Ilmari Lehtinen, Blake Gaudette, Ryan Leaf Jr, Dick Trickle, Björn Leppänen, Doug Glatt, Owen Zerfas, Mr America and Ricky Runlope
Most of you have never heard about these players and most of them will never be heard again, I went to investigate what happened to these prospects that were all in latest SMJHL draft, playing in prospect tournament and mostly fighting their name on post game reports. SHL head office was kind enough to give me unlimited access to their stats and archives.
I went there to take look at these archives to track where these players ended and then started to dig deeper to find why they went to where they are now. So let us take look at this latest draft that was highly influenced by number of new players coming from marketing the league on reddit.
Some of you might have noticed that my own name is also on the list and I found the league same way as most of these players. Joining in days before draft, reading the tutorial and thinking what kind of player I want to be. As enforcers are becoming things of the past in real hockey I wanted to see if there is still room for them in SHL. Yet I did not wan't to ruin fun for my teammates so I made relatively well balance player, leaving fighting as it is and increasing my discipline to 45. I did my update thread, all point tasks and interested prospects posts and ended up in Vancouver at #27 in draft. So nothing out of place here.
But then I found out that there is talk going on if removing enforcers could be good for league and one of reasons was that they are trap for new players and when left undrafted they most likely drop from league before they start their journey. Looking long and hard I managed to find some hard stats that might give us light at what lies at bottom of this case.
At end of prospect tournament top 10 fighters were, ones we are focusing here are on bold:
So looking at that list it is very clear that they were fighting a lot and mostly with each other. These players have very high fighting, everyone is over 60 and most of them have very low discipline so it should be clear that no one really wants players like this on their team? End of story, right?
But one of these players was not like the others, as one of them went at 27th on draft and rest weren't drafted at all even tho last player was drafted as late as #149 during latest draft (while most of teams were passing for multiple rounds). As I was hungry for truth, I took my time to dig one level deeper in this mystery.
Taking look at only these stats Ryan Leaf Jr looks like he could have been drafted as he should be less liability to team than Björn Leppänen, so we go check them one by one and start with him. Ryan Leaf Jr was created and update thread was created for him, but it did only contain his player profile again, so he tried but failed to make update and that was his last activity. So not very ideal profile or showing for draft.
But I heard that Doug Glatt was active before draft, so lets take look at what he did. He got his update up, took part in league survey, first PT but did not do any interested prospect, earlybird PT or mock draft, but still he had some activity and still went undrafted. Here we have to take look back at his stats and can see that with his 91 fighting there were not really any points left for any other stats, resulting in player that actively hurt his own team. After draft he retired his player as he understood how it was not build that could see any play.
Then we have Blake Gaudette, a prospect that made post in one interested prospects threads but never did any PTs or activity checks, also didn't update his player. So we get back to not being very active and having quite high fighting with low discipline.
Next lets take look at Owen Zerfas, who created his player and then asked help as he could not find what to do next, he was pointed to tutorial but was never seen again. Finally I start to feel I'm actually on to something.
And then we have Ilmari Lehtinen, Dick Trickle, Ricky Runlope and Mr America. They all created their players and posted nothing else, no call for help, no update threads nothing, gone forever.
So in the end it is getting lot clearer why fighters did not make it to league as currently Björn Leppänen is only enforcer in SMJHL. Under the mask of team hurting enforcer was all along mostly just inactive players. As I'm ready to close the case I get creeping feeling that maybe there is bigger picture that i'm missing.
Might there have been lot more players that created new players after reddit draft, but never invested more time in them? Might this be caused by forum based interactions, lack of UI or might tutorial need some updates? But before I can get back to archives to take deeper look at 50th draft class and how many people did drop out, facility security comes up to me and tells me it is my time to leave now.
As I leave I might have more questions than answers, but it seems like my part was only to take it this far and hope that what I have found helps someone.
08-10-2019, 02:45 AM(This post was last modified: 08-10-2019, 02:45 AM by Gwdjohnson.)
Of course you're an exception, but I think for the most part, too, if someone creates as an enforcer they likely won't stay active since they probably did it just as a meme, and with no actual intent of long, or even short-term commitment to the site. Looking forward to seeing how the experiment goes for you, though!
Ye, earlier I noticed that there was no one else with fighting over 40 in SMJHL and that really made me want to take a look at this topic. But when you habe player that has all their TPE in fighting it is pretty clear they aren't too serious about it and with build like that it cannot be salvaged even even if player wants to stay active. Many of those players mentioned here also had higher cheking and/or strenght than me so that is more TPE taken away from more important stats.
And that 12M price for changing player build should give me enough time to see if this is something I will stick to or will I end up changing it at later date.
08-10-2019, 02:59 AMpuolivalmiste Wrote: Ye, earlier I noticed that there was no one else with fighting over 40 in SMJHL and that really made me want to take a look at this topic. But when you habe player that has all their TPE in fighting it is pretty clear they aren't too serious about it and with build like that it cannot be salvaged even even if player wants to stay active. Many of those players mentioned here also had higher cheking and/or strenght than me so that is more TPE taken away from more important stats.
And that 12M price for changing player build should give me enough time to see if this is something I will stick to or will I end up changing it at later date.
Yeah for sure. At the end of the day it's all about what gives you the best experience on the site.
puolivalmiste
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