At the start if the year GM Mark Rogers drafted what he thought was a pretty good Avalanche team. Starting the season the team was under performing and battling for the 8th seed in the West. Often on the outside looking in. Something wasn’t clicking…..

Flash Back 30 Games ago. Colorado made a blockbuster trade with St.Louis bringing in:

MARTIN ST. LOUIS LW     &       ANDREI MARKOV – D

Since the Trade the Avs have went an impressive (19-4-6-1) picking up 45 of a possible 60 points over 30 games. They have sky rocketed to the Top of the Western Conference defeating many of the best in the East along the way!

St.Louis has been teamed up with Mike Fisher & Jeff Carter on the Avs 2nd line. Putting up 19 points (7goals & 12 Assists) with a +8 Rating….. with St. Louis Carter has been on a tear!! Flirting with the Player of the Month awards.

Markov since the move has been on the top pairing D-line with David Savard. Putting up an impressive 16 points in 30 games. (2 Goals & 14 Assists) with a +5 rating taking away a lot of pressure off #1 Defencemen Ryan Suter

With the trade deadline coming up this month…..Many teams will be looking to change up the fortunes of their team much like the Avalanche have done! Should be an interesting month!

This will be a series of little reminders / hints for stuff you should be aware of and I will post whenever I feel its required.

Lets start with number one: Goalies – Minutes played

Remember we got a little rule that limits the amount of minutes a goalie is allowed to play:

4. Goalies cannot play more than 4,080 minutes total during the Regular Season. Any team going over this limit will be fined $1 million and have the goalie suspended for the remainder of the Regular Season.

This equals to 68 full games and looking at the stats a few teams/goalies are well on pace to reach that way before seasons end considering there are about 25-26 games left per team

If you are one of the teams mentioned above, you better think about giving your back up a few more games down the stretch.

Ben (OTT GM), the leagues semi-official chief scout has put together a mock draft, quite a good read.

1. Winnipeg – Auston Matthews
Already stacked down the middle Saif adds another potential franchise C and will slide some guys over to the wing. This team will just be no fun to play against and his salary picks like Zajac have already posted strong NHL years.

2. Chicago – Jakob Chychrun
Didn’t ignore D in the dispersal draft grabbing guys like Murray and Krug but Chychrun provides the tools to provide a true top pairing guy to Chicago and help them buff up the blue line to get the pucks up to guys like Pacorietty Hall and Galchenyuk.

3. Dallas – Patrik Laine
Monohan, Bennet, Fabri, and Domi provide some skill going forward up front but one thing in common with those guys is they’re smaller. Patrick Laine is not at 6’4″. With the skill to keep up with the players mentioned Laine provides the stars with a top 6 option that can protect some of his smaller players.

For the full mock draft, go here

The GVFHL Department of Player Savety got its first work this past weekend when Habs GM Josh Silver asked for a review on the play that saw Alex Wennberg pushing Radko Gudas into the boards. The action left Gudas the Injury Reserve for a few days so the DoPS had enough reason to take another look.

After seriously examining the play for about 0.87 seconds the Head of the DoPS Brandan Shanaban decided the only way to make a just decision was to spin the Wheel of Justice

The Rated Players Draft has officially started a little bit over on hour ago (Aug 7th 5pm EST). As I had allowed a little bit of a jump start here we are already at pick no 14.

Below the picks already made:

1 Calgary – Sidney Crosby
2 Nashville – John Tavares
3 Tampa Bay (Anaheim) – Tyler Seguin
4 NY Rangers – Carey Price
5 LA Kings – Steven Stamkos
6 Buffalo – Jamie Benn
7 Montreal – Alexander Ovechkin
8 Edmonton – Jonathan Toews
9 NY Isles – Vladimir Tarasenko
10 Boston (Philly) – Evgeni Malkin
11 Carolina – Erik Karlsson
12 Pittsburgh – Claude Giroux
13 New Jersey (Tampa Bay, Anaheim) – Oliver Ekman-Larsson
14 Ottawa – Nathan MacKinnon

A (incomplete) list of players available for the inaugural “Prospect Draft” is available.

For more details, please see the forum post.

Just finished the database with all player ratings and contract details.

Have a look at the forum for more on this or see the link on the right site.

Just running a test season, to figure out whats working and what not right now. Anyway I guess you could say, its a good sign and we arent too far away from getting ready to go.

An updated set of the CBA will be available soon (today-ish) too

Folks,

the “alpha”-version of the homepage is online.

Please consider everything is still in a sort of “test n trial” mode as I am playing around with various stuff here. If something isnt working its either not intented to or I havent figured out how.

The Rosters are just a test version. All players will go to “unassigned” and we will have a full fantasy draft along with a GVFHL Entry draft (2015 NHL draft class). The rules are still a “work in progress”. If you havent done so yet, register at the forums and you can also register here at the site to write up some stuff. Keep in mind though, both require my approval first at the moment.

Over the next days I will continue to work on the homepage as it still needs some polishing. After that a first edition of the CBA will be drafted.