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Rancidbudgie · 10-21-2022, 03:58 PM

DEEP DIVE 2:

A Tale of Two Cities:
How Portland, Maine and Regina, Saskatchewan, found SMJHL success in wildly different ways.

When the dust settled on the S67 SMJHL regular season, the playoffs were set and teams prepared for the post season. At the top of the leaderboard were four phenomenal teams - the stacked league-leading Quebec City Citadelles, the Stout and steady Regina Elk, the continuing powerhouse Nevada Battleborn, and the hot-burning Maine Timber. Something intriguing when looking at the standings was the goal differential of the four teams - despite Regina and Maine finishing second and fourth in the league, respectively, they far and away had the highest goal differentials in the league - Regina with a +73 goal differential, and Maine immediately behind them with a +72. The next-highest GD would be 5th-place Detroit, with +51, more than twenty fewer in their differential, and farther apart still from their top competition. Top of the league Quebec City only finished with a +44 GD by comparison, and Nevada a +49.

It appears that Regina and Maine had fewer close games than their competition, and when they won, they usually won decisively. Quebec and Nevada, at first glance, had more one-goal games than the Elk or Timber. But when we compare the two highest GD teams, we see two different methods of getting there. The Regina Elk only sported the league’s seventh-best offense - almost exactly middle of the pack in a 14-team league. But in spite of this, they had an extremely stingy defense, only letting in 152 goals over the course of the regular season - a full 35 fewer goals than the second-stingiest defense, the underrated St. Louis (187 goals against). So it wasn’t so much that the Elk could put up a respectable 3-and-a-bit goals every night (on average), but that they also had 22 games where they held their opponents to one or zero goals. Exactly one-third of the whole season, Regina only let in one goal or less, including two games that they lost 1-0 in a shootout! The team has a string of 3 shutouts in a row this season, and 4 out of a string of 5 games where they goose-egged the other team. Both Regina goalies had 5 shutouts each, and both Regina goalies were top of the league, with Jackson Cannon leading the league in GAA, GSAA, and SV%, with Alexis Texas finishing 5th, 5th, and 6th in the league in those same respective categories. All six of their defense were over 400 TPE, with 4 of them being capped at 425, so Regina was insanely stacked when it came to both stifling and saving scoring opportunities against them.

Maine, on the other hand, maintained its top-tier GD with a high-octane offense. Maine was also pretty stingy on defense, with 194 goals against, good for 4th in the league in that category. But what let them take off this season was their league-leading 266 goals for, 18 clear of the second best offense of the Detroit Falcons. Maine currently has a large group of S65 and S66 forwards, with five of these forwards being above the 425 cap, but below 550 TPE. It seems that Maine has a competitive edge in the fact that they have a stable group of players that earned to just over a capped build, then stopped developing, allowing for fewer SHL call-ups and a deep forward core complimented by active young S67 forwards, also approaching or at the 425 cap. They had an individual game this season where they slaughtered the Newfoundland Berserkers 10-2, a number of goals in one game that is hard to replicate in FHM8, and with the average scoring sliders for a game set to where they are by the league. The Timber had 4 other games this season where they scored 7 or more goals against their opponents, leading to wholesale slaughter that put their offense at the top of the league.

Hopefully you enjoyed this deep dive, and thank you for reading!

Thank you to Ham and Sulo for the sigs!

Opera_Phantom · 10-26-2022, 05:25 AM

@Rancidbudgie APPROVED! +5 TPE

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