Oye cómo va

[Gustav 6,407]

That's something you might think is just "hey, what's going on" in Spanish (and it is, if you phrase it like "oye, ¿cómo va?"), but without the punctuation it's (loosely) "listen to how it goes" instead, a context you may have heard in a Santana song by that name. I've chosen that name here because there's a bit of a difference between those two interpretations--one extroverted, one introverted, one reaching out to the world and one letting the world reach out on its own. 

 

I bring that up because, although it's highly counterintuitive, sim results have suggested that maybe I should have done literally nothing with Davos after our first iteration of the lineup was put together this season--passively watching how the sims treated us rather than immediately reaching out and trying to see what I could get from Toronto when news broke that they were selling.

 

Am I seriously suggesting that I shouldn't have addressed our weak point (forwards, and wingers in particular), or that making our team significantly better on paper was a bad choice? Not at all. In fact, even though we're no longer atop the standings, I'm more confident in our current lineup than I was in our former one. The line changes that we needed to make to accommodate, well, a different lineup, simply created a disturbance in the force that needs to be ironed out. I know we can be a good team--in fact, we already have been this season--and I also know that we should be able to be an even better one. Until that point, it's time to play around with things, find something that works, and listen to how it goes.

[bigAL 2,176]

I think you nailed it, because Simon is exclusively counter-intuitive. TPE is bad, don’t get too much of it or you’ll be bad. 
 

On the team level, it seems like the best team in the regular season never wins it all. When you saw you were in first, you made a smart move that helped you fall in the standings a bit and dodge that classic first-round-upset of the too-good team. And so, because Simon, becoming a worse team and falling in the standings ups your Cup Win Percentage. 

Right? I can rationalize any bad decision. 

[.sniffuM 1,741]

Almost every good team that has bought over the past few seasons has ended up worse for wear after the fact. Only exceptions I can think of are Malmo this season (who really needed that defensive upgrade) and Chicago when they added Winter a few seasons ago. Warsaw somehow lost over 10 shots a game going from regressed Gino Digiannantonio to Chris Hylands a few seasons ago, and recovered a bit but not all the way when Hylands switched to D and muffbeav switched to forward.