Hi all,

There isn't a lot to report as far as big or small changes.

Firstly, we've added @hockeyfan and @ThePyroAlpaca to the team. We're glad to have them!

To go ahead and rip the Band-Aid, we're keeping the Quick Sim Only format for the regular season for this season, which is longer than originally planned. Playoffs will still follow the format is has been, where the first round of the SHL is split, and all other rounds in both leagues are live games with few highlights.


Expanding on the new format that's coming, there's two basic concepts that I'm working on building a trial set to check out. It's built from an older file along with some newer tools that I've been working on. One is a Block Format schedule where there will be fewer, pre-taped sims. This would see, for example, Weeks 1 & 3 with 3 sim days and Weeks 2 & 4 with 2 sim days. The other, which I'm calling Lag Format, is taping only a day or two in advance. For example, as Day 10 is airing, Day 11 is in production. They both have pros and cons. There's a lot of interest on the simmer side of things to try out pre-taping since it would hopefully allow a little more wiggle room for changes in schedule without affecting the stream schedule. The intention is to test both to see which would be better and to gather notes for procedure. I've gotten pretty close to being able to start the trials, but I've hit a significant snag that has caused some major problems.

Let's look at the Block Format schedule. One of the understandings I set for these systems early on is that 20 live games would be chosen from the 660 games on the schedule in the SHL. For a block, it'd be based on the following rules:

1. No Matchup Can Occur Twice
   
2. Teams Must Have 1 Home & 1 Away Game
   
3. No Team May Play Twice in a Week (Sim Date + 7)
   
4. Each Sim Week Must Have 4 or 6 Games*
   
5. Each Sim Day Can Have 2 Games
   

* = In the SHL. SMJHL rules will likely be 4 Games a Week due to team numbers.

Picking games by hand turned out to be a tedious process and, for all of the tedium, I'd get to the end and have 3 or 4 game slots open with teams that were incompatible with each other. Picking 1 game per day for Lag Format scheduling is actually a little harder, since it narrows each pool of possible games per day. Manually setting the schedule was already an undesirable pain when it was just data entry; this sorting process is not feasible for the turnaround ahead of preseason. I've been looking at some scripting options, however, I don't know what I don't know and I'm going to be building new skills to put this together myself. If anyone has any thoughts or advice that would help in this, I'd be very happy to hear it.


The more positive news is probably not something that most people care about at all. In tandem with the format changes, I've been working on a new system of goalie scheduling and roster sheets to make offline management a little more friendly to war rooms and GM changes, as well as more accessible in general. I'm about halfway finished with the SHL, and then I'll start working on rolling it up for the SMJHL, then IIHF and WJC. Even if there's still difficulties with the schedule next season (which is not ideal), this will most likely roll out for S77.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or ideas, please DM me here or on Discord.