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ZodiacEXE · 05-01-2024, 11:07 PM

The SHL has had a few different simulation engines during its history. At first the league used the SimonT Hockey Simulater, or STHS. From the looks of things it was very robust, with each game generating a highly detailed play-by-play that made up for a lack of graphical interface and still having a wide variety of tracked stats. However, for Season 53 the league moved on to Franchise Hockey Manager 6 (FHM6) made by OOTPDevelopments. This sim came with a graphical way to watch the games, though as I've noted in a media article, much much worse fight tracking. In this Deep Dive, I'd like to explore how the teams handled the transition between sims.

First things first, how did things work in Season 52? The teams were still separated into the same two conferences, and we still played 50 games. However from what I can tell the playoff format shifted. Previously 10 teams made the playoffs, 5 from each conference with division winners getting a guarantee for the top 4 seeds. After the switch in S53, the number contracted to 4 teams per conference. This left a team like San Francisco, who scored 57 points in the West compared to playoff-bound Manhattan's 53 in the East, on the outside looking in.

The first thing that struck me after plotting the differences for team performance between seasons is just how much parity was lost in the transition. The team with the lowest total points in S52 was Tampa Bay with 36, 33 points behind San Francisco at the front. In S53, New England battered the league for 85 points, 70 clear of Toronto. In changing games, the spread between teams nearly doubled. Part of the gap at the front came from a huge leap for the Wolfpack, going from a close 2nd in the Atlantic Division to handily winning the division and jumping Hamilton for control of the conference, while S52 playoff-bound Toronto crashed hard.

Other teams that saw significant improvements were the Panthers, who flew from wildcard team to West Conference leaders, Calgary, whose improvement moved them from fringe playoff team to competing for the Northwest Division, and Buffalo, whose great jump in performance was somewhat overshadowed by two other teams in the conference eclipsing the 80-point mark. As for others who fell behind between games, the Renegades bore a lot of the burden of the death of parity in the league, going from 44 points to 18 while only dropping one spot on the overall standings. While Tampa Bay fell 14 points between sims, they ended up in front of both Texas and Toronto. And as a fun bonus, the Baltimore Platoon at this point were based in West Kendall-- I'll let you decide whether that's an upgrade or not.

Lastly, let's take a look at the goal scoring environment changes. With the parity being lost, it shouldn't come as a surprise that goal differential range widened significantly as well. The Pride and the Barracuda were split by 103 goals in S52, while the Wolfpack and North Stars found themselves separated by 286 goals by season's end in S53. Despite that, overall goal scoring was down from 2,519 to 2,336. This indicates that top teams were winning more games in blowout fashion than before, a reality that seems to have continued to today.

Popol · 05-02-2024, 06:49 AM

Interesting deep dive. FHM clearly has its own way of simulating and it should come as no surprise that it changed the parity and stats of the league

*CptSquall* · 05-04-2024, 10:21 AM

Approved @ZodiacEXE

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