12-28-2018, 11:39 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote:

12-28-2018, 11:36 AMluketd Wrote: Sure I’ll give my quick thoughts on this.

1. Expansion is a good thing, it will be temporary or permanent depending on the activity level in the next seasons.

2. I was on the 4th line my rookie season because my team was deep depth wise. The biggest factor in retention rate I think is 2 main things. The locker rooms you are in and how well you are doing in the sim.  For me personally a strong Czech Locker room and a strong whalers discord kept me interested in the SHL. Even though I only put up 14 points while other rookies I knew were getting 20+ it was that I was having fun and I had hope for next season to do better. Staying engaged and talking to people I think has kept a ton of people from quitting the site. Keep people invested into the team is also a good way.

3. As a gm you have to find a good balance of keeping your team competitive and giving ice team around. And it’s difficult process because you want rookies to do stuff so they keep on updating and having fun, and you also want to win because you want people to be happy about your team. I know for Halifax people were getting frustrated when they had a really good team but still failed to show up for it in the sim.

Just to add to that last point, I have been in quite a few locker rooms where the players where absolutely fine with one or two high-caliber inactives playing in a bigger role over lower TPE actives because it gave the team as a whole a better chance at winning and thereby made the overall experience more enjoyable for everyone, often even for the guys whose personal ice-time suffered a bit.

I think this is a good point and I would've agreed with it in other regular seasons but since the SMJHL has gone back to the everyone makes play-offs deal the regular season hardly matters. I don't see a reason for a capped inactive to be playing in front of a rookie first-gen in the regular season anymore and I really don't think the players that have already dominated the SMJHL for over 2 seasons should be playing ahead of them either.

I think it would've helped the league if some capped players were drafted in the expansion draft (not blaming the SMJHL commisioners, I know what it's like to expand on short notice) but right now its looking like there is a huge imbalance in the league where some teams have 7+ capped players that have been in the SMJHL for 2+ seasons and Lethbridge and Anaheim having zero capped players at all.

I'd like to see line restrictions with teams being forced to play at least 2 rookie actives in the top six and top 4 instead of just loading up the top six/top four with capped send-downs esp with everyone making the play-offs again, they can allow teams to load up their top six in the play-offs/last 5 games if they need to.

As a recreate I really don't gaf about my ice-time/point production this season or next but there's probably some first gens rookies that would.