The Inevitable Vopatization of Vik

[Vik (Habs)]

Sad to say, it's the end of the road for me. I've enjoyed my time here and I think we've got a good group of guys, but real life beckons. There are too many projects demanding my time and time seems to be a finite resource. This probably explains why Dan's been figuring out how to get GMO to help with waivers and why I've been expressing my deepest feelings for Klim Kostin.

Disappointing that I couldn't pick up a title in my time here, but you can only have so much influence over random numbers (unless you're Julien). I'd ask that you all take it easy on the plundering when someone new takes over my Habs, but I know you won't. I'm probably going to have to avoid any impulse to check on things lest I find out someone's given away Shawn Matthias and Klim Kostin to make room for Matthew Boldy or some such nonsense.

Many thanks to the good folks who've run this league over the years: Adam, Bubbles, Justin, obviously Dan's still hard at it and probably wondering what he's got himself into. Hopefully, some of you can step up to help him out.

I'm going to stick around for a couple sims to make sure you're all still toeing the line. So you won't be completely rid of me for a couple days, but figured I'd get this post out of the way now. I'm also figuring on writing a training how-to post. I get asked occasionally "Why your guys overdevelop better than mine?" or some variant and I can't say I've ever given a full answer so maybe it's time for one. Or I could just keep my secret to myself. There's only one piece of information that I've figured out that I don't think anyone else has and it's not what I'd call a game changer so anyone who knows what they're doing might not appreciate my divulging. But I probably still will anyhow.

Anywho, if anybody's got questions for me about EHM or EHEC, you've still got a couple days to fire away.

[DetroitGM]

Damn, sorry to see you go. Obviously I've only been here for a little while but your value to the league has been obvious. Hopefully real life is entertaining! (and possibly that other projects demand less of your time so you might one day return, even if in a lesser capacity?)

[PittsburghGM]

aw man another big loss for the league. Good luck with whatever real life brings, Vik.

[SensGM]

Holly Molly!!!
I can’t believe my biggest rival is leaving
Thanks Vik for everything you’ve done for the league.
Farewell

[NYRNYRNYR]

Vik,

Sad to see you go. In my year here you've always been one of the hardest working, but all around nicest guys. You never hesitated to answer a question. You were one of the first GMs people pointed me to about "how to run a franchise the right way" from your pro team, to how you develop, to how you draft. I always appreciated that. Would beg to hear how you develop your young ones!

Good luck in the real world. You always have a home here

[AvalancheGM]

Damn! Sorry to see you go Vik. It's obvious you've played a huge role in this league, and from reading your Fhockey posts over the years, you're one of the most knowledgeable EHM guys out there. Hope you get time to return some day.

[TorontoGM]

Thank you for all the hard work you've done to make this league as good as it is. I was really looking forward to the divisional battles this season. Good luck with whatever life brings your way.

[Bernyhawks]

Thanks for your commitment and good times Vik you’re a big beauty wish you luck in your future projects and like I said to Justin I hope you come back one day *virtual props*

[The-Boss-GM]

Goddam it how am I ever going to figure out my cap now?

GL in whatever the future holds!

[SharksGM]

If you're going to advertise yourself as vopatizing, then you'd better start managing an AHL team in increasingly erratic and incompetent fashion before retiring.

In all seriousness, thanks for your attention to detail over the years. I hope you had fun trying to optimize away the randomness and enjoy whatever it is you do next.

Anywho, if anybody's got questions for me about EHM or EHEC, you've still got a couple days to fire away.

Well! Since you asked, I am vaguely curious as to whether you have a giant pile of Excel sheets to track everything. I will be most impressed if it's a collection of obfuscated perl scripts.

[Vik (Habs)]

Well! Since you asked, I am vaguely curious as to whether you have a giant pile of Excel sheets to track everything. I will be most impressed if it's a collection of obfuscated perl scripts.

Fun fact, I learned how to do this stuff thanks to an Excel spreadsheet an fhockey user named greg posted. He used it somehow for scouting and I figured out how to modify it to my own purposes and just kept adding on from there. That's basically what got me making the utilities I did back in the day. Take that people who think I did nothing but waste time with EHM! Turns out, I only mainly wasted time with it.

For league use, I have...

• One for tracking financials, roster size, and underagers.

• One for checking for any peculiarities in the file. That's where I find waivers or contract issues or Justin not updating the players file resulting in a LE increase during the regular season, etc. That one's not so fun to use (why make it easy to use when you only use it after every sim?) in that it doesn't actually tell me what's wrong, it just tells me something odd happened with this line, you figure out what the issue is. Most of the time it's nothing, some of the time it's something.

• I've been making a special spreadsheet for free agency. It's a different spreadsheet every year because otherwise I'd have to figure out what I did the previous year. Making a new one seems easier. I'll copy the necessary columns from your calculator and write a formula to calculate what the contract for each number of years is. As people post their offers, I just have to enter the number of years (and occasionally check if the player is coming off entry level) and it gives me what the contract should be so I can point out errors. When you enter the contracts, I just write a little ditty to find the new contracts and compare them to what I have on that sheet. It comes with the added bonus of making it easy to figure out which (occasionally surprising) players haven't received offers so I can get a jump on that (eg Marc McNulty). I do a similar thing with UFAs, obviously without having to calculate anything.

For personal use, I have...

• One for my team. No scripts in that, just easy way to track my team, my lines, what potential trades would leave me at financially, etc. Just tracking anything I feel I ought to.

• One for tracking development. Keep an old file around to compare to the new file, it'll show me what players were at and where they are now along with what the difference is. Helps me with training.

• One for scouting. Enter the team number (including 98/99 for UFA/draft eligible), it'll find all the players, calculate their ceilings, and sort them into separate sheets, one for each position. For the draft, I also do a second set of numbers on each sheet for boosters. I guess I also use the draft one for league use - as players get selected I move them to another sheet. When the draft is entered, I compare my list to what's in the file to find any discrepancies.

• One for simming. It finds my next game, looks up the opponent and writes over the 30 teams with 15 copies of my team and 15 copies of the other team in all relevant files (which was a real hassle when I was figuring out how to do it). It then updates the schedule so that there'll be 15 games the next day. In other words, when doing test sims, I can do 15 at a time. Based on the ridiculous number of sims I've done using that in the past playoffs (and trusting my faulty memory), I worked out rough odds of winning each of the following playoff series:
  • 2017/18 2nd round loss vs Ottawa = 90% (for any newcomers reading this, my team shouldn't have been that big a favourite over them but Ottawa was without a GM at the time)
  • 2018/19 3rd round win vs Philadelphia = 70% (lowest I've found, games in Philly seemed to be virtual coin flips)
  • 2018/19 4th round loss vs Edmonton = 75% (on the up side, if you consider these series independent, my expected series won is only a little higher than 1)
  • 2019/20 2nd round loss vs Tampa Bay = 85% (after he won, Justin even expressed surprise at getting the better of me based on his test sims)

I might have others, but these are the regulars. Before anyone asks, I don't intend on sharing any of them, in part because I don't want to try to explain how to use them. For anyone not using the Habs, I'd have to figure it out myself for the last one.

[Dallas Stars GM]

Very very sad to see you go. Tough loss for the league but I believe we'll move on and continue to be the best league. You were a great GM and you took good care about the stuff around the league daily. Big thanks to you and I wish you best of luck in your next life. You still have friends in here forever!

[Vik (Habs)]

All right, think that'll do it. Thanks for all the kind words, they are very much appreciated. Hopefully you guys can keep this league going another 10 years.

[Bruins_GM]

Best of luck!