Leaderboard

In which @Advantage accidentally offered me a $1 bonus, which I purposely accepted, which made the portal look like we were in cap trouble. Expansion was the name of the game back in the day. S65 saw the founding of the Moscow Menace franchise, along with two additions to the VHLM in Houston and Philly. I'd played for Houston and was fairly intrigued when I saw that the big league would be expanding again right in time for me to join it. The Malmo logo looked cool, the limited impressions I'd had of inaugural GM Advantage seemed positive, and I just really liked the idea of being a team's history rather than simply adding to it. They were also one of a handful of teams to actually scout me, which is something I don't care about as heavily now but did as a first-gen. In the days leading up to the draft, I had a good time taking in the new member experience. I remember @MubbleFubbles writing a mock draft that said some nice things about me, and I took that idea and made what's still one of my favorite articles ever--my own mock draft, 50 picks deep, that taught me everything I needed to know about every player when I was writing it. I really knew nothing ahead of time about who was going where, but correctly speculated on a bunch of things. Some that I'm proud of were Julius Freeman over Shane Mars to Vancouver at #2 overall, Apollo Hackett to Riga at #16, Edward Vigneault at #33, and Rhys Chism at #39--oh, and my very own Jerry Garcia, 7th overall to Malmo and the first player ever to be drafted to the Nighthawks. My mock was weirdly accurate with Malmo picks in general. I ended up joining Rusty Shackleford (@K1NG LINUS) and Nacho (@Nacci25), picked 17th and 37th overall in both my article and the actual draft. Also of note were goaltender Juan Jaundice (@Jus) and monster goon MORPHEUS DESTRUCTIOUS (@Abaddon), as well as Blake Laughton and @Grape, my VHLM teammate and the only other member of Malmo's inaugural draft class to be active today. I knew some of these people already, and the time that all were active was enough for me to get to know the rest. Our locker room was super active and a really fun place to be in general, removing quite a bit of the doubt that many players have when they leave the M. But of course, we were an expansion team that finished last in S66. Garcia played just-OK and wasn't really anything special despite having lots of empty space on the roster to stand out from. These trends would continue in S67, where the team got marginally better and so did Jerry. Worse, we already had a couple of our S66 picks go inactive. There was some sort of foundation built, at least (we drafted @Phil's Phil Marleau and @fonziGG's Michael Johnson, players that stuck with us at forward and in net for a while)--and we figured it wouldn't be too-too long before things started going the right direction. And go the right direction it did in just the next season--not only did we pick @OrbitingDeath 's Condor Adrienne (the best defenseman of the generation) at #1 after winning the draft lottery, but @Beketov's Matt Thompson (the best player of the S60s) signed with us in free agency for his last season. A few things happened in S68 that were really nice. First, Garcia had his best season on defense. His stats (60 points, 154 hits, and 150 SB) may not mean a whole lot to anyone used to the standards of the S90s, but they were pretty solid for that time and got me nominated for the Jake Wylde Trophy. And though the vote had solid support, it fell one short of winning. I still haven't won an individual award not named Campbell, and this was the closest I ever came. But I digress--S68 had a whole lot more going on as far as the team was concerned. We went from the VHL's basement all the way to the top, finishing first place in the standings and taking home the Victory Cup in just our third season of existence. At some point in our first few seasons--and I think it was here--Advantage became the first VHL member to ever hit 1000 wins as a GM. All of that was cool, and we carried that success into the playoffs, where regular-season MVP Thompson played so well--shooting at somewhere around 20%--that it drew accusations of sim rigging and the strongest demand for live sims up until that point. That's the reason why we have live sims today, actually--it's not a special event as much as it's proof that the simmer isn't cheating. The playoffs went very well, and we made the finals with the chance of becoming the earliest championship winners of any expansion team in the league's history. The finals had been simmed live before S68, so doing them this way was as much common practice as it was the result of peer pressure. So, we did them live--and although I never once believed that the sims were being rigged, the people who thought they were certainly had something to laugh at when we got swept by Seattle (whose core by this point was made up of multiple players who used to be my own first-gen players in the M). It was my first finals, and would remain so for quite a while. After S68, my player success (and my team success) declined steadily. I don't remember a whole lot about S69-71 as a player, to be honest--S69 was my best run as a VHLM GM (as I'll talk about in a future article), and I remember S70 being absolutely dominated by Moscow. Also during this time, Garcia somehow acted as Condor Adrienne's kryptonite. He didn't even steal stats, either, because his totals went down a little bit even as I kept adding to his TPE. But after S71, Advantage stepped down, @FrostBeard took over as GM and started the team's first rebuild, at the start of which he was gracious enough to give me a fair deal to move Garcia out to the Davos team I was then running. That's also a future article, but the long story short is that I made Jerry a winger and enjoyed a couple seasons of being half decent on my own underachieving team before retiring. Jerry Garcia would eventually finish his career with 420 points (an amazing coincidence). He never won a Cup or an award and was never really the top player on any of his teams. He doesn't even come close to making my own Hall of Not Bad series. In fact, I believe that he was the worst player to ever reach 1500 TPE back when 1500 TPE actually meant something. But even though his TPE total was his most impressive number, that's still representative of over a year of work that I put into making him what he was, and I have no regrets about it (not even the part where I built Passing over Scoring). Jerry taught me that I could make it in the VHL as more than just a flashy new kid, that I could earn with the best of them and build a player that most people still respected even when that didn't show up on the leaderboard. And I hope no one who played with him regretted it, either. There were lots of players drafted after 7th overall in S66, but none of them can say that they were Malmo's first choice--and I like to think Malmo wouldn't have had it any other way.

The next two weeks are super busy for me so trying to do an extra long media spot to count for two weeks. I am off to Las Vegas for two weeks which is waaaay too long to be in the desert. So this weeks Around the League will cover a bunch of topics such as Bollos de Trueno potential draft spot, a look in on Rip Wheeler, the race to the playoffs, and maybe other random stuff to get me to 1000 words. BOLLOS de TRUENO A quick look in at the upcoming draft shows a pretty deep first round and truly a bunch of “can’t miss” draft pick for the first 10-15 picks. Lots of big names and huge earners litter the top spots and a large amount of these picks are defensive players. What does that mean for Trueno? Well lets look deeper at BDT. Without even looking at @Thunder current player in Trueno we have to think his draft stock is high simply because of his history. His first player, Jake Thunder was the type of defenseman that set the standard for modern era VHLers looking to make a Hall of Fame dman. Not knowing what type of build Trueno will be, it seems likely we will be looking at Jake Thunder 2.0 but maybe better since Thunder is passed the learning curve now and knows what to put his TPE into now. Currently, Bollos de Trueno plays for Saskatoon and is having a great season. In 61 games he has 12 goals 39 assists 51 points with 94 hits and 67 SB. 6 of his 12 goals are on the power play and he somehow snagged a shorthanded goal to show he is a threat in any circumstance. He currently sits #7 in overall TPE (3rd overall for defenders) for the upcoming draft class that shows 7 defensemen in the top 15. So where will he go? Based on the current standings it looks like LA will have #1 pick with Davos picking #2. LA’s needs could force them to take a sure pick goalie in Soju @Frank first overall and based on Franks past players could prove to be the smart choice. If Davos had the second pick they could go with #2 in overall TPE in Jillian Woods @jacobcarson877who is lighting it up in Ottawa (18-47-65) and another guaranteed winner of a pick. But could Davos draft Trueno at #2 since his former player was a Davos legend? Davos has some young forward talent but some needs all around so tough to say, only @AlexAlex knows. There is some amazing forward talent as well in Maverick Goncalves @leandrofg who skipped the M and is already playing well against better talent in the VHLE. Maverick is supreme talent and earner, and we can easily see him go #1 in this draft or any previous draft. If he falls to #2 will Davos pick him up to lead their club in the future? Other names like Felicia Hardy @JCarson, Pierre Mac Bouchard @Gaikoku-hito, The Phantom of the VHL @Hogan, Pombo @samx, Lazlo Holmes @Gustav , Maple Dogwood @dogwoodmaple, Erik Thorvaldsson @Tetricide, and Wally Lose @youloser1337 all complicate the matter too since they are all great talent with historically great players. My prediction for Bollos de Trueno’s draft spot is #2-#8 spot. My sincere hope is that he somehow falls to Vancouver’s draft selection so that I may play with my friend in real life. But it’s more likely he ends up somewhere else just based on pure statistics and, in that case, I hope to smash his face on the daily. LOL. Best of luck Trueno, either way I can’t wait for you to get to the VHL and make another Hall of Fame defenseman. RIP “Glass jaw” Wheeler To date, I have recruited four players to the VHL. Two shit the bed early and were useless. One made the hall of fame (Jake Thunder) and one recruit I like to consider an off and on disappointment in Rip Wheeler. Now, I know Rip in real life, and we work together. So, we often have conversations about Rip Wheeler @ScottyP and my player, Logan Ninefingers dropping the gloves and going at it. For example, he told me that he was, “going to make that rookie Ninefingers pay the price in the big leagues,” when my player got to the VHL. So recently when the Vancouver Wolves squared off against the Prague Phantoms in game 393 in Prague. So, in front of his sold-out hometown crowd Rip Wheeler tried to assault young Vancouver forward, Riley Martin @Smarch. At the 16:44 mark Rip embarrassed himself by challenging the youngster to a fight by slashing him up the ice over and over. What happened after will be shown on YouTube clips for ages as the rookie Martin served right hand after right hand into Wheeler’s mouth. Wheeler looked like a puppet on strings as Martin showed the veteran forward a little about pugilism on ice. To add fuel to the fire poor Wheeler was given a game misconduct for his antics and a guaranteed hearing with league officials over his behavior. However great the fight win was for Vancouver they ended up losing in a shootout to a goal by Skor McFluery. VHL Standings At the 60-game mark the Toronto Legion are currently the best team in the league with a 43-15-2 record. Malmo, Seattle, London, New York, Moscow, and Prague are all close and this off-season should be a fun one to watch. Seattle and Moscow made the most moves at the deadline to try and improve their clubs and I think both were successful and pose a real threat to other clubs come playoff time. Warsaw, defending champs DC, and Chicago also have their talents and are looking to wreck their pairings come playoffs. The current hot team in the league is Malmo with a 4-game win streak and is in a battle for top spot in the European division with London. It will be an exciting ending to the season to see where these clubs shake out. will claim for weeks 04/28 and 05/05

For a future article:

I call it Soja too after 3 bottles of Soju.

Soja is the new Soulja Boy!! @Frank Really needs to be cracking that shit up!!

4 TPE @DarkSpyro @Spaz @Theory 3 TPE @Nathan_8 @Spartan @Grape @youloser1337 @Scurvy @Gaikoku-hito @JCarson @Frank @STZ @KaleebtheMighty @meandyoc @N0HBDY @Ricer13 @dstevensonjr @southworth @Doomsday @Thunder @KRZY @RJMW @v.2 @jesse115 @Joel Main @Langostine @animal74 @McWolf @Mongoose87 @LucyXpher @Alex @tcookie @Gustav @Noodle Enjoyer @Girts @UghSike @Subject056 @jRuutu @Snussu @Ahma @Victor @McLovin @Pifferfish @mmrs617 @nerji @AJW @kirbithan @Hogan @Anthique @Knight @FiZi @Sjin @Cartripp14 @ke1vi @Renomitsu @dlamb @comrade cat @chikn @Kisslinger @scoop @badcolethetitan @jacobcarson877 @Baby Boomer @CowboyinAmerica @lilchrist @Velevra @leandrofg @OrbitingDeath @MubbleFubbles @pugsood @Greg_Di @Schnee @cLoWn 2 TPE @aimkin @Berocka @Tetricide @Triller @sportexperts show @Misty @Jubis @Daniel Janser @Erik @VattghernCZ @mattyIceman @FrostBeard @Mystery_boy98 @frescoelmo @GoodLeftUndone @Rhynex Entertainment @Kenamatic @Hockey4Life @wcats @Mysterious_Fish

With about 20% of the season left to play in S93, contenders in the VHL's European Conference are in the midst of a potentially unprecedented race for playoff positioning. Just a couple of days ago, teams one-through-five in the EU were *all* tied with 36 wins and separated by just two points in the standings overall. For five teams to be so tightly-packed is incredible, and certainly makes for an exciting ride for the fans! The teams aren't just close in terms of points in the standings either, as they have the second-through-sixth place goal differentials in the VHL as well, with a range of +43 to +60. All five teams seem poised to battle it out for positioning right to the bitter end. Malmo Nighthawks Leading the EU with a 38-15-4 record and 80 points are the Malmo Nighthawks. The Nighthawks have, to an extent, had some issues offensively this season, but they are riding strong team defense and goaltending to a contending spot. Their 190 goals for ranks 8th in the VHL, but their 144 goals against is fewest in the league. Netminder Ash Sparks @DarkSpyro is in the league's top-five in SV% (0.925) and is second among starters in GAA (2.43) and shutouts (4). Viktor Jensen @Advantage is the star of the show offensively, leading the team with 68 points, although Malmo's offense features a pretty balanced attack overall with six players right around or above the PPG mark. All-situations defender Jacob Stone @scoop is having his best year in the VHL, with 67 points, 178 hits, and 138 blocks as the #1 defenseman on the league's best defensive team. London United The London United are actually tied with Malmo at 80 points, but have one more game played and one fewer win (37-15-6). The United boast a formidable roster that's a little differently-constructed than Malmo. They're a lot more top heavy with less depth, but equally effective, with Wann Kerr @VattghernCZ leading the entire VHL with 102 points and linemate Leonard Triller @Triller with a remarkable 85 points in 58 games himself. London has the sixth-best offense but second-best defense in the VHL, with certified superstar Jesse Teno @aimkin between the pipes. Teno is in the final season of an eight-year VHL career spent entirely with London, and he is authoring yet another excellent campaign. Prague Phantoms The Prague Phantoms come next, currently one point back of Malmo/London (37-16-5, 79 points). Prague has a bit of a unique roster construction as they have played most of the season with two fewer players than most VHL contenders. The recent pickup of LeBen Aky now leaves them just one defenseman short of a "full" roster. They have not been punished for this, though, as they've been on a roll all year long. Prague has some true star power in the lineup with John Jameson @Frank, Nikolas Kauppi @Tetricide, and Skor McFleury @Alex, and all three players are living up to the hype. Jameson is second in the VHL with 101 points, Kauppi leads the league with 46 goals (93 points), and McFleury leads the league in assists (62) and defenseman scoring (82) points - while being top-5 in hits (231) and blocked shots (185), too. Moscow Menace The Moscow Menace are fourth in the conference but they, too, are sitting on 37 wins (37-18-3, 77 points) and boast the league's second-best offense with 214 goals for. Moscow are a young team with a roster built similarly to Malmo's in that they're very deep and balanced, and having nine players at the 50-point mark is a testament to that depth. Axle Gunner @Steve has been the team's best player since his rookie season in S91 and continues to improve, having gone from 73 points to 94 to now pacing for 103 this season (83 points in 58 games). On the back end, Leif Reingaard @Zetterberg is having a stellar year with 68 points in 58 games so far. The second-year pro is already one of the league's best offensive blueliners. Warsaw Predators Warsaw (36-20-3) sits in fifth place, with brick wall Lachlan Summers @kirbithan having a massive part to play in that. Summers was brilliant in S90 for Davos and captured some individual hardware then - he seems poised, now, to fill up that trophy case a little further in his first year outside of Davos. Summers has faced a tougher workload than most starters - the only goalies that have faced more shots are Matthew McCagg, Karl Pederson, and Red Panda who all play for rebuilding teams in LA, Davos, and Riga (for perspective - Summers has 32 wins himself; LA, Davos, and Riga combine for 34 wins all together). Despite facing 260 shots more than the nearest goaltender on a playoff team, he's atop the league with a .935 SV% and also has 4 shutouts. Their offense has been keyed by breakout seasons from their entire top line of King Kisslinger @Kisslinger (88 points in 59 games), Thor Reingaard @N0HBDY (86 points in 59 games), and Maxim Anisimov @McLovin(85 points in 59 games). Their biggest weakness is a lack of depth - they have six players over 56 points, but then nobody else with more than 17 - but they did make a recent move to pick up Sunglasses Joyo @JetsGoalie101 to help remedy that. This will mark the 21st season since the league's expansion to 16 teams, and only twice in that time have teams 1-through-5 in either conference been separated by even less than 10 points: S87 when first-place Davos was separated from fifth-place London by 9 points, and S77 when first-place Chicago was 9 points ahead of fifth-place Vancouver, making this season's race potentially historically-close. For the vast majority of S93 so far, these five teams have not been separated by more than 5 points. Remarkably, the first-through-seventh place teams were only separated by 11 points in S87, so there were higher stakes in that case, as two teams didn't even make the playoffs. Still, if the level of play shown by all five of these teams so far continues through the final 13-15 games, we could be witnessing the hardest-fought battle for positioning within a conference in recent VHL history. --- 1032 words, for this week and next

Bumppppp

Another name enters the VHL from the Eagles dynasty and Roger follows the original Eagles, Greg, in playing in the goalie position. Here is his scouting report as he begins his VHL career. Pros: Rebound Control: Roger has always had amazing rebound control even from a young age. He has carried this over to his professional play and is probably one of the top end goalies in his draft class for rebound control. The way he plays, he can put rebounds wherever he wants which makes it harder for the other team to get rebound goals. Hand Speed: This kid has a quick glove and you will find it very hard to beat him glove side. One second you think the puck is going in and the next you see a blur and the puck ends up in his glove. He has practiced and learned this from Greg Eagles. Note to shooters, if you want to do well against Roger, you need to avoid shooting glove side Reaction Time: This goes hand in hand with his great rebound control and hand speed, this kids reaction time is unbelievable for someone so young. If you didn't know he was a development player, you would think he is a veteran goalkeeper with how quickly he reacts to the action on the ice. Good luck trying to score a tipped shot on this guy! Cons: Skating: Rogers still has a lot to improve on the skating aspect of the game. This has always been his weak spot and is something he will be improving as his career grows in the league. He needs to get better at his side to side and backwards skating if he wants to become a franchise goalie in the future. Agility: This goes hand to hand with his skating, his agility is not at the best. Good goalies need to be agile and need to get from post to post and be able to change direction quick. Due to his height this has been tough for Roger but it is something he is currently working on with Greg Eagles who also had agility issues. We can't wait to see how the training goes and how his agility will improve. Size: Could be good, could be bad....but at the moment his size is a con. Roger is a tall and big goalie, similar to Andrei Vasilevskiy, while he covers a big portion of the net, this impedes his agility and skating. As he grows and earns experience, eventually size will become a pro to him as he learns to use it to his advantage.

John Season (dylanjj37) has announced their retirement.

@Mysterious_Fish sorry to see you lose your job

When we consider the day-to-day work of a general manager in VHL, VHLM, and VHLE, I think it is safe to say the level of effort and dedication required could be compared to the effort and dedication of a car salesperson. The cars are going to be there even if the salesperson is not right next to the car all the time. If you have a question or if something needs to be done the car salesperson will get back to you in a bit, or they will send the recently hired young car salesperson to do the dirty work. A lot of the actual selling is done by the internet as the cars are advertised on the websites and other forums. People can also research the cars in advance. Sure, the car salesperson can hype up the car and say this and that, but you would be foolish to fall for their sweet words. Similar to VHL, the actual selling is done by the portal as we can see the players, picks the team has, etc to see if we would want to play in the team. When the GM approaches you or starts to sell their team up, you know they are up to no good, you would be foolish to fall for their sweet words. Quite interestingly, the general manager also shares a lot of similarities with a person about to buy a new car. They both point their fingers toward something while saying: " I want that one". General managers, of course, point their fingers towards players. They look at the stats and numbers but ignore them completely as something else captures their attention, similar to a person who is about to buy a yellow car that eats a lot of gas just because they are over 40 and think they deserve nice things. A lot of being a general manager and car salesperson is about showing up. Some days it will rain, and some days the sun will shine, but when you come to the office most of the hard work is already done.