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pboomg · 03-07-2025, 01:51 AM

Deep Dive #2 - The Worst Team Ever

While conducting my research for my first deep dive and media piece, I discovered some interesting anomalies in the index. The Season 54 Tampa Bay Barracuda and Season 75 Montreal Patriotes completely run away with the worst seasons in the history of the league. But which one is worse?

The Barracuda came into Season 54 off the back of a 10-38-2 season in which they had just three players over 1000 TPE, one of the three being a goalie. Their roster losses heading into Season 54 include all players over 700 TPE, although they were able to pick up a goalie to be their highest TPE player by over 300, with Johannes Leitner at 997 TPE. Season 53 included a 14th place finish, so not last, and a -99 differential, scoring about 100 and giving up about 200. It would get just a little worse in Season 54, giving up 309 and scoring an astonishing 45 goals in 50 games for what is surely the fewest goals ever. The team would go 0-50-0, unable to even make it to overtime in a game with their 600 TPE average first line. They would lose by one twice, which is pretty good considering they were averaging less than one goal per game while giving up an average of over six per game. Does it make it funnier that they won the last game of the preseason in a shootout before going completely pointless? Absolutely it does. This team was definitely really bad,

But this one might have been worse. The Season 75 Montreal Patriotes would finish a 66-game season with a 1-64-1 record. This team had finished second in their conference just a few years before, but in a truly generational rebuilding period the team would lost all semblance of a roster entirely, instead being left with an SMJHL team and a Damien Hirano. The team would actually improve their scoring from previous years under 1000 TPE Hirano, but it wouldn't really matter, as the team would give up a record 544 goals for an average of 8.24/night. Their previous year wasn't much better, as they began the dive into the rebuild very strong, giving up 474 and scoring 125 in Season 74. This team put two goalies at just about minimum TPE in net, with 227 for the first option, and the actual 155 minimum for the secondary. The team had 4/6 of their best players on defense and still gave up 544 goals, that is how BAD having 200 TPE in goal is in the SHL. They had players with +/- nearly worse than the worst TEAMS over some entire seasons. Icing J replacement level players is never a good sign, and this team had about half the roster full of them.

In my opinion this is a case similar to the winless Cleveland Browns and the previous year's 1-15 Browns. The winless Barracuda team was truly much better for the time, and most likely could have won a few games in a longer or luckier season. The Patriotes of Season 75 most likely did not deserve to come away with even 3 points from that year. A -405 differential is truly unforgiveable, and there is zero chance that team should be even close to winning a game. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

569 words

***sve7en*** · 03-07-2025, 08:43 AM

:patpat:

Chris · 03-07-2025, 10:30 AM

Don't tell me your inspiration to make this was from Minnesota...

***HabsFanFromOntario*** · 03-09-2025, 11:23 PM

+5 tpe, approved

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