I was looking around at a bunch of the other deep dives, and the one's that stood out as the most interesting to me are the ones that are unique. Not to say that they are better but there are a ton of articles on certain teams and I just wanted to break it up a little. So no, this is not a deep dive on a certain team, but it is rather a deep dive on the players (and one could say player builds) of the SMJHL. 

There are 23 distinct attributes ratings for players that are editable. We have all the freedom in the world to put as many TPE into any category we want. But do we? The answer is no. 

Why?

Probably because we want to win some games, right? LOL. Putting all your TPE into bravery and fighting may sound like a noble cause, but a traffic cone with some fists can't do too much out there. So here's what I found among attributes for SMJHL players:

Number of players with a 14 rating or higher:

Screening: 1
Getting Open: 6
Passing: 14
Puckhandling: 3
Shooting Accuracy: 5
Shooting Range: 1
Offensive Read: 17
Checking: 3
Hitting: 1
Positioning: 3
Stick Checking: 0
Shot Blocking: 1
Faceoffs: 4
Defensive Read: 6
Acceleration: 1
Agility: 0
Balance: 1
Speed: 9
Stamina: 18
Strength: 3
Fighting: 1
Aggression: 0
Bravery: 0

There is only one 16 in the league: QCC's Mikael Koskinen has a 16 in Passing. I was honestly very surprised to see this breakdown of 14s and 15s. I thought I would see a lot more zeros in a few of the categories. For example, I didn't expect any 14 or higher in faceoffs, fighting, or screening. On the opposite end of that I expected that more players would be ranked higher in agility, balance, puck handling, positioning, and defensive read. 

You can see a trend: players want to score. Just look at the offensive read vs defensive read: 17 vs 6, respectively. (Interestingly, 4 of the 6 highly ranked defensive read players are from only two teams: NBB and ANC.) Only one forward had a defensive read rating higher than 13, while 4 defenders had a 14 or higher rating in offensive read. 

I also wanted to look at floors: 

Number of players with a 5 rating or lower (interestingly there were quite a few 4s which I didn't think was possible):

Screening: 84
Getting Open: 12
Passing: 1
Puckhandling: 2
Shooting Accuracy: 14
Shooting Range: 20
Offensive Read: 6
Checking: 4
Hitting: 38
Positioning: 1
Stick Checking: 3
Shot Blocking: 54
Faceoffs: 147
Defensive Read: 5
Acceleration: 1
Agility: 1
Balance: 1
Speed: 1
Stamina: 51 (Defaults to 11, this is number under 12)
Strength: 3
Fighting: 179
Aggression: 139
Bravery: 48

You could see a lot of those coming (like fighting or faceoffs). This shows what players think is not important at all. Keep in mind, a lot of these numbers represent 155 builds that are in the SMJHL but are not necessarily active. Even so, it shows you what players value as opposed to the opposite above. A surprise: checking seems to be a lot more important than hitting. Another: stick checking is a lot more popular than I would have thought. Nobody makes that attribute high, but nobody really keeps it low either. 

It really is an interesting breakdown. I think it would be a good project to create some bell curve graphs to show the distribution. Then we need to look at the suggested player builds and see which attributes are key for more builds. I'd like to know if passing is really that important or users just like to be a passer. 

(624 words) +5 TPE

@By-Tor GRADED! +5 TPE