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S58 SHL State of the Union
#16

If the league is realigned then what’s to stop a newer division turning into a bloodbath? Seems like a temporary solution. I’m all for two conferences where the top 6 make it. Anything outside of geography would come across as playing favorites I fear. The playoff format is what sucks. There’s no true east/west bracket anymore. So the same thing the Great Lakes get stung with in the regular season favors them in the playoffs (two GL teams make the finals). Conferences don’t matter in the playoffs right now. And if that’s the case just make one big 18 team table.

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#17

03-22-2021, 08:21 PMLeoben Wrote: If the league is realigned then what’s to stop a newer division turning into a bloodbath?  Seems like a temporary solution.  I’m all for two conferences where the top 6 make it.  Anything outside of geography would come across as playing favorites I fear.  The playoff format is what sucks.  There’s no true east/west bracket anymore.  So the same thing the Great Lakes get stung with in the regular season favors them in the playoffs (two GL teams make the finals).  Conferences don’t matter in the playoffs right now.  And if that’s the case just make one big 18 team table.
I think the idea is to make this fix, then if the league continues growing as it has we'll expand and the format will be fixed as the FHM playoff formats get more and more normal with more teams added.

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#18

03-22-2021, 08:21 PMLeoben Wrote: If the league is realigned then what’s to stop a newer division turning into a bloodbath?  Seems like a temporary solution.  I’m all for two conferences where the top 6 make it.  Anything outside of geography would come across as playing favorites I fear.  The playoff format is what sucks.  There’s no true east/west bracket anymore.  So the same thing the Great Lakes get stung with in the regular season favors them in the playoffs (two GL teams make the finals).  Conferences don’t matter in the playoffs right now.  And if that’s the case just make one big 18 team table.

Playoff expansion to 16 teams would likely be ideal over realignment, as it wouldnt require realignment, would allow conferences to matter again, and would prevent a 90+ point team from missing playoffs. There are drawbacks to this however, with us being an 18 team league the primary one. I know once we expand again to 20 teams sometime over the next calendar year, we’re likely expanding to a 16 team playoff so I guess I can’t see why we can’t expand to a 16 team playoff sooner rather than later.




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#19

I appreciate the communication and think HO is doing a good job.

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#20

Great job with these State of the Unions. I really appreciate the transparency of what's being worked on and getting a sense of the overall direction of the league. Its really encouraging to see how healthy the league is!

That being said, it'll be nice to have a resolution to the current playoff format but sucks that options are limited though. I think playoff races are exciting and expanding playoffs to 16 out of 18 teams would take away a bit of the purpose of the regular season.

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#21

Quote:our goal with this is to allow players to make the jump into the SHL earlier by making them more effective at lower TPE totals,

sweet, lets do 4th lines

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#22

03-23-2021, 10:06 AMPremierBromanov Wrote:
Quote:our goal with this is to allow players to make the jump into the SHL earlier by making them more effective at lower TPE totals,

sweet, lets do 4th lines

Expansion > 4th lines ainec




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#23

03-23-2021, 10:06 AMPremierBromanov Wrote:
Quote:our goal with this is to allow players to make the jump into the SHL earlier by making them more effective at lower TPE totals,

sweet, lets do 4th lines

I don't want 4th lines

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#24

gonna take a crack at answering a few questions people have here after class, but for now I'll bump to let y'all know RedBubble is having a 15% sale right now for those interested in snagging some merch!

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#25

03-23-2021, 11:34 AMnour Wrote: gonna take a crack at answering a few questions people have here after class, but for now I'll bump to let y'all know RedBubble is having a 15% sale right now for those interested in snagging some merch!

Do you know if the 15% off is coming from RedBubble's cut? Just curious if it impacts the SHL's margins.

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#26

Sick

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#27

03-22-2021, 06:45 PMZombiewolf Wrote: I still fail to see how division realignment isn’t a good temporary solution until fhm 7 is ready but oh well

The way we're looking at it there's basically 2 issues with this. The first is that FHM 7 doesn't have a timeline for when more custom playoff options will come, they've said they're working on it but it could be next update, it could be months away in a future update, so we're not sure how temporary realignment based on standings would be. The second issue is the one I mentioned in the OP where re-aligning the divisions based on standings has drawbacks as well based on how you do it. If we re-align every season based on standings results, then the regular season is invalidated, since every division is going to have a really clear playoff picture before the season even starts. If we do a one-time realignment, then the regular season being invalidated still happens, and down the line we might end up right back where we started if one division gets too good. Keeping people engaged is important and we worry that making 4 divisions where everyone knows which 3 teams are going to make it will deincentivize participation and engagement with the regular season. Again, its a frustrating situation for us too, a lot of the current possible solutions have drawbacks, and the best solution is, for now, inaccessible.

03-22-2021, 07:01 PMpuolivalmiste Wrote: You want divisions realigned but want things to be less predictable? Add teams to pools based on last seasons regular season performance (A: division winners, B: 5th to 8th, C: 9th to 14th, D: 15th to 18th) and pick one from every pool (expect one extra from pool C to 2 divisions in different conferences). Would add another lottery event to offseason for people to watch and work well enough if/when FHM 7/8/9/x might fix the problem. Though this way you would lose your divisional rivalries which barely matter when playoffs mix things up and you play everyone in conference same amount anyway.

This is a pretty solid idea, Head Office can give it some discussion for sure, the only issue is that I don't think it totally solves the issue making the regular season less predictable. There's such a large skill gap between the teams that finish 14th or higher and the teams that finish 15th or lower, and with 3/4 (or 3/5) teams making the playoffs in each division, I worry that this is still really predictable. As an example, here's a trial run using this format:

Division 1 - Texas, Buffalo, Los Angeles, Baltimore, New Orleans
Division 2 - Calgary, Toronto, Atlanta, San Francisco
Division 3 - Hamilton, Edmonton, Tampa Bay, Minnesota
Division 4 - Manhattan, Chicago, Winnipeg, New England, Seattle Argonauts

Right off the bat there's a few issues I see here. Divisions 1 and 4 seem pretty alright, there's an interesting battle for 3rd place in both of those divisions, but TEX finished 45 points ahead of LAP last season and BUF finished 26 points ahead of them, and BUF just got better at deadline. They run away with that division, which I know in our current format Texas already did that, but Buffalo goes from a division where checking the standings every day was a must, to a division where they likely coast into the playoffs. Same issue with Division 4, where Manhattan and Chicago finished this most recent season leaps and bounds ahead of 3rd-best Winnipeg. Chicago goes from a Division where they were neck and neck with Buffalo and had to follow the regular season closely, to a division where they now coast in with Manhattan as 2/3 teams who make the playoffs. Divisions 2 and 3 are even worse, I don't even have to explain which teams from those 2 have a comfy run to the post-season. So basically this system creates some interesting battles for the 3rd and final playoff spot in each Division, which is never a bad thing, but that's not something we're really missing out on. TBB and NEW missed the playoffs by 5 points, SEA missed by 3, and MIN/CHI missed by 2. There's already interesting battles league wide for playoff spots, but this format gives the top 2 teams in each division, essentially a free pass. Not to mention that this is just one randomized test, if we opt to do a system like this where divisional alignments are randomly generated each season, it opens the door to maybe some good seasons where everything works, but also some bad seasons where things go poorly and a team gets shafted, so something semi random and always changing like this does worry me.

Again a lot of this is mostly devil's advocate, not shooting the idea down just point out some of the potential issues I see.

03-22-2021, 07:36 PMcaltroit_red_flames Wrote: I feel like we need another thread for the divisional realignment topic. Personally I'm against that idea because as much as it sucks for the team that misses in the Great Lakes having the Great Lakes be so freaking good is an awesome story line and one that was created organically. It's a feature not a bug.

As frustrating as I find our current playoff system to be, I won't lie about the fact that I'm definitely in the camp of "tighter divisions are more exciting". I'd kill for more FHM 7 playoff options so we could entertain the idea of switching to it, but its not outlandish to say that the playoff race in the Great Lakes was a lot more interesting than the playoff race in the Southwest last season, and for the time being, at least for me personally, I'm definitely trying to look at it from the "feature, not a bug" perspective.

03-22-2021, 07:37 PMRotticusScott Wrote: Folks I call him snour because this put me right to sleep!

I wanna bash you over the head with a big wooden hammer like a looney tunes character.

03-22-2021, 08:21 PMLeoben Wrote: If the league is realigned then what’s to stop a newer division turning into a bloodbath? Seems like a temporary solution. I’m all for two conferences where the top 6 make it. Anything outside of geography would come across as playing favorites I fear. The playoff format is what sucks. There’s no true east/west bracket anymore. So the same thing the Great Lakes get stung with in the regular season favors them in the playoffs (two GL teams make the finals). Conferences don’t matter in the playoffs right now. And if that’s the case just make one big 18 team table.

Basically HO's thought process as well. I've spoken with everyone in Head Office about this a lot in our bi-weekly voice chats and when it comes to assessing options, whether its re-alignment, expansion or increasing the number of teams that make the playoffs, it either makes things too easy for the top teams, is something we're not ready for yet, or makes the regular season a complete joke, respectively. Minimal custom playoff options are without question the issue, for now all we can do is wait for FHM 7 to add them, and continue to assess, brainstorm and evaluate how to best move forward until then.

03-23-2021, 10:06 AMPremierBromanov Wrote:
Quote:our goal with this is to allow players to make the jump into the SHL earlier by making them more effective at lower TPE totals,

sweet, lets do 4th lines

This was an idea I had been mulling over since before the most recent expansion, I figured opening more spots on teams would be a good thing to help fix the logjam and get people called up quicker, give teams more room for their prospects etc. I changed my stance on it however after discussion with GMs and various HO members since I joined Head Office. The issues with 4th lines vary from team to team, but to keep it brief, prospects who feel stuck in the logjam of top teams will not feel any less stuck if they go from having to spend 4 seasons in juniors, to called up after 2-3 seasons to play on the 4th line. Most active and participating users here don't want to play on a 4th line, especially if they're on a stacked team and will be stuck there for multiple seasons. That's just the top teams. If you're an above average or bubble team, 4th lines means you have to field another line that is probably worse than top teams' 4th lines, furthering the gap between you and higher tier opponents, and if you're a below average or low tier team, your rebuild just got longer because now you have 3 extra spots to fill with inactives that you have to replace via draft eventually. It's nice in theory but it has a lot of logistical problems that all basically stem from the idea that 4th lines just aren't that fun. STHS had 4th lines and it was almost exclusively used as a way to bury inactives, more of a chore for GMs to deal with while they built their top 3 lines than anything else. When the time is right, I do think that expansion is a better way of opening up spots over adding 4th lines.

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#28

03-23-2021, 12:42 PMGrapehead Wrote:
03-23-2021, 11:34 AMnour Wrote: gonna take a crack at answering a few questions people have here after class, but for now I'll bump to let y'all know RedBubble is having a 15% sale right now for those interested in snagging some merch!

Do you know if the 15% off is coming from RedBubble's cut? Just curious if it impacts the SHL's margins.

It would be split between both, we make 5% from every sale, so whatever price you buy at, sale or not, we make 5% of it.

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#29

03-23-2021, 12:57 PMnour Wrote:
03-23-2021, 12:42 PMGrapehead Wrote: Do you know if the 15% off is coming from RedBubble's cut? Just curious if it impacts the SHL's margins.

It would be split between both, we make 5% from every sale, so whatever price you buy at, sale or not, we make 5% of it.

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#30
(This post was last modified: 03-24-2021, 07:40 PM by Count Chocula.)

Why are there still no gold, silver,bronze iihf forum flair for users? It might inject some more prestige into the tournament, since it's current iterration is mostly a filler tournament. With some stakes and visibility it may get people more hyped for IIHF.

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