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***eddiesnothere*** · 03-11-2024, 02:11 AM

Howdy, all!

I’d like to take the time today to discuss something interesting that I’ve noticed over my years of being around FHM and the SHL, and the intricacies that are currently present in the way the SHL handles the most important factor in a player’s career – aging.

The sim’s unique take on growing a player – having it directly correlate to activity, media interest and participation, and earning – makes it functionally possible for anyone to create a solid-earning, top-producing player. This slight barrier of entry is undoubtedly a good thing, but it presents a challenge to the SHL’s top brass, who understand as well as anyone in sports that careers can’t last forever. At some point, your player is going to have to retire, and restart the cycle by recreating, helping to refresh the talent pool.

The system in play to ensure this natural aging curve, regression, has the player in question’s skill level – represented tangibly by their TPE total slowly depreciate over time. Starting in the player’s 10th season, a 9% loss in TPE is docked from their total, which grows from season to season to its final practical form in Season #19, where the total is cut by a quarter. It’s a harsh representation of aging, but it is undoubtedly effective in ensuring that players are able to find the right time to cash out and start over, and for teams to find young talent.

But what does this mean for a player’s actual aging curve? Obviously, the SHL and the normal aging track of NHL-level players is vastly different, dependent on personal preference and feeling. This means that the system, which has its difficulties at times, does its job. What isn’t focused on often is what this means for the players, not the users.

SHL players often spend 2-3, sometimes four years in the SMJHL, essentially the minor leagues, honing their skills until their TPE total is reasonable enough to break into the SHL proper. For average-to-good teams, this total is often between 700-850, the standard competency barrier at play in FHM (competency barrier is a personal name for this total, and it does not mean that I find users whose players are under that total personally incompetent. No offense is meant). For SHL players who often earn about 150-175 TPE a year depending on their activity and purchases, this means a 3-4 year time period for a player finding their way to the SHL. If we consider a player’s SMJHL Draft season their 17th birthday and the SHL Draft a functional 18th, this means players tend to start their SHL careers at age 20.

So you’re in the SHL! Congrats, you now have about 6-7 years to build up experience, TPE, and those sweet, sweet milestones to build a great player. Be mindful though, your 10th year quickly brings a very notable reality check for your career: the 9% regression threshold. If you’re a good earner, by year 9 and beyond you are probably capping out at 1750-1850 TPE. 9% on the high end leaves you with just under 1700 TPE, and the low end just under 1600, about 160-170 TPE. This is manageable, given you make just under that a season if you’re max-earning. Still, it’s a sign that your prime is likely over soon. The kicker is, as far as your player is concerned, they’re just 26, maybe 27 if the team was good. In hockey it’s generally understood that a player’s prime starts at this point.

Season 11 cuts you down 12%, the first hard tinge of aging. If you’ve been cut down to 1700 TPE, this brings you down 204 TPE, to 1496 TPE. It’s important to understand that this isn’t just a pay-grade lower, something players understand is significant despite the fact you never get taxed by the system in money. What is less understood is how FHM handles that. If you’ve played the game or viewed the blink-and-you-miss-it screens of the rosters the simmer doesn’t cover up, you know of the 5-star system. The game doesn’t run off TPE, but a separate attribute counter that has 10 separate tiers for talent. 2000+ TPE players, down to just over 1700 TPE players are 5-star talents, and this doesn’t effect the game or even the GMs’ perception of your player, but it does mean you’re cutting down enough attributes in regression for the game to notice and adjust. Season 12 brings a 1550 TPE player down 15%, to 1318. In two seasons, this brings a player from a rating of 5/5 stars to 3.5/5 stars. Again, at this point a player on a mid team to start their career is 28, 29 if they had to wait 4 years.

This is the recognized point that users tend to tap out. All you have to do to look at how many players are represented in each draft class. This season, there are 40 active SHL players from Season 68, functionally 25-year-olds. There are 30 26-year-olds (S67), 24 27-year-olds (S66), and 35 28-year-olds, from likely the most incredible draft class in recent memory, S65. Out of the 21 players still a part of the active S64 Draft Class, seven are either retired or unsigned. Only 15 30-year-old SHL players have a home on an SHL team.

There are only so many bastions of sensible aging left, Hall-of-Fame level active users with boatloads of cash and years of experience, riding out their player for their version of a Last Dance. Videl Valor is 34. So is Sven Svechnikov and Angus McFife XVIII. Dogwood Maple is 35. Jon St. Ark of the Specters is 36. The remnants of the last great active deep draft class and the last of the FHM new-bloods, Will Salming, Vaseline Podcalzone, Kev Kevens, and Xavier Doom, are 37. The STHS refugees, Ryu Jones, Lord Raiden, and Theo Kondos, are all 38. If Ryuuji Minamoto and Steve Harrington hold out to play for a hard-tanking team like Montreal, they will be 40.

Functionally, only the best of the best-earning users get to see their players ride out of their careers at a sensible point in time. It’s easy to see that normal players, intimidated by the quick ramp-up of regression, tap out before their player celebrates birthday #31. Is this good? On one hand, the system, largely unchanged for years, has led to a clean balance of talent and a refresh of the league, meaning teams have to be smart with their draft choices, have to retain talent for longer, and have to understand contracts and their term.

But are circumstances beginning to change? With the S76 Draft Class comes a new wrinkle, as the bulging SMJHL has been forced to expand by two teams to account for the amount of talent needing stable homes at the entry level. In this sense, the league has never been more full of talent. Other factors, like SHL teams quickly beginning to form on two sides of a “haves and have-nots” dynamic, clearly point to a shift in how we view talent.

The most important part of the equation, to me at least, is that users want to enjoy the experience they have with their players. It’s very fun to see them grow, become useful assets to their teams, slowly growing from role players to stars to franchise cornerstones. It’s wish fulfillment, but every user also dreams of a long, fruitful career, and that dream is in sight right until regression feeds them their first dose of the reality that the SHL has in place, a necessary bitter pill to swallow; that even in this fantasy arena, your player will not last forever.

And are there solutions? Altering the regression path now is a hard sell to players already deep into regression, as veteran users forecast for their losses, using the new portal to ensure they’re ready to keep their builds effective. Is this a change that helps new users more than it would older users?

These aren’t questions I’m prepared to answer, but they are answers I want to present. An SHL career, as short as they may appear from how I frame them, are still 2-year endeavors – each SHL season usually lasts around 2 months – and that is more than enough time to be fully content with a players’ career. Users move on when they want to, regardless of how the regression system works.

I think that’s the most interesting thing about the system in place right now. Does it create this culture in which users are content to see their players disappear from the SHL in just 9-10 seasons? Ask a majority of users and I would say you’d get a yes. Would they be happy to see their players have a longer career? Universally, that answer is yes.

So with changes abound in the league, and as we exit the 75th season, I propose: How will the SHL itself age?

(Word Count: 1566)

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