Word Count (Part 1): 3320
Part 1 of 3

General Management of the SHL - A Biopsy of the League’s Most Influential Position

Part 1: On the Health of the GM Position

Hello, SHL!

Team management, as a job on the site, is one of the most vital pieces to keeping the site going. A lot of user engagement comes from their interactions with their GMs, whether it be as a dedicated user who helps out in the war room, or a fresh-faced first generation player who usually has an SMJHL GM be their first main grounding point to the site and its hockey teams (not including the Recruitment and Rookie Mentor teams, who do amazing work ensuring newcomers are informed and welcomed). My first experience on the site at all, coming as a curious Redditor in 2017, was being welcomed and scouted by @JKortesi81, who happened to catch that I had created my player probably a day before the draft with no idea what I was doing or how to connect on the forum at the time. He was the only SMJHL GM to reach out, and as a result I was drafted by him to the St. Louis Scarecrows in the seventh round of the S38 draft for the J. The GMs and Co-GMs I have had, and the communities they have built from the ground up or built upon, are the reason I have kept coming back (and even stuck around for once!), and the main reason I am here today. I can comfortably say that this is not a unique story of an SHL member. Given this, I believe that the management job is one of the most important jobs on the site in regards to forging the SHL as a community, so this article is of some significance to me, and potentially to a lot of us, in addressing the health of the management position, and by extension, the league.

In this article, I am looking to explore a topic that has been the focus of some intensifying discussions in the SHL. In addition to appearing in multiple discussion topics on the forum, discord and team LR’s have increasingly pondered the question: “Why does it seem to be harder to find GMs and Co-GMs for the league recently?”

It is a question that has been more frequently asked as of late, and I wondered if my own experience of management on the site was mirrored by many others. For disclosure on my personal and anecdotal perspective, I joined the site in 2017, and after my first two players enjoyed strong SMJHL careers before burning out as at-best useful 3rd-pairing IA corpses, I finally got traction on the site with my third and current player just over two years ago, and have been active to various degrees ever since. I was a general manager for the WJC for eight consecutive seasons, two for Finland and six for DACH, for the S54-S61 tournaments. I also test simmed on the newly-implemented FHM6 system at both the SMJHL and SHL level for different teams, in addition to contributing as a scout over the same eight-season span. During that time I did push my boundaries by applying for one of the S56 expansion slots, pitching an SHL team in Victoria, B.C called the Crusade (I’m sure I applied with this pitch because I mostly wanted to have an excuse to bring back the “praising intensifies'' memes that @ml002 and @Muford were so fond of in their PGF heydays). I was unsuccessful in my application (rightly so, looking at the winning bids), but never quite sought to enter the position of SHL or SJHL manager since, despite being very interested in the position (and I still am).

While I saw success as a manager both on the ice and in a personal fulfillment kind of way with my war room roles and WJC management, I never made the step to a GM Co-GM position at the SMJHL or SHL level because I realized how much time went into the position, especially test simming, if you wanted to be very effective at all. At the WJC level this was not nearly as prevalent - it was a quick round robin and single-game elimination tournament, and a much more casual environment where newer users cut their teeth at GMing or seeing their players for the first time in the sim engine, so it was a lot more fun, and easier to focus on team-building and tinkering with builds and tactics, as well as connecting with the people I drafted to my WJC squads. At the SMJHL and SHL level, a lot more of the focus, from the outside looking in, seemed to be a lot more of a grind, testing as much as possible to be able to have a chance of competitiveness. Over time, changes were made (like the update scale readjustment, which had a significant impact) that have shifted this imparity a bit, but I still felt like the job would lose enjoyability beyond the WJC, and this feeling personally lessened my interest in potentially GMing currently. While I am still tempted by the job postings that have gone by over the last couple of years, I have never quite made that next step.

My own personal journey was just that, personal, but upon seeing more and more conversations around the topic, I began to see some anecdotes and perspectives from other people that mirrored my own. This led to my driving question behind this article - “Is there a systemic deterrent to making the jump to an SMJHL/SHL GM (and staying on as one), or is it all in my head, tainted by my own internal bias?”

To investigate, I did two things: First, I crunched some quick numbers to see if there is, in fact, a noticeable difference in both turnover/retainability and time searching for a suitable candidate for management positions. Second, I asked for the personal insights of a number of current and former GMs, Co-GMs, HO members, and various other site positions in regards to GM retention and hiring. I wanted to hear from people outside of my own head, to see what perspectives we shared on the issue, and what was seen differently by those on the inside of the issue.

To start with the first thing, let’s do some quick math: How many jobs have opened up recently? And is that any higher than previous seasons, or am I completely barking up the wrong tree with this article, and recency bias is to blame?
To get reliable data, I pulled up every archived hiring post from the forum and went over each posting thread individually, to see if I could find out not only whether the job was filled, but how long it took to find a suitable candidate for either the hiring GM or HO to pull the trigger. In many cases there would be minimum timelines to wait for applicants before hiring which may impact these numbers, but overall the more important of the two figures is the number of GM/Co-GM jobs that have opened up.
Unfortunately I couldn’t go too far back into the past, as I eventually hit a wall where the announcements of successful applicants seemed to be posted somewhere I couldn’t find (perhaps discord?), and site etiquette had not quite evolved to the point we have now where the original post title is updated from “Hiring” to say “Hired”, or where the announcement of the successful hiring is at least made in the same post’s comments. The earliest I could get mostly reliable data, and where I made my cutoff, was from the very beginning of 2019, with @Wally being hired as the Co-GM of the Montreal Militia of the SMJHL. This gives us a timeline of over 3 years IRL to look at, and over 20 seasons of GM/Co-GM hirings (January of 2019 being the end of Season 45, and transitioning into S46, right before the SHL expanded with New Orleans and Chicago). I broke these down by month, so that I could compare them to specific seasons as well as try to observe any seasonal patterns that IRL time might account for - for all I know, positions could simply open up in waves based on when people go back to school or work. Beginning at the start of 2019 also allowed me to observe the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on hiring - we get a full year-plus of hiring trends before the virus struck, and can see if the boom the site saw in membership at that time reflected in the GM pool, and we are now simply suffering from people gradually returning to normal, in-person workloads (as a teacher, I’ve been back to work since the summer of 2020, but I understand that is not the same experience for everyone).

2019
So in 2019 there were a total of 29 GM and Co-GM positions listed over the course of the year. I listed the hiring date, as opposed to the date of the job posting, when recording which month the position appeared. The statistical breakdown of jobs posted in 2019 was as follows:

January: 0
February: 2
March: 2
April: 4
May: 2
June: 2
July: 8
August: 3
September: 1
October: 0
November: 0
December: 1
Total: 25

Of the 25 positions:
3 were for SHL GMs
2 were for SHL Co-GMs
9 were for SMJHL GMs
11 were for SMJHL CO-GMs

The average time to fill an SHL GM or Co-GM position was 6 days*
The average time to fill an SMJHL GM or Co-GM position was 4.56 days*

*2019 was a little skewed compared to the other years, as there were some posts that I could not find when the applicant had been hired. Both SHL Co-GM positions were unrecorded (and for one I think, went completely unfilled), and four of the SMJHL positions (3 GM, 1 Co-GM) had no hiring date either. They were not included in the calculation of the average.

So, 2019 averaged just barely over two positions opening each month, but mostly concentrated in the S48 offseason, with 8 of the 25 positions being filled in July. The job openings in February and March DO include the S46 expansion of both the SHL and SMJHL , so it is worth noting that only one non-expansion SHL GM job opened over the course of the calendar year. The winter months were specifically punctuated by a lack of openings, whereas the summer sees a lot busier in terms of management jobs changing hands. This seems in line with work/school schedules, albeit over only a single year’s sample size.

2020
In 2020 there were a total of 33 GM and Co-GM positions listed over the course of the year. I listed the hiring date, as opposed to the date of the job posting, when recording which month the position appeared. The statistical breakdown of jobs posted 2020 was as follows:

January: 9
February: 1
March: 2
April: 0
May: 3
June: 2
July: 1
August: 4
September: 7
October: 0
November: 3
December: 0
Total: 32

Of the 33 positions:
9 were for SHL GMs
7 were for SHL Co-GMs
12 were for SMJHL GMs
4 were for SMJHL CO-GMs

The average time to fill an SHL GM or Co-GM position was about 8.5 days**
The average time to fill an SMJHL GM or Co-GM position was 6.18 days

**There was one Co-GM position that, according to the forum, took 63 days to fill, or a little over two months. Omitting this one massive outlier from the average gives the 8.5 number, otherwise the average is closer to 16 days.

2020 saw a noticeable, but not crazy, uptick in GM positions filled, and surprisingly seemed relatively unaffected overall by the COVID-19 pandemic’s global emergence in March, with perhaps a slight decline in job openings at the very outset. Once again, these numbers reflect another SHL expansion in S56, with the introduction of the Seattle Argonauts and the Atlanta Inferno, which account for four (two GM, two Co-GM) of the SHL management openings this year. The Head GM position for both leagues saw far more turnover than their previous years. Additionally, with larger sample sizes came larger average times to fill those positions compared to 2019. April/May saw one of the most significant changes to the league in SHL history, as the switch from STHS to FHM6 was made in S53, but that doesn’t seem to have initiated a significant change. Instead, 0 positions opening/filled in April implies that GM’s were excited to try and test new strategies and lines on the new sim engine. The spikes in job openings in January and September don’t line up with the 2019 numbers really at all, so there is no immediate pattern to the calendar year’s effect on GM positions.

2021
In 2021 there were a total of 45 GM and Co-GM positions listed over the course of the year. I listed the hiring date, as opposed to the date of the job posting, when recording which month the position appeared. The statistical breakdown of jobs posted in 2021 was as follows:

January: 3
February: 1
March: 1
April: 5
May: 3
June: 5
July: 4
August: 4
September: 2
October: 7
November: 2
December: 8
Total: 45

Of the 45 positions:
12 were for SHL GMs
7 were for SHL Co-GMs
16 were for SMJHL GMs
10 were for SMJHL CO-GMs

The average time to fill an SHL GM or Co-GM position was about 6.67 days***
The average time to fill an SMJHL GM or Co-GM position was 8.167 days

***A note here is that, for the first time since tracking these numbers, the average time for a GM hire was significantly different from the Co-GM counterpart. A Co-GM hire in the SHL in 2021 took an average of only 4.67 days. An SHL GM hire took an average of 9.73 days, more than twice as long, averaging out to 6.67 days. This does include the S60 expansion of the SHL and SMJHL, which may have influenced these numbers a bit (as HO gave a very clear application timeline of hiring two SHL and SMJHL expansion GMs each in 14 and 16 days, respectively).

Another significant jump in the overall number of positions opening, and since each of the last 3 years have had a 4-team expansion (except 2020, with only 2 new teams added that year), the increase cannot be chalked up to simply being that many more teams. The month by month breakdown is a decently even spread until the winter comes along, and noticeably this is the first year the October to December range has a significant turnover, as the S61 and S62 offseasons saw a lot of management roles changing hands. October to December in the previous two years COMBINED only saw 4 job openings total. December six months ago had 8 postings alone, and October of 2021 had 7. The back-loading of these openings also will impact the way we look at the 2022 statistics - as the spike in GMs and CO-GMs moving positions or stepping down has been a more recent phenomenon that can be seen leading into 2022 from the end of 2021. Let's see what 2022 has to hold so far for turnover in leadership.

2022
In 2022 there have so far been a total of 26 GM and Co-GM positions listed as of the writing of this article. The statistical breakdown of jobs posted in 2022 so far is as follows:

January: 0
February: 9
March: 7
April: 5
May: 4
Currently unfilled and also posted in May: 2 (2 SHL Co-GM jobs as of the writing of this article)
Total: 26 so far

Of these 26 positions:
9 were for SHL GMs
8 were for SHL Co-GMs (With 2 more still pending a successful applicant as of writing, for a total of 10)
4 were for SMJHL GMs
4 were for SMJHL CO-GMs

So far, the average time to fill an SHL GM or Co-GM position was about 19 days****
So far, the average time to fill an SMJHL GM or Co-GM position was about 7.333 days****

****There are now two outliers that were omitted from these averages, and would only have made them longer. One SMJHL position took 46 days to fill, which would have brought the SMJHL average into the 17-day range rather than the -day range, and @SpartanGibbles apparently took a site record 67 days to choose an SHL Co-GM after posting for applicants, which would have brought the 2022 SHL average up to over 25 days, if it was included.

With just under half of the year completed and the 5th month of May halfway done, we are currently on pace for the League to see around 62 GM or Co-GM positions open in the calendar year. Whether we reach that or not remains to be seen - this could just be a front loaded year for job movement - but if the winter of 2021 being any indication, the League is looking at yet another significant increase in job openings for team management roles, specifically at the SHL level (There were 5 SHL Head GM postings in the month of February 2022 alone!).

Overall, these numbers are telling. In an increasing pattern, we have exponentially more turnover in the last three-plus years on the site (equivalent to about 20 SHL seasons), and the numbers initially are weighted heavily at the top level - not only are more SHL management jobs being posted, it has taken an increased amount of time to locate a suitable candidate, as compared to the SMJHL level. While anecdotal, as I perused each hiring post I did personally notice an increase in “bumped” posts by the posting GM or HO, and more comments stating a deadline increase for accepted applications, than I saw in years previous. For the Head GM position at the SHL level in particular, it has taken more time to find a suitable candidate in each successive year, now climbing to just under a three-week average for hiring (which is more than an entire offseason and preseason, even in the schedules with some downtime).
Unfortunately, I cannot find out if these “bumps” or extensions are due to no suitable applicants, or any at all, due to the long standing SHL tradition of commenting “applied” on the hiring post without ever actually considering the position. That, of course, made it difficult to gauge genuine user interest in posted positions. Perhaps in another article I can ask GMs and HO about how many applications they actually get when they look to hire, but that will have to be another article for another time.
Another major point worth noting is it seems like the COVID-19 pandemic did not influence the overall pattern of job openings. If that were the case, I would have hypothesized a more bell-curve pattern (one way or the other) between January 2019 and May 2022, but that was not the case. It has only been a rising number, year after year, in regards to both the job postings and the time it takes to fill them.

This is part one of a three-part article. In this part of the article, I looked to empirically examine whether or not the team management position is experiencing an increasingly high turnover rate, and if this turnover is supplemented by a suitable amount of replacements or not, and whether it is getting harder to find proper applicants for the opening positions. 

In the second part of my article, I take a step away from the numbers, and talk to the real people behind the function of the SHL - Current and past General Managers and Co-GMs of both leagues, Fed Heads, and even users with HO experience.

Thank you for reading, and look for the second part of this article, it should be posted immediately after this one!

Thank you to Ham and Sulo for the sigs!

Jon Tellofsen, Defenseman for LAP/BUF/CAL/TEX/MIN (RETIRED)
Drafted 52nd OA in S38 SMJHL Draft by the St. Louis Scarecrows
Drafted 11th OA in S39 SHL Draft by the Minnesota Chiefs
4-Star Cup Winner (St. Louis S39)

Basil Magnicotta, Defenseman for St. Louis and New Orleans (RETIRED)
Drafted 33rd OA in S45 SMJHL Draft by the St. Louis Scarecrows
Drafted 53rd OA in S45 SHL Draft by the New Orleans Specters
Two-time 4-star Cup Winner (St. Louis S45 and S46)
WJC Gold Medal with Team World (S45)
Three-time Ondrej Ravchitikov Award winner (S47, S48, S49)
S55: Ravchitikov Award Re-named to Basil Magnicotta Award

Nicolae Antonescu, Goaltender for St. Louis and San Francisco (RETIRED)
Drafted 26th OA in S54 SMJHL Draft by the St. Louis Scarecrows
Drafted 27th OA in S55 SHL Draft by the San Francisco Pride
Named to SMJHL All-Rookie Team (S54)
Four time Friedrich Schmidt Award Winner (S54, S55, S56, S57)
SMJHL All-Star, 1st Team (S56)
Nominee for Ryan Jesster Award (S58)
Named to SHL All-Rookie Team (S58)
Named to SHL All-Star Roster (2nd Team) (S59)
Nominee for John McBride Award (S59)
Named to SHL All-Star Roster (2nd Team) (S61)
Nominee for John McBride Award (S61)
IIHF Silver medal with Switzerland (S63)
Named to SHL All-Star Roster (S65)
Winner of John McBride Award (S65)
IIHF Gold medal with Switzerland (S65)

Ignacio Garza, Winger for Anchorage and San Francisco
Claimed on entry waivers by Anchorage during the S67 SMJHL season
Drafted 20th OA in the S68 Draft by the San Francisco Pride
 


Jon Tellofsen, General Manager and Coach
S54 - WJC GM (Team Finland) - 8-5-1 Record - Bronze medal
S55 - WJC GM (Team DACH) - 7-5-1 Record - Quarterfinals
S56 - WJC GM (Team DACH) - 8-4-1 Record - Quarterfinals
S57 - WJC GM (Team DACH) - 10-3-1 Record - Quarterfinals
S58 - WJC GM (Team DACH) - 12-3-0 Record - Silver Medal
S59 - WJC GM (Team DACH) - 12-2-1 Record - Gold Medal
S60 - WJC GM (Team DACH) - 10-4-1 Record - Bronze Medal
S61 - WJC GM (Team Finland) - 10-4-1 Record - Bronze medal
- WJC Career as GM - 77-30-7 Record -

Did someone say...


praise?

i'll playwith anyone
playing with my teammates is part of the intangibles I bring to the table
i play with them a lot.
they didn't like it at first
but after a while, it just felt normal

4-0 and 0-4 aren't that different tbh

FIRE EGGY
HIRE ARTY

super interesting read! atta be

Ashton King || LW || Newfoundland Berserkers (WPG) || 358 TPE

Name: Ashton King
Age: 18
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 220lbs.
Number: 55
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SMJHL SEASON STATS

S64 || NEL || GP: 23 || G: 2 || A: 2 || P: 4 || +/-: +4

S65 || NEL || GP: 53 || G: 19 || A: 23 || P: 42 || +/-: +24

------------------------------------------------------------
SMJHL PLAYOFF STATS
S64 || NEL || GP: 15 || G: 4 || A: 6 || P: 10 || +/-: +7
------------------------------------------------------------

WJC STATS

S64 || NA || GP: 12 || G: 3 || A: 4 || P: 7 || +/-: +2
------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSACTIONS

S64 || Signed 1yr/$5m w/ Newfoundland Berserkers

S65 || Drafted 2nd Round, 32nd Overall by Winnipeg Aurora

S65 || Signed 1yr/$3m w/ Winnipeg Aurora

------------------------------------------------------------

AWARDS

S64 || Laurifer Trophy Champion

S64 || King-Kurczewski Gauntlet Champion 
S64 || Four Star Cup Champion

Good read so far! Appreciate the analysis. I'd wonder about the proportional comparisons of how many GM positions are available total compared to how many are needing to be replaced year by year, and when in a season the hiring position was posted instead of when in the year since they didn't always line up together, but I think overall these would most likely still support the current trends shown

                    John Brown | RD | TBB
570 TPE, 6'3, 204 lbs.
S67 - Drafted 1OA by the Nevada Battleborn
S68 - SMJHL All-Star
S68 - Drafted 6OA by the Tampa Bay Barracuda
S69 - SMJHL All-Star
S69 - SMJHL All Defense Team
S69 - Alexis Metzler Award
S70 - SMJHL All-Star

S66 Damian Littleton

      Joseph Weston || Winger || Los Angeles Panthers        
Joseph Weston || Winger || Los Angeles Panthers        
                                  1885 Peak TPE, 6'1", 202 Lbs.
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Regular Season Stats:
S49 | MTL | GP: 50 | G: 08 | A: 03 | P: 11 | +/-: 03 | MP: 621
S50 | CAR | GP: 50 | G: 17 | A: 22 | P: 39 | +/-: 02 | MP: 766
S51 | CAR | GP: 50 | G: 20 | A: 28 | P: 48 | +/-: 25 | MP: 807
S52 | CAR | GP: 50 | G: 19 | A: 20 | P: 39 | +/-: 08 | MP: 957
S53 | CGY | GP: 50 | G: 10 | A: 19 | P: 29 | +/-: 11 | TOI: 17:06
S54 | CGY | GP: 50 | G: 06 | A: 14 | P: 20 | +/-: -6 | TOI: 17:17
S55 | CGY | GP: 50 | G: 12 | A: 17 | P: 29 | +/-: 15 | TOI: 16:57
S56 | CGY | GP: 50 | G: 17 | A: 29 | P: 46 | +/-: 44 | TOI: 18:33
S57 | CGY | GP: 66 | G: 28 | A: 27 | P: 55 | +/-: 33 | TOI: 18:57
S58 | CGY | GP: 66 | G: 28 | A: 28 | P: 56 | +/-: 31 | TOI: 20:19
S59 | CGY | GP: 66 | G: 31 | A: 42 | P: 73 | +/-: 31 | TOI: 22:15
S60 | CGY | GP: 66 | G: 28 | A: 31 | P: 59 | +/-: 27 | TOI: 22:09
S61 | CGY | GP: 66 | G: 36 | A: 35 | P: 71 | +/-: 13 | TOI: 21:45
S62 | CGY | GP: 66 | G: 25 | A: 44 | P: 69 | +/-: 12 | TOI: 21:19
S63 | TOR | GP: 66 | G: 11 | A: 27 | P: 38 | +/-: -15 | TOI: 19:40
S64 | LAP  | GP: 66 | G: 18 | A: 28 | P: 46 | +/-: 19 | TOI: 18:11
S65 | LAP  | GP: 66 | G: 14 | A: 24 | P: 38 | +/-: 21 | TOI: 17:53
S66 | LAP | GP: TBD | G: TBD | A: TBD | P: TBD | +/-: TBD | TOI: TBD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Awards:
S49 Montreal Militia Four Star Cup Champions
S50 Carolina Kraken Four Star Cup Champions
S50 Zach Miller Trophy Nomination
S50 Vyacheslav Onoprienko Trophy
S50 WJC USA Bronze Medal
S50 & S51 Carolina Kraken Assistant Captain
S51 SMJHL All-Star
S51 Laurifer Trophy
S52 Carolina Kraken Captain
S52 WJC USA Captain
S53 SHL All-Rookie Team
S54 Calgary Dragons Assistant Captain
S56-S58 Calgary Dragons Assistant Captain
S59-S63 Calgary Dragons Captain
S59 SHL All-Star Game
S60 SHL All-Star Game
S61 SHL All-Star Game
S63 United States of America IIHF Gold Medal
S63 SHL All-Star Game
S65 Challenge Cup Champion


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