Login

***honkerrs*** · 05-22-2021, 09:14 PM

So with the start of playoffs and the double media bonus I decided to put together a bit of look back into the past on the SHL playoffs. I've been meaning to do this for awhile now ever since I did it for the SMJHL( https://simulationhockey.com/showthread.php?tid=105864 ) so I figured now's a pretty good time since we've been in FHM6 for a few more seasons now so will have a bit more data to talk to.
A lot of people complain that the playoffs aren't very interesting in the SHL lately because of FHM6. To take a look at this claim, I'll walk through the results of the SHL's esteemed President's Trophy winners and see how they have fared come playoff time. This will also hopefully help more new members of the SHL learn a bit more about each of the franchises histories.

Assumptions

As I did before like my SMJHL article, I'm just going to stay consistent and call the teams by the team names that they currently go by. It's actually pretty interesting in the SHL but there honestly haven't been a lot of re-brands in the SHL, which in my opinion is pretty cool to see from the league. Below is a reference guide to what the teams have been called and when they joined the SHL. Additionally, unlike the SMJHL data, Luke is a boss and has all the data pretty well formatted so I really didn't have to do a ton of digging like the juniors data. Thanks Luke!

[Image: unknown.png]

History of President Trophy Winners

Let's just get right to it. Here's the data for how many President's Trophies each team has throughout the SHL's history

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=474]

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=474]

I know what some of you are thinking. Well this isn't fair because Edmonton has been in the league much longer. So here's the data normalized based off seasons in the league.

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=475]

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=475]

For example, this means that 14% of the seasons that the Edmonton franchise has existed they've finished with a President's Trophy.

Honestly it's pretty cool to see that a lot of teams have had major success during the regular season during their time at least at some point. EDM though, even when accounting for how many seasons each franchise has been around, still is in the lead as of now. HAM has done a ton of catching up in the FHM era though so the stats have been swayed recently a bit.

So how do the President's Trophy winners usually perform in the playoffs? I classified an "Early Exist' here as anything before the Conference finals just to keep it easier since the SHL has had many playoff formats during it's history.

[Image: unknown.png]

This shows you what a lot of people are griping about at a high level. There still has yet to be a President's Trophy winner drop off before the Conference Finals. I wasn't around in the STHS era so I'm not sure if we've seen such uneven TPE teams at the top being so dominant before like we do now. Looking from a regular season winner to challenge cup perspective though, FHM seems to be about on pace as STHS was. More on this analysis at the end...

Historical Franchise Playoff Performance

As just another interesting look I decided to show what team's have been most successful in the playoffs because that's all that matters , right?

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=474]

One interesting thing about this to me was that BAP, CGY and WPG used to be major playoff contenders but the past six seasons they haven't really been in the picture too much. Maybe in a few seasons from now I'll separate out the FHM appearances from the STHS ones. Just pretend you're looking at NHL franchise history data now lol

Same thing as the President's Trophy winners...I'll normalize it.

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=475]

Again, this is saying that HAM has made the Finals nearly 30% of it's existence. Pretty crazy stat. For comparison when I did the J a few seasons ago both VAN and KEL are in the 30% range too.

Which franchise is the most "successful" franchise in SHL history as of now?

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=474]

Right now CGY and EDM are tied for the SHL lead at 8 a piece. Unfortunately looks like they won't be adding another to separate themselves this season. One thing to look at is HAM with 7. Might be 8 this season and will have a 3 way tie for most 'successful' franchise.

Again, normalized it again for a second look.

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=475]

Normalized doesn't change too much here because the SHL hasn't a) had a lot of expansions and b) have those expansion teams be immediately very successful.

One last graph I'll show for the history shows who the most clutch franchises of the SHL have been.

[Image: unknown.png?width=960&height=475]

CGY with 67% win percentage stood out to me for sure. With 12 finals appearances that's pretty impressive. TEX at 100% too with 4 appearances.

Conclusion

My main goal of this was just to summarize the history of the playoffs in the SHL for newer players or for folks who wanted a refresher maybe. One thing I did want to leave with is to talk a bit further about "FHM6-era fairness".

[Image: unknown.png]

First thing I noticed is that it's pretty crazy how even both the data were for the STHS history between the J and the SHL. I guess in STHS even if the TPE differences were smaller it was still that same infamous (?) STHS randomness no matter what. For the SHL I was actually pretty surprised to see the Regular season winner won the championship 50% of the time so far. Small sample size still but still pretty crazy.

The thing I wanted to leave with was the comparison with the NHL. I thought it was pretty interesting again that even with the SHL FHM data the regular season winners fair about the same as real life NHL. The thing that concerns me is that the J, which is supposed to have smaller TPE differences still didn't make the data too much better, just a few more early exists (upsets). Maybe with the new TPE scale changing it will be interesting to see how it effects the trajectory of the FHM era.

Let me know if you guys got any questions. I'm done rambling for now.

Note: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...1423734368 is where I got most of my data from. If you don't know it exists, you should. Luke's the best.

1276 words plus grafs (double media pls)

***bluesfan55*** · 05-22-2021, 09:24 PM

anal

SlashACM · 05-23-2021, 12:09 AM

Nhl 50% early exit should be what we strive for

***Canadice*** · 05-23-2021, 04:41 AM

Great breakdown! It would be interesting to look at the TPE of each team and its competitors for each season to see if that has some effect in when a President's trophy winning team goes all the way to the cup.

***honkerrs*** · 05-23-2021, 08:11 AM

05-23-2021, 04:41 AMCanadice Wrote: Great breakdown! It would be interesting to look at the TPE of each team and its competitors for each season to see if that has some effect in when a President's trophy winning team goes all the way to the cup.

For sure. Unfortunately we don't keep historical tpe values anywhere. Lots of work

***Canadice*** · 05-23-2021, 08:56 AM

05-23-2021, 08:11 AMhonkerrs Wrote:
05-23-2021, 04:41 AMCanadice Wrote: Great breakdown! It would be interesting to look at the TPE of each team and its competitors for each season to see if that has some effect in when a President's trophy winning team goes all the way to the cup.
For sure. Unfortunately we don't keep historical tpe values anywhere. Lots of work

Are the ratings of players kept somewhere from the STHS days? With those you can calculate the TPE of each player. We can get them from FHM at the end of the season to use as some form of indicator of team strength for the playoffs, but that would only be from S53 and onwards.

Wearingabear · 05-23-2021, 10:16 AM

Honkerrs did media???

SlashACM · 05-23-2021, 03:41 PM

05-23-2021, 08:56 AMCanadice Wrote:
05-23-2021, 08:11 AMhonkerrs Wrote: For sure. Unfortunately we don't keep historical tpe values anywhere. Lots of work

Are the ratings of players kept somewhere from the STHS days? With those you can calculate the TPE of each player. We can get them from FHM at the end of the season to use as some form of indicator of team strength for the playoffs, but that would only be from S53 and onwards.

Sths had strengths and weaknesses that required different update scales tho

***luke*** · 05-23-2021, 03:54 PM

05-23-2021, 03:41 PMSlashACM Wrote:
05-23-2021, 08:56 AMCanadice Wrote: Are the ratings of players kept somewhere from the STHS days? With those you can calculate the TPE of each player. We can get them from FHM at the end of the season to use as some form of indicator of team strength for the playoffs, but that would only be from S53 and onwards.

Sths had strengths and weaknesses that required different update scales tho

that plus people banked TPE a lot more. Especially since you really only needed ~1500 TPE to have a maxed out player

***Canadice*** · 05-24-2021, 01:19 AM

05-23-2021, 03:54 PMluketd Wrote:
05-23-2021, 03:41 PMSlashACM Wrote: Sths had strengths and weaknesses that required different update scales tho

that plus people banked TPE a lot more. Especially since you really only needed ~1500 TPE to have a maxed out player

Ah, fair enough!

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us