Under 250: The VHLM Review (S74 #2)

[diamond_ace 3,112]

 

Hello, and welcome to Season 74, Edition 2 of Under 250: The VHLM Report. In this series, we will be taking a look at the trends and topics from the past week in the VHLM. What twists and turns will our minor league hold? Stay tuned to find out!

 

Speaking of other VSN content, make sure to check out the other great work from the greater VSN family! Here are a few handy links to check out, from our weekly podcasts to in-depth history articles, scouting reports, and more! 

 

Ringless | WJC Preview | Game 7 Stories | Bog Update

 

The Review

 

We’re about 2/3 of the way into the season now, and the teams are pretty clearly delineated. There are title contenders, teams to occupy the rest of the playoffs, and rebuilders, just like any other season - however, this season is definitely not like any other season. There was recently a massive recruiting drive, and it’s been so successful the teams are running out of spaces! Your commissioners are working on something to entertain the new players if they ultimately can’t fit on the teams, but for now, the VHLM is working to fit as many people on rosters as possible. This is truly a season where the VHLM priority of retention over competition is being put to the test, and it seems many of the teams are stepping up to that end. 

 

However, the competition side does still happen, and as such, here’s where we stand so far:

 

 

At the top of the standings, we have the Halifax 21st, led by their strong defense having allowed only 76 goals so far this season. The Mississauga Hounds are next on points, but will prove to be an interesting contest with the offensively-minded Las Vegas Aces who have scored a league leading 225 goals. The Saskatoon Wild, Yukon Rush, and Mexico City Kings are all comfortably playoff teams and will look to strike an upset in the playoffs, while the Ottawa Lynx, Philadelphia Reapers, and Miami Marauders are three teams competing for two spots but are likely early round fodder if they do get in. The Minnesota Storm, usually one of the stronger teams, find themselves near the bottom, while the Houston Bulls and San Diego Marlins are recreating their race to the basement from just a few seasons ago. Such is the cycle of the VHLM sometimes - but again, importantly, these teams toward the bottom are filling their rosters with newer, less experienced players, who are the future lifeblood of the league. Their position is nothing to be disappointed about.

 

Let’s check in with the ELO chart and see if there are any interesting trends there that don’t quite match up with the standings:

 

 

This largely matches up with what we already knew, although it’s perhaps a bit shocking the size of the gap between the top 9 and bottom 3. Miami is only sitting at 40 points, they’re not an unreachable distance ahead of Minnesota in the standings, but it certainly appears the gap is much stronger in ELO than it is in points. Additionally, Miami isn’t even 9th in ELO, they appear to be roughly equal to Ottawa for 7th/8th, while Philadelphia finds themselves just below that pair. It seems Miami’s failure to take any of their losses to overtime has come back to cost them vital points in the standings, whereas they might “deserve” (if any team can truly be said to deserve) to be a little higher up. Also, the ELO chart shows Las Vegas as a clear second, rather than behind Mississauga, which is a bit unusual (although conveniently it counters the story from a few seasons ago where Las Vegas overperformed in the standings and underperformed in the ELO). Saskatoon was actually third much of the way unto the season but fell quite sharply around the 30-40 game mark and dropped below Mississauga and Yukon - they’ve since pulled back level with Yukon, but have yet to regain much of anything on Mississauga. In any case, they’re in 4th place in the standings, regardless of their performance in ELO, which is pretty logical to where they are now - it looks like their ELO change was more a regression to the norm. This does, however, indicate a bit of an ELO underperformance for Mississauga. Mexico City is an interesting case, as compared to their spot in the standings. They’ve been 6th and only 6th in ELO for the vast majority of the season, and appear just as close to falling into the 7-9 range as climbing into the 4-5 range, which is to say that they’re not particularly near either one. They’re in 6th in the standings as well, and also don’t appear to be exceedingly close to either the teams above them or the teams below them. In a 12 team league with often crowded standings, carving out a spot all alone is typically only done at the very top or the very bottom, if at all, but Mexico City has managed to do so dead in the middle. It’s a weird quirk but they’ve managed it - perhaps this will afford them a little flexibility in roster management toward the back end of the season, as their position is locked up. 

 

The Teams

 

There are two more things worthy of discussion as pertaining to the ELO chart: the sharp counteracting peaks of San Diego and Miami around game 30, and the sharp counteracting peaks of Yukon and Saskatoon around game 35. In both these cases, there’s a single game causing the change, between the two teams in question. The first game is a 9-0 Miami win over San Diego. It was such a dominant performance for Miami that goalie Rara Rasputin recorded a shutout on only 7 shots. San Diego just did not have an answer at all for Miami in this game, and failed to shoot the puck even once in the entire third period. Eoin Byrne, who recorded 5 assists, was still only third star - he finished behind teammates Chicken Wing, second star with a goal and 4 assists, and Peter Louis II, first star with a hat trick and an additional assist. The three point performances of Gideon Haviv and Gaspar Zakrevsky, normally enough to garner some sort of plaudits in the star rating, went entirely unrecognized because so many people performed so strongly for Miami in this game. 

 

While a 9-0 win is certainly a strong statement, it ultimately just reflected what we already knew. Miami was at least a decent team, and San Diego was not nearly to that level. The second game, however, was perhaps a starker contrast from the expected reality of things. Yukon and Saskatoon are only two points apart, and that lead, as small as it is, belongs to Saskatoon. How, then, does one explain a 5-0 Yukon win? Kloxified recorded another small shot count shutout, albeit on slightly more shots (10) than Rasputin’s 7 in the prior game. However, unlike the 57 shots Miami put up in their 9-0 win, Yukon only shot 27 times in this game, even though they managed to score on 5 of them. It was a poor game for Saskatoon’s Cal Conway in goal, exacerbated by a few strong Yukon performances, chief among them Fat Palloon with a goal and 3 assists. Jeff Odinson scored twice, Pistil Stamen added a goal and an assist, and Alek Andreshnikov with two assists all contributing to Yukon’s superiority in this game. Yet for all the disproportion of this single result, Yukon still finds themselves behind Saskatoon, although this is likely a match that will be revisited in the playoffs as these are the 4/5 seeds. 

 

That’s all for this edition of Under 250: The VHLM Review. Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned next week for the inside scoop on all that’s going on in the league. Until next time!

 

GMS: @DoktorFunk @Ricer13 @Hylands @Rayzor_7 @rjfryman @Doomsday @Spartan @Dil @ColeMrtz @InstantRockstar @DMaximus @MexicanCow123

 

Players mentioned: @Victor @LatinViking @Kloxified @GoldGear88 @UnkemptCL4PTP @PuckPushers @chikn @CosmicStorm @STUNT @Pythonic @Shaka

 

[Kloxified 16]

Thanks for the mention i guess lol

[Shaka 228]

Tagged.
Checks article for mention of Conway.
Only mention talks about how garbage Conway was.

 

[diamond_ace 3,112]

On 10/17/2020 at 8:00 PM, Shaka said:

Tagged.
Checks article for mention of Conway.
Only mention talks about how garbage Conway was.

 

In one game. I'm sure you did significantly better than that throughout the season

[diamond_ace 3,112]

2nd week of this will be week ending 10/25