Parity. A hot topic on this forum since the moment we moved from STHS to EHM. While one side of the brain says that it was a logical move and only normal, other side can't deny the fact that there isn't much parity. But the question is - is there anything to do, so it changes?
The day when parity died (I thought it sounds so dramatic, so I kept it)
S54. Tampa Bay ''Barracuda'' does the impossible and finishes regular season in the last place with 0 victories and 50 losses. 45 total of scored goals, 309 allowed pucks in a game. That means they are basically losing each game of the season with the result of 1:6 (average). But let's go back a bit as well.
S52 - 16 wins (50 games) - don't know the place, but they did not make the ''Play-Offs''
S53 - 10 wins (50 games) - 14th place in the entire league (16 teams in total)
S54 - 0 wins (50 games) - 15th place in the entire league (16 teams in total)
S55 - 8 wins (50 games) - 16th place in the entire league (16 teams in total)
S56 - 11 wins (66 games) - 16th place in the entire league (18 teams in total)
S57 - 17 wins (66 games) - 16th place in the entire league (18 teams in total)
S58 - 26 wins (66 games) - 13th place in the entire league (18 teams in total)
S59 - 20 wins (66 games) - 15th place in the entire league (18 teams in total)
S60 - 29 wins (66 games) - 12th place in the entire league (20 teams in total)
S61 - 38 wins (66 games) - 6th place in the entire league (20 teams in total)
Tampa Bay didn't make ''Play-Offs'' for seven straight seasons. Can someone let me know what is the longest SHL and SMJHL combined ''Play-Offs'' drought? 175 wins in 596 games - win rate of 29.4% in this period. How many players did spend time on this team though? It took them nine seasons to go from the bottom team to a squad who won at least 50% of their games in a season. This was the moment when word ''parity'' was extra popular on the forum and you can easily see why. This was the outcome of simtool change.
Bottom teams and their past seasons
Manhattan ''Rage''. Won against Philadelphia ''Forge'', Atlanta ''Inferno'' and Buffalo ''Stampede'' in S68 ''Play-Offs'' making it to the Finals. In seven game series they lost against Seattle ''Argonauts'' and that was the first day of the downfall. They ended this season with 40 victories in regular season and 9th spot in an entire league. It's obvious that they weren't favourites to make it to the Finals, but they did. But what happened after?
S69 - 39 wins - 11th place in the entire league
S70 - 20 wins - 16th place in the entire league
S71 - 4 wins - 20th place in the entire league
S72 - 8 wins - 20th place in the entire league
Players like Aksel Fiske and Tomas Lind has spent there all of their careers. They had some good times and now they have bad times, but we can't deny that it makes an impact to players aswell. And there are some players (for example, Eddie Crellar) who moved to Manhattan at their worst time as well. Some users might not care about how team is doing and they are just here to communicate with people, but there are others who feel passion and wants to succeed as well. But how many seasons does it take for a weak franchise here to be back in the game? Will ''Rage'' improve their record next season and climb at least a few spots in the table?
Toronto ''North Stars''. Proud to be a part of this organization, because we will bounce back stronger, but we can't deny that situation has been rough recently. It all started after S68. Fourth place in the regular season with 46 victories and a loss in the second round against Buffalo ''Stampede''. But what happened next?
S69 - 13 wins - 19th place in the entire league
S70 - 6 wins - 20th place in the entire league
S71 - 10 wins - 19th place in the entire league
S72 - 14 wins - 19th place in the entire league
43 victories in the past four seasons with a win rate of 16.3%. Four seasons are almost half of a prime SHL career here. After that you have other four seasons and regression is here. That means if one player spends four seasons in a team which is performing badly, half of their career is pretty much gone. And I won't lie if I say that every user here wants to get that championship trophy at least once and have an opportunity to be the best player at least for one season in an entire league. And can we be sure that Toronto will highly improve next season and it wouldn't be fifth season in a row with such of results? Hopefully, I'm wrong. These are my boys and I hope they will get back to the top, but parity is not working on our side.
Let's go back to the place where it all begin. ''Barracuda'' is struggling nowadays too. So it's a proof that it's very hard for a bottom team to get back and somehow go from 0 wins to a contender. And even if they do, give couple of seasons and they are back. Past five seasons has been a rollercoaster from them.
S72 - 20 wins - 18th place in an entire league
S71 - 21 wins - 17th place in an entire league
S70 - 14 wins - 19th place in an entire league
S69 - 19 wins - 14th place in an entire league
S68 - 16 wins - 17th place in an entire league
It's hard to stay active for a player if he is playing for one certain team and you just gotta hope that the next season might be the one. All of them SHL teams have loyal players, but you can't expect them to spend whole career there just to win 20 games per season and end up in last three positions. It's hard and those teams definitely needs some help.
What we should to get some parity in the league?
Well, I'm not some type of expert. There are many administrators, head office runners and other important people who could definitely find a way to help bottom teams to live not survive. It's just based on if they are interested to do that or not. They were interested to make a Player Portal, but what with parity?
One of my suggestions is pretty simple. TOP 10 teams before trade deadline need to rent out one player to bottom five teams. For example, an inactive or 4th liner. Active players get a chance to choose if they want to be rented out for the rest of the season or not. The ones who agree to spend the rest of the season on the bottom teams plus inactives are available for bottom five teams for some type of amount. That means the bottom team have a great pick up for the rest of the season and if they don't make ''Play-Offs'', player can go back to his own team and fight for a championship. Dude who has 15 minutes per game on a contender would have like 23 to 25 minutes on a team who is struggling. He would help the bottom team to win a couple of games, would have an experience of a new environment and would get more opportunities and maybe even an increasement in personal statistics. From 4th to 2nd line. Contenders would have to think about making roster deeper as well if it would happen, plus they would get some cap space. Bottom teams would get help, top teams would need to think about how to still keep rocking the league. That's called parity.
Of course, it's always easier to explain than actually do, but is it impossible? If you really want to help bottom teams and get some parity then not. I'm pretty shocked that there isn't any rents late in the season. If we don't want to get some parity, at least bottom teams could rent out some leaders to the top teams. Having multiple seasons without ''Play-Offs'' and an actual fight is frustrating. They would have an opportunity to fight for a chip and maybe even improve. Maybe rents are allowed, I haven't checked that much, but there are multiple ways how to help either bottom teams or their leaders.
I am pretty sure that if leaders of this community would put their heads together and communicate with the forum, we would find a way to make this league more entertaining for everyone. Let's make it clear - it's not easy to figure it out, but it isn't impossible either. Just have to work with it. And I remind you that this is just a media. I need that cash for Personal Coaching, so I had to find a topic to make a media about. This is my opinion and of course there will be tens of others.
It’s a competition. If you want to win, you should do better. Even if you’re the top team year after year, there’s no guarantee you win. The Aurora are a prime example - three straight Final appearances without a championship.
09-13-2023, 08:21 AM(This post was last modified: 09-13-2023, 08:30 AM by hhh81. Edited 1 time in total.)
I will give you the benefit of the doubt on this first part that English isn't your first language, so the nuance is likely a simple mistake and not your intent. When you put team names and playoffs in quotations, the connotation is patronizing, as if those things aren't real. It would be like if someone came and said your "suggestions" aren't made in good faith.
Now onto the larger critique.
This really comes down to what your definition of "parity" is, which is what makes this conversation frustrating for everyone. Many people have different definitions of what parity is. Head Office members already gave clear, factual explanations to how we have seen expanded parity in recent seasons of FHM8, compared to the Great Lakes murder nest that was early to mid FHM6. I personally don't think there's a huge issue with parity, for those reasons.
First, we haven't had 4th lines in at least 10-15 seasons, if not longer. The J held out longer, but got rid of them too when it turned into a spot to stow IAs because no rookie is going to be ok playing 8-10 mins a night. Also, where are the top teams going to find replacements for the players you just want us to give away? This isn't soccer--we're locked into a tight salary cap as is. Plus, users who get cast aside like this for really no functional reason would rebel.
Second, the nature of the league is cyclical. The running meta at this point seems to be to get your core group and chase your specific window with that core. Some teams that have had consistent management and an engaged war room, have been able to retool and keep their window open for long periods of time. Others have had to hard dump to try and get the formula right, and that takes time. There's no benefit to being in the mushy middle anymore, so teams follow (to a less aggressive scene than) that 0-50 TBB team's tanking model until they feel they have their core group built and ready to go. We're always going to have teams going for it and teams not trying to win in a certain season. Yes, it sucks to be on one of those rebuilding teams. That's the nature of the game.
The point no one else will say (in part because I think many people, HO in particular, don't agree with me) is part of this is we don't have enough active players to fill 20 SHL teams without forcing users up after less than 4 seasons. HO already abolished the 5th J season as part of this. I think if we took the actively updating players off Manhattan and Toronto from this past season and had them join one of the other 18 teams, I'm fairly confident the few active users wouldn't have trouble finding a spot elsewhere. The exception might be the few very old (s40s) players still poking around chasing records.
That's a poison pill, because no one wants to be the HO member who contracts teams, especially ones with long history like Minnesota, Toronto, or Manhattan. Based on where we are with J and SHL rosters, player life cycles, etc, that's just what it is.
Finally, you make another bad faith argument implying the update portal keeps us from working on parity, when the team that did that are web developers professionally doing free labor for the site. Portal and parity have nothing to do with each other; if you engaged honestly with your own threads, you'd know that.
Thank you karey, OrbitingDeath Ragnar, and sköldpaddor for sigs!
09-13-2023, 08:21 AMhhh81 Wrote: The point no one else will say (in part because I think many people, HO in particular, don't agree with me) is part of this is we don't have enough active players to fill 20 SHL teams without forcing users up after less than 4 seasons.
As a member of HO, I can say i've said this to numerous people over the seasons, and to some extent thought I was crazy. That probably has more to do with being newer to this league than most and seeing things differently, but for many reasons, 20 teams feels like its way too much to be consistent in activity, parity, filling up line-ups and making drafts matter. IDK what the solution is because like you also said, contraction sucks, but 20 teams is tough. Just felt like supporting this point, as a soon to be ex-HO member.
09-13-2023, 08:21 AMhhh81 Wrote: I will give you the benefit of the doubt on this first part that English isn't your first language, so the nuance is likely a simple mistake and not your intent. When you put team names and playoffs in quotations, the connotation is patronizing, as if those things aren't real. It would be like if someone came and said your "suggestions" aren't made in good faith.
Now onto the larger critique.
This really comes down to what your definition of "parity" is, which is what makes this conversation frustrating for everyone. Many people have different definitions of what parity is. Head Office members already gave clear, factual explanations to how we have seen expanded parity in recent seasons of FHM8, compared to the Great Lakes murder nest that was early to mid FHM6. I personally don't think there's a huge issue with parity, for those reasons.
First, we haven't had 4th lines in at least 10-15 seasons, if not longer. The J held out longer, but got rid of them too when it turned into a spot to stow IAs because no rookie is going to be ok playing 8-10 mins a night. Also, where are the top teams going to find replacements for the players you just want us to give away? This isn't soccer--we're locked into a tight salary cap as is. Plus, users who get cast aside like this for really no functional reason would rebel.
Second, the nature of the league is cyclical. The running meta at this point seems to be to get your core group and chase your specific window with that core. Some teams that have had consistent management and an engaged war room, have been able to retool and keep their window open for long periods of time. Others have had to hard dump to try and get the formula right, and that takes time. There's no benefit to being in the mushy middle anymore, so teams follow (to a less aggressive scene than) that 0-50 TBB team's tanking model until they feel they have their core group built and ready to go. We're always going to have teams going for it and teams not trying to win in a certain season. Yes, it sucks to be on one of those rebuilding teams. That's the nature of the game.
The point no one else will say (in part because I think many people, HO in particular, don't agree with me) is part of this is we don't have enough active players to fill 20 SHL teams without forcing users up after less than 4 seasons. HO already abolished the 5th J season as part of this. I think if we took the actively updating players off Manhattan and Toronto from this past season and had them join one of the other 18 teams, I'm fairly confident the few active users wouldn't have trouble finding a spot elsewhere. The exception might be the few very old (s40s) players still poking around chasing records.
That's a poison pill, because no one wants to be the HO member who contracts teams, especially ones with long history like Minnesota, Toronto, or Manhattan. Based on where we are with J and SHL rosters, player life cycles, etc, that's just what it is.
Finally, you make another bad faith argument implying the update portal keeps us from working on parity, when the team that did that are web developers professionally doing free labor for the site. Portal and parity have nothing to do with each other; if you engaged honestly with your own threads, you'd know that.
My assumption/remembering from the last few times the team name thing has been mentioned is that st4r is European and (soccer) teams there usually just go by the city and don’t have nicknames.
But yeah, what hhh said. As someone who’s running a rebuilding team, I don’t want charity from other teams and I wouldn’t want a redistribution, either being at the top or the bottom of the table. Besides, it’s fun being a scrappy underdog in the lean years.
09-13-2023, 08:21 AMhhh81 Wrote: The point no one else will say (in part because I think many people, HO in particular, don't agree with me) is part of this is we don't have enough active players to fill 20 SHL teams without forcing users up after less than 4 seasons. HO already abolished the 5th J season as part of this. I think if we took the actively updating players off Manhattan and Toronto from this past season and had them join one of the other 18 teams, I'm fairly confident the few active users wouldn't have trouble finding a spot elsewhere. The exception might be the few very old (s40s) players still poking around chasing records.
That is actually something I though when I got back and checked how much the numbers had dropped from the peak covid numbers. As I think that when there are less active players around more teams are likely ending up in rebuild as they can't get good active core together leading them competing vs each other for picks and making rebuild likely longer or more likely to fail when you cannot just stack like 5 1st round picks for a season. But like you said removing 2 teams would be very though call and I understand why it isn't done when things aren't absolutely broken at the moment. So I think to increase parity there would need to be something that forces the actives to spread around more which itself usually isn't great for the players involved. One such thing that would come in mind would be dynamic salary cap that would be tied to number of active users and would go down in cases like this. That on the other hand would feel like punishing the teams that do well and be pain in the ass for the long term planning so while it could help with parity even I don't like it as a solution to that.
I don't normally post on the forums. But I just want to share my experience on Tampa as a user that was in the LR (Zoltan was still in the J then) during the 0-50 season and as someone who's player spent their entire career there as you can see from my player card below. Tampa entered into a severe rebuild mode as you mentioned @st4rface. As a new player in the league and in the tampa locker room, I wanted to be as engaged as I could. We may not have made the playoffs but we sure were active in our locker room and did our best to keep people active and earning. I took pride in that. I was helpful in the war room I think but @trella , @hockeyiscool and @PremierBromanov really made things happen. We knew we were building towards the future , and we got there. We may not have won a cup, but we got really damn close and had a great time along the way.
As an HO member and now a co-commish of the league, I do disagree with some of the opinions you hold and thats OK. We say this in regards to earning TPE a lot but. Being a part of this community and member of the site is a marathon, not a sprint. There are ups and downs in everything. We need to be patient and wait for change to take hold. I personally feel things have improved in the last year, and I think they will continue to improve as we progress.
09-13-2023, 09:53 AMRangerjase Wrote: I don't normally post on the forums. But I just want to share my experience on Tampa as a user that was in the LR (Zoltan was still in the J then) during the 0-50 season and as someone who's player spent their entire career there as you can see from my player card below. Tampa entered into a severe rebuild mode as you mentioned @st4rface. As a new player in the league and in the tampa locker room, I wanted to be as engaged as I could. We may not have made the playoffs but we sure were active in our locker room and did our best to keep people active and earning. I took pride in that. I was helpful in the war room I think but @trella , @hockeyiscool and @PremierBromanov really made things happen. We knew we were building towards the future , and we got there. We may not have won a cup, but we got really damn close and had a great time along the way.
As an HO member and now a co-commish of the league, I do disagree with some of the opinions you hold and thats OK. We say this in regards to earning TPE a lot but. Being a part of this community and member of the site is a marathon, not a sprint. There are ups and downs in everything. We need to be patient and wait for change to take hold. I personally feel things have improved in the last year, and I think they will continue to improve as we progress.
st4rface
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hhh81
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