So I got a little curious after some conversations in the locker room about what the average TPE was per player in the SHL. The initial estimate was made of 1000 TPE, which seemed to be a reasonable number and a good goal to reach for anybody entering the SHL. But that estimate wasn't enough for me, and I decided to dig in a little deeper and check out each team's current roster as of March 3rd. All numbers used in these calculations were taken directly from each team's roster page and did not take into account any prospects that are currently in the SMJHL. Some teams had filler players at 155 TPE and even a few players lower than this, so a number of calculations were ran that both included these players and also excluded these such outliers.

I ran 4 separate formulas against each team, conference, and the league as a whole. The first calculation that I ran was a simple average. Taking every player on the roster, add up the TPEs to get a total TPE for the team, and divide that total by the number of players on the roster. The second calculation was to get the median TPE value for each team. The median is the number right in the middle of a data set ordered from lowest to highest, which in this case would represent the TPE value of the middle ranked player on a team (for most teams, this is roughly the 10th or 11th best player on the roster). The third calculation was to get the average of the innermost 50% of TPE values. I wanted to exclude the top 25% of players and the bottom 25% of players to chop off outliers on both ends of the spectrum and really focus in on the middle half of the league. The final calculation was to get the average of the top 80% of TPE values. This calculation was done to chop off any low TPE roster fillers in order to focus solely on players that provide at least some value to their team.

With the introduction out of the way, let's start diving into the numbers. I'll first present the 4 calculations for each of the 16 SHL teams, and rank the teams in order from highest to lowest. I'll then present those same 4 calculations for each of the 2 conferences. And then lastly, I'll show how these calculations turn out when ran against the SHL as a whole (again, not including players currently in the SMJHL).

Teams

Simple Average

1. New England - 1134
   
2. Calgary - 1118
   
3. New Orleans - 1091
   
4. Manhattan - 1087
   
5. Los Angeles - 1068
   
6. Buffalo - 1061
   
7. San Francisco - 1048
   
8. Chicago - 1005
   
9. Hamilton - 991
   
10. Edmonton - 990
    
11. Winnipeg - 863
    
12. West Kendall - 771
    
13. Minnesota - 769
    
14. Tampa Bay - 737
    
15. Texas - 734
    
16. Toronto - 530
    

Median

1. New England - 1274
   
2. Calgary - 1258
   
3. New Orleans - 1121
   
4. Manhattan - 1120
   
5. Los Angeles - 1108
   
6. Chicago - 1068
   
7. San Francisco - 1044
   
8. Buffalo - 1034
   
9. Hamilton - 1033
   
10. Edmonton - 952
    
11. Winnipeg - 821
    
12. West Kendall - 809
    
13. Tampa Bay - 765
    
14. Minnesota - 758
    
15. Texas - 690
    
16. Toronto - 503
    

Innermost 50% Average

1. Calgary - 1269
   
2. Los Angeles - 1247
   
3. New England - 1239
   
4. San Francisco - 1228
   
5. Manhattan - 1218
   
6. New Orleans - 1213
   
7. Hamilton - 1113
   
8. Buffalo - 1099
   
9. Edmonton - 1061
   
10. Chicago - 1009
    
11. Winnipeg - 924
    
12. Tampa Bay - 871
    
13. West Kendall - 814
    
14. Minnesota - 679
    
15. Texas - 667
    
16. Toronto - 480
    

Top 80% Average

1. New England - 1350
   
2. Calgary - 1326
   
3. New Orleans - 1294
   
4. Buffalo - 1283
   
5. Manhattan - 1277
   
6. Los Angeles - 1271
   
7. San Francisco - 1263
   
8. Edmonton - 1176
   
9. Hamilton - 1153
   
10. Chicago - 1133
    
11. Winnipeg - 1020
    
12. West Kendall - 928
    
13. Minnesota - 905
    
14. Texas - 892
    
15. Tampa Bay - 882
    
16. Toronto - 621
    

There are a lot of numbers to take in here, so I'll pause for a moment to give you a few minutes to digest it all. Obviously some rosters have changed a bit between the end of the regular season and the time that I grabbed these rosters, but for the most part things line up as expected. Teams with a higher average TPE rating are all in the playoffs, while the lower TPE teams missed out. The lone exception to this is Toronto (the lowest TPE at this time) and New England (the highest TPE average at this time). Toronto actually edged out New England for the final playoff spot. I admittedly haven't followed the roster transactions of these teams since then so I don't know if there were any major moves, but I'll leave that up to you the reader to figure out.

Conferences

Simple Average
Western - 958
Eastern - 917

Median
Western - 930
Eastern - 925

Innermost 50% Average
Western - 958
Eastern - 929

Top 80% Average
Western - 1144
Eastern - 1088

Taking a look at the data at a conference level, we can see that the average TPE level of players in the western conference is stronger, though the median player is actually very close. I realized afterwards that it may have also been interesting to break this down to a divisional level but at this point I'm too lazy to go back and run the numbers again.


League (SHL)

Simple Average - 937
Median - 928
Innermost 50% Average - 937
Top 80% Average - 1116

So here we are, the numbers you've all been waiting for. We can finally go back to the original question of "what is the average TPE of an SHL player?". Well, we have a couple of different ways of looking at this. The simple answer would be 937 TPE for the average SHL player. This number came up the same by taking the average of every player in the league, as well as taking the average of just the middle 50% of the league. If you're trying to determine if a player is above or below average, you can feel safe with using 937 as the benchmark. Now with that being said, we also know that there are roster fillers in the league sitting at or near 155 TPE. These roster fillers drag down the average TPE numbers of your more useful and active players. If you want a more accurate benchmark for what is the average TPE of a "useful" player, you may want to use 1116 TPE as that number since it's the average TPE of the upper 80% of the league.

If there are any other numbers that you'd like to see, feel free to leave a reply and I may or may not have a follow-up post with more calculations. I may do a similar post for teams in the SMJHL if the interest is high enough.

DISCLAIMER: These numbers were not double checked and I could have fat-fingered something along the way, so certainly don't hold these numbers as gospel but use them more as a guideline.

word count: ~1200 plus research