SHL and its community has a weird masochistic streak. Of the most similar leagues to it (ISFL/PBE/WSBL), it’s by far the grindiest, the hardest to earn money in, the longest time spent in juniors, etc.

In the time I’ve been here, there’s been very little desire to change that by league management (the example that always sticks in my mind was players and GMs asking for more PT passes and being told ‘no, we’re not going to be like other leagues’ with little further explanation) - the regression change is the only one I can think of, and making the league more user-friendly didn’t seem to be the main motivation behind that.

When I joined SHL, it was my 2nd league and I max earned (including the highest tier of equipment) for 3 seasons. I was sent down for a 4th juniors season so that my SHL team could call up a player with less TPE because of internal politics, and then finally called up by a GM who played my player for the fewest minutes of any player in the league.

By that time, I’d earned over 1000 TPE and been in the league for well over a year - but my player’s SHL career had barely started.

The wait to get to the position of second-year-SHL-player-on-the-third-line-of-a-playoff team has been so long that I’ve grown bored. New users are going to be inherently optimistic and don’t know what they’re getting themselves in for, but it’s no wonder that potential recreates don’t want to grind for over a year to get to the bit that’s supposed to be good.