A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - Printable Version +- Simulation Hockey League (https://simulationhockey.com) +-- Forum: League Media (https://simulationhockey.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=610) +--- Forum: SMJHL Media (https://simulationhockey.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=48) +---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://simulationhockey.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=403) +---- Thread: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players (/showthread.php?tid=122393)

A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - RAmenAmen - 03-05-2022 Hello, aspiring new SMJHL rookies! If you, like me just two short months ago, took a chance on the SHL and are here but not quite sure what’s in store for you, then I’m here to fill you in. There’s a ton of great things you have to look forward to, and after all the ups and downs I experienced this season, I thought it might be nice to put out a media piece aimed specifically at you, the user who hasn’t done this all before. This far from comprehensive guide will give you an idea of what to expect from now until the draft, and through the course of your first season in the juniors. My goal isn’t to turn you into an SHL all-star (though every one of you at this point has the potential to be exactly that), but instead to help you find the fun and easy ways to be active on the site and make the most of your SHL experience. After all, despite the incredible effort that so many of our great users put in, this is a hobby, not a job, and it’s only worth doing if it’s fun for you. Without further ado, let’s get started with something you’ve probably done already: How to make your player: If you’re thinking to yourself, “Of course I’ve made a player already RAmen, why else would I be here reading media pieces?” then don’t worry, I have a point to make here and it’s not just padding the article length for extra cash. Creating a character is pretty straightforward, and this guide is the best place to start for the technical bits. My only advice for those who haven’t gone through this process yet is to try to keep your player fairly balanced at first before jumping into a specific build. There are some attributes that are objectively better than others, and once you’re on a team you’ll have access to experienced GMs and veteran users who can help you find a skillset that works with the sim engine for the type of player you want to be. The great part about being a rookie is that over the course of your first season you’ll have the chance to radically change your build, between earning TPE and the ability to redistribute TPE for free at the end of your rookie season if you find you really don’t like what you started with. Even if you’ve signed up just days before the draft (like I did), you’ll have the opportunity to end the season with double the TPE that you started with, so don’t worry about getting things right the first time. Another good reason not to worry is that for the upcoming draft, your build really doesn’t matter, which leads us to what you’re probably here for: How to get drafted: First, the good news: If you’re reading this before the draft, you’re going to get drafted, so there’s no need to worry about not finding a home. The draft is fun, and I’m going to try to help you get drafted high, because that’s also a ton of fun, but it’s important to remember that there is absolutely no difference between the 1st pick of the draft and the last one other than bragging rights. There’s no guaranteed money, no change in TPE, no preferential treatment other than getting to feel special, so if you’re picking up this guide after a draft that didn’t go your way or after joining as a free agent, your future is still entirely in your hands. Now, the harder part (but not that hard): Assuming you’ve got a day or two before the draft and you want to get noticed, remember that GMs, much like goldfish, have short attention spans, and recency is everything. I joined the site just two days before the S63 draft, and managed to get picked 5th overall thanks to some good scouting conversations and a single pre-draft media piece. Even a relatively short bit of media about your player can help you stand out from the crowd by signaling to GMs that you’re interested in being part of the community and taking part in activities that will help you earn and grow your player. For reference, this was my pre-draft media post that helped get me started and climb the draft board. In addition to their short attention spans, juniors GMs are also quick to forget the old established players in favor of the newest shiny objects (that’s you). With the exception of a couple of power users, recreates (new players of existing users who retired their last player) don’t tend to go as high in the junior draft as first generation users, so don’t feel like you’re going to be buried in the draft under a pile of returning players. Depending on the draft class, being a new user may actually give you an advantage in getting picked high. GMs (and everyone, really) want players who are going to be involved in the site and fun members of the community. After all, the best part of the SHL isn’t the on-ice results, but the people themselves, and the best way to tell the league to draft you early is to prove that you’re going to be a fun and involved member of the league. Writing media is the quickest way to get the big bucks in the SHL, but getting noticed is as easy as reaching out on discord, the platform on which most of the SHL really runs. If you haven’t already, you should join your draft class’s discord server, which you should have an invite to from one of your rookie mentors. These mentors are a great resource for pretty much any question you have, and if they could put up with my dumb questions when I first joined, there’s nothing you should be afraid to ask them for. Being enthusiastic about participating in your future team’s locker room is enough to propel you up draft boards alone, and extending that enthusiasm to potential site jobs or media will absolutely get you noticed and carry you to that coveted first round potential. With luck, a little work will pay off with a great draft pick for a team you love, but once the dust settles and you’ve got yourself a team, you’ll probably be wondering just what to do next. How to get good: Title aside, everyone would rather their player be good than bad on the ice, and being good or even great is a matter of checking off boxes on a season-long list of items that can be fun activities or boring chores depending on how you approach them. These tasks, when complete, will net you the TPE you need to succeed on the ice and make your team and opponents jealous of your sick dekes, powerful shots, great saves, or whatever it is poke checking actually does. The full list (as of S63 and subject to change at the whims of HO) is as follows: Claim catch-up TPE (amount will be based on when you joined) Complete the “Interested Prospects Survey” (this will also help in getting drafted early) Post in PT threads Complete your mock draft Fill out the prediction surveys (preseason, post trade deadline, and WJC) Complete your choice of the Championship Week tasks Post in the weekly activity check threads Purchase the top tier of SMJHL coaching Purchase weekly training each week of the season Complete two Deep Dive posts (500 words each) That list may look large, but spread over the course of an entire season it really isn’t that bad, and missing one or two is far from the end of the world. We’ll cover how to accomplish each of those goals, but first, I want you to go ahead and bookmark this page, because it’s going to be your home away from home this season. Ok, now that you safely have that bookmarked (or in my case, left open in my first tab for two months), let’s make sense of some of the things you’ll see. Your page will probably look something like this one, with your respective rookie season instead of my S63. The first thing you’ll want to bookmark is the Claims Thread, which I’ve circled in red. Your goal for the season is to be able to claim TPE from that thread as many times as possible, and to do so you’re going to need to watch carefully for new opportunities as they appear. The first opportunities available to you will be claiming catch-up TPE and filling out the “interested prospects” survey prior to the draft. The survey is also a great opportunity to show the league what kind of person you are, and what you hope to get out of the league. There are no wrong answers here, so just be yourself and you’re likely to attract the attention of the teams that will be a good fit for you. As the season goes on, you’ll also have access to new PT (personal training) threads every week, which are typically worth 3 TPE and involve writing 150 words or creating a graphic in response to a prompt (sometimes hockey related, sometimes totally different and fun). There will always be a PT thread during the regular season, but some weeks also have mPT (mini PT) threads worth 1 TPE for a mere 25 word response. These are quick, easy to do, and most teams have great reminder tools you can subscribe to in order to make sure you don’t forget. I know that some users can be intimidated at the idea of writing content, and creative writing certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so if it’s something you’re not sure of, let me attempt to put you at ease with some perspective: Word counts can be deceiving. 150 words can sound like a lot, but this paragraph alone took just a few minutes to write and is 233 words long. There’s no quality score on PT answers, so just have fun with it, write what comes to mind, and don’t worry about how good it sounds, because we’re not professional writers and we don’t expect that from anyone else. After you write a few PTs, you’ll surprise yourself with how quickly a stream of consciousness put to page can get to the word count. Outside of PTs, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to put your guessing skills to work, with several chances to make predictions on the outcome of certain games. Whether it’s the preseason predictions, where you’ll make your best guess (or copy someone else’s) at predicting the final standings for the league, or the occasional Primetime challenge where you’ll guess the winner of a specific game, these opportunities will pay out TPE even if you’re totally wrong, so there’s no reason to let that chance pass you by! My advice is to always pick the favorite, but go with your gut and you just might surprise some people! At the end of the season, you’ll get to put your PT skills to good use with the end of season extravaganza that is Championship Week. Whether your team is fighting for a title or sitting on the sidelines after getting eliminated, you’ll get a wide range of PT-style prompts to choose from, and you can complete as many or as few as you’d like, up to a maximum of 16 TPE. The list of prompts is massive, and sometimes scares users away, but remember that you’ll get the full payout for completing less than half of them, and if your player met some seasonal milestones or if you’re a member of an affiliate sim league you can substitute some of those tasks for free TPE! If you really like writing, or are willing to grind out some slightly longer pieces, you’ll also have the opportunity to write two “deep dives” over the course of the season. Each one can be about any topic you’d like, as long as it looks at one or more teams or players with the intent on analyzing some aspect of their performance (past, present or future). Each needs to be at least 500 words long, and your second deep dive, should you choose to do one, cannot include any team covered by your first one, so be careful not to do your first deep dive on a topic like “the top player on each team in the SMJHL” if you intend to complete both of them. For each of your two deep dives, you’ll receive 5 TPE, which can give you a significant boost over your classmates, especially if you do them early. There’s no rush, though, and you have until the final game of the playoffs to get them done. Rounding out the free TPE opportunities is the easiest thing you’ll ever claim: Activity Checks. These are the sim league equivalent of wiggling the mouse to keep your computer screen turned on when you’re browsing your phone instead of working, but they’re worth 2 TPE every week and all you have to do is write your name down. These can be found from the main SHL page, and usually pop up every Sunday night/Monday morning, depending on your local time zone. Between PTs, Deep Dives, predictions, and activity checks, you should be able to make a competitive player without ever spending a fake dollar, but if you want to make your player elite, you’ll need to throw some cash around. There are two ways to turn SHL money (a generally useless fictional currency) into TPE (an awesomely powerful fictional currency): Weekly Training and Seasonal Coaching. Weekly training can be purchased once per week from your SHL bank page (if you don’t know what that is, go back to the first in the create a player section and follow steps 1-5, specifically “Your First PT”). For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to assume that you’ll be purchasing the “+3 Weekly Training” at a weekly cost of $500,000, which is the most you’ll be able to purchase in your rookie season. Likewise, we’ll also assume that you’ll be purchasing the top tier of seasonal coaching (20 TPE for $4.5M). If you don’t have enough money to cover the top tier of coaching just yet, it’s better to wait until you have the money than to purchase a cheaper option, since you can only purchase one of them over the course of the season. Typically, a season (from your first draft to the SHL draft at the end of your rookie season) will last about 9 weeks, which means purchasing one round of coaching and 9 weekly training sessions, for a total of $9 million in SHL fun bucks. That may sound like a lot, but there’s a lot of ways to make that money, and I’ll give you an example of just how easy it can be. How to make money: Above is my bank account transaction list for my rookie season, starting with the free $500k from my first PT. Every weekly training purchase is listed there, and in green are all the different ways I earned money over the course of the season. As you can see, there are plenty of different ways to earn money, and just picking one that you enjoy will be enough to cover everything you’re going to need. First, there’s the obvious one: Your rookie contract. After being drafted, you’re officially a pro hockey player, and that means your team has to pay you! Every team’s situation is different, but your GMs will work with you to settle on a contract that will be paid out before you ever hit the ice for your new team. Part of that contract is a $2M signing bonus paid directly by the Head Office (so make sure you treat them well) as a welcome package to all new rookies, and the rest is the actual value of your contract against the salary cap. My advice: once you have your rookie contract money, go spend it all on the tier 4 coaching if you haven’t purchased it yet. Getting that early will help your player on the ice, and that will help your team and impress the SHL scouts for your upcoming draft. The next item on the list is the rookie tasks, designed for new users (not recreates) and only available to you during this season. The rookie tasks can be found here, and are worth $1M each and another $1M for completing all of them, for a total of up to $9M. For those of you who are doing the math at home, yes, that’s the exact amount you need to pay for everything you need in your rookie season. Many of these are things you’ll have already done just by getting started in the league (make an update thread, complete an activity check, complete a PT, etc), so even if you’re not looking to do all of them, make sure you claim the easy ones and make life easier on yourself moving forward. Next up is Twitter, the underrated but surprisingly effective way of funding your entire SHL career. If you’re looking to branch out into social media, you can create a Twitter account for your player (or use your own account) and earn up to $600k per week by posting 3 posts and 3 replies using the #shlhockey tag over the course of a week. This doesn’t sound like much, but it covers slightly more than the cost of your weekly training, and a dedicated Twitter account can fund a significant portion of your player’s career, even in the SHL. Personally, I’d never used Twitter in my life until joining the SHL, and thought I never would, but I’ve found it to be a surprisingly fun way of interacting with other SHL members, so give it a try and you might just find your new favorite way to earn some extra cash. Just make sure to add your account to the Twitter Claim thread so that the magical money machine can read your posts and put the funds in the bank. The biggest opportunity for money (as if you still needed money at this point) is in media and graphics. Whether writing written content or making exciting visuals for the league, these opportunities have massive payout potential, and for the aspiring writer or artist, they’re your go-to for funding anything you may want in the SHL. Personally, I have the artistic abilities of an enthusiastic but talentless toddler, and my one and only graphic was a hastily recolored screenshot from NHL 22 that I submitted for my final Rookie Task, but if you have the talent for it you can do amazing things. If you don’t have the talent for it but would like to, there’s an amazing community of graphic artists on the SHL discord that would like nothing more than to take you under their wings and teach you everything you’ll ever need to know. For the writing types like me, your payout is pretty straightforward: $100k per 100 words, and double that on special weeklong events (usually the draft and the playoffs). You’ll also get double payout on your first media article no matter when it was written, so don’t be afraid to try it out! An article like this one can pay more than $5M, or half a season’s worth of spending in one go, but it’s even easier to write shorter pieces throughout the season, on any subject you find interesting. Have an idea for who your player is and want to share it? Tell us their story. Are you a stats junkie like me who wants everyone to know why +/- is the most useless statistic in hockey? Get paid for that rant! Whatever your interests, there’s no better way to make a name for yourself and get paid for it than posting in the media forum. Finally, though not for the faint of heart, the last way to get paid is through site jobs. There are a mountain of opportunities for those looking to play a bigger role in the vast machine that is the SHL, from awards committees to graphics and media graders all the way to the GMs and Head Office themselves. In addition to being great ways to help build the SHL into something even better than it is now and put your stamp on the community, these jobs also reward your hard work with payouts of their own, which can range from $1-2M all the way to the $8M contracts the GMs get. While I wouldn’t recommend taking these jobs for the payout alone, they’ll reward you for the work you put in, and I can say for sure that joining the awards committee in my rookie season was one of the better decisions I made. At this point, you’ve got all the tools you need to be successful, but we still haven’t answered the biggest question of all: What exactly did you just sign up for, and what can you expect over the next couple months as a SMJHL rookie? My first season, and what to expect in yours: S63 was a wild one for me to say the least, and I got plenty of highs and lows. I came in after hearing about the league on Reddit a few seasons back and deciding I probably didn’t have the time for it, but when I saw a recruitment post for S63 I decided to take the plunge and see how things would go. I knew a little bit about FHM, and I’d played my fair share of sports sims, so I had a vague notion of what the games might look like and what to expect there. What I didn’t expect at all was how quickly my fictional hockey team would become the center of my online social life. After joining the site and the discord servers, I created a goalie, mostly because I’m a goalie in real life and I love the position. I filled out the rookie survey and did my first PT, and for the next four hours I sat back and waited for something to happen. Then, I got my first PM on the site, from a scout in Vancouver, wanting to know a bit about me and my player. It was a strange feeling at first, having a total stranger reach out to ask me what I thought about my new fictional hockey player and what my aspirations were for a career in something I’d only discovered the day before, but at the same time it was exciting and new. Then another message came in, and another. On the forums and on discord I had people pinging me left and right to learn all about Justin Time, the imaginary potato farmer-turned goaltender from Boise, Idaho. The next thing I knew I was reminiscing about college hockey with a GM from Nevada, and learning about Quebec City’s weekly game night from a scout there (who would only days later be named captain of my team). Some teams were super interested, and some weren’t, but I never got the impression from anyone that I wouldn’t enjoy my time there, and I haven’t had a bad experience with someone yet. If you’ve yet to be scouted, don’t worry, because most of it happens at the last minute, but it will happen and you’ll meet some amazing people along the way. After the draft, where I went 5th overall to QCC, I was quickly introduced to the rest of the team in our discord server, and the rest was history. In Quebec, like most teams, we do a little bit of everything, from game nights and memes to discussions on everything from DnD to NHL hockey, and of course, the dedicated channel for pictures of people’s pets. I became the team’s starting goaltender and alternate captain, but I had plenty of moments I’d like to forget as well. In my first game, I got pulled after letting in 3 goals in the first 5 minutes, I had more losses than wins, and spent almost the entire season waiting for my first shutout. Despite all of that, we squeaked into the playoffs by a single point, got an upset first round win, and took our second round opponents to overtime in Game 7 before ultimately losing. After the playoffs, I got the chance to play for Team USA in the World Juniors Championship with mixed results, and met plenty of great users on several teams there. Off the ice, I posted some media, built some fun stats tools, and applied for a couple of site jobs, ending up with a spot on the SMJHL awards committee where I’ve gotten to work with even more amazing users from across the league. It’s been a wild ride, and I’ve still got no idea what to expect going into the SHL draft tomorrow (as of posting this piece), but if there’s one thing I can say for certain, it’s that what you get out of the SHL is entirely based on what you put in, and the more you put yourself out there, the more surprised you’ll be at what you find. If there’s one final piece of advice I can give to you as a new user, it’s to remember that this is a hobby, not a job. Hobbies are supposed to be fun, and it can be easy to lose sight of that when you focus too hard on individual tasks, and it’s easy to see someone who’s mastered a hobby and expect to be able to dive straight into it and get the same results, but that path can quickly burn you out if it doesn’t immediately succeed. Remember to pace yourself, but don’t be afraid to test the waters of something just outside your comfort zone. The rest of us are doing this as a hobby too, and each and every one of us is here to make your experience a good one. You only get one rookie season, so remember to let yourself enjoy it. Good luck out there, and I’ll see you on the ice! Word Count: 4844 RE: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - Yagoyi - 03-05-2022 thx ramen RE: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - Chevy - 03-05-2022 “Write a 4K word article” Pay em! Double! RE: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - brickwall35 - 03-05-2022 Fantastic write up! RE: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - boom - 03-05-2022 This is really well-written! RE: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - Shylo_Moxii - 03-05-2022 this is what you call SHL Goat status RE: A Rookie's Guide to Your Rookie Season, for First-Generation Players - Anthique - 05-13-2022 God, I just find out this. I wish I found it when I sign up. It wouldn't have changed anything, but there're some good pieces of advice every newbie (like me) should have known. In the guideline of a new player, we should read this to be more prepared for what's coming. This is golden: «What I didn’t expect at all was how quickly my fictional hockey team would become the center of my online social life.»