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***eddiesnothere*** · 03-21-2023, 01:15 AM

As I write this, I think back to my first few days of activity with the SHL community. Being bright-eyed and fresh-faced in any new community is exciting and jarring, and it takes plenty of time to get used to it. The SHL has always been kind and gracious to almost everyone I've come into contact with, and it allows for change and integration, while only asking for so much in return. It can be hard to find community outside the forum, and some may consider it a slow process. The arrival and use of Discord has been vastly important to keeping users engaged. Still, it's hard to find connections outside of these discords, and team identity means some players end up closed off from others.

When I wrote my piece on the history of Asian players in the SHL, what I found most jarring was just how many players were immediately inactive upon creation. These "ghost players" exist in the moment they are created, at the peak of the interest a user has in the community, before interest abruptly wanes. Often, this is inevitable, as players creating new players have to take into account their time they have to spend on any given activity. It's the players that don't fit this description that troubled me during my research. Those who reached out but never got the attention or help they felt was necessary in order for them to get involved, and becoming active members of the community. Many, like myself, feel disoriented and bitter about the lack of player progress, and the reward of the community just isn't enough to keep them active and contented.

The SHL's reach into Asia gets stronger every year, as players look to untouched parts of the world to tell their hockey story. In many cases, the only place they have to go to interact with other players is on the league's Discord, which is rarely used by new players after the first few days.

That is the reason that, during my review of the report I wrote on Asian players, I decided to take the initiative, and create a community where users with players hailing from Asia can feel a sense of greater belonging, where the teams of the SHL and SMJHL aren't what brings the users together, but their sense of importance for the growth of the game and the unity of the community as a whole.

So I present:

The Asian Hockey Federation is made up of a single open Discord server, hosted by yours truly, that is free for all to join, but is focused towards users with players born in Asian countries. It's a place for them to share and to make friends, for new players to join the community and ask for help, and even for users to use their player's voice in roleplay.

The AHF will abide by the community standards set in place by many other SHL-run communities, and will recognize the roles played by staff with the utmost respect and importance. We seek to offer impartiality, and will play no favorites in terms of SHL teams and subsidiary teams in the SMJHL, and the IIHF and WJC tournaments. Any talk of eligibility is strictly forbidden, and the word is blacklisted from ther server by bots.

We are excited to open our doors to veteran and rookie users. We hope to have a fun experience with you!

Join the AHF Official Discord!

***eddiesnothere*** · 03-21-2023, 01:29 AM

I should make it TOTALLY clear: If you're a user with a player not from Asia, it is entirely not an issue, you're still free to be a part of the community.