RomanesEuntDomus

S76 legendary draft class for the Wolves, so proud to spend my entire career with this team and winning all those Cups and working our way towards the top of the leaderboard along with @NSG and @Sixersfan594

Was an honor everyone

This looks nice, a very interesting and creative change approach to this problem. I could see this working out and am looking forward to seeing it in practice

I was fairly critical of the SHLs transition to FHM but there must be a middle ground between rushing into a solution and sitting on your hands doing nothing for three seasons. You make it sound like that's barely any time when in reality it's like what, almost half a year in real life at this point? I'm a firm beliver that when it comes to exploits and tricks like this, it's unrealistic to expect GMs and player to just not use them out of the goodness of their hearts, you can only really solve them through decisive league action and new rules. And at the very least we need a clear timeline, "we are working on it and present a solution when it's done" just doesn't cut it anymore after a while. If you can give that and name a date like next offseason, then I'm perfectly fine with not having a short-term solution. But we at least need an outlook like that to look forward to.

That's all fine and well if a fix actually comes anytime soon. But we're in like the third season of this hardcore meta now (at least, might be even longer) and we keep pushing pushing back concrete measures that would alleviate the issue right now in the vague hope of a long-term fix that even the BOG isn't confident enough yet to even set a timeline for. If you guys can promise that there will be some sort of fix next offseason then good, lets do that, but we need need something more concrete than "when it's done".

What Vancouver is doing obviously isn't trolling, but I'm also surprised to see how little is done about this meta sitiuation and how hesitant and cautious the league is to take any measures. I get it, you don't want to rush anything and end up with a solution that just creates new problems, that makes complete sense. But the damage is being done every day that the problem isn't tackled in the sense that it erodes peoples trust in the league and at least some of them are losing interest because of it. And I would argue that there are at least some stop-gap solutions you could implement quickly while continuing to work on a more exhaustive long-term fix. Things like minimum gaps between PA and SC for example, say you put that gap at 20 so in order to build towards 99 Scoring, you have to build to at least 79 Passing as well. It doesn't completely fix the problem, but it softens the current extreme outgrows of the meta that we see and I'm sure there are other short term solutions like this one as well.

Wow still no Nylen? Come on now...

No no it's all fine, I didn't perceive you as talking down to me or anything ! I appreciate the blunt and open discussion and apologize if I got carried away a little bit myself as well. I just think it's an interesting topic of discussion in general to talk about these kinds of stats and to talk about what I think are misconceptions but also hear takes different from my own. The issue with the distorted/unreliable stats shows itself in many different ways. In regards to TA and GA for example, I think earlier versions of the sim actually had those stats but the one we use doesn't anymore - or it still has them, but just doesn't track them anymore on a seasonal level. That's why it shows 0's for TA and GA I think. In regards to the other stats a lot of it is subjective of course. I believe that +/- and SB are essentially useless as they are the most team-dependant ones out there, they only really work in an intra-team context but only if the gaps are really big and even then you still have issues (lines being used differently etc). But then for others like Hits or PIM you will find very different opinions and interpretations so it's fair game to talk about those. I just looked at a few more of these All-Stars and found a few more interesting cases that I think relate a bit to the discussion we had earlier. There seems to be a certain trend of the people in charge looking at Defensemen a bit differently than I would. The first is DC, where Ryan Vidot got the nomination, who fits pretty well into the earlier discussion we had. I don't see what qualifies him outside of SB (who come from being on a bad team) and goals. A team-worst +/- and no Hits while being far away from being one of his teams better scoring defensemen make this selection a headscratcher for me. But with his goal numbers and PIMs he does fit a bit better into the criteria that you seem to use. But I would say that all three of Lambert, Johnson and Dyrdahl have a better case than him. The second one is Moscow with Hard Markinson as the nomination. Now he is a very deserving player overall and one of the leagues best Defensemen, but he has Duncan Idaho on his team who I would argue was even more deserving. There is a good case to be made for both players here and no wrong answer, but I find it especially interesting when you compare Markinson/Idaho to Nylen/Peace. Defenseman Nylen outsocres forward Peace by 7 points while being good defensively, but loses. Defenseman Markinson gets outscored by 12 points by someone who is also among the premier physical forwards in the league, with even more Hits than Markinsons already good totals, but he wins? Really the only possible explanation I see here is Goals, but if that's indeed what led to this result then I think we have to wonder if we aren't overemphasizing this stat a bit at this point?

You make it seem like my player was a defensive liability when he wasn't, he was simply used in a much more offensive role. As I said I had seasons before with 200+ Blocks and way higher numbers in other defensive stats when I had less TPE than I do now. The difference wasn't that I was a better defensive player back then, but that I was in a situation that emphasized defensive stats more. Now I'm in a situation that emphasizes offensive stats more, it's simply not possible to put up crazy high SB numbers anymore when playing on a team that has the puck a lot. It's a problem with STHS in general I find, the sim just doesn't have a lot of reliable defensive stats (no giveaways or takeaways, no possession numbers) etc. and the ones it does have are all faulty to some degree. You rightfully point out the issues when just looking at points, but largely ignore the issues with what you call the "traditional" defensive stats. The one point I do grant you is Hits, I'm just not very impressive in that category and it's one I've deliberately stayed away from over the course of my career, so that stat does work against me a bit. But in all the other categories my player was either very good, or they are highly team-dependant or otherwise situational. At the end of the day you end up nominating a player just for being slightly better in those defensive stats, but who is far from a standout in either category while punishing the one who is a standout player but in the "wrong" ones. This is not meant as a slight against sam but I just don't get the Madison selection in general. Like, if you don't think my player deserves it because of his statline then fine, so be it, but at least give it to the standout goalie that is Sales then, or the top offensive forward that is Reinhart or the Power Forward that is Tucker. But another Defenseman, who doesn't even come close in points and is decent defensively but not a standout either even in his own team? That doesn't make much sense to me and does feel a little bit personal. In any case, as I said before I don't want to make this about myself too much as I think Nylen is actually the more egregious case. I can at least acknowledge the points you make about my player even if I don't share them, but I still haven't heard any good argument for discounting Nylen other than "the other guy had goals". Which coincidentally Nylen also has quite a lot of for a Defenseman.

Thank you for engaging in this discussion in such a productive way, but it's really hard for me to not read this as "Offensive Defensemen don't matter". This would make sense if we talked about this in the context of a "Defensive Defenseman of the Year" Award or something but we aren't, it's about Defensemen in general so peoples offensive contributions should matter as part of an effective and well-balanced two-way game. Especially if someone managed to build up a 12-15 point gap on the rest of the leagues Defensemen in just 28 games, which is pretty insane in itself if you look at it like that. I'm also not arguing that me or Nylen are the best Defenseman in the league (although Nylen has a good case imho), but that we at the very least are in the Top-8 that this type of voting seeks to establish - which at least one of us (likely me) will miss out on. It's especially frustrating when I compare it to earlier in my career, when I started to score over a point per game while also putting up huge SB numbers but back then those numbers didn't matter because my team was too bad, and now that my team is a contender my numbers don't matter because my team is too good. Feels like a player type like myself has no real chance either way because voters just pick and choose which categories to look at to fit their preexisting narratives and if you aren't a super active member around a boards, that hurts your case even more. I don't want to argue against my teammate but apparently "points inflation" is an argument that counts against me but not against him even though we played on the same line, ouch. Slightly higher defensive stats are super crucial but a 17 points gap through just 28 games is neglible, as are 45 assists compared to the second placed player on the team who had just 29. Where are all their Assists if inflation makes it so easy to rack them up? And your argument in regards to the Toronto situation amplifies that impression even more. Nylen getting all those points is all a result of his team inflating his stats, but Peace getting all those goals is just his own accomplishment? Do you not see the inconsistency there? Explaining that away with "Forwards = Offense, Defensemen = Defense" falls way short, maybe the fact that Peace has been fed pucks by the finest Defender in the league all season is what allowed him to get all those goals? Plus even with all those goals Nylen still outscored Peace by 7 points because he didn't just feed him with passes but the rest of his team as well, all the while being 1st among Defensemen on his team in Blocks and 2nd in Hits. There really isn't much more that guy could've done and I think it's wrong to discount all those contributions because "that one forward had a lot of goals". And it was just goals by the way, he doesn't even lead his own team in points among Forwards now and is like 12th in the league to Nylens 3rd. You claim that we focus on points too much when looking at Defensemen but then for Forwards, suddenly goals is all they need.

I don't think that Chicago example works as they are literally the only team with such bad offense, almost every other team is at least somewhat close to the 100 mark. The highest scoring Defenseman that isn't Nylen or myself had 39 points, taking the math you used and assuming I always contribute to 35,71% of all goals, I would land right around that 39 point mark with about half a dozen teams and surpass if with 3 (Vancouver, London, LA). But I don't want to talk make this about my own player specifically too much, because I think this is even more criminal when it comes to Nylen, who had slightly better numbers than myself both offensively and defensively and did all that on a weaker team. I somewhat see the argument against my player even though I don't share it, but how he didn't make it in first round is absolutely baffling. I mean I totally understand wanting to give defensive players more recognition, but downgrading scoring to a secondary attribute for Defensemen, thereby basically eliminating all offensive defensemen from contention, is very questionable. I think it gets a bit bizarre when we even outscore the Forwards on our teams and around the league, whose number one job it literally is to score, but that doesn't stop them from making it on an all-star team over us. There is literally no way for players like us to make all star teams anymore if that's the criteria. It's also a sad fact that STHS doesn't give us a lot of reliable defensive metrics, stats like Hits, SB, +/- etc are all flawed in their own regard and often times just as team-dependant as someones scoring numbers. You argue that it's much harder for players on weaker teams to reach the kinds of scoring numbers that players on good teams have, I would counter that with the fact that it's even harder, if not outright impossible, for us players on stronger teams to reach the same kinds of SB numbers that players on bad teams have. How can SB be a primary stat in that context but points aren't? Having high SB doesn't mean that you are a better defensive defenseman, it just mean that you got shelled more.

Damn that's what I feared, I just had a little bit of hope left that it wasn't actually the reason. I know there are different approaches but I strongly disagree with this one whenever it crops up. This should be about player performance, not whether you like a member or his activity or TPE level or not. But I guess if you aren't a TPE-whore or friends with everyone then you shouldnt have a shot at personal recognition even if your performance warrants it, got it.

I would strongly disagree with that assessment. Some of these "classic" defender categories you mention are pretty questionable to begin with and we still lead our teams in a couple of them and also significantly beat some of the other Defensemen that did make it in, Nylen even more so than me. It's not like we are just offense and nothing else and you can't seriously argue that our points might be inflated by being on good teams, but then vote other people in based on Shots Blocked which is a category that is super inflated by being on a bad team and by special teams usage. Plus it's not like we just had a few more points than the other Defensemen, we absolutely dominated the competition in that regard by 10-15 points not even halfway through the season, and also lead our respective teams and at some point even the entire league in scoring. So yeah, I don't think we are feeding off our teams success, we are key contributors to it. And especially in Nylens case that point works even less than it does for me, as he isn't even on one of the leagues current top teams. This list feels like someone tried to ovecompensate hard for a perceived "scoring bias", to the point where having high point totals actually hurt your chances. But yeah I don't want to complain too much, as someone who is involved in these kinds of decisions in other leagues I know how annoying that can get, but it really caught my eye that somehow neither of the two most dominant Defenseman of the season so far made it onto one of the teams and one of us will be missing out altogether as there is just one spot left (Likely me, as Nylen is just a tad better in most categories). It's frustrating to not get any recognition for the season I just had because I guess being on Vancouver does that to your chances, but it's even more outrageous when you look at Nylen who had an even stronger case than me.

Wow... How do neither Nylen nor myself make this list?

@Beketov