Introduction
When considering what sort of media a new community member could possibly contribute to a community so rich in both history and content, the question I sought to answer was: What perspective do I hold that is unique? And, well, the answer to that question is that I was recently and am still within the SHL’s onboarding process. And so, to my newfound community, without further ado, I present to you a report card and analysis of the aforementioned SHL new user onboarding process.

The format of this report card will be as follows. I will go through each perceived step of the onboarding process in chronological order. I will describe exactly what occurred at each step. I will then give my perspective - what went well? What was engaging? What was welcoming? What could be improved? I will finish each section with a letter grade (A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D, F). Please note that my thoughts on this matter and associated letter grade are purely scientific and not disputable in any way, shape, or form. Any dissent, no matter how small, is horrific, disgusting propaganda and should be treated as such by the fullest extent allowable by law.

Registration and Player Creation
I registered for the SHL through the browser based website around 1:00 pm on September 13th. The initial registration page was very straight forward. I then landed on a Player Creation page. Here I first considered who my player should be. I thought to model him after myself as a hockey player (fun fact, I’ve played and/or coached for 28 years now). I went with speed and shot accuracy as strengths, picked a default name in other games I’ve played, and picked an arbitrary render.

During the player creation process, I remember wondering how big of an impact certain attributes have versus other ones. For instance, if I create a player with the lowest allowable height and weight, will they perform poorly? My competitive side wanted to maximize my height/weight but I did not know what would work the best. I wound up nixing that train of thought and went with a fairly normal weight and height to maximize the role-play side of my SHL journey. Overall, the player creation guidance is solid. Choosing a player style is a great way for new users who may not know as much about hockey is a wonderful idea. One simply cannot go wrong as they are somewhat forced to consider the identity of their player and then act accordingly with the guided attribute suggestions. While I had some questions about how exactly some of the attributes affect the simulation, the player creation process is clean and simple, even if someone has zero sim or hockey experience.

Grade: A

Initial Point of Contact
I joined the SHL Discord server at 1:14 pm on September 13th. I was immediately prompted to agree to the rules and then joined the server. 1:17 pm was my initial point of contact with another community member, ‘Anthique,’ who clicked the Wave to Say Hi button. Two other community members, ‘charity gremlin jess’ and ‘AJ/Bugg’, did the same at 1:38 pm and 1:53 pm respectively. Conversation then picked up at 1:58 pm regarding an all-time records website page.

As far as an initial point of contact goes, I was immediately pleased that someone immediately greeted me at the door, so to speak, three minutes after joining the server. Anyone looking to join a new community wants to know that said community has a baseline level of active users, and I was no exception to this. Ultimately having three users give me the classic Discord greeting reassured me that I was not joining a dead or struggling server. That all being said, and perhaps this is my fault for not immediately jumping in with who I was or in any way introducing myself, I think it would have been nice for someone to have posted a message directed towards me, letting me know the basics of where to turn to if I needed help, a more personalized welcome message beyond hitting the wave button, or offering next steps such as joining the discord server for my draft class, which, not to spoil the next section, I was able to find and join later that might at 8:34 pm.

Grade: C+

Day One
Beyond what I had already completed, as mentioned above, this section serves to relay what I did with the rest of my first SHL day and how that experience went. I spent a lot of time simply reading and pursuing the SHL forums. I went back in history in the SHL Discord server and read some of the conversations there. I went back to the forum and took a closer look at “Step 2: Updating Your Player” by ruggsy. For some reason on my browser, the images do not load, however using the text I was able to update my player with TPE gained from training and level 3 training using the text explanations.

I eventually found, and honestly I forget how I found it, the Discord channel for my specific draft season, S80. I joined this Discord server on the same day, September 13th, at 8:34 pm, a solid seven hours and twenty minutes after joining the main SHL Discord server. At 8:36 pm I asked my first question, as this seemed like the best area to do so. 'Cake307' responded to my question five minutes later, in an enthusiastic manner, giving me tips as to how to put my best foot forward within the SHL community.

Personally, my first day was a little overwhelming with the amount of information there is to take in. Reading over new user experiences, I do not seem to be alone in this opinion. The two player guides that 'ruggsy' created are excellent to explain to new users how to create a player and how to use the player portal. What seems to be missing is a “Step 3: What Now?” The forum is organized intuitively and allows new users such as myself to read literally more than a decade of SHL history. When browsing the main Discord channel, it struck me that the average user age may be lower than I was hoping it would be - the conversation seemed to be what you may expect from early to middle aged teens (emojis, cartoons, spongebob, memes, anime, what I believe is referred to as K-Pop). This was slightly off-putting to me at first, and I really have nothing to add to that sort of vibe, but I was able to balance this with the more mature responses and discussions found in the forum and other areas of the community, even when Spongebob K-Pop isn’t my personal cup of tea.

It took me 7 hours and 20 minutes to find my draft class Discord server (I really wish I remembered how I found it!) which is probably too long in regards to new user retention and joining a smaller sub-community where you might not get lost in the void of the main channel. When asking specific questions in my draft year server, I was met with quick, enthusiastic responses. This definitely gave me hope that, although I did not know everything yet, that the community was happy to help and not tired of giving advice to new player after new player, even in a smaller subsection of the wider SHL community. The draft Discord channel definitely helps new players to feel included into a tighter-knit sub-community, helping new players like me to feel more comfortable jumping into the conversation and participating than I otherwise would have in the main server.

Grade: B

Being a Draftee
As of today, so in the span of 8 days, I have received direct messages via Discord from four GMs (one on 9/14, one on 9/16, one on 9/19, and one on 9/20). They asked me about how I have been doing with everything so far, what my goals are for my player, and what my interests are.

This process has been fun. For a new player, the idea of being drafted and being almost interviewed by prospective GMs is very engaging. It is good to get to know people who are in leadership positions in the league and it is equally good to be known by them. The only negative I can think of is that it takes a little while to have people start reaching out to you, but that should honestly come as no surprise as each draftee does what they can to get noticed. The draftee process is one of the definite strengths of the SHL - it initializes the immersion of joining a real professional team (or the junior leagues, to start, anyways!)

Edit while writing: While writing this article, I've since been offered and have accepted the offer of a UDFA contract. This even further goes to show that by putting your best foot forward, in less than two weeks you really can begin to establish yourself in the wider (or in the more specific, depending on your perspective) community. The below grade does not reflect this most recent development.

Grade: A-

Waiting for Draft Day
This section is regarding the various areas of the community I’ve since decided to contribute to and how that experience has been. Since joining, and waiting for draft day, I’ve: 1. Started developing the role-play of my player, 2. Attempted to create a graphic for my player, 3. Written two bounties, 4. Chirped, 5. Joined the SHL fantasy (I think).

While some of these opportunities were challenging to find, the community does a nice job of steering new players to them when asked directly. I’ve seen on numerous occasions at this point, a new player saying something along the lines of “What do I do now?” in both the main Discord server and the S80 Draftee server. These opportunities to participate in the community are somewhat hidden in the forum, so it is good that there are people to pave the way. This may be a further indication that a “Part 3: What Now?” thread may be warranted. Another idea may be that new users get an automatic forum DM sent to them with a sort of forum scavenger hunt that is worth a small amount of TPE or money.

Overall, I enjoyed the opportunities I found to participate. Envisioning the role-play around my player has been a rewarding creative experience. Typing the bounties helped solidify this role-play and helped me to work out some of the kinks. It also made me more invested in his success. As for attempting a graphic, the experience once again helped me work out exactly who I want my player to be and what niche he may fill both statistically and artistically. It made me realize that I still have a lot of work to do when comparing it to the SHL pros. The chirps were a little underwhelming, as you just type a sentence that gets lost in the nether, but overall it gave me something to do and helped me to feel like I was being productive. As for the SHL fantasy, I signed up via the thread, joined the Discord server, identified, and am still confused as to what is happening there. Perhaps I could go hunting in the forums to see if there is anything else I am supposed to do currently, but with the general information overload I decided to leave it be at the moment. Overall, although the participation opportunities were somewhat hidden in various areas, I eventually was able to find them and enjoyed my first week of contributing to the community.

Grade: B

Overall
The overall grade was determined as an average of the above five results. According to my state of the art scientific formula, the SHL onboarding process has earned a... 

Final Grade: B+

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