2020

[jRuutu 2,464]

 

 

When everybody thought 2020 could not get any worse,  the news about Seattle Bears getting eliminated from the playoffs was heard all over the world. Such tragedy sparked painful memories from the ongoing year, the Trump vs Biden battle was a major event, or like the educated call it: a battle between good and evil, which ended in many ways like the Seattle playoff run, evil won and the good is forced to step aside.

 

The most optimistic see Seattle getting eliminated from the playoffs as the bottom, 2020 can not get any worse, which could very well be true since there are only a couple of days left. On the other end, some see a superior team such as Seattle getting eliminated as a sign of foul play. If they were able to rig the elections for Biden, surely the same people can influence playoffs series in a hockey league? During the series, Seattle was given questionable penalties. To make things worse, the referees were reportedly openly celebrating when Chicago scored a goal. No actual video footage is available, conveniently.

 

Why someone would want to influence playoff series is simple, the glory and power that comes with winning the VHL championship is a life changing moment to those who win the championship. VHL folklore suggests that the VHL championship gives hidden powers to those who believe.

 

Some people have invested a lot of money in organizations and they want to see results.  Jack ''Diamond'' Robinson for example owns Chicago Phoenix. He has publicly stated that winning the VHL championship is his number one goal, the amount of money he has invested in Chicago supports that. Robinson reportedly gives every Chicago player a golden pig when they score a goal. Robinson of course as many remember collected his wealth by buying a corona mask factory and then tripling the price of every mask. Someone like him has the wealth to make surprising things happen.

 

Whatever the case might be, the only thing we know is that Trump and Seattle, beacons of lights are dimmed down for now, but the future is bright. Seattle will come back stronger than ever and show everybody that you can not stop them, you can only hope to contain them.

 

Part 2 - Too many teams in the league?

 

I have been looking over the teams and their rosters, too much of my surprise I see quite a few players that are in the 400-600 TPE region. Not just ''younger'' players, but older players. That made me wonder if VHL has too many teams at the moment?

 

The salary cap space also tells something, Phoenix has 7m free, D.C 3m, Davos 4.75m, London 1.25m, L.A 4.75m, Malmo 2.15m, New York 12,75m, Seattle 1,25m, Toronto 2,25m, Vancouver 10,85m, and Warsow 5,5m. That is a lot of free cap space and when you take into consideration the fact that there indeed is a lot of mediocre talent floating around the league - is this the new norm? Do teams much rather have the 500 or 600 TPE players with scoring instead of doing something else? Or is the so-called top-end talent so rare that there is no other way? Need to have the borderline inactives in the roster?

 

What is the point in having copies of teams competing against each other? The only different thing is the team names, otherwise, teams look similar. I mean, as far as I see it there is no reason why we could not have 100 team league if this is just fine. WHERE IS THE COMPETITIVENESS? I want to lose to a team that is mostly full of high earning active players.

 

Perhaps I'm just looking at it during an awkward time and there is a lot of mentioned top-end talent coming up from juniors in the future, but as an older player approaching depreciation and recreating time fairly soon, it does not look good. What if I have to play in a team that is full of those 400-600 TPE players?  I guess these times require users to be extremely clear on what they hope from their teams and perhaps a certain level of selfishness is a must.

[JeffD 648]

[Banackock 8,044]

pArItY

[fishy 1,757]

This is really a great work of satire. I like how you compared Seattle's loss to the election because I think it really highlights the comical overreaction that folks have to hockey simluations. I also enjoyed the extra details from the sim, like how the refs favored Chicago and that our owner had a money-driven scheme going with the masks. By villainizing an opponent who overcame their competitor, I think you did a great job of parodying some news sources, so great work on that front. 

As for the critique - I'd say that your argument about competition is a bit flawed. You mention that Seattle is an obejctively better team and later point to Chicago's significant cap space to suggest that they are not competitive. However, I think this contradicts the beginnign of your article, specifically the part where Chicago swept Seattle in the series, so I'm a bit confused. I would love to see future work from you about the kinds of variation among teams that you believe there should be in order to make the league competitive as you wish for it to be. 

Ultimately, I appreciate the satire, like I said earlier. This article is funny, 9/10