The Article I Was Going to Write, and Why I'm Not Writing It

[Gustav 6,177]

Some of you may remember a couple status updates I posted within the last month: one promising the release of "the most quantitative" article I've ever written, and another saying that I'd hold off until exams were over. I meant both sincerely at the time I posted them.

 

And now I'm just not going to write the article.

 

That doesn't mean I'm not going to talk about it--I did most of the number work, and I learned some things that I think are important to share. It's just more of a collection of general takeaways than any big main point that I can argue, and that makes it much less fun.

 

Takeaway #1: we can't realistically nuke the VHLE anytime soon (as much as I want to).

Originally, I opened up a spreadsheet to try to show that with the retirement of the S75 class, we'd have the ability to get rid of the VHLE and operate under what I still consider "normal" conditions, with the 250-TPE cap back in effect in the minors. If we had more normal-sized draft classes in S80 and S81, this might indeed be realistic. But the problem is...we didn't. Both of those were huge, and per my own projections they're going to make average roster size increase over the next two seasons. 

 

Takeaway #2: BE CAREFUL WITH RECRUITMENT. 

What are we trying to do here? We established the VHLE with the understanding that we didn't want to make the big league bigger, and that this would be our way to keep things sustainable rather than trying to expand. We shouldn't have responded to that by flooding two draft classes in a row--that's how you create exactly the same roster issues that made the VHLE happen in the first place! I have spent some time talking to @Beaviss and I understand that it's really hard to control how many people join as a result of which recruitment campaigns (especially after we got yeeted from Reddit), but keeping the size of the league CONSTANT rather than trying to grow it is the goal we need to have in mind at this point. It's my opinion that we could do nothing at all for the S84 class (also known as the S75 recreate class) and that would be a good thing.

 

Takeaway #3: I made a cool equation and I'm proud of it.

Projected Earn Rate = (TPE-(TPE/([Current Season]-[Draft Season-1])))/([Current Season]-[Draft Season-1])

 

Until banking starts and depreciation hits, at which point I just assume that TPA is constant, I have in the past just calculated projected TPE numbers by guessing based on my own experiences with players and their earn rates. Instead, I decided to make an equation to guess for me. This is more complex than just TPE divided by seasons played, because things like carryover and creation time can mess with things and give numbers that are way too high. This thing gives me some pretty nice, realistic-looking career arcs for players of varying levels of activity, though it's worth it to note that it doesn't work on S81 players (because current season and draft season are the same thing). 

 

 

Here is a big spreadsheet I made to track roster projections across the league. Assumptions I made to do that are as follows:

Spoiler

WITH THE VHLE:
An active prospect with 300+ TPE will be considered as having a 100% chance to make it to the VHL next season.
Active prospect, 250-299: 80% chance to make it up next season, 90% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Active prospect, 200-249: 60% chance to make it up next season, 80% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Active prospect, 150-199: 10% chance to make it up next season, 50% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Active prospect, 100-149: 0% chance to make it up next season, 20% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Active prospect, <100: 0% chance to make it up next season, 10% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Inactive prospect: 0% chance to make it up
Any prospect S79 or older will have the above odds decreased by 20% due to a presumed slower earn rate, regardless of TPE.
All prospects who make it up will be considered to have a $1.5m cap hit in the season they come up, and a $2m cap hit the season after.

1st-round pick: 10% chance of making it up in the draft season ($1.5m cap hit), 90% chance of making it up the season after ($2m cap hit)
2nd-round pick: 0% chance of making it up in the draft season, 60% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)
3rd-round pick: 0% chance of making it up in the draft season, 30% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)
4th-round pick: 0% chance of making it up in the draft season, 10% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)

WITHOUT THE VHLE: 
Any prospect >250: considered playing up at salary minimum, regardless of activity
Active prospect, 200-249: 100% chance to make it up next season
Active prospect, 150-199: 70% chance to make it up next season, 80% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Active prospect, 100-149: 30% chance to make it up next season, 60% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Active prospect, <100: 0% chance to make it up next season, 20% chance to make it up in 2 seasons
Inactive prospect: 0% chance to make it up
Any prospect S79 or older will have the above decreased by 20%, except in cases where that prospect is already above 250 TPE.
All prospects below 200 TPE will be considered to have a $1.25m cap hit in S82 if they come up, and a $1.5m cap hit in S83. Prospects above 200 TPE will be given $1.5m in S82 and $2m in S83. 

1st-round pick: 80% chance of making it up in the draft season ($1.25m cap hit), 90% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)
2nd-round pick: 10% chance of making it up in the draft season ($1.25m cap hit), 70% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)
3rd-round pick: 0% chance of making it up in the draft season, 40% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)
4th-round pick: 0% chance of making it up in the draft season, 10% chance of making it up the season after ($1.5m cap hit)
Picks made in the 1st and 2nd rounds will be given $1.5m in the first season they play up and $2m the season after. Picks in the 3rd and 4th will receive $1.25m and $1.5m.

IN BOTH CASES:
Percentages will be calculated as such (for example, a 40% chance counts for 0.4 players, and if the cap hit is $1.5 million, the projected cap hit will be 0.4*1.5 = $0.6 million. This is to account for earn rates, as well as possible present and future inactivity.
Teams will see numbers represented by both roster space and cap space, and I will attempt to mock-draft players by position to each team to try to present a balanced roster in future seasons.
S74 players will not be on any team's roster next season, and S75 players will not be on any team's roster in two seasons.
Inactive players from S75 who are below 550 TPA will be considered "gone" next season, as they will depreciate to an easily-replaceable level and likely will not be present on any team's roster. This also applies to any inactive S76 player under 700 TPA in S83.
Currently-signed players will be considered signed with their teams in the future, for the sake of simplicity.
 

 

I don't think what I have proves much of anything, and that's why I'm not going to write 5,000 words about it. But there it is, and you can do what you want with it.

[Banackock 7,771]

Takeaway: So we don't want anymore members than we have right now, right? There's nothing wrong with massive recruitment as long as the recruitment to an extent can be sustainable, with player creations/recreates and retirements/cycles being sustainable which they always find a way to generally be/shift. The more the merrier, ho, ho, ho.

[JardyB10 4,837]

15 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

(especially after we got yeeted from Reddit)

Wait, what?

[Spartan 4,097]

10 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

Takeaway #1: we can't realistically nuke the VHLE anytime soon (as much as I want to).

Originally, I opened up a spreadsheet to try to show that with the retirement of the S75 class, we'd have the ability to get rid of the VHLE and operate under what I still consider "normal" conditions, with the 250-TPE cap back in effect in the minors. If we had more normal-sized draft classes in S80 and S81, this might indeed be realistic. But the problem is...we didn't. Both of those were huge, and per my own projections they're going to make average roster size increase over the next two seasons. 

 

Takeaway #2: BE CAREFUL WITH RECRUITMENT. 

What are we trying to do here? We established the VHLE with the understanding that we didn't want to make the big league bigger, and that this would be our way to keep things sustainable rather than trying to expand. We shouldn't have responded to that by flooding two draft classes in a row--that's how you create exactly the same roster issues that made the VHLE happen in the first place! I have spent some time talking to @Beaviss and I understand that it's really hard to control how many people join as a result of which recruitment campaigns (especially after we got yeeted from Reddit), but keeping the size of the league CONSTANT rather than trying to grow it is the goal we need to have in mind at this point. It's my opinion that we could do nothing at all for the S84 class (also known as the S75 recreate class) and that would be a good thing.

This is actually a pretty interesting point that I called out from a different perspective - moreso the timing of recruitment and how it puts strain on our existing structure. As M GM's, we'd complain when there'd be a recruitment push that was between the end of the regular season and the M draft. I don't think it's been as large an issue recently, but I feel like there was a recruitment event a couple seasons ago that brought in players when playoffs were starting up. 

 

The issue we had this past season was that we had another large and successful recruitment ad on youtube right as we decided to contract the VHLM. It didn't make sense to me that we were going to try and get an influx of new players right after contracting the M, especially on a large channel. I don't know if I'd say that the goal is to keep the league size constant, sustainable growth is good for the league. I just think that maybe we need to be coordinating recruitment and league structure changes together instead of as two separate entities. As long as we aren't running the recruitment well dry, and we have the capacity to make room for everyone (which we have in the form of 3 leagues), I have no issue with growing the league size. As always though, we can't kneejerk react with EXPANSION every time we have a surge of new members, hence the need for more intentional and cautious recruiting. 

[Gustav 6,177]

19 minutes ago, JardyB10 said:

Wait, what?

 

Reddit always WAS the best way to recruit--we'd get permission from some sub's mods, make a post, and wait.

 

Then there was one day where a member of one sub who may or may not be a member of other leagues took exception to one of our posts and mass-reported everything we'd put up. Technically the way we were doing it (specifically, offering a reward to members for upvoting) violated Reddit rules so there wasn't really anything we could do about that. Moving forward, I believe we tried to put up posts without offering any reward, but we'd basically been blacklisted from hockey subs at that point.

[Gustav 6,177]

22 minutes ago, Spartan said:

This is actually a pretty interesting point that I called out from a different perspective - moreso the timing of recruitment and how it puts strain on our existing structure. As M GM's, we'd complain when there'd be a recruitment push that was between the end of the regular season and the M draft. I don't think it's been as large an issue recently, but I feel like there was a recruitment event a couple seasons ago that brought in players when playoffs were starting up. 

 

The issue we had this past season was that we had another large and successful recruitment ad on youtube right as we decided to contract the VHLM. It didn't make sense to me that we were going to try and get an influx of new players right after contracting the M, especially on a large channel. I don't know if I'd say that the goal is to keep the league size constant, sustainable growth is good for the league. I just think that maybe we need to be coordinating recruitment and league structure changes together instead of as two separate entities. As long as we aren't running the recruitment well dry, and we have the capacity to make room for everyone (which we have in the form of 3 leagues), I have no issue with growing the league size. As always though, we can't kneejerk react with EXPANSION every time we have a surge of new members, hence the need for more intentional and cautious recruiting. 

 

Behind the scenes, it was more or less agreed upon that we didn't want to expand, or at least that we didn't want to keep expanding in the future. The VHLE was initially brought up as an alternative to that. 

 

So, if we want to talk about making the league bigger, and advocate for that, it works pretty much in opposition to why the VHLE exists in the first place.

 

but so do a lot of other things we're trying to do with it so I guess that doesn't really matter

[Beketov 8,731]

2 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

keeping the size of the league CONSTANT rather than trying to grow it is the goal we need to have in mind at this point.

I’ve been trying to stress this for a bit. It’s obviously a balance because people constantly disappear and need to be replaced with new people but retention rather than recruitment needs more of a focus. I care much less about 200+ person recruitment drives with 10 staying more than a week than I do about 40 people joining and all staying active.
 

Additionally to that we have proven that constant expansion to fit player needs will not work. Adding a team does nothing, adding 2 fixes the problem for about a season, adding 4 fixes it for like 3 seasons. That’s not sustainable growth even if people do love to lose their minds over expansion. Ultimately if a draft class was reasonably big (say like 4 active rounds so 64 players) and we retain 90% of those players for a full career and into recreation then the draft 8 seasons down the road is still going to have ~58 recreates, let alone first gens.

 

I’m not saying those are reasonable numbers or that new members are unimportant but obviously if we can focus on rolling the draft classes through their careers and keeping them around we’ll keep drafts full without being as concerned about what happens if a recruitment campaign flops.

[Beketov 8,731]

2 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

 

Behind the scenes, it was more or less agreed upon that we didn't want to expand, or at least that we didn't want to keep expanding in the future. The VHLE was initially brought up as an alternative to that. 

 

So, if we want to talk about making the league bigger, and advocate for that, it works pretty much in opposition to why the VHLE exists in the first place.

 

but so do a lot of other things we're trying to do with it so I guess that doesn't really matter

Also I’m not against the idea of EVER expanding again but obviously 16 teams just in the VHL is stretching things quite a lot so I wouldn’t want to unless we’re sure. 16 I think is already at the point where it’s hard to keep track of them all (an innate issue) as well the fact that every expansion brings risk of future contraction which is inevitably messy. I’ve already said before that while it SEEMS contracting the VHLE would be messier than removing a team or 2 it would actually be far easier in practice.

[BOOM 8,467]

We have to get the Aussie expansion team somehow. Recruit away! 

[Victor 10,614]

Takeaway #4: Gus is Devise's multi

[Beketov 8,731]

8 minutes ago, Victor said:

Takeaway #4: Gus is Devise's multi

Too many draft picks for that.

[Shindigs 1,771]

15 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Both of those were huge, and per my own projections they're going to make average roster size increase over the next two seasons. 

Did you make the projection before or after a solid chunk of the top prospects in the M had freak retirements? Were the numbers off enough that it doesn't have any appreciable impact? Just curios. Because based on recent events, it does seem like maybe the last couple draft classes weren't quite as big as they may have seemed.

[Victor 10,614]

4 hours ago, Beketov said:

Too many draft picks for that.

After Horcrux I think we need to open our minds to new possibilities.

[Gustav 6,177]

7 hours ago, Shindigs said:

Did you make the projection before or after a solid chunk of the top prospects in the M had freak retirements? Were the numbers off enough that it doesn't have any appreciable impact? Just curios. Because based on recent events, it does seem like maybe the last couple draft classes weren't quite as big as they may have seemed.

 

Any draft class is going to shrink with time. People retiring or going inactive before they make it up is nothing new--even among first round picks (look at NY in the early-mid 70s for an insane streak of bad luck). 

 

I initially put together the sheet about a month ago, so of course things have changed. I doubt anything between then and now threw things off much, because I did take into account the probability that players wouldn't make it up (i.e. a player at a certain TPE level who has a 70% chance is only counted as 0.7 players).

 

8 hours ago, Victor said:

Takeaway #4: Gus is Devise's multi

 

I vaguely remember someone saying this a couple years ago. I managed to keep it hidden for a while, but we'll see what happens with all the recent punishments...

[fonziGG 1,065]

MF you could've just claimed this shit as a MS.... Whatchu doin baby @GustavMattias

Edited December 30, 2021 by Squidward2