Been a while since I wrote a Media, and while it seems to be far more reasonable to split my writing over the course of several smaller Media, I have instead decided to write one massive article to cover my costs for next season. This is the sort of insanity that one should expect with me, so for any GMs looking, I see you, you see me, and I know we’re both insane so lets just get that out of the way. I am a fiend for TPE, and bonus, apparently a fiend for money. While I’m hoping to wait at least another season before diving into jobs, I do want to showcase my ability to put words on a screen for cash.

So far, things are looking good for Carolina on selecting me. I remain tied for the highest TPE in the class, although at this point there is virtually no separation between any of the top earners. I might not be as active in the LR as management might have been hoping but it’s been a complicated few months with taking advantage of my girlfriend not being in school (until last week! Go her!), and being 80% laid off (it’s complicated), so I have been all over the place both physically and mentally. Add in getting the shit knocked out of me by some mystery illness, and the everlasting trauma that is the holidays, and we’re here. But I’m settling back into a routine. I’m spending much less time driving back and forth to my girlfriend’s city, and well working less. So that means more time for Discord and the SHL! I’m down a couple of sim leagues for the next month or so, which means I’m all yours folks! I generally spend most of my waking hours in front of my computer, although I’m hoping to remedy that a bit this year in my attempts to lose a few more ill-gotten pounds, but at the very least I’ll be around every weekday in some capacity (being several hours!). I work on a computer, usually at home, and always on multiple monitors, one that is dedicated to sim league shenanigans! Means I’ll always be on top of PTs, and can almost always answer pings, as I hear [insert Discord boop] playing in my ears over the sound of whatever song or video I have playing in the background.

And my player! She’s pretty okay in my opinion. Still lots of room for growth, even if I don’t know exactly what to be growing at any given time. I’m not used to sim engines with such small attribute scales, or leagues with such small TPE earning. This isn’t my first rodeo and I’ve spent a lot of time in 12 TPE cap leagues, and earning my measly couple a week, and then waiting for PTs to be graded I always feel like I’m a little bit behind even if I’m very obviously not! This is all to say, if you intend to draft me, or watch my player play this season, disregard any stupid build decisions I make. I hear every kind of build kind of works, so that’s my excuse. But in general I want to make a smooth skating defender, who is capable of carrying the puck from her end of the ice to our opponents and setup up a good offensive play there. Zone Entries and Zone Exits are my bread and butter. Not getting scored on would be nice too, but we’re not quite there yet. One day maybe! You’ll see I was moderately successful at making an offensive impact in my rookie season. Decent amount of goals on a respectable amount of shots, despite virtually no investment in the group of attributes that I would expect to affect that. Would’ve liked more assists, but I can only control a small portion of that total! There were a lot of excellent, and obviously deserving players ahead of me in the depth chart, and considering the opportunities I was given as a core member of this team’s future, I think Agate made a good impression. There is a lot of room to keep going here though, as we nail down the final ~50 TPE before grinding towards 425 at the conclusion of this coming season. The priority will be shutting down the opposition and making the most of my puck control time.
 
Carolina has been a dream come true for me, and while I was fully prepared to explore other options at the draft, and had great chats with everyone, this is where I wanted to end up. I was worried they were considering me for 1st overall, because boy is that a lot of pressure, and then they traded it, and then I thought they were hoping I’d slide to 13 or whatever their last 1st rounder was, but I knew I wouldn’t make it that far. I really hadn’t considered a reality where they trade 1st and then pick me at 2nd. Not sure why, but the management group did an amazing job not giving away their hand, and I really got to have a genuine draft experience which I’m honestly really grateful for. Getting to be a true First Generation player again, with a band of people I really don’t know all that well has been incredible. Joining affiliate leagues for the VHL involved seeing a lot of familiar names, and even joining GOHLS was a lot of the same names. This though has been almost a blank slate, and I haven’t even crossed paths yet with most of the people I know from before. It’s like living a hidden life here, and I bet most of them don’t even know I’m here. I know there was at least a couple people who didn’t know I was, that found out like a week ago when I welcomed them to a server here.
It’s going to be really awesome to join the capped group of Carolina this season, with a wealth of talent at every position. I don’t have enough in me right now to do a deep dive of every SMJHL team, especially to have that altered by an incoming draft. Yes I have enough effort to write 2500 words (at least, I’m only at 1000 or so now!), but this comes easy to me! Hear that GMs? Anyways, we’ve got a ton of Center depth, a 350 goaltender, a capped D pairing, and Ragnar and I making that 4 by some point in the season. Couple of wingers here and there, and a ton of depth, and you’ve got yourself a contender! At least that’s what I think. The vibes here are certainly deserving of a good playoff run.
 
It is a bit crazy to me to see players on my team pushing 900 TPE, probably closer to 1000 by the end of the season. I wonder how satisfying of a boost it will be at the end of my SMJHL career to apply all of that TPE. Rookies must integrate pretty quickly? Or Applied TPE must skyrocket. I’m not quite there with the math yet to figure out what a max build looks like for someone earning a ton of TPE. I don’t even know what depreciation looks like yet, but thankfully I have a ton of time to figure that out. Lots of time to chill here in the SMJHL, hang out with the wonderful people of Carolina and write my silly little PTs.

I’m sure this is a universal problem in sim leagues where people complain about the prompts, but honestly I’ve really been enjoying the prompts that we’ve gotten so far in the SMJHL. I could honestly write so much more about all of them than the requirement and sometimes I really consider it before I rein myself in. Can’t be wasting all of my precious words on sim hockey now can I? Irony, I know. We’ve got a long way to go here, so I hope you’re still hanging in there! I must say not knowing when I’ll get my TPE is a bit nerve wracking. VHL you get your TPE as soon as an Updater gets to it, and SBA you get it every Monday. Usually I wake up on a Monday morning to have both sitting waiting for me, and here I have to remind myself that there’s a week to do them, then a couple days to pull and grade them, and then I get the TPE. Long cycle, but really rewarding when pyro tells me I got some TPE. Even 1 TPE gets me giddy. Not that I can do much with 1 TPE anymore, as the cost for things has begun skyrocketing, and I’m eager to trudge my way through things costing 12+. Hopefully some old geezers swing by to dunk me for being young and naive, and comment about how many hills they’ve had to climb both ways to get to their build. It’s nice to feel young again, as the weight of the world (capitalism) crushes us all slowly and painfully. If even just in sim hockey, I get to be the little baby again.
 
Speaking of babies, I’m taking a quick peek at the 76 class, and I recognize a few names! We’ve had a lot of people stop by the sim leagues I’m in recently, expanding their spheres, and some have made their way here too! They may or may not recognize me, as I’m a bit more of an addict than some others might be, but I see you! Enjoy the spotlight here in the SMJHL draft, and put together a better mock draft than we did!

Shoutout to the S75 Discord server for popping off all the time. Even if I have no idea who their players are, or how they’re doing, or really anything about them, these names are my peers for the extent of our careers, and there is some fierce competition and lots of encouragement that is going to be coming our way over the next however long a career usually is here, and I’m excited to see where it all goes! The only person I’ve really kept up with is Kalakar, who is of course my bitter rival in the game, and always a welcome face wherever I see them around here. Our rivalry, mostly one-sided, for the one who needs some sort of reference to judge their success, and a subject to write many words about, is intense, and has earned me a great number of TPE. For that I must be thankful and hope for many more prompts that I can loop this fiction back into.
 
I do hope to keep better tabs this season, with more time spent mindlessly in front of my computer, and start to get to know some names, faces, teams and rivalries. It’s one of those things that sort of clicks all of a sudden, and no amount of index browsing has gotten me there yet. Shoutout to the portal devs, your portal is so beautiful. Especially now that I know to log in and log out regularly! I hope to get just as ingrained in this sim hockey universe as I have in the VHL, which is pretty lofty since I have GMd nearly everyone in that league by now, but hey, this community is also deserving of my love. My rise to power and fame will come, but I want to make sure I’m ready this time for things to take off quickly. Count this as my warning, for my world domination is about to begin. I don’t know why I’m being so dramatic about it, but I have a hard time holding myself back from managing and mentoring, particularly newbies, and so the moment I’m confident in exactly how to answer the most frequently asked questions, or at least who to guide them to, I’ll be right in there. I suppose I should also learn a few things about the league structure and the sim engine, but those are mostly secondary. If I know anything about myself it is that I can spend many hours scrounging through forums looking for answers to questions about obscure pieces of software. I have a computer science degree, in case you were wondering. And I also dabble in mentoring a high school robotics program. There’s a lot of awful documentations my eyes have seen. But I eventually find what I’m looking for (usually)!
 
Some final notes for my SHL GMs who most certainly skimmed the first couple paragraphs and ended up here at the end, hoping I summed up this monstrosity tightly. Yes, you should pick me. I’ll be in the SMJHL for a while, as Carolina is in fact the place to be. I’ll follow your build advice, I’ll earn all of the TPE, and nothing can stop me. I’ll hang out with your team, I try to butt into conversations where I can. We’re all scarily similar, I’m sure there’s something we can relate with each other about (I’m looking at you Tabletop Roleplaying games). I’ve been in sim leagues for 3 and a half years, I have been a TPE fiend for about 2 of those years. I know some people here, but I am willing to commit a career to any team that will treat me like I’m theirs. Take care of me and I’ll take care of you. Business is business, and I’ll always encourage you to take the stupidly good deal to acquire me, and I’ll love you anyways. I’ll always choose to resign with a team than test free agency, too much work in my opinion. I want to join a team that is heading in a direction, whether that is tanking or winning. None of this mediocre, hanging-in-the-middle type of franchise. I’ll be so bad with you, just to get the chance to be so good with you. I’d rather join a bottom-feeder than an already championship calibre team, but hey a free ring won’t be turned down. I want to be a part of your plan, not just a final chip. Make way, because Agate is coming. I’ll set up your forwards to do lots of scoring for as long as I can. That simple! I like to make it easy to keep me around, and plan me as a constant in whatever length of plans you have. Easier to build a contender when you have 1 less hole to fill! And count on me to be a die hard cheerleader for whatever team I’m playing on, and worm my way into helping the team in any capacity they’ll let me, in any official or unofficial capacity. I can’t stop myself from brute-forcing good vibes and an efficiently managed organization. I see a great number of spreadsheets in my future, and I’ve already begun delving for opportunities to make some projects for my professional portfolio that desperately needs some additions.

Lets have a good S75 everyone, lets score lots of points, hit lots of those milestones and let Carolina win a championship!

2600+ words for da moneyz