I figured since the Playoffs are starting, the draft is coming up, and Marston's career is coming to a close, it's a good time to do a press conference and harvest more trading card cash training money. Depending on how many questions I get, I may follow the trend of opening card packs and talking about any player cards that grab my attention as well. Bare minimum, though, I will answer questions submitted in the body of this post. We'll see how it goes! Ask away!

---

Apparently, getting an hour that's quiet enough to record without something interrupting just doesn't happen in my house anymore, so podcasting is out. Sorry if any of you were really hoping to hear my voice. I promise, you're not missing much.

Micool Asks...

Hi Micool! It's been fun getting to know you a bit this season! Thank you for your questions! I’m going to skip your first question briefly because I think it ties well to the other goalie questions I received. So, we’ll start with:

Quote:If you could be a cereal brand and dive into a milk pool, what would you be and why?

At first, I read that as “if you could dive into a cereal and milk pool”, and my answer was going to be Cinnamon Toast Crunch because it’s my favorite. I don’t eat cereal very often, but if I do decide that I want cereal, I’m probably going to pick up a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I like cinnamon. However, since it’s what brand I’d want to be if I were diving into a milk pool, I feel like I’d have to go with Frosted Mini Wheats. We went camping a lot when I was a kid, and my parents would always get the variety pack of cereals. I want to think it was like Apple Jacks, Fruit Loops, Honey Smacks, Golden Grahams, Frosted Mini Wheats, and and Honey Nut Cheerios. I’d always eat the Mini Wheats last because it always felt like an age waiting for them to soak up enough milk that it didn’t feel like chomping down sawdust pellets. They take the longest to dissolve or get too mushy out of any cereal that I can think of, which feels like it should be important if I’m diving into a pool of milk.

Quote:What is your appreciation of your first junior year with your new player?

This season in Colorado is so far away from my pre-Draft expectations of what was going to happen. Going in, I had figured I was going to go to Carolina, Vancouver, or Colorado because those were the teams that had the most obvious spaces for a developing goalie. I was pleasantly surprised to get to chat with some other teams who were looking at possibilities, but I figured it was probably one of those three. Along with that, I expected to struggle a fair bit as a rookie goalie and as somebody who feels awkward getting to know new people. It took me almost a season in St. Louis to even decide if I wanted to keep going in the league, and even knowing Squall, ml, and Tron when I went to Toronto, it was a bit intimidating. I expected to have to find a groove in both the sim and the locker room, and I expected it to take a while.
It feels like calling it a blessing is probably the right word, a blessing to feel so welcome and like I fit well so quickly with the Raptors. All I’ve really wanted for Shuckle is a place to hang out and recharge after some burnout in the SHL level. The success that I’ve had on a personal level and getting to experience the run we’ve had this season is honestly the just about the best icing. It could've been a little sweeter, but that's okay. We'll get 'em next time.

Quote:What is something funny we do not know about you?

I was a big time dinosaur kid when I was growing up. If there was a dinosaur on a piece of clothing, a book, or a movie poster, I was there for it. One of the saddest days of my preschool life was when my mother had to call in and order another set of “Walking With Dinosaurs” VHS cassettes from the BBC catalog because I had shredded the tape on the ones I had. I was the kid in the back of the class that the teachers left alone in Kindergarten because while the stereotype with small children is struggling with hard consonant sounds, I would hold up my Paleontology book and read off the Latin names of the dinosaurs on the page like “That’s a Pachycephalosaur. That’s a Brachiosaurus, but I like Diplodicus better.” My favorite dinosaur is Stegosaurus because there was a theory in the late 90s and early 00s that Stegosaurus had an itty bitty tiny brain in its skull but a second, more robust brain in its tail. That has since been challenged and might have even been disproven, but 5 year old me thought that was the Coolest Thing EVER! Naturally, when I joined the SHL, I was immediately interested in Colorado. It didn’t work out then and that’s fine, but I was hyped that there was a dinosaur team.

All of this to say that I have what has to be one of the world’s most embarrassing dinosaur tattoos on my ankle. My sister and I have matching ones. Classic “Barely Adult Rebellion”, we got them around her 18th birthday as a sibling bonding thing. Emma had a friend who can draw make her Triceratops so it’s all cute and cartoony. I tried to draw mine from the silhouette of a Stegosaurus and I can’t draw. Thusly, Emma has a line art dinosaur, I have a line art dinosaur chicken nugget. Thankfully, since I am basically a walking Xerox page origami, I can color it in with Sharpies and it kind of hides how derpy looks. I actually tend to do that when I wear shorts in public.

Quote:How do you like being a goaltender versus being a skater?

The short answer is that it’s been a good experience, but I don’t know for sure yet. I’ll try to explain.
They’re very different positions, very different schools of thought. I’ll detail more of that in a bit. Part of the draw to creating as Shuckle right now is that I wanted to take a bit and figure out how goalies work. With all of that in mind, who I am around the league is also different at this point compared to the same point in my rookie season.
I have loved getting to be Danny Marston. As I got my bearings around the site, I really bought into St. Louis and then I bought into Toronto. I’ve been through a lot in the last two years, as we all have, but the way that I’ve been able to interact in the league has been really helpful to me. So far, it’s been a very different experience as Shiny Shuckle. A lot of that is how I get to interact in the league. I know a lot more people now, I know more about how the league works. I’m also a bit burned out of some parts of the league. Not only are the positions very different, but the person I am as I move through the league is too, and I’m not sure how that affects being a goalie versus being a skater just yet.

Squally asks...

Quote:What is it like being a goalie compared to being a skater? Is there room for more goalies in the coming seasons?

Continuing right along with a more direct comparison, the biggest difference is that goalies still use the old skater update scale. It works better for goalies once they uncap but makes builds in the J a little weird. I haven’t been able to figure out a way of using all of my available points under cap without losing out on stats that I’d rather have at a certain level. The other aspect that’s wildly different is how goalie stats work. For the most part, skater stats are an independent effort in FHM. Yeah, having good linemates will make a difference, but you’re not always directly considering what your teammates are doing as a part of your performance. With wins and GAA in goalie stats, that’s exactly what you end up doing.
As for more space in coming seasons, I think there’s a few spots opening next season. I think Newfoundland, Regina, and Great Falls have spots opening up, possibly a couple of other teams. In the SHL, I honestly have no idea and I haven’t really been looking. I think it’ll be a few more seasons before the goalies who’ve reigned through the FHM era so far begin to retire. I know you’ve been talking about possibly recreating as a goalie next time around, so I hope I answered your question.

Quote:How does Winnipeg compare as a locker room to Toronto?

They’re a little bit different but I like both. The activity levels are about the same, but Winnipeg has done a game night this season and has another coming up soon, which has been nice. Getting to play Jackbox and Skribbl is always fun. I will be very lucky to get to experience a team environment like Toronto in the late S50s again, with how tight-knit and focused it felt and how good of a group I got to be a part of, it felt special. I think with the call-ups coming for S65, Winnipeg is starting that kind of streak, and I love that for these folks. It’s gonna be a wild ride and I wish them the best.

Quote:As an addict of the new SHL Trading Cards myself, how addicted to trading cards are you?

The phrase “cardboard crack” has never been so real. I finally understand why my mother never bought me Pokemon or Yugi-Oh cards as a kid. I cut down my subscription to 2 packs a day and had to take the SHL Card site off of my Chrome start page to save more than 10 packs. Even then, I’d go in and buy a 3rd pack every couple of days so I could open one. Squally, I’m doing media. I have done more media in the last four months than in the preceding two years that I've been on this site. That’s the best answer I can offer for your question there.

Quote:Do any teams have potential for upsets in the SHL?

The answer that I had prepared was that I kinda checked out on the sim side of the SHL this season. I’ve been more focused on getting Shuckle to stop giving up 4 goals a game. I was pretty happy to go to the playoffs one last time with the Aurora, but I didn't really know idea what to expect. I predicted that Buffalo and Philly had the potential to be interesting to watch, that they had the best chance in the East of going to a Game 6 or 7. That was pretty wrong. I also thought that the most extreme potential was in the NOLA-Texas matchup. I thought that it was either going to be an Upset Watch or NOLA is going to get swept without a whole lot of in-between. That was kind of true for a little bit, but Texas ultimately won in 6 games.

Thank you for the questions, Squally! Always a pleasure!

Rashford Asks...

Quote:We’ve loved having you in WPG in S64,

If you could name three people/players that really shaped your career, who would they be?

Well, first off, thank you so much for the kind words and the question! I've really enjoyed getting to know everybody in Winnipeg this past season, yourself definitely included!

To answer your question, funny enough, the most obvious one is Squally. We were line-mates in St. Louis, and when I asked out of Minnesota, Squall was one of the people who I thought of in Toronto that drew me in. Then we were linemates in Toronto for a long time. If I think of the best three seasons I’ve had statistically, mentally, and emotionally, I would be very surprised if there was one without Squall rostered to my right. This is the only my second season ever on a different roster from Zapo.
Nictox is the second one. He was my GM in St. Louis, and he helped me get my bearings as a player, as a member of the site, as a war room guy, and then as a GM. So much of who I’ve gotten to be in this community is based off of what I got to learn from Nic.
There have been so many people who have affected my time on this site, mostly positively. I’ve had so many wonderful conversations and experiences, and it’s all meant so much to me. That might be a bit of a cop out answer, but it’s really, honestly difficult to pick from all of the awesome people that I’ve gotten to share time with. Whenever we have those tasks to talk about our favorite people, mine is always a novel because I have such a hard time narrowing it down that it's easier to list everybody I can think of. Probably the front runners are ml, Joe K, Chevy, Fuzz, and Sparky, and they’re all great dudes and I have no idea how I could pick just one to be the third guy in.

Gibbles Asks...

Hi Gibbles! Thanks for the questions! I'm going to rearrange a bit so it's not quite as much of a tonal whiplash. The first one got a bit heavy, whereas some of them are a little more fun.

Quote:If you could change 1 moment in your career what would it be?

This is tough. I don’t really have too many regrets. There are things that I wish had panned out differently, but ultimately things kind of go where they need to go. I kind of just make my peace with it, or try to.

I think I’d go with Game 7 against Detroit in S53. There were around 5 highlights from my line alone where we almost had a goal but it tipped wide or got stuffed or what not. I was in the war room and I had been testing FHM for that series like a mad man, and I was confident that if we could get them to OT, we could win. It was insanity, I want to think it was somewhere in the 40s percent that we went to overtime, and if we went to overtime the win rate was in the high 80s. If we could win against Detroit, we had pretty good odds against whoever was going to come out of the West. Picture it: rivalry series, first season in the new engine. We had been embarrassed a bit by Anaheim in the Finals the season before because STHS was overly cruel to aggressive players. Detroit had looked unstoppable all season long, and while we weren’t underdogs, the Scarecrows' challenge was a surprise to some. The final score ended up being 1-0 in favor of Detroit, who went on to win the Cup. But if we had gotten one good tip, one goal, and gone to overtime, it’d have been very likely that we got to the Finals to chase redemption.

If OT had gone our way, whether we pulled off a Cup win or not, it would have meant getting to play with Dangel for one more series. When I think about that game, that’s what I feel like I missed out on the most. That game was in July, and by October, he was gone. I got the privilege of knowing him for precious little time, but he's one of the most genuinely good people I've ever met. I miss him a lot.

Quote:What is your favorite moment from Marston's Career?

It’s a tie. This past season in IIHF is one of them, and Chevy asked about it, so I’ll talk more there. The other one is from S57, our 37th overall game of the season in Toronto. We played Tampa Bay, which is my hometown and the closest team to Danny’s hometown because I’m not that creative, and the game is dated December 21st, was simmed on December 15th, and my birthday is December 19th. So, my only career hat trick came within a week of my birthday in my home town, and it’s really cool in my opinion.

Quote:What's your favorite memory from your time in the SHL so far?

This kind of falls in line with my thoughts about people. It's hard to choose just one, since there's so many in so many ways and for different reasons.

Sweeping Detroit in my last season as the GM of St. Louis was pretty sweet. It felt good to do well in the playoffs even the slightest bit after struggling for so long. That it happened to be Detroit was extra motivation and made it a little more fun.

The S55 draft was one of my favorites. We took Joe 2nd overall, then whiffed on a few picks up to 66 OA, where we got Bud Weiser who was one of the best value picks I ever made. And then, turning happenstance into tradition, I traded for 69 OA to pick up the crown jewel of all of my picks at that position: Jingle McMonkeynuts. It was a really fun draft, and Inf1 trying to announce that pick was amazing. I’m really sad that it doesn’t exist in VODs anymore.

In S59 testing against Buffalo, I worked myself until I couldn't see the numbers very well. It was somewhere around 6 AM that I posted a zip file with a bunch of screenshots to Toronto's management chat and apparently had named it "Operation Fuck Yo Couch". It was basically a way of maximizing our aggression while still focusing on scoring, with balanced passing and tempo. It was a cruise missile (not really nuclear) option if we got past Game 5, which I wasn't sure we would do. I woke up 12 and a half hours later to a pillow line etched into my face, a bunch of tags on Discord, and the team chat scrolling fast about "Fuck Yo Couch" and Game 7. That was fun, and it would have been nice to have been able to hold on for those last 30 seconds.

Quote:Why were you the only one to heal me after failing 2 death saves when the whole party knew I was the only one who could cast revivify?

For some background, obviously this is a D&D campaign. Gibbles and I play in Tig’s campaign, along with Nic, Corey, and Halkohol. This past session, we had a big boss fight and while Gibbles and I are both Clerics, only one of us remembered that Revivify was a thing going into the day. In fairness, I was not aware when we began the session four? weeks before that a trip to the library was not the only thing on the itinerary. There was also crime, getting our shit kicked in, and going to what I can only imagine is the Underdark gulag.

To actually answer the question, 1) I’m the other Cleric, it’s what we do. 2) Based on how much healing equipment that two of our party members had on hand that they didn’t use even on the edge of consciousness, I think everybody else just forgets about healing if we’re around. Which, like, okay, but sometimes I want those spell slots for thunderstorms and trying to punch red-eyed bastards who need to mind their business in the throat with Inflict Wounds. Low key, I’m glad that I took the Druid level when I did because now that we’re stuck without equipment, the first thing I want to figure out is a way to start hoarding Goodberries. High key, I’m mad that I didn’t get to use my reaction once in that fight because Roos is a bitch who wouldn’t stab me. Halk’s our Wizard and he took more of a hit than me.

Carpy Asks...

Hi Carpy! Thank you for the questions! I hope you're doing well, I haven't gotten to chat in a bit.

Quote:How difficult was it for you to retire?

It was easier than I had ever considered. Heck, I made it more difficult by making so much media and fanfare. I’ve made contract posts that I put more study, thought, and anxiety into than my retirement post.

I don’t think it was that it was hard or easy to get to the decision, it was more that I was mad about the situation. I know that I’ve been a bit of a slacker on media, that I had been having problems updating consistently for a couple of seasons, so a lot of it was self-inflicted as I was sliding downhill a little too quick. When the rules changed, it clicked in my head that I wasn’t going to enjoy whatever was coming next as much. I recognized that burnout feeling that I’ve had toward the, we’ll call them, intricacies of the SHL level of competition. Toronto’s always had a front row seat to the shit-show that gets put on, and with the changes that came in the league, and the shock to our team’s system, it pinged in my head that I was tired and I wanted to try something different around the league. It's also been wild in my life offline for the past while, and seems to be ramping up to stranger new heights. This new player was created with allowing space for real life's oddities in mind.

Quote:Which are your favorite cards in your current collection, and which are some you really would like to get?

In my current collection, I have a couple of Chris York cards and I pulled a Lokitonov card recently, which is cool. Aesthetically in my collection, I think the Julio Tokolosh card is my favorite, but I've always enjoyed the cow render. I want a Nour Harrak card, since I like the MS Paint avatar. Ultimately the cards that I want are all from people I got to play with in Toronto, so you, Squally, Dex, Tron, Rich, Fresh, Ursin, Mika, and Charlie are the big names on that list. Pretty sure most of them are Diamond-tier, so it’s gonna take a while. The only one I've got so far is Gurbs.

Jumbo Asks...

Hi Jumbo! Thanks for the questions, and for leading us through such an awesome season in Colorado! I hope it's okay if I skip your second question though, since Gibbles asked the same thing.

Quote:How did you come up with your goalies name?

I’ll be honest, alcohol was involved. I’ve got another group of friends that I play games with, and sometimes we have nights where we drink and scroll through our social media and memes instead. That's probably weird but they’re really bad at Skribbl and Cards Against Humanity gets too meta because we’ve been friends for coming up ten years. There's just too many receipts and old jokes and memories. Inevitably, I'll be minding my business and sipping my drink and one of those bastards will bring up that kid on the old Minecraft server who built a shrine to my feet. It’s safer to scroll memes.
So, one night about a year ago, we were doing that and the classic “Don’t Fuckle” greentext came up on my buddy’s Twitter feed. I got it in my head, “what would a defensive specialist look like in the style of a Shuckle?”, and then somehow I remembered it in the morning. When I decided to make a goalie, I had the thought again and really liked the idea of a goalie with the catchphrase “Don’t Fuckle”. I made Shiny Shuckle because Regular Shuckle wasn't alliterative and blue is my favorite color. And here we are.

Chevy Asks...

Hey Chevy! Always great to hear from one of the best members of S52! Thanks for popping in and asking a question!

Quote:How did gold feel?

I mentioned it earlier, but I’ll say it again that it’s one of the highlights of my time in the SHL so far, and one of the best moments out of Marston's playing career specifically. I wasn’t expecting to be voted the Captain for Team USA, and I don’t think anybody really expected us to do well. You and Campin pulled off the upsets that got us to Gold and it was just amazing. It was really a sweet ending to Marston’s tenure with the red, white, and blue. It also bookends quite nicely with the S54 WJC Gold that we won right before I got called up to Toronto and the IIHF roster. It still feels great to open the site and see the banner sitting there, and know that I played a part in that. Partly as Captain and a member of the team, but also as the guy who made the banner.

Tig Asks...

I was going to say hi, but then I read the question. Now I feel the urge to pout.

Quote:Do you consider it a strong operating policy to play a cleric that doesn't prepare revivify before a major fight?

Now, listen here...!

Nah, it was an accident. I honestly hadn't thought further than the library. I wasn't sure what the day was going to bring, and then it was moving very quickly and I forgot to check my spells. It was an Oopsie on my part. Thankfully, no one died permanently because Gibbles was there. I will say that my view going forward is that if you have a Cleric with one functioning brain cell, you should have another Cleric so that your dumbass stormy boi realizes at least before the end of the fight that Something is Wrong. At least then the party may plan accordingly.

...

I'm still mad that Roos didn't stab me. I may die to regret this later, but...

Ragnar Asks..

Quote:Are you ever going to promote to Major?

I considered it at one point, but if anything, I've been trying to shorten my name. I went to _Blitz_ on Discord and I've been thinking about changing it in some other places. The original name was a reference to one of my parents' hobby group that they had when I was growing up. The shorthand for that made me Blitz online. When I became an adult, I felt like I had to change it a bit but I wanted to stay Blitz to all of my online friends. Capt_Blitzkrieg came about because I felt like I sort of fell into team captain or moderator positions for at least a little bit whenever I'd join a group.

Nowadays, it's less frequent, so I've been looking for alternatives. There's a lot of "Blitz" accounts on Steam though. I'm still workshopping it some.

Trips Asks

Quote:How do you get crotch funk out of goalie pads?

That just dragged the depths of my childhood. When I played sports, my Mom might as well have taken out stock in Febreze and Arm & Hammer. She had baking soda boxes in every space that my soccer bag might reasonably sit for more than five minutes, including her car, because it was supposed to absorb odors or something. Then, it was the constant Febreze. I'm not too sure if that would work on a scale for goalie pads, but it might help?

Quote:What's been your favorite part of this season?

I love being back in the J. I've loved getting to know the Raptors and find my place in the locker room. It's just been a great experience the whole way around to be a rookie again! Hopefully my time in Colorado will just keep getting better! This season definitely gave me really good reasons to be optimistic.

Quote:What can SHL GMs expect from the Shiny Shuckle?

You and I have talked about this, and I've been explaining it as I get scouted, but I'm not really looking to move to the SHL. My life outside the SHL is crazy with no signs of calming down any time soon. I don't know what my time commitment is going to look like, and I don't really want to commit to a grind anyway. I'd still like to be drafted so that I can hang out with the community around a prospective team and stay loosely tethered to the larger community, but that's about the most that I want from the SHL level right now.

JUST one more question...

04-28-2022, 07:02 PMlespoils Wrote: Ballroom Blitz or Blitzkrieg Bop?

This is actually a really hard question. I like both a lot. They're on my main Spotify playlist, along with "Blitz" by Digitalism, a couple of songs by a band called Blitz Kids, "Thunder" by Boys Like Girls, "Cry Thunder" by DragonForce, "Thunder Kiss 65" by Rob Zombie, and "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC.

If I have to choose, though, I have to go with the Ramones on this one. When I was 8 or 9, my Mom cracked. She decided that she couldn't spend one more minute on Radio Disney, that three summers of "Jenny on the Block" and "The Hamster Dance" had broken her. She wanted her music back. The very first CD she bought with the intent of educating me and my sister was a Best Of collection of the Ramones. "Blitzkrieg Bop" was the first track on that album. When I close my eyes and try to picture the songs, I still picture the sunroof open, windows down drive in the old gold 4Runner, going across the Causeway out to Clearwater for a day at the beach. The old Coppertone SPF 50 smell, salt, maybe a bit of petrichor if the rain chased us off early. Fighting with Emma in the backseat over the last Uncrustable or bag of Cheetos, one of us inevitably spilling a drink, and both of us belting out the lyrics that we Did Not Understand At All.

I might have to take Daisy down to the dog beach this weekend and make that drive.

---

And with that, I'm going to call it here since I'm long overdue in answering these questions. Thanks for your patience, everybody! Sorry I wasn't able to record.