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Let's predict the S57 season using TPE - Citizen of Adraa - 11-30-2020 So hey, welcome to the TPE predictions article, where I spend stupid amounts of time getting information that someone actually able to use Excel would get in under a minute, just to talk a lot of useless shit about them. My goal here is to get the average TPE figures for teams, their offenses, their defenses, their goalies and try to predict based on them how the season plays out. Disclaimer: I am assuming quite a few things. Since a lot of teams don’t just straight forward have 21 players on their roster pages, I had to guess who would get play time (hint: higher TPE), not everyone had clean 4C/8W/6D/3G setups so I had to assume the spreads there, but I tried to be as logical about it as I can with absolutely no idea of the inside workings of those teams. Anyway, let’s get to it. I just want to mention here, in the rankings, the over average figure is comparing the particular position to the specific team’s average TPE. I don’t feel like rewriting it all, so I will just explain it. Overall 1. Nevada Battleborn – 363,81 2. Quebec Citadelles  - 349,86 3. Anaheim Outlaws – 343,14 4. Anchorage Armada – 336,71 5. Kelowna Knights – 326,38 6. Maine Timber – 304,71 7. Vancouver Whalers – 300,90 8. St. Louis Scarecrows – 296,86 9. Newfoundland Berserkers – 288,81 10. Carolina Kraken – 288,19 11. Colorado Raptors – 284,14 12. Detroit Falcons – 280,57 So, this is just the overall part of the puzzle. In this ranking, the unsurprising leaders are the two expansion teams that are going into their 4th seasons – most of their big first 2 drafts had time to hit 425 cap and a lot of them have done so, so they are looking pretty strong. Following are Anaheim and Anchorage, both teams that had a strong season last time around even though Anaheim eventually fell apart thanks to some surprises, and the resurgent Kelowna that grew back into the contention after having a rebuild season. Maine is roughly where it was last 2 seasons, around the middle of the table, followed by some teams hit hard by call-ups, Vancouver, Newfoundland and Carolina, even to an extent Colorado, and there is St. Louis still waiting for it’s rookies to earn up and closing off is Detroit. Obviously, if I was lazy, I just call this the ranking, but I feel like being a bit more thorough and giving some of the other rankings a look might be important for the eventual ranking, since some of the gaps here are ridiculously small (looking at that .62 TPE difference between NL and Carolina) Forwards 1. Anaheim Outlaws – 363 (29,86 over average) 2. Quebec Citadelles – 356 (6,14 over average) 3. Nevada Battleborn – 347,67 (-16,14 over average) 4. Anchorage Armada – 342,17 (5,46 over average) 5. Kelowna Knights – 324,42 (-1,96 over average) 6. Maine Timber – 318,92 (14,21 over average) 7. Carolina Kraken – 317,67 (29,48 over average) 8. St. Louis Scarecrows – 315,17 (18,31 over average) 9. Vancouver Whalers – 296,67 (-4,23 over average) 10. Newfoundland Berserkers – 290,17 (1,36 over average) 11. Detroit Falcons – 288,83 (8,26 over average) 12. Colorado Raptors – 260,08 (-24,06 over average) The offense shows some interesting stories. Offense is a big strong point for Anaheim and Carolina, and is ahead the curve for St. Louis and Maine, but is the big weak point for Colorado and Nevada, even though calling a offense where the average player has almost 350 TPE is kinda funny. Mostly however, offense is a stronger part of the teams than their average TPE, so it suggests that the weak overall group of players lies somewhere else, even if offense with it’s 12 players contributes the most players to this whole average thing. Some other observations – Carolina jumps 3 places from overall ranking to this one, just like Anaheim, while Nevada drops 3 spots, and I supposed Colorado would drop 3 too if they had 3 spots to drop. There is also 1 less offensive group under 300 TPE on average compared to the overall TPE, but considering forwards are such a huge part of the team, I wasn’t expecting massive swings anyway. Defense 1. Nevada Battleborn – 410,5 (46,69 over average) 2. Quebec Citadelles – 364,83 (14,97 over average) 3. Colorado Raptors – 363,33 (79,19 over average) 4. Anchorage Armada – 357,33 (20,62 over average) 5. Vancouver Whalers – 345 (44,1 over average) 6. Anaheim Outlaws – 336 (-7,14 over average) 7. Maine Timber – 327,67 (22,96 over average) 8. Newfoundland Berserkers – 325,67 (36,86 over average) 9. Kelowna Knights – 323,5 (-2,88 over average) 10. Detroit Falcons – 285,33 (4,76 over average) 11. St. Louis Scarecrows – 273 (-23,86 over average) 12. Carolina Kraken – 222,5 (-65,69 over average) So, the numbers definitely get bigger here in the defensive ranking. Some very stupid ones, like Carolina’s 222,5 average Dmen TPE, or Nevada’s 410,5, some crazy jumps in the rankings compared to overall (Colorado shooting from 11th to 3rd), yeah. This is a mess that I probably should’ve but didn’t expect. Defense is a position that tends to be a little bit short in supply, so a lot of GMs probably prioritize it a lot, and for those that didn’t lose all their Dmen to callups, it shows as we only have 3 teams with the average D TPE of under 300. Nevada shows us where all of that TPE from their forwards went to, while Carolina shows why they have so much better offense than the rest of their team, but Colorado is definitely the biggest standout when it comes to comparison to mean, and yeah. Make your own mind but expecting something out of this would be probably extremely wrong. Goalies 1. Nevada Battleborn – 425 (61,19 over average) 1. Kelowna Knights – 425 (98,62 over average) 3. Carolina Kraken – 375 (86,81 over average) 4. Quebec Citadelles – 365,5 (15,64 over average) 5. Anchorage Armada – 330,5 (-6,21 over average) 6. St. Louis Scarecrows – 329,5 (32,64 over average) 7. Anaheim Outlaws – 302 (-41,14 over average) 8. Detroit Falcons – 275,5 (-5,07 over average) 9. Vancouver Whalers – 263,5 (-37,4 over average) 10. Colorado Raptors – 255,5 (-28,64 over average) 11. Newfoundland Berserkers – 237 (-51,81 over average) 12. Maine Timber – 225,5 (-79,21 over average) I will quickly mention here that this ranking does not include EBUGs as they are kinda useless for most cases anyway and probably won’t play many games. Just to mention, most EBUGs are below 170 TPE, but Anaheim has a 230 TPE EBUG just because they can. Anyway, goalies are going to be really mixed up as they are only 2 and therefore don’t influence the TPE of the rest of the team that badly, but they are an important part of it damned be FHM. There is a tie for first as Kelowna and Nevada both have a duo of 425 capped goalies, really nice indeed, while the bottom team in Maine barely manages to hit half of their average TPE. It will be interesting to see how the goalies and defenses mix up together, and how badly it influences the goals against of the teams, but the over average figure really just shows how well taken care off or neglected this position is by the respective teams. With these rankings at our hands, we are able to give teams points based on their position in each of the rankings and see if the prediction we get this way holds up at least at the start of the season. At 12th, with 11 points (12th overall, 11th offense, 10th defense, 8th goaltending) are the Detroit Falcons. Some of the overall predictions stand even after we take the rankings apart a little bit more. Detroit is still expected to be the weakest team, as they don’t really jump a lot of positions in any ranking and therefore don’t grab a ton of points. Detroit is therefore seemingly in for a rough start of the season. At 11th, with 14 points (9th overall, 10th offense, 8th defense, 11th goaltending) are the Newfoundland Berserkers. Newfoundland however is definitely lower than the overall suggests. The other teams above them gain points thanks to being more lopsided for particular parts of their team, while NL stays fairly balanced and therefore pretty low on all rankings. There could be discussion about how accurate this is and I can guarantee NL won’t like being ranked P11, but that’s what my highly scientific methodTM threw out. At 10th, with 16 points (11th overall, 12th, offense, 3rd defense, 10th goaltending) are the Colorado Raptors. Raptors get helped by their good defense to offset the otherwise unimpressive roster, and therefore slot themselves at P10. It still means they are the weakest team in the West, and by quite a bit as the next western team doesn’t show up for a decent while, so it might be even rougher since they have to play considerably stronger teams than their Eastern rivals. At 9th, with 19 points (8th overall, 8th offense, 11th defense, 6th goaltending) are the St. Louis Scarecrows. St. Louis has a fairly balanced team, their not amazing defense offset by decent goaltending, and tack onto the end of this big 4 way fight for 6th, which doesn’t really change a whole ton besides that the last team of these 4 ends up playing as the lower seed in their games and will likely have a little bit of a problem to make it out of the 1st round. At 8th, with 20 points (10th overall, 7th offense, 12th defense, 3rd goaltending) are the Carolina Kraken. Honestly, considering just how stupidly weak Carolina’s defense is, this is actually sort of hard to expect. But, since I didn’t really put in any punishment for massive deviations from the norm, Carolina get’s helped by their goaltending (and honestly, the goaltending will need some help from Simon himself) to push into the 8th and technically, into the randezvous with St. Louis in the 1st round. At 7th, with 21 points (6th overall, 6th offense, 7th defense, 12th goaltending) are the Maine Timber. Maine shows up as a very average team everywhere but in the goaltending, which makes them lose the otherwise expected finish above Vancouver, but at the end of the day, just the fact that their goaltending is this weak might be enough for Vancouver to beat them. There is still the argument about stronger West and weaker East, but well, the methodTM did what it did, and we will see how that goes. At 6th, with 22 points (7th overall, 9th offense, 5th defense, 9th goaltending) are the Vancouver Whalers. Finally, the 2nd weakest Western team makes it in at P6 and that just makes it sound really scary. Vancouver, the cup defenders, are probably not quite in the spot to repeat their 4 star success, and considering who else is waiting for their shot this season, Vancouver might just be happy to start the rebuild period and not even look that bad. At 5th, with 32 points (5th overall, 5th offense, 9th defense, 1st goaltending) are the Kelowna Knights. Kelowna has a similar approach to defense as Carolina – just let the goalies deal with it. Obviously, since both of those are stronger than Carolina’s, and they have a better offense on top of that, Kelowna is expected to end a touch higher than Carolina. As long as the points go, we are finally talking about a team that might be decently competitive even with the top of the table, and we will see whether Kelowna goes full dark horse and upsets some big favourites, or just wait their time for next season where they probably should be stronger. At 4th, with 35 points (4th overall, 4th offense, 4th defense, 5th goaltending) are the Anchorage Armada. This is the one position that I had to decide. As ANC and ANA both have 35 points, I had to decide what I predict to be better between the two, and I expect the stronger offense to beat out the more all round team of ANC to the 3rd overall spot. Don’t be mistaken though, ANC is going to be a strong team to open up the season and will stay strong throughout most likely. At 3rd, with 35 points (3rd overall, 1st offense, 6th defense, 7th goaltending) are the Anaheim Outlaws. Anaheim proves that their offensive form of the last season wasn’t a whim, and that they want to continue dominating the scoring sheets. Again, they are in a bit more of a dark horse position compared to the top 2 teams in the rankings, but they should be plenty strong and since anyone below 6th seems a lot weaker than normal, we might see ANA still hit some really nice points. At 2nd, with 42 points (2nd overall, 2nd offense, 2nd defense, 4th goaltending) are the Quebec Citadelles. Quebec, predicted to be by far the best Eastern team, is the first true cup contender of the ranking. And since they play in the East, they are honestly most likely to win the President’s just off of strength of the schedule alone, even though they are ranked as the 2nd strongest team here. Can they truly compete with Nevada? Depends on how big the difference in defense TPE shows up as, but Quebec shouldn’t struggle with their divisional and conferencial competition much. At 1st, with 46 points (1st overall, 3rd offense, 1st defense, 1st goaltending) are the Nevada Battleborn. Nevada just went and did a Newfoundland. Creating a team with some of the crazier TPE values we have seen in the SMJHL, the cup seems to only have 2 major competitors for it and Nevada is probably the favourite out of those 2. We will see how much tactics favour in to these strengths, but expecting Nevada anywhere but at the top of the West is honestly a bit silly. Just to put it at the end, let’s see how the predictions line up within the divisions. Northeast 1. Quebec Citadelles (2nd overall) 2. Maine Timber (7th overall) 3. Newfoundland Berserkers (11th overall) Southeast 1. Carolina Kraken (8th overall) 2. St. Louis Scarecrows (9th overall) 3. Detroit Falcons (12th overall) Northwest 1. Anchorage Armada (4th overall) 2. Kelowna Knights (5th overall) 3. Vancouver Whalers (6th overall) Southwest 1. Nevada Battleborn (1st overall) 2. Anaheim Outlaws (3rd overall) 3. Colorado Raptors (10th overall) So, this predicts the 3rd best team of the league in Anaheim to actually not even get a bye, Northwest to be very strong and probably pretty close, and Southeast to have by far the weakest bye of any division, and the weakest bye I think we have seen since this playoff format has been introduced. With that though, the article is over, and I hope I haven’t just word vomited all over the media section but that I actually brought some valuable information. Ready for grading. RE: Let's predict the S57 season using TPE - W19eaver - 11-30-2020 What a methodTM, great article! Let's go battleborn  RE: Let's predict the S57 season using TPE - Katth - 11-30-2020 Solid article and as the season progresses the gap to the top will become closer and closer as rookies gain more TPE along the way. RE: Let's predict the S57 season using TPE - Grapehead - 11-30-2020 Great stuff CoA RE: Let's predict the S57 season using TPE - GCool - 11-30-2020 A very interesting way of looking at things, here. Like Katth said, it'll be up to some of these rookie classes to earn at a rate that narrows that gap in the 5-10 spots and gives them a chance come playoff time. I've thought about discretizing TPE (making it a categorical variable) and seeing where teams rank with regard to the category most often placed at a position. I think especially in the FHM era the idea of "300-350" is a little more telling than looking at 313.5 vs 322.3, and I'd like to explore it. But that comes after thesis stuff, so RE: Let's predict the S57 season using TPE - nyumbayangu - 11-30-2020 TPE will not matter if the other players no longer have arms.