04-14-2022, 11:44 AMsköldpaddor Wrote:

04-14-2022, 11:30 AMCampinKiller Wrote: Well I'm not saying "make it suck" but I would consider from what I've heard outside of 3-4 teams, the J isn't exactly competitive. However, if there were less teams, there'd be less dead LRs such as St. Louis, and players would have to start getting called up, which would help in terms of the enjoyment, because teams around the league would be having to field lower tpe players, as opposed to just the 1K tpe rookies.

I think there's absolutely an argument to be found for SHL expansion in this, but contracting the J or forcing people up sooner is just not gonna work when there are not roster places for those players to be found. Fifth season players like the ones that are being eliminated here are almost entirely players who are not going to go up to the SHL anyway because they would have had to go through waivers if they were anywhere near ready to do that, and likely wouldn't have cleared waivers anyway, so this change is afaik not actually forcing anybody to be called up sooner than they would have been.

Eliminating the fourth season or contracting the J without adjusting anything on the SHL level absolutely would be forcing a lot of people out of the J who are going to be SHLers eventually (like me) and trying to get them into roster spots that just currently do not exist for a player of that TPE level. I think another SHL expansion paired with J contraction could be a viable option, but I don't think it's as easy as just booting them out of the J without ensuring that we do the work to make sure they actually have somewhere to go. The S62 draft class alone has forty active players - about thirty of them with 700TPE or higher, who would already have had to have been on teams this season. Do we really have thirty roster spots for 700-800TPE players right now in the SHL, let alone the 10 or so other active ones with less TPE than that?

Also, for what it's worth, the J is actually really competitive this season. There's the obvious outlier at the top that everybody expected, but below that, the next six teams in the league are all within five points of each other at most, and eight out of fourteen teams have a winning record.

The J expanded last time for next to no good reason. Contracting it is just bringing it back into line with what it should be. At present locker rooms for the majority of teams are dead. Smjhl HO is forcing anchorage to give minutes to IA fourth liners. Recruitment has been dire for seasons and with respect to the recruitment team I don't see it getting better in the short term. All contracting will do is concentrate active players more which will hopefully have the side effect of retaining people's interest in the league.