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Ronniewalker · 05-22-2021, 05:58 PM

(Disclaimer: I’m not much of a humorous fiction writer, nor a graphics wrangling stats buff, but maybe just a personal diary guy at best, writing from my own experience. So the following is basically just a long-winded thank you note and may well be pretty boring overall for long stretches therein. So if you’re here just because you got the alert of being mentioned, don’t feel bad to just scroll to where that is and read the part that pertains to you. That’s completely fine Cheers

)

Prologue

I've been meaning to put this together for a while now, to look back at my time with my first team in the SHL universe. But a chronic lack of time and then also energy in the moments when the time would actually be available, has postponed this task time and again. Now that I have a week of vacation from work, albeit already quite condensed with various other obligations that have also been biding their time as well, I would be wrong not to at least try to finally take it up and jot down at least a page or two about my first go-around in the SMJHL with the Anchorage Armada.

(* The Anchorage or Anc Special refers in Armada locker room parlance to an instance of simulated FHM gameplay where the obviously dominant (judging by shot totals and other fairly obvious metrics) and thus presumably also superior team nonetheless manages to lose a game to an otherwise inferior opposition mostly simply by virtue of either the other team's goaltender's extraordinary heroics, or otherwise simply their own goalie failing to catch anything except maybe a cold on a given game night. While of course these sorts of absurd performances happen to all teams from time to time, it seemed particularly commonplace in the mid-50s seasons for the Ass and GA-led Armada to be on the losing end of these sorts of affairs, until they stepped down from office and Gabe Johnson and Bear took over and successfully turned the tables on the league from season 57 onwards. But we are getting way ahead of ourselves now...)

Introduction

As said in my earlier pieces, I came to the SHL from Estonia. A small country on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, surrounded on all sides by great hockey nations - the big scary bear of Russia to the east, across the Lake Peipus; big brother Finland to the north across the Gulf of Finland; the Tre Kronor of Sweden to the west across the Baltic Sea, and even those suspectedly six-toed latvians behind our southern border. Sounds like there should be no refuge from ice hockey in a country surrounded on all sides by others with such pedigree in the game. But alas, in Estonia ice hockey is only but a niche sport at best, with the number of playable ice rinks possible to be counted on your fingers. And you won't even need all of them...

So what brought me to this niche sport in a country with very little access to ice hockey even on TV, apart from what was still shown on the finnish channels until about the turn of the century when the coming of cable TV meant the end of those and the Olympic tournament broadcasts on the national television every four years? It was a video game that, although discovered off a pirated collection disc with a bunch of EA Sports games (stripped of voice commentary and intro videos and such to cut down space) from that year that I originally bought because of the NBA game, became the first legit video game that I ever bought. Original copies cost a fucking lot for what the average wage was at that time in our country, but I was so into the game that I really wanted to have the full version of it! And it was worth it from the very first beats of the intro video! It was the coolest fucking intro video I had ever seen! It was ‘Push It’ by Garbage blasting pucks into nets and bodies into boards and it was the NHL 2000 that I already played and loved, but I had yet to experience it in full force and glory with the music and the cut scenes and the commentary and it was awesome!

And suddenly I was a hockey fan. Started following the NHL via internet, which in those days meant just reading boxscores and recaps. For a while when the finnish channels still aired around here, I followed the finnish league as well. As new NHL games came out, tried a few of those - 2002 became the one I ended up playing the most, I think, hotseat against a buddy of mine.

Then we started looking for hockey manager games and came upon Eastside Hockey Manager, still in it’s fairly primitive freeware version, a few years before the creator got signed by Sports Interactive. So that and the future editions by SI got a lot of play as well over the years to come.

By the time the 2010’s rolled around though, EHM had been discontinued and I had otherwise kind of grown out of it too, I guess. Then in 2012 I entered the world of WebSim Hockey, a box score based online hockey manager simulator with an NHLPA license to use actual NHL player likenesses and stats, which was their big selling point at the time. Initially a very strong emphasis on financial management, although that side eventually got watered down to a mere shadow of its former self due to the difficulty of mastering it adversely affecting their user retention rates. The community therein was great enough though to keep me active there for the better part of the last almost 10 years now. As my interest in competitively managing teams there has been waning for the last few years though, after some advertisement from a WSH friend @sulovilen, I finally turned my eye towards the SHL kind of sim league instead in the summer of 2020.

And after that long-winded introduction we finally arrive to where I should have maybe started this whole piece in the first place...but hey, word count! And also, history adds context to things. Coming back to the Thank(orage) part of this piece, I guess I have all these mentioned things to thank for leading me here when they finally did Smile

Getting started

When I decided to join up and give the SHL a chance, it had legitimately been about 20 years since the last time I regularly visited a BB forum. I was also new to Discord and had never imagined I’d ever be one to install and start using Twitter of all things! But here we are and there you go!

So I joined up and my first impression was pretty overwhelming. I thought ‘man, this forum is hard to navigate! How the hell am I ever gonna find anything, let alone remember where I found it later!?’. But the tutorial threads in Create a Player and the discord were good enough to get me started.

I tried to be candid about my lack of experience with this kind of game and just ask whatever questions I didn’t find or just understand the answers to and I was helped right away by the rookie mentors. So my thanks to them Smile

I created a player and waited to see what happens next. It was just the beginning of a new season, but the entry draft had already taken place, so I was apparently a free agent to start out. I wondered about how I should go about finding myself a team.

Luckily it didn’t take long before I was contacted by @golden_apricot , then the co-GM of the SHL junior league’s Anchorage Armada to offer me a spot on their team right off the bat! Inside I was hesitant at first. I didn’t really know what to expect, but just being invited to join a team before I had really even introduced myself was actually quite unexpected. But in hindsight I guess they had been monitoring the rookie channels and seen me as a guy who asked the right kind questions to be worth their time.

Not having any inkling as to my own value though, or the value of various teams, or the value of money within the system in general, I wondered if whatever I was being offered at first was a legit number or an attempt to poach an unsuspecting newbie to a bargain cheap contract? So I actually asked one of the very few somewhat familiar faces @RomanesEuntDomus from another online game Hockey Dynasty, to give me some context on what was being offered. It turned out everything was on the up and up though, and thus I had soon already joined the Armada before anyone else had even inquired of my interests! I was lucky! Thank You, GA and RED for helping me find a great place to land! Smile

The Boat Gang

Once I was inducted to the Armada LR, I have to say I was perhaps a bit shell shocked at first. The sheer volume of messages that went through those channels, the amount of rambunctious banter and memeing among a group of people I as yet knew absolutely nothing about was indeed overwhelming. Luckily they had already realized that this may be the case with many newcomers and the locker room was actually split into many different channels for various topics of discussion, so as to help focus better on some of the more important ones and separate them from the idle chatter of the main channel which truly seemed never-ending! I was really amazed how people find the time to talk so much all through the days and nights! But anyhow, these dedicated channels were very helpful to me when starting out and allowed me to concentrate on figuring out the necessary processes without too much distraction from the mass of chatter in the main channel.

It also took a while to familiarize myself more to the various characters and memes and emojis flying around constantly, trying to differentiate what was real talk and what was just memeing. Have to admit, I felt very much like a boomer at a frat party at first!

But aside from the memes, whenever I had a question to ask, I always got a friendly helpful answer and it was understood to all that new people may need time to acclimatize and there was no pressure to take part in anything I didn’t feel like taking part in. So I concentrated mainly on the more practical channels and took my time to really get up and running before dipping into the distractions of the main channel.

Earnings

My main concern when starting out was whether I would really have enough time to dedicate to it so that I could become a useful player. I had a newborn at home that was probably going to start taking up more and more of my spare time as they grew and I wasn’t at all sure if taking on something like this was a very good idea at that time in the first place. But most people that I talked to about it here were chill about it and told me it shouldn’t be that hard and it would be enough if I could do the weekly tasks and not to worry about affording all the best trainings and max earning. And that suited me well. I was going to try to do the best that I could to keep up, but wouldn’t beat myself up about it if I missed a beat or two along the way. So thanks to all those people for taking the pressure off and assuring me it was all right to progress at whatever pace I could manage Smile

In reality though, I have thus far, after four seasons in the J, been able to make all the TPE opportunities that have been available to me (except the recruitment TPE, I think) and am actually keeping pace well with the best in my class, the difference largely coming just from my later starting date (Lemo was created just when the new season had already started and missed a few of the first games of the season due to that), which lost me some good off-season TPE opportunities unbeknownst me. But that’s all water under the bridge now, as they say. By the time I realized that, I was already so far into Lemo, the persona anyway, that retiring and starting over just because of that didn’t even cross my mind.

Being so far into the character though and being able to keep him progressing at an almost max earning pace all this time has by now changed my personal goals a bit as well. Since I have been able to keep up this pace, it seems a shame to allow it to go to waste at some point and I am now looking to keep it up at least until Lemo too reaches regression. I’m still not making myself any promises, but my goal has indeed become a bit more ambitious than it was at the start, which was simply to see if I could survive here as a player.

Also, obviously the playing field has already changed quite drastically for players in the last few seasons as well, with the salary cap and rising number of active users together weighing teams down to the extent that they are actually refusing to draft active players to keep their budgets and depth charts in order, leaving completely serviceable young players to either try to find themselves a roster spot via free agency, to bide their time and have at least some access to trainings and cash, even if only on a junior league contract. Or they can just retire and start anew and hope for a better league-wide situation after the next expansion has taken place and that some SHL team will decide to give them a chance then. In hindsight, it seems I was lucky that I found the time from the get-go to build as good a player as I could, despite that soothing advice of ‘doing things at your own pace’ being enough.

It hasn’t been too easy at times either, during my first season it was somewhat difficult to muster up the time to produce enough media to be able to afford top trainings. But a few introductory and recap articles later I seem to have lucked out on my general timing in joining the league after all, when before my second season, my first off-season then, firstly I was drafted to the Texas Renegades and secondly I was introduced to the SHL Casino!

Casino

While I have never been a proponent of gambling in real life, the SHL Casino, coupled with some fairly reliable looking test sim results presented an opportunity to multiply my earnings that I could not pass on. It did take almost all my savings to enter the parley that first time, but I was willing to take the chance and try and write a few more articles to afford the weekly trainings as the season wore on in the hopes that perhaps I would have it easier in the future as a result. Lucky for me, the plan worked and I (along with like half the league, as it later became known) hit my parley and the champion prediction and was suddenly sitting on enough cash to cover all of next season and then some! Of course the same thing was repeated next season (although without the part of writing media to afford trainings anymore, but then my media probably was never anything special anyway...) and also the season after, so three successful parleys later it doesn’t even feel too bad that my bets this season are looking to be doing pretty bad. So my thanks also to @Grum for running the SHL Casino (into the ground, if it were a real casino :D) and providing me with the means to survive these past few seasons now where I have really been too busy or tired to write anything much even if I would have needed to.

Fantasy

Another kind of gambling which I was introduced to in my first off-season was the SHL Fantasy league. Although I had been playing hockey manager games for decades now, I had never taken part in a fantasy draft of this style, despite hearing about them here and there. It was a very interesting experience though and has over these past few seasons really helped me become more knowledgeable about different players and teams. It has been a great way to spark interest in the games of teams other than your own and players other than your teammates. Thank you @Hallsy and your crew for running this thing!

Of course, it really helped capture my interest that the first fantasy lineup I picked, based largely on last season point totals and some advice from my locker room buddies, ended up winning the group and collecting me the maximum 10 TPE award that season. It was a great gift for me to catch up at least a little a bit with some of the others in my draft class that had had the benefit of creating at an earlier time and thus going through more Point Tasks and weekly trainings and activity checks and so on. And then suddenly my team did even better next season, when I led my group pretty much from start to finish and was even at the top of the global standings for a moment! I dropped into the second decade in the end, I think, but still claimed the maximum TPE from there for a second time in two tries. So that was already a cool 20 TPE for me from two consecutive seasons of fantasy! I might have even imagined being good at this thing, although admittedly, the whole thing does rely on luck at least as much as on research and any sort of knowledge about the sim, the players and their teams. (This is not at all to say that I agree with those calling it just a random number generator thingy. Not at all, but the luck factor is very strong in this.) Next season brought me back down to earth though, as my lineup had a very slow start and I was pretty sure to end up at the bottom and I was glad to have even climbed back up to fourth place and at least collect the one solitary TPE prize. Hey, it was still better than nothing Smile

Getting drafted

I just glided over the got drafted to the Texas Renegades bit just now like it was some small meaningless thing compared to my newfound gambling habit! But nothing could be further from the truth!

When it was nearing the Season 56 SHL entry draft, I was approached by about five general managers or their co-managers or scouts. Since I was a new user and still very much an unknown to most people I didn’t expect to be courted with too much eagerness or to end up drafted very high. But the conversations with the various representatives were nice and I tried to be open and honest about my interests and also about my doubts about how much time I was going to have available for the league in the future. I didn’t want to make big words and promise a future that I could not in good conscience guarantee to anyone.

And so as the draft came around, I can’t even remember if I stayed up to watch it unfold or did I just wake in the middle of the night and checked in, but I ended up being drafted by the team whose scout had been someone that was already my teammate on the Armada, Theo Kondos. I am forever grateful that @Ohtaay decided to recommend me to the Texas management and that @puolivalmiste and @RedCapeDiver decided that I was worth giving a chance to with their second round pick.

The Renegades were a really great match for me personally, because they even play in the same arena as my long-time fave NHL team, the Dallas Stars. Also, me being a fan of Finland and speaking the language, and Lemo somewhere around the same time also seeking to and joining Team Finland for the international tournaments here, it was a fun coincidence to be drafted by (to my knowledge) the SHL’s only finnish general manager.

I’m not sure if this should be said in public, but getting drafted to Texas was also a big part of what enabled me to secure those future casino parleys and consequently keep up well enough with the rest of my draft class (and even beat another former Anchorage teammate and the first round pick from that same S56 draft for the lineup spot) to now become a pro team player for the Renegades starting this very season. I am not at all sure if I would have made it here otherwise, but I am very thankful for the way things have gone and looking forward to helping the team soon reach the ultimate success that their long and thorough rebuild has been geared toward. So thank you guys, @Ohtaay, @puolivalmiste, @RedCapeDiver and the whole Renegades locker room that has been very welcoming to me even before I have actually joined their pro team! Now let’s get those cups!

Senddown seasons

But going back now to my time with Anchorage. We had a fun two regular seasons still under the leadership of @Acsolap and @golden_apricot where we were a really dominant defensive team in the regular season with a legendary goalie in Scoochie Stratton @honkerrs putting up record numbers in net, but failed to go as far as we imagined in the playoffs both times, including that ignominious collapse in the second round against Maine in season 55. We had a lot of big personalities in the locker room in those seasons too, but as season 56 drew to a close, it was time for many of them to make the jump to the big SHL stage. And then also came the announcement of Acsolap stepping down from the team’s general manager position.

It was kind of like a double-whammy at first. We lost a big part of our lead players and then suddenly also our leader! But the team regrouped quickly and it didn’t take long for some good candidates for the GM job to crop up. In the end, @Gwdjohnson was hired as head GM, leaving his post as SHL’s Hamilton co-GM to come and help out his one time junior team in their hour of need. While “Gabe sucks”, of course, it was unanimously agreed that his choice of co-GM @Wearingabear , although only a rookie as far as team management went, was the perfect person to offset this and bring the necessary balance to the locker room and the top floor. I also have to mention coach Bloos here @bluesfan55 for his big role in keeping the team locker room active and alive!

Boat team good

The new management wasted no time to show their capabilities and proceeded to draft us a superb batch of rookies who would prove to be invaluable in the team’s eventual Four-Star Cup championship at the end of that very first season with Gabe and Bear at the helm!

It was truly an off-season of upheaval for the Armada between seasons 56 and 57. But what looked like a demolishing at first, turned out to be a great renovation instead! Of course, that is often the case in the junior league in any case - the top players from every team get pulled up to the major league year-in year-out and the onus is on the remaining players and management to fill those voids. But after the way the Armada were projected to be the cup favorites in those previous seasons and to finally capture it now, when most pundits had assumed that their window had if not closed, then at least narrowed considerably considering the amount of turnover from called up vets to still-wet-behind-the-ears rookies, it was a grand feeling for all involved!

Of course, many could point at the managerial change and say that it was largely thanks to the previous administration’s work that the cup was finally won. But while of course, it wouldn’t have been possible without the foundation that had been lain in those past years, I think it also might just as well not have been possible without the great drafting, trading and tactical choices of the new administration and it would only be fair to recognize both for their important roles in the accomplishment.

It was really awesome winning the Four Star Cup with that group! Knowing it was the final season with the team for Theo Kondos ( @Ohtaay ) , TURG TURG ( @ThisSeemsFishy ) and Igor Victory ( @Wearingabear ), it was great to get their names there on the cup before they had to pack up and hit the big leagues. Also Vladmir Petrov ( @Muford ), who I think we found out later that he was already getting called up for next season. Also the other S56-57 guys alongside Lemo who were now called upon to take on key roles like Pablo Salvatici ( @Jepox ), Tokkulu Lakkamaa ( @dmuda11 ), Michael Withecheck ( @sakrosankt ), Slava Petrov ( @ckroyal92 ).

Not to mention the rookies! The rookies were so good for us that season. What a crop! Bean Beanman ( @"SeymourSnatches" ), Gregory Goode ( @Keenan ) and Jorg Fuchs ( @rapideagle ) did better than anyone could have expected and the Armada defense was once again worthy of their reputation!

Also, Paul Binder ( @CaptainCamel) became a top six player almost immediately and excelled in the role, while David S. Pumpkins ( @Rev ) and Cole YUNG BABY JODAN Carter II ( @Boomcheck ) held their own on the lower lines.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also give credit to those few players who had spent many active seasons with the Armada already, but had by then become inactive, but who were still important cogs in the Armada machine for that championship run - Thorbjorn Gunnarsson, Alexei Petrikov and Matthew Sawful were all guys who might well have been off to the big leagues by then, if it weren’t for their users’ retirement from the league instead, but they still played a noteworthy role solidifying the team’s lower lines with their veteran quasi-presence.

In what could be called a final stroke of genius, our new management pulled the trigger on a mid-season trade to bring in Dee Centerman IV ( @grok ) to give us an experienced defensive-minded center for the middle six that proved a very valuable addition come playoffs.

All the previous praise would be for nothing though, without the magnificent performances of the man between the pipes on most nights - the one and only Chimkin Tendy ( @Ragnar ) whose truly MVP worthy season (although snubbed of even just the goalie awards) was a sight to behold! Where his predecessor Scoochie Stratton had put in some legendary regular season numbers, but faltered come playoff time, Chimkin stood tall, all 6’ 8” of him, all through the post-season, all the way to the Four Star Cup celebration! What a guy!

And lastly, there was also our backup goalie IFA Ethan Bravo, who for the most part also did well enough in relief of Tendy when needed, to keep us on the right course.

I thank You all! It was a great experience!

Conquering the Citadelles

Of course the part that still shines brightest about this championship run is the way that we were able to come back against the dreaded Quebec City Citadelles in the semi-final series. And especially that unforgettable ending to game 6, when we managed to stage a comeback from two goals behind in the final ten minutes to send the game to overtime and then consequently win it, which seemed to be the actual deciding moment that actually broke that camel’s back. The subsequent Game 7 and even the following final series against the Anaheim Outlaws after that went by kind of like an afterthought, in hindsight. But those ten minutes at the end of that Game 6 were truly something that I think everyone on the team will always remember and look back on as a moment to draw pride and strength from even in the hardest of times.

Awards

That third season was without a doubt the best season I have had here in my still short career and while I wasn’t expecting it at first, it was great to be nominated for most underrated player and best defensive forward at the end of the season. Lemo and his line had some of the best advanced stats in the league and Lemo himself with his 39 points was the only player in the top 75 in scoring to have had no powerplay time whatsoever to pad his stats and also had the best Corsi % in the whole league that season.

Now, winning personal trophies wasn’t even what I imagined aspiring to when I started out and Lemo is proud to be the guy putting in the hard work on defense without expecting to be at the top of scoring charts. But I have to say, looking back at the season he had, by the time the award winners were announced, losing the best defensive forward title to that Grape Fruit (worthy also, as he may be) did sting quite a bit.

Very much the same as Chimkin Tendy’s spectacular performance in net getting put in second place simply because he had played in front of a better team than his main competitor for the Goalie of the Year award, I felt the same kind of disappointment there, as if my all-round work and league leading advanced stats were somehow discounted on account of them coming from a better overall team. But what made that team better in the first place? Were they also not those same numbers, at least in part? So yes, that left a bit of a bitter aftertaste. But at the same time, we were the freshly crowned champions and couldn’t let petty little things like that spoil our parade! Smile

Final season in the J

My last season with the Armada was underwhelming, personally. Lemo was not able to repeat last season’s performance, but luckily the team around him still found ways to manage things well enough to even make it back to the finals for the second time in a row! Gabe and Bear had again found some diamonds in the rough at the draft and the rookies were once again a key factor in getting us that far. In the end though, our finals adversary Quebec got their sweet revenge over us for last season’s bitter semi-finals loss, but the Armada were happy even to have gone that far, since it was supposed to have been more of a rebuild season for them in the first place.

Lemo garnered another defensive forward of the year nomination, which seemed a bit made up and odd even, given the contrast in his performances of this season and last, so it was not even something that he could take seriously himself.

Leaving Anchorage

And then it was time to pack up and be on my way to the big league. I was lucky to have been able to work up enough of a TPE lead over my teammate and fellow Texas prospect Slava Petrov, because as it turned out, they only had room for one of us at that time. It was sad that they had to make a choice between the two of us, but I was glad to have been the one given the chance to join the pro team.

Although I imagine they had tried to get at least some sort of return for Slava, the status regarding cal space and pro team spots in the league being as it was, Slava ended up being waived and consequently picked up by the rebuilding New Orleans Specters franchise. I wish @ckroyal92 success in Louisiana and hopefully the Specters’ rebuild will turn them into just as strong a team as Texas has at the moment.

For my own part, it was of course sad to be leaving my junior team, my first and only team so far in the SHL universe (although of course I had already been introduced into the Texas locker room for a while then as well), but also the thrill and anticipation at seeing what I could do in the pro league was there to balance it out. I wished everyone in Anchorage continued success and promised to stay in touch with their progress even when I was no longer a part of it and I have tried to do that to the best of my ability and time allowances. It’s has been great to see this season’s team once again perform at a high level and I very much hope to see another Four-Star Cup go to Alaska in the very near future!

Mess Hall

At this point I would like to mention a very big part of why the Armada locker room has been a great place to get to know the league and learn things not only of the present state of the league and its teams, but also the histories and stories therein. And that part is the Mess Hall.

The Armada Mess Hall brings together all the alumni and many others from around the league and has been a veritable treasure trove of historic information and curious tidbits and fun memories from the SHL and life in general that get shared all the time among all the other chatter as well. While I have not been too vocal in there myself, and I can’t even say I usually have the time to read even half of what gets written there every day, it has been great to get to read all these stories of past seasons and ages shared by the likes of @hotdog , @Acsolap , @golden_apricot , @Gwdjohnson , @bluesfan55 , @Wearingabear , @honkerrs , @Tomen , @goldenglutes , @Weretarantula , @frithjofr and many others collected there from all around the league. I think that one can safely say that the camaraderie there is one of the biggest aspects that keeps many of these people around the league and also helps newcomers to better integrate and form bonds with everyone, once they get over the possible initial shell-shock of how busy that place always is.

———

As I try to conclude this Thankorage Special that has by now taken me a full month to write, on and off, when I rarely find the time and remaining energy apart from just daily life with work being busy and the son-to-be-one-year-old’s teething and stuff to actually take it up, I will try to also voice my thanks to parts of the league in general, that certainly deserve all the thanks they can get for keeping this this up and running. And not just running, but developing and thriving! So, in no particular order, and with apologies if I simply forget to mention something equally as valuable to all this, my continued thanks to...

Sim teams

@Kalakar , @AgentSmith630 , @TheSparkyDee and whoever else takes up the job - It is hard to put into words how grateful we all are for your devotion to bringing the live sims to us all, season to season, day in day out, week by week, month to month! Being a fairly new recruit and only having heard tell of the SHL before live sim broadcasts, I find it hard to believe that I would have taken to it as I have now, if it weren’t for the work you guys do. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Another “Thank You” doesn’t seem like much, but it’s all I have and I hope it still brings through all the appreciation that we have for you.

This thanks also has to extend to all the file workers and updaters doing their jobs behind the scenes to make all these sims possible.

HO and Dev teams and everything else behind the scenes

I can’t speak much for what has been done before, but this past year and perhaps especially these last six months or so have seen so many great new features and developments unveiled to the league, that it really feels like I have joined up just as we are heading for a kind of Golden Age for the SHL! Everything is getting more and more streamlined, from the bank to the Twitter automation to live drafts to now the long-awaited fresh new index! It’s like we’re getting a Christmas present with one of these new things every few months!

I have no doubt that all these things have taken a lot of work (mostly volunteer and unpaid, most likely) to get to this point and I’m sure we still have plenty to look forward to as well and we are all so grateful for all the effort that gets poured into all these improvements and also just the work you guys put into the everyday running of the league as well.

I have to admit, I don’t really rummage the site itself half as much as I maybe should, so I’m not even familiar enough with all of the names of all the many people involved in all these things and also I’m sure most of these improvements have been in the works for longer than just the current edition of Head Office, so I will tag for instance @nour , @"luketd" , @DrunkenTeddy and @SDCore here and hope maybe the thanks gets forwarded on by you to all others involved.

Also, to @nour and @"luketd" , I really like the way you seek to increase transparency and open communication between the league and head office with your seasonal State of the Union addresses and other such posts. I think it goes a long way in helping everyone get on the same page regarding where the league is at regarding any issues that we are facing and helps bring the head office ‘closer to the people’, so to speak. Thank You for that as well!

There are obviously a lot more thanks to go around for making the site and the whole league work, from the PT teams to graphics teams to... Thank you all for the work you do and the effort you put into it for the benefit of all of us!

Asron bot

Finally as a major improvement apart from the site itself, I would like to thank @aaronwilson for building the Asron Bot and making it available for all our Discord locker rooms. It has been a great addition and has made things like stats watching and following the fantasy leagues immensely easier compared to before and thus I think also helps drive locker room activity.

A little bit in the same vein, I also wish to thank @PremierBromanov for your fantasy calculation sheet which has also been a great tool for many of us in drafting and following our teams every season. In addition, I have to say that whenever I see you argument something on the site, I seem to agree with your statements Smile

And I do think this is where I will try to draw things to a conclusion now. It has taken me so much longer than I anticipated to put thins together and I hope it was at least worth it a little bit for the people I mentioned. Or else, just to finally make up for the casino money that I wasted picking all the wrong bets with the new and improved lines we had for this season. Which was all well and fine and as it should be, despite the advantage it presented myself and many others during those few seasons in between there. Anyhow, if you actually read all of this, I salute your stick-to-it-iveness! If not, no worries either Smile

Lemonade out.

(6769 words as per WordCounter, 2 X media)

Sigs by sulovilen , Ragnar , supertardis101 , Leviadan , High Stick King , Carpy & KaleSalad

S69 Challenge Cup Champion - Philadelphia Forge Forge

S59 & S62 Challenge Cup Champion - Texas Renegades

S57 Four Star Cup Champion - Anchorage Armada Armada

S57 & S58 WJC / S62, S64 & S66 IIHF Gold Medalist - Team Finland Finland

After 69 shots on net with still no SHL goals to show for it, even the opposition started to feel so sorry for Lemo, that they decided to help him out :D

- Bad pass by Jack Klompus, he gave it right to Lemo Pihl.

- Lemo Pihl rips it to the net...

- Lemo Pihl will find the empty net, that should do it!

TEX @ MAN, S59 game 31

honkerrs · 05-22-2021, 06:41 PM

it's been a pleasure getting to know you in the LR . you came into the league barely even knowing what discord was and now you chime in with the jokes and SHL history yourself. can't wait to keep talking and getting to know another fellow Stars fan

Ohtaay · 05-22-2021, 06:58 PM

Well written my man, its been a pleasure getting to know you more, and I am sure we are going to find out more as we conquer the next level in Texas.

Renegades

*Grum* · 05-22-2021, 07:31 PM

idk how to feel about this .-.

*Weretarantula* · 05-22-2021, 08:01 PM

God damn what a post. It's always a pleasure when you pop in to say hi Ronnie, so glad to have you amongst our alumni ranks <3

Ronniewalker · 05-23-2021, 04:31 AM

05-22-2021, 07:31 PMGrum Wrote: idk how to feel about this .-.

Confusing, for sure Biggrin

Well, think of it as inadvertently saving a few careers during the interim and now being on the right track to fixing your shop Smile

So it’s all good Cheers