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By-Tor · 01-12-2025, 08:25 PM

Predicting the Season 81 Turd Ferguson Winner

As most of you know, the Turd Ferguson Award is the most random crapshoot on this site. For those of you who don't know, the Turd Ferguson is the SHL award for most penalty-minutes. On the surface, it doesn't matter what you do to claim this trophy - you will submit to the randomness of FHM. Since the SHL switched from STHS to FHM in Season 53, there have been only two repeat winners of the Turd Ferguson, both of those with FHM6. The first being Luc-Pierre Lespineau-Lebr with back to back wins in Seasons 56 and 57. Then the infamous Juni Panda with three consecutive Ferguson wins in Seasons 60, 61, and 62. Since season 62 and consequently the switch to FHM8 in Season 66, there has not been a repeat winner.

Today I will be attempting to unlock the secrets of the Turd Ferguson award, and figuring out who will win this award in Season 81. Since Season 81 will be another FHM8 season, we will focus on the award wins from this era.

The Historical Winners of the Turd Ferguson can be found in the History section of the Portal.

Section 1: How Many PIMs Could Get Someone the Turd Win?

Obviously the key to claiming this award is accumulating more PIMs than any other player. So how many PIMs is enough PIMs? During the FHM8 era, the winner racked up somewhere between 60 and 88 PIMs in 66 games. Here is a breakdown of the winners and top 5 average during the FHM8 era:

Season 80 - Winner: 88 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 81

Season 79 - Winner: 82 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 74

Season 78 - Winner: 79 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 72

Season 77 - Winner: 88 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 74

Season 76 - Winner: 88 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 80

Season 75 - Winner: 70 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 64

Season 74 - Winner: 78 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 68

Season 73 - Winner: 68 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 63

Season 72 - Winner: 76 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 72

Season 71 - Winner: 67 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 65

Season 70 - Winner: 75 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 69

Season 69 - Winner: 66 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 60

Season 68 - Winner: 62 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 57

Season 67 - Winner: 60 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 57

Season 66 - Winner: 70 PIMs, Top 5 Average: 61

Visualizing this table of top 5 finishers in graphical form, we see the following:

Two things are apparent. First, the race is pretty close every year. The only season with a PIM gap larger than 10 was in Season 77. The average gap between 1st and 2nd is 4 PIMs. What this tells me is that it will be even that much more impressive when I correctly guess this Season 81 winner. There have been two ties in the FHM8 era, in Season 76 and Season 68. The second thing that is glaringly apparent is that PIMs have been rising over this era. Every winner of the Turd Ferguson in Seasons 66 to 73 would have finished no higher than 5th in the most recent Season 80. You can see it on the graph. If anyone out there knows of a change that went into effect in Season 76 that could explain this, please drop a comment. Will this trend continue?

So, for our purposes, I predict that the winner of the Season 81 Turd Ferguson will end up with no less than 80 PIMs. I'm going to take a shot and say 86. I don't think they will eclipse 90.

Section 2: What Do Their Attributes Look Like?

One would think that aggression and fighting play a major role in how many PIMs a player accumulates. This is not the case. Of the 17 winners in the FHM8 era, only five of them had a Fighting rating over 5 (5.8 average) and only four of them had an aggression rating over 7 (7.9 average). Fighting and aggression is not the key to a Turd Ferguson. There is no correlation between attributes only and the Turd Ferguson in FHM8 that I have found.

Section 3: How Old or Experienced Do They Need to Be?

Overall, the winners of the Ferguson in this era have Applied TPE ranged from 837 (S66) to 2016 (S77). The average TPE applied to a Turd winner is 1459. Since the recent jump in PIMs over the last few seasons, this average has been 1606 (S74 - S80). Three of the past four winners have had over 1900 TPE. Is high amounts of TPE a key? Probably not by itself, but could lead to a more significant role and ice time, which could affect PIM production. The Ferguson winner has never been a rookie, and I expect that trend to continue. The Season 81 winner of the Turd Ferguson is currently in the league.

Section 4: How Good/Bad Will Their Team Need to Be?

Historically, I was under the impression that bad teams produced more penalty minutes. And I think I may have been right in that assumption for a time. Take the graph below that shows PIM leaders for each of the last 15 seasons under FHM8. 1st is the Ferguson winner, followed by the next four runners-up.

In the late 60s, teams lower in the standings tended to have a higher chance of having one player with a lot of penalty minutes. That trend markedly changed after Season 70. A number, nay, most of the top five finishers in PIMs are from top teams. Only 17 of 50 of these top PIM accumulators in the last 10 seasons are from the bottom half of the league. I am very curious to know what changed to have this monumental shift in what teams have more PIMs. A major trend and shift in the league for sure, but not something we can really use as an indicator for who our Season 81 Turd Ferguson winner will be. Ferguson winners have been all over the board in terms of team standing in the league, most recently 14th. There's not a sure-fire way to say a bottom feeder or top tier team will end up with a Ferguson winner.

Section 5: Do Team Tactics Play a Role?

I believe that team tactics are the section that can pull back the curtain the most on the Ferguson wins. Real trends start to appear when you break out top PIM finishers and team designation. 150 players have finished in the top ten of PIMs in the FHM8 era. Of those 150, here is a breakdown of which teams they have played for:

EDM - 24
PHI - 16
TEX - 11
ATL - 9
NEW - 9
LAP - 8
SFP - 8
HAM - 7
CGY - 7
BUF - 6
MAN - 6
NOL - 6
BAP - 5
TOR - 5
MIN - 5
SEA - 5
TBB - 4
WPG - 4
MTL - 3
CHI - 2

Edmonton and Philadelphia have more bruisers over the seasons than others. Why? We have established that there is no correlation between team success and who produces a Ferguson winner, so why are some teams more prone to PIMs than others? My hypothesis? Team tactics. Some teams may run systems and move the team performance sliders in a way that modifies aggression (and PIM) output. After digging into this, I found that (a) leaguewide team tactics are extremely boring and copy/pasted one team to another. I should have seen that coming. Here are the slider levels leaguewide (based on final Season 80 file):

Can you say "boring"? And no obvious correlation with team level PIMs. I think we will need to dig deeper into player roles to figure out if there is a correlation somewhere for a Ferguson prediction.

Section 6: What Role Do They Play? How Many Minutes?

Ace Lightning of the Toronto North Stars won the Turd Ferguson in Season 80. Toronto also put a player, Mac Turner, in the top 5 and another, Westley Kirkpatrick, at #12. Looking at player roles, Ace Lightning was a Two-Way Defenseman, Mac Turner was a Two-Way Forward, and Kirkpatrick was a Two-Way Defenseman as well. All three were playing top line minutes.

Hamilton also put three players in the top 10 in PIMs in Season 80: Jani Manty (Gretzky's Office role), Trevor Lahey (Gretzky's Office role), and Raw Cheese McPickle (Power Forward role). Only two played significant minutes, Manty and Lahey. McPickle only averaged 17:40 per game.

Here's the top 15 in PIM for Season 80 and their assigned roles (assuming they stayed the same all season):

Ace Lightning (TOR, RD)(88 PIM): Two-Way Defenseman

Rowan O'Beirne (SFP, LD)(84 PIM): Two-Way Defenseman

Andren Akerson (LAP, RW)(81 PIM): Power Forward

Mac Turner (TOR, LW)(77 PIM): Two-Way Forward

Georg N'Zola (ATL, RD)(76 PIM): Two-Way Defenseman

Jani Manty (HAM, C)(75 PIM): Gretzky's Office

Troy McClure IIII (NEW, RD)(75 PIM): Quarterback

Tony Soprano (PHI, C)(74 PIM): Gretzky's Office

Trevor Lahey (HAM, C)(70 PIM): Gretzky's Office

Raw Cheese McPickle (HAM, LW)(69 PIM): Power Forward

Graj Virrok (PHI, RW)(68 PIM): Dangler

Westley Kirkpatrick (TOR, LD)(68 PIM): Two-Way Defenseman

Guy Incognito (TEX, RD)(67 PIM): Point Shooter

The Murray (TBB, RW)(66 PIM): Two-Way Forward

Activity Check (HAM, RW)(66 PIM): Power Forward

While there are quite a few Two-Way Defensemen, Two-Way Forwards, and Power Forwards, there's not really a clear correlation between role and PIMs. Many other players occupy these roles and don't have the PIM totals. For example, The Murray's teammate, Dag-Otto Bjornjanst, was also playing only two minutes less average per night in the same Two-Way Forward role and only had 22 PIMs to Murray's 66. It's just too random.

Final Thoughts

We covered a lot of different variables that could lend it's correlation to our prediction of who will win the Season 81 Turd Ferguson Trophy. I did a lot of research and approached this problem from every angle I could think of. There are definitely still some questions that stand in my brain about PIMs, but I think we now have enough to go on.

Conclusion: The Winner of the Season 81 Turd Ferguson Award Will Be....

[Image: i-dont-know-man-michael-che.gif]

Good luck with those Season 81 predictions!

Credit to enigmatic, Merica, tweedledunn, and jaypc8237 for sigs

***hockeyfan*** · 01-12-2025, 08:32 PM

Ace Lightning led the SMJHL in PIMS twice during his four years in the league (S70 and S71, finished 7 off the lead in S72) and also won two defensemen of the year awards (S71 and S72).

Anybody else lead both leagues in PIMS in their career?

***cake307*** · 01-12-2025, 08:36 PM

This was a very interesting analysis, even if the result is that there's too much noise. Out of curiosity, when you checked fighting and aggression, did you also check defensive read, positioning, and hitting? I have a feeling those play some big roles in picking up PiM, or at least having the chance to.

By-Tor · 01-12-2025, 08:38 PM

01-12-2025, 08:32 PMhockeyfan Wrote: Ace Lightning led the SMJHL in PIMS twice during his four years in the league (S70 and S71, finished 7 off the lead in S72) and also won two defensemen of the year awards (S71 and S72).

Anybody else lead both leagues in PIMS in their career?

Only Jarrod Lakemore (SHL 74, SMHJL 69) in the FHM8 era.

I thought Swiss were supposed to be peaceful?!?

Credit to enigmatic, Merica, tweedledunn, and jaypc8237 for sigs

By-Tor · 01-12-2025, 08:41 PM

01-12-2025, 08:36 PMcake307 Wrote: This was a very interesting analysis, even if the result is that there's too much noise. Out of curiosity, when you checked fighting and aggression, did you also check defensive read, positioning, and hitting? I have a feeling those play some big roles in picking up PiM, or at least having the chance to.

Would be worth a look and could make sense. But could also be a dead end if top tier defensemen like Ace Lightning have high PIMs. Lightning has 17+ in all his relevant attributes, so I'm not sure where that would fit into a high PIM formula.

Credit to enigmatic, Merica, tweedledunn, and jaypc8237 for sigs

***luke*** · 01-12-2025, 08:44 PM

Troy the only fucker to be a quarterback and hit people the most

*AuggieO* · 01-12-2025, 09:43 PM

I think that if anyone could figure it out it would be you!!!

*UptownCord* · 01-13-2025, 12:59 AM

Confirmed what I already suspected, EDM is a dirty franchise

Marshi · 01-13-2025, 07:21 AM

So... All of the Top 7 in most Top10 PIM Players on the team from S66-S79 are also in the Top 9 of playoff success from S69-79? Also 9 of the past 11 Cups were won.

Also the last 7 Cups were all won by teams in the Top 7 of high PIM players.

There is no coincidence, it is very clear.

More PIM -----> More Playoff success

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