Login

Aephino · 08-12-2024, 07:04 PM

I was reminded earlier today of my personal glory days. Edward Williams was my first player and I can never miss an opportunity to talk about his illustrious feats, particularly in S53. It was the debut season of FHM (which I'm not sure what that canonically means in the SHL, but let's just assume it was big for Edward, too) and there was a great deal of hype with the S53 sophomore class in the SMJHL.

Detroit stormed the league and capped it off with a Four Star Cup. The run was led by centerman Edward Williams, but certainly can't be forgotten without the likes of Kekkonen, Labovitch, Sutherland, McMaster, O'Shea, Wanesly, Kanoff, NCheese, Topalo, Sulfergold... wow that team was stacked. But it was Williams who had his name up in lights from the very start, and all eyes were on the potential MVP. It was one of the most dominant SMJHL seasons of all time. So to say it was a surprise when the Award Committee MVP was announced as Anchorage center Mitchell van der Heijden is quite the understatement. Understandably, people eventually move on and forget. Enough time has passed where even I have come to terms with this. That being said... the time passing also gives us the opportunity to take a second look at this result. The SMJHL itself has changed a lot over the years. Let's take a little trip down memory lane.

----------

Here are basic averages for all SMJHL players' average points and average PPG for each season from S53 to S77. As we can see, the average points and PPG increase gradually as the seasons advance. Note that in S57 the league increased from 50 to 66 games per season. There was also an interesting blip when 4th lines were temporarily implemented for S74.

[Image: eEeoMRi.png]

Next we have the average of the top 10 skaters by average points and PPG.

[Image: zFbWnye.png]

And here are points and PPG leaders.

[Image: xhCnLi0.png]

Lastly for this section, I'll drop an interesting graph showing the percentage of Leader Points divided by Second-most points (minus 1). We'll revisit this later.

[Image: mN0plFF.png]

Given the points inflation that the league has experienced, Williams' S53 seasons doesn't exactly standout here. If we look at the raw stats, it's difficult to visualize compared to the boosted numbers in the current era.

[Image: DjqJqTK.png]

Even extrapolating the adjustment from 50 to 66 games doesn't quite do enough.

[Image: 5mdEk6d.png]

I selected an inflation factor of Top 10 PPG in S77 / S53 = 1.138 / 0.906 = 1.53. I multiplied the S53 Top 10 PPG by these factors to result in this.

[Image: 2aeqGqy.png]

I'll be honest - this doesn't tell us much or provide any accurate stats. I just wanted to provide a projection / some more relevant numbers for this ancient season.

To really understand the bigger picture, I wanted to look at every single season of Top 10 players and how they fared in the Award Committee's eyes for the Ideen Fallah. In the following tables, the green highlights the Ideen Fallah winner.

[Image: iPy44rG.png]

There's a lot to unpack here. Firstly, the seasons without green highlighting (55, 73, 75) had a goalie win the Ideen Fallah. In this article, I will not be investigating goalie seasons and will only be comparing apples to apples. Maybe that's a future analysis.

Now there are evidentially a number of seasons where the points leader does not win the Ideen Fallah. Only 15/24 winners are the points leader. But the main question I wanted to know was - how does the dominance of the points leader affect the MVP result? Let's revisit that metric of Leader/Second-most points and this time look won the MVP that season.

[Image: 46nWlum.png]

The green highlighting here indicates the MVP being #1 in points. The purple highlighting is goalies. The lack of highlighting indicates when the MVP was not #1 in points, and displays their points ranking. There are 6 examples of this happening, four of whom came #2 in points, including S53.

In S53, Edward Williams had 23% more points than the second-most points, Mitchell van der Heijden. This may be the most dominant season of all time based on a single skater outperforming the rest of the players. And yet, no MVP. In fact, the only other examples of players in the top 11 most dominant seasons NOT winning resulted in a goalie MVP. Williams is the ONLY example of a dominant skater losing to another skater.

Now, while have all these awesome stats that someone pulled, I might as well take a quick glance at a few other seasons that stood out. There are a number where it's pretty simple and the #1 points leader wins the MVP, even when the points are close. Sometimes we see other instances of perhaps a team being penalized by their collective dominance.

In S58, Pearce in #2 on 65 points is surrounded by QCC players in #1, #2(tied), and #4. But the lone KEL player wins MVP. Curiously, the very next season features the exact same lineup of McFelter in #2 on 68 points surrounded by ANC players in #1, #2(tied), and #4. But the ANC points leader wins MVP. Interesting. In S71, we see another similar case where Tony Soprano in #3 on 108 points is overshadowed by NBB players in #1, #2, and #3 (tied). But the lone ANC player wins MVP.

And there are a couple cases where it's not crystal clear why the MVP was selected without further analysis, such as the #2 leaders winning in S64 and S74. But for the most part, I can see the logic by the Committee.

----------

So... what does this tell us? I don't really know. Well, maybe I have some opinions, but you can form your own. At the end of the day I essentially wrote this so I could relive my glory days. Hopefully someday I'll write a cool article about Zedward. But I think it will be quite rare that the SMJHL, let alone my player, will experience such dominance as Edward again.

Written words (from wordcounter.net): 998
Data words/values: 1,845

***bluesfan55*** · 08-12-2024, 07:53 PM

:handshake:

good shit my dude

***Seany148*** · 08-12-2024, 08:15 PM

What the fuck I didn't expect to see Ozolins mentioned in a "good player" media!!

Good stuff Zedward aka big mustache Edward, you won't fool me away from the DET propaganda though

***Anthique*** · 08-13-2024, 09:16 AM

Good stuff!
That amazing season motivated him to have a great career in Texas so there was some good in that Tongue

***hhh81*** · 08-13-2024, 10:44 AM

I stand by the choice to this day. Hard to argue most valuable with 3 other players in the top 10 scorers.

Aephino · 08-13-2024, 11:08 AM

08-13-2024, 10:44 AMhhh81 Wrote: I stand by the choice to this day. Hard to argue most valuable with 3 other players in the top 10 scorers.

I'm not here to bash on methodologies, but it's interesting that in S57 a QCC player won with 3 other scorers in the top 10 and in S59 an ANC player won with 3 other scorers in the top 10. (After that season I believe you rotated off the committee so I can't really comment beyond that!)

Waters · 08-13-2024, 04:32 PM

i had a similar season just 3 seasons earlier and won the fallah, and everything else (yeah I'm bragging). There were several falcons players in the top 10 that year too. I think when you're so much better than the league at this level, teammates are kind of irrelevant. In fact, I think the argument could be made that those players are only in the top 10 because of Williams. Very unfortunate for you, think you got robbed.

e: nvm, just looked and there was only one other falcon in the top 10 in S50, but honestly the point still stands. I don't think teammates are that relevant here

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us