]

1 minute ago, GustavMattias said:

 

What about a sort of one-time trivia thing where new people can take a quiz on how things work with easy questions ("What's the most uncapped TPE you can earn in a week," "How many teams are there in the VHLM," stuff like that) and get a small amount of TPE based on correct answers? You'd have to complete it while still in the VHLM with your first player, and someone would have to monitor it every week and make a payout post, but it could definitely work and serve some informational purpose.

 

If this were on Google Forms, too, they'd be able to see correct answers upon completion.

 

The one thing I thought of was a weekly task tracker on the manage page on the portal.

 

a little window in the corner that shows:

Weekly Tasks:

Point Task(6 TPE) *not completed*
Practice Facility(2 TPE) COMPLETED
etc.

something built into the portal would be the best thing but unfortunately the portal guys are swamped so its on the back burner.

[Gustav 6,406]

1 minute ago, Beaviss said:

 

The one thing I thought of was a weekly task tracker on the manage page on the portal.

 

a little window in the corner that shows:

Weekly Tasks:

Point Task(6 TPE) *not completed*
Practice Facility(2 TPE) COMPLETED
etc.

something built into the portal would be the best thing but unfortunately the portal guys are swamped so its on the back burner.

 

It could just be as simple as making the "welcome" post more informative. This explains the technical details of player creation, but that's it. There's nothing in there about earning and people being clueless might not be as much of an issue if they had info directly presented (or at least directly linked) in the very first post they're pinged in.

[bigAL 2,176]

And our VHLM GMs do do an excellent job of onboarding their new recruits, but formalizing it and standardizing it across the league would be huge.
heh, do do 

[Beaviss 4,957]

5 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

 

It could just be as simple as making the "welcome" post more informative. This explains the technical details of player creation, but that's it. There's nothing in there about earning and people being clueless might not be as much of an issue if they had info directly presented (or at least directly linked) in the very first post they're pinged in.

 

They normally get an automated message and post sent and tagged to them when they create but with the new forum update it broke so it doesn't work anymore. 

[FrostBeard 2,049]

17 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

There's a problem with inactive players. 

100% Agreed, this is and have been a problem for quite some time. It needs to be fixed. There are situations when teams are labeled good ONLY because of Inactives. That is not acceptable. 

 

17 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Reduce the pick limit.

I think this is a great idea. For me, probably the best option would be to limit it to 4 picks in the Top 2 rounds. That way people can try to get 4 Top guys in the first round but not have amazing depth pieces. The thing about VHLM draft is that if you draft smart, your guys that you get in the 2nd round will be capped at the time for playoffs. So it is your choice. But I think people should be able to trade, but not have more than 4 picks in the Top 2 rounds. 
 

 

17 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

If, after 24 hours, a player has received no signing offers, they will be automatically assigned to the team with the lowest number of waiver signings, assuming said team has room on their roster.

This is such a great idea, I would campaign for it. Also, talking about waivers, I want to say that in my mind GMs have to offer a spot no matter if they are at 18 roster players on 6. That should be a thing. I know that there have been situations when fuller teams don't want to take on new players but in my mind it is really a huge problem. Newcomers have to have a chance to choose and if not - they are assigned to the team with Lowest number of waiver signings or MAYBE a team with lowest number of roster players (I think that would be an interesting idea to talk about)