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Preseason vs. Regular Season
#1
(This post was last modified: 11-29-2019, 12:36 AM by kenvald.)

(1142 words - using the first article double bonus on this as I used the draft related bonus on my actual first article)

As a completely new member to the site and the league I have wanted to spend some time to look into its history. While doing so I also ended up looking up the stats from previous seasons. At least the ones still available to me that did not return a 404, which turned out to be season 43 and later.

While doing so I thought it would be interesting to compare the preseason numbers with the regular season numbers. I wanted to answer questions such as “Does the preseason accurately show what is to come during the regular season?” and “Does the preseason top goal scorers usually end up as top goal scorers in the regular season?”. Well, let us find out, shall we?

Disclaimer: Keep in mind that all the statistics in this article only contain data from season 43 through 50, plus season 51’s preseason. It is not enough to be statistically significant, but at least enough to be statistically interesting.

So, how well do the preseason numbers stack up against the regular season?
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This chart shows how many spots a team drops or gains, on average, depending on how they did in the preseason. For example a team that finishes the preseason at number 4 in the standings finish on average two spots up or down, ie. spot 2 or 6, in the standings at the end of the regular season. I only calculated the 1-8 placements as 9-10 did not appear until season 45.

One number that immediately caught my eye was the number 1 spot. If a team finish at number 1 in the preseason it is highly likely that the team will finish the regular season at number 2, at worst.

Surprisingly, compared to number 1, the second spot has the largest difference. I urge you to take this number with a grain of salt, however. This larger difference comes from season 49 when the Anchorage Armada ended their preseason at number 2 but fell all the way down to number 10 in the regular season. Without this outlier I would expect the difference to be less than 2.

What more can be concluded from the chart?
In my opinion, it seems like the preseason standings are not to be scoffed at. Wherever a team ends up in the preseason they could expect to end up no more than three spots higher up or further down the standings when the regular season is done.

That is for each team, but what about the individual players that flash their scoring or passing abilities in the preseason?
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This chart tells us how often a top-10 goal scorer from the preseason end up as a top-10 goal scorer in the regular season.

The only correlation I would potentially trust from this data is if a player finishes the preseason as a top-2 goal scorer they are likely to finish the regular season as a top-10 goal scorer. But somehow there is just as big of a chance for anyone that finishes as the number 8 goal scorer.

The data is all over the place and does not show any real correlation. While logically a high scoring preseason player will most likely end up near the top during the regular season, there is no guarantee that they will stay a top-10 scorer.

What about assists?

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The visualization on this chart aims to show us how many total assists were achieved by the top-10 players during the preseason compared to the regular season.

Only three times have the top-10 players totaled more assists during the regular season. What does this mean? Maybe the players are more willing to pass during the preseason, or maybe teams play a little easier during this time as to prevent injuries and therefore causing more goals to be scored which maps directly to assists.

Enough about the past. What about the future?
Now that season 51’s preseason has ended let us take a look at those numbers and see if we can predict how the regular season will end.

Preseason Standings
1.  Carolina Kraken
2.  Kelowna Knights
3.  Lethbridge Lions
4.  Colorado Raptors
5.  Anchorage Armada
6.  St. Louis Scarecrows
7.  Anaheim Outlaws
8.  Vancouver Whalers
9.  Halifax Raiders
10. Detroit Falcons

My Regular Season Prediction
The upcoming regular season’s top-5:
1. Carolina Kraken
2. Colorado Raptors
3. Lethbridge Lions
4. Kelowna Knights
5. Anaheim Outlaws

Top-10 Preseason Goal Scorers
1.  Alexei Rykov (CAR)
2.  Ravyn Tedisko (HFX)
3.  James Ronlain (STL)
4.  Cody (LBL)
5.  Raquel Castillo Gutierrez (ANA)
6.  Daniel Bischoff (ANC)
7.  Karl Krashwagen (HFX)
8.  Gylfi Eriksson (KEL)
9.  Andrey Barbashev II (KEL)
10. Ricky Bobby (CAR)

My Regular Season Prediction
These are the only players among the preseason top-10 that will stay somewhere in the top-10 goal scorers for the upcoming regular season:
Alexei Rykov (CAR)
Ravyn Tedisko (HFX)
Raquel Castillo Gutierrez (ANA)
Gylfi Eriksson (KEL)
Andrey Barbashev II (KEL)

Top-10 Preseason Assists
1.  Alexei Rykov (CAR)
2.  Ryan Shepard (KEL)
3.  Yamamoto Mitsuharu (STL)
4.  Ricky Bobby (CAR)
5.  Jakub Bruchevski (STL)
6.  Tom Fiddler (CAR)
7.  Adam Barron (HFX)
8.  Vorian Atreides (COL)
9.  Aron Hernadivic (STL)
10. Akira Ren (LBL)

These ten players amounted for a total of 347 assists.

My Regular Season Prediction
I predict that we will see a total of 327 assists from the top-10 players.


Beside everything I mentioned above I also noticed a few other interesting tidbits.

High Scores
The most points by a team in a season is the Vancouver Whalers with 71 points in season 43.
The most goals scored in a season is Jagger Fouquette with 33 goals in season 50.
The most assists in a season is Nickolas Klaus with 46 assists in season 45.

Fight for Number 1
The closest race for the number one seed happened in season 45 with the top five teams being within 4 points of each other. The top two teams, Detroit Falcons and Anchorage Armada, ended up on the same number of points(64) but Detroit ended up as number one thanks to them having one more win than Anchorage.

Best of the Worst
In season 44 the Kelowna Knights ended up last in the standings even though they had the league’s top scorer on their team, Vladislav Konstantin. He was also the 10th best player for assists that season.

Top Notch Consistency
If we average out the final regular season placement of each team after the league expanded to ten teams(season 45) we can see that the St. Louis Scarecrows has done the best with an average placement of 4.33 out of 10.

The McDavid
Most of you probably know this as it happened just last season but only once has a player been number 1 in both most goals and assists. Jagger Fouquette from Detroit Falcons accomplished this impressive feat in season 50.


My spreadsheet where I put my data and calculations
Bear in mind that the spreadsheet is not very smart.

What are some of your predictions for the upcoming regular season?

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#2

To get the older seasons in the index you can do

https://simulationhockey.com/games/smjhl...index.html

And change S50 to whatever you want it to be

https://simulationhockey.com/games/smjhl...index.html

For example

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Czechoslovakia PROFILE || UPDATE || RAGE. Rage 
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#3
(This post was last modified: 11-28-2019, 01:20 PM by kenvald.)

Oh, I didn't even try that. I just assumed they were dead since the links in the past threads went nowhere. But it goes all the way back to season 31. Thanks!
Looks like I now have some more data for a follow-up article!

[Image: sBUQCq8.png]

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#4

11-28-2019, 01:18 PMkenvald Wrote: Oh, I didn't even try that. I just assumed they were dead since the links in the past threads went nowhere. But it goes all the way back to season 31. Thanks!
Looks like I now have some more data for a follow-up article!

Yeah S31 and under are kinda lost to us unfortunately. If you go to

https://simulationhockey.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=430

Then if shows all the seasonal records we have(though a few missing ones)

[Image: 0XJkcN5.png]
Czechoslovakia PROFILE || UPDATE || RAGE. Rage 
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#5

This was an interesting read, thank you! Looking forward to more of your articles.

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#6

Some serious quality content here. Looking forward to the rest once you go back further.

Good stuff!

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#7

This was great work! Love the research that went into it.

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#8

@kenvald My old player (Alex Light) holds the goals record in a single season (in S33). Wink

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#9

@Zoone16 I'll make sure to correct my mistake in my next stats article! Biggrin

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