05-18-2023, 10:43 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: My issue isn't so much that the #1 seed beats the #8 seed, but that the #5 to #7 seed seem to not really have a chance either, even when those teams are decent and not just bad teams who got a spot in the postseason due to our diluted format. Especially in the West where things seemed very static for years even outside. Calgary and Edmonton kept turns dominating each other in the 1st round only to then get dominated in the 2nd by Seattle. And every conference finals since S66 were two our of SEA, WPG, CHI. But yeah with some rebuilds starting and cycles ending, I expect this to change now. The East might be more competitive in the later rounds, but over the last two seasons the higher seeded team won every first round series, and we have go back three or four seasons to find the last case of one of the top three seaded teams being beaten.

I really dislike the narrative that comes up so often in these discussions and in your post as well (I'm not blaming you for this obviously). This is NOT about bad teams being bad, or teams that got into the playoffs due to our generous playoff format, who then naturally have no chance against the very best in the league, as they should. Nobody argues that they should artificially have their chances inflated to create random upsets. For me the core of this discussion is the middle-tier of the league. The teams roughly in the #7 to #13 range, who should at least have a fighting chance, but usually don't.

My very subjective gut feeling is that is what has had the biggest impact on my and potentially many other peoples enjoyment of the league. In the past, be it due to the STHS-randomness or other factors, for most teams there was that feeling of "Let's play decent regular season, get into the playoffs and then everything is possible. We might not have a big chance to go deep, but we have a chance. Let's make the most of it and maybe we can win, as unlikely as it is." But in todays SHL, my impression is that for more and more people the realization is setting in that this chance is simply not there anymore. People in the midfield know that they won't win, and it doesn't take until the playoffs to figure that out, they know it early. Everyone knows that 5-6 teams at most will play for the title and you will realize after a few days of simming if you are on one of those teams or not. After that, it's just riding it out for a large portion of the league. The tanking teams tank while the midfield plays for the right to maybe get knocked out in the 2nd round instead of the first. But yeah as I said, I acknowledge that there seems to have been a slightly positive trend over the last season or two, but the 15 or so before that have left me scarred at this point. Also, this could very well be a personal issue as well where I'm not as objective as I think, because I was on those kinds of midfield teams a lot. And boy does it grind you down after a while...

I also hate that "GMs just need to get better" argument because it takes all the agency away from the players. Most of the players in the league are on teams whose GM isn't top-tier, it's a simple numbers game. There isn't enough room for every player to play for a top-GM and even if there was, we wouldn't want every player to flock towards the same handful of teams because those teams have the best GMs. This is NOT a GM league, it's a player league. GMs are important but they should not be the sole factor that decides everything while the players are passenger and mere pawns in the battle royale of a few great GM minds. And again, it's not about giving shitty GMs random boosts to create upsets. It's about the fact that even decent to good GMs tend to be outclassed by the very best. As counter-intuitive as that might sound to many, GMs have too much weight and power in my opinion. In my ideal world, GMs would still be very influential in building a good roster, drafting well and creating a LR atmosphere that draws people to their team, but their influence on the results through lines and tactics would be greatly diminished.

Naturally, in any competitive league, only a certain relatively small percentage of users can be on the best team. That's not the issue, that's normal. The issue is that we need everyone who is not on those teams to have something to fight for as well, and that hasn't really been the case for the last decade or two. Combine that with the fact that our seasons are so quick and short these days that there is a ton of downtime for everyone whose team doesn't go deep in the postseason, and you will find a large portion of the league simply having nothing going on and no games to follow for more than 50% of the time.

But yeah, I'm getting dragged into another parity discussion which probably isn't super useful. Some of these things are just points that annoy me whenever they come up because they try to frame this in a way that misses the core problem. But yes, things might be moving in the right direction after all, I'm willing to give it some time.

I see the core problem I do. But I also see the core problem not becoming a big problem as it is. I see about 5 teams on each conference be truly competitive, so about 10 teams in the league which lines up with win%. You have 12-13 teams a season that is above .500 win%. Especially in the east since I’m more east centric, the series can go a lot of ways. My goalie was a big reason why we beat montreal in both seasons. Philly beating Atlanta and Manhattan also were close series. When Toronto was in the playoffs montreal beat them and they were worse. For the east at least, the top 5 teams can win the cup. I believe PHI, ATL, NEW, MTL, and BUF(probably like HAM, BUF, or BAP now) can win the cup.


But with the gm problem, in order to have a good team you have to have a good gm that for the most part can rebuild a team. You saw it with TOR for a couple seasons before they blew it up by buying a bunch of guys. You saw it in more greener gms in MTL doing a proper rebuild. EDM doing a quicker rebuild and doing it fine. I rebuilt. Winnipeg rebuilt under ace. MAN rebuilt, went all in for a couple seasons then rebuilding again. Philly had a slow rebuild/competiveness. BUF is trying that. CHI, NOLA, CGY all went in the path of not tanking but trying to always try to replace their older players with less old ones. Some teams like CHI did better with that than teams like CGY


As long as GM’s can manage the roster and do lines, they have that power over the player. If you want a player centric league, then it hasn’t been happening in a while, If you look at free agency. There are still those player first players, but the wide majority will just tell their gm “whatever makes us win”. I can tell you in NEW, there are a mix of them. Both players who want individual success and those who want team success and it’s on the gm to manage both. If a person like Arty who wants to score more, it’s my job to get him to score. Or someone like R1cebowl who gave me what his goals were. It’s my job to get him there, while also trying to get the team to win. And then there are players like myself or Simon(Brie) who won’t care about the player that much and want to win.