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*Carpy48* · 02-15-2020, 07:52 AM

Today marks my one year anniversary on the site. I thought it's only fitting to reflect a little about my past year here with my 1000th post and thank a few people. I don’t write much here, but I’d like to look back a little anyway. Let's see....

Why did I sign up?
I remember it was a Friday evening and I noticed a post somewhere on reddit. It wasn't actually the first time I had seen a recruitment post, but the previous times I had thought it was something entirely different, nothing that would even remotely interest me - and ignored it.

What did I know about the league when I joined?
Absolutely NOTHING. Neither did I know anything about sim leagues nor that people spent so much time with this stuff and this entire universe behind it.

What did I expect?
Again, nothing. One thing I didn't expect was how much of my time this thing would consume. When I joined I thought I would spend maybe 10-15 minutes a day with it, at most. I didn't understand anything, found it extremely complicated and I had no interest in using discord, even though it seemed like most of the action was happening there. I had always thought discord was just another app that the kids used these days (which is still mostly true, but luckily there is a number of older people there too) and it would eat up too much of my time. I had never used it much before.

So what happened next?
I found out how to create a player - I think I had to do it twice, on mobile, the first time it didn't work. Since I love goalies so much the choice for me was easy (especially Finnish goalies). Little did I know that this was the hardest position to find a team with and I remember getting a message from someone giving me the option to change my player's position - but I refused. I know some others from my draft class did that. Every time I played one of the NHL PS4 games I always made a goalie in "Be A Pro" and I roughly based my player on one of the goalies I had created there. Of course I didn't know anything about strengths and weaknesses (or what STHS was), but luckily we have the option to change these for free once. The next day I spent a little bit of time exploring the forum and looking at what I could do. I believe what happened next was the Prospect Tournament (#Vipers4Lyfe) and the Mock Draft. Looking back I had NO clue how to rank the players and I was so wrong Smile

I did find my way to the S47 rookie discord eventually, but I still didn't use it much.

Another thing I found out was that you could make little pictures to place in your signature and I believe I even made one for myself on the second or third day. This leads me to my favorite part of the site (if you couldn’t guess): the graphics section. I had been working with Photoshop for a looong time, but hadn't used it much in the last several years and I knew I had a graphics tablet somewhere collecting dust in a box. Thanks to the SHL I use both a lot more now. When I learned that you could (and needed to) make money on the site to pay for your training and equipment I immediately knew that my only option was to create and possibly even grade graphics. Writing simply wasn't my thing and I’m definitely not touching podcasts. I believe I messaged @Lazyeye (the former graphics head) within my first week here and asked what I needed to do to get a job as a graphics grader, even though there were no openings. Of course I didn't get a reply (part of the name was lazy, after all) and when I did get one eventually, I was told that there were no openings at the moment.
In the meantime I submitted several sigs I made for my fellow rookies, but grading took weeks back then (if not months) so I had no other choice but to write media to earn some money. I only did that because I had to, not because I enjoyed writing very much and I still don’t. It probably took another month until there were new job openings for graphics graders. I applied immediately and… got the job along with @Julio Tokolosh from my draft class. Look at us now: We're running the department and we’ve recently hired our first new graphics graders ourselves. So remember newbies: anything is possible here.
The site was extremely confusing for me in the beginning and there were so many teams I knew nothing about. I tried to spend some time digging through everything and asking the rookie mentors tons of stupid questions. I had heard that most SMJHL teams had two goalies already and didn't need any. The draft was coming up and I believed the only team that might want me was Halifax. I didn't really care as long as I got a spot, because I didn't know anything about the teams or their history. The draft happened in the middle of the night for me so the next day I was surprised that I got drafted by one of the recent expansion teams: the Lethbridge Lions Lions

(R.I.P.), just before Halifax had the chance to draft me. The first person to reach out to me was my new captain @TnlAstatine who invited me to the Lions discord (he's probably the main reason I stayed active and gave this whole thing a try, the other one then was my goalie partner @Fluw who introduced me to the great goalie discord that @Tomasnz was running). Sadly no other rookie from my draft class ended up in Lethbridge and those who were on the team then know how dead the place was most of the time. What happened to the management is a whole different story.

By the time the SHL draft happened I saw a little more interest from the GMs, but still not really as much. I was relatively unknown in the league and there still was no demand for goalies. I believe a few GMs scouted me though, but it didn't look very good. I heard that Toronto really needed a goalie, but I didn't know back then how bad the team's situation really was. Long story short: I got drafted by @ml002 and ended up being the first piece of a looong rebuild that was happening in Toronto Stars

. We're still working on that. Essentially I went from one somewhat dead discord in Lethbridge to one that looked even worse. Besides ml and myself everyone else on the team was inactive (yay?!). Also: again nobody else from my draft class went to the same team. At least ml wasn't that lonely anymore and had someone to talk to Wink

I didn't really have the best start in this league and I heard all those stories about how active the other teams were and how my fellow rookies knew so many people already. My IIHF team (Finland) wasn't really active or successful either. Luckily their goalie situation looked pretty bad, so just like in Toronto; I was going to be their starter for a long time. Somehow I even ended up as @WannabeFinn's Co-Fed Head there.

Despite all that, being on bad teams with dead discords, I kept going and stayed active - I became the starter in Lethbridge, leading the infamous "Skeleton Krew", and then after three seasons went to Toronto to become their starter. Little by little I learned how to find my way around the site, met lots of great people here and even started mentoring some like @KlusteR who's essentially another me and I'm currently helping two of my fellow S47 draftees - @JNH and @SDCore - out with the team that once used to be Lethbridge and has recently moved to Newfoundland Berserkers

. I was involved in the creation of that new team too. The list of people to thank is too long, but I couldn't end this without mentioning @Tate who almost ended up being my goalie partner in Toronto. Instead we're rivals now. I think we both like this better. Luckily ml drafted well and Toronto is now full of active players, some of them have joined the team already, others will follow soon and for some odd reason we don't suck as much as we should. We're probably the youngest team in the league with @Mika_Kandinsky and myself being the only two players with more than 1k TPE, but things look a lot more promising now.

What else?
I spend way too much time with this league (and on discord), I think my Photoshop skills have improved and I still haven't won anything with my player.

(1500 words)

Grapehead · 02-15-2020, 09:42 AM

congrats on the 1000th post milestone

*CptSquall* · 02-15-2020, 09:45 AM

Congrats my man, glad to have you here

***Fluw*** · 02-15-2020, 10:57 AM

Love you Carpy!

SDCore · 02-15-2020, 12:35 PM

Carp!!!!! Can't believe it's been a year for both of us. It's been an insane ride. Glad to have you in my MGMT team and get to chat with you daily! Go have some coffee and relax today