I Got Bored - Mostly A Playoff Review, Somewhat A Place For Me To Complain

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Well, the playoffs ended later than expected for the Marlins and far sooner than expected for the Wranglers. As such, I’m stuck feeling confused, filled with both pride and disappointment, and for exactly the same reason.

 

Obviously for anyone who knows anything about statistics, its hard to draw any meaningful conclusions about a small sample size, which is what can make playoff structures so exciting. Especially with hockey, which is more often than not a coin flip sport, where the odds of any given team winning is rarely more than 55-60%, especially between 2 teams that actually intend on competing. Even the worst teams will win games, and against top teams at that. Obviously over a larger sample size, such as a 72 regular season, the top teams, the ones pushing that 60%, will appear to be significantly better, and their record will show that.

 

Spoiler

 

I remember reading a particularly interesting tweet, that I can’t find, but I did find out it was just an excerpt from an article, where the authors were looking to find out the likelihood that the “better team” or the higher seed actually moves on. The NHL and MLB were JUST above 60%, with the NBA at around 80%. The notable part, and the part they actually wrote a published article about was that in order for the NFL, NHL and MLB to have the better team move on 80% of the time, the NFL would need to be a best-of-11, NHL be best-of-51 and MLB be a whopping best-of-75.

 

Spoiler

https://statsbylopez.netlify.app/post/part-ii-randomness-of-series/

 

Obviously using a simulation engine narrows down some of the inherent randomness of reality, and generally normalizes the results. But even still, I struggle with the how to approach the playoffs with any form of sanity. As the 8 seeded Marlins took on the top seeded Aces, our goal was to avoid a sweep. I had to pull out lineup tricks and get bailed out by some incredible individual performances to pull out 2 wins against the Aces. I would argue that series should not have been nearly a coin flip, regardless of how satisfying it was to get a few wins. Follow that up with the Wranglers facing the Phoenix, and I see firsthand the opposite side of that argument. Although the Aces ended up winning the series, and unsurprisingly so, the VHL rolled the dice and got the less likely values. Objectively the TPE gap was much different between the VHL squads, but relatively, compared to the TPE cap of the VHLM, the talent gap for the VHLM series was far greater.

 

The fact that both of the top seeds in the North American conference were knocked out by the 3 and 5 seed is rather confusing to interpret. Obviously, NA had 5 incredible teams, and the fact that any 3 of them would be eliminated by this point is not all that out of this world. But looking forward to next season, or future seasons beyond that, how does a GM respond to what was essentially a triple upset (Chicago over Seattle, Chicago over Calgary and DC over Vancouver)? If every series is roughly a coinflip, then suddenly we get all nihilistic and as such, just constantly putting together a decent team is enough to give you roughly the same odds as anyone else to win.

 

If a team like Chicago, which is a great team by all accounts, wins, what happens? What do we all learn from it? What would cause them to win? It wasn’t a TPE advantage, on average or at the maximums. It wasn’t superior positional depth. It wasn’t build quality. I suppose it could have been a better goaltender, but ignoring a dreadful game 6, Ben Dahl had the better metrics in that series than Cole Pearce. The NHL is a copycat league as we all know by now, so is the answer just to have a 1000+ TPA goaltender and hope that the other team falls apart? I suppose Davos should be thrilled with losing their series then, knowing they have all the tools to win next season.

 

The real answer as to what teams should learn from this playoff is really that in a coin-flip league, it’s not that your choices don’t matter, or that there is some hyper-specific thing you have to emulate. It is that the playoffs are fun, and exciting because of the crazy results. Why do people love March Madness, or the NFL so much? Because of the best-of-1 format, every weird bounce, missed call and insane play is the difference between a championship and utter embarrassment. We don’t remember the series that went according to the odds. No one is thinking about Davos and London losing to Warsaw and Moscow. Looking back on these playoffs as a Wrangler, we played the odds, flipped the coin, and got tails.

 

If we come back next season with a strong roster and get put in the same position again, the odds won’t be any more in our favour. It’s the same issue that plagues Leafs fans everywhere. It isn’t all that baffling that they would lose any given series, as we know the better team only moves on about 60% of the time anyways. It only becomes baffling when the better team loses multiple seasons in a row. It is equally as baffling when a team like the 2021 Canadiens, with a very mediocre team on paper, continues to win.

 

But one has to remember that every single series, the underdog team walked in with a roughly 40% chance to pull out a series win. Every single series is like that, so if you look at them as isolated events, it isn’t all that surprising that any given team wins any given series. I am a firm believer that the extra odds of being the top team is an important thing to chase, and should inevitably pay off, but before coming to an emotional decision, posing as a logical one, we have to remember that the odds in hockey are never in anyone’s favour in an overwhelming fashion.

 

We know that we have a great team. We firmly believe that we put together the pieces that could have won us a championship. But so did 6 other teams in the league, and only 1 can actually win it. I know we have the core pieces in place to continue to succeed and will get reinforcements this offseason to maintain or improve our team’s strength. Our core is now at their max contracts, and entering our 3^rd season, and with term on our deals, there is a lot that is certain in our futures. That is part of what is scary, knowing that there is not a lot of room to change. But we also know that we will be more than good enough to win for the rest of our primes.

 

The only reason we have to be sad after this series is that we will have to wait for months to flip the coin again. It doesn’t look like the talent in NA is going anywhere, so even a first-round win won’t be overwhelmingly likely for a while. But hypothetically, if considering multiple playoff runs as one event, we should be overwhelmingly likely for success eventually.

 

Now when it comes to the VHLM, the Marlins obviously have a lot to be excited for next season, with 3 of their top offensive players primed to make a return (pending announcement of the TPE cut-off), giving them an incredibly strong core to build off of right away. We also have 6 top-15 picks, meaning that we will have a lot of control when it comes to building a contender for the upcoming season. With the new rule changes about the number of draft picks one can have, and must maintain, lower round picks will also be increasing in value for a few reasons. Not only are these lower picks essential, as many of these players will return for a second season, which helps to compensate for the “loss” of pick hoarding. And also, these lower picks do not have caps, so they are now the hoarding commodity. Building a sustainable playoff team sounds as though it will both be easier and harder to accomplish. I had the minimum number of picks we will soon be required to have, and made the playoffs with it, but only because Houston tapped out, in my opinion far too soon. If everyone is able to compete every season, more deserving teams and players won’t make the playoffs, but also making the playoffs becomes an achievement. My only major concern moving forward, as someone with a very “potential-based” drafting philosophy is whether the drafts will be deep enough so support this lack of boom and bust. To maintain a competitive air, and provide enticing opportunities for all players, the drafts will have to be deeper than ever before. If we want actual roster players to be playing playoff games instead of bots, then teams need to be able to fill out their rosters without relying on buying players from a team that is tearing down to the bottom.

 

I’m definitely very excited to give it one final chance in the boom-and-bust era and hopefully continue to build up the brand of the Marlins for when we can’t get away with just having a bunch of top picks. I know there are lots of exciting changes coming down the pipeline, and I hope to establish the Marlins as the new go-to team in this new era. I have always believed that roster depth is a key part of success in the VHLM, and it is part of why I have gotten a reputation in regard to my waiver pitching.

 

I never really took the chance to weigh in on the idea of many of the recreates joining Mexico City and watching them have a lot of success so far in the playoffs. I knew they were far more talented than their regular season record said anyways, but I can understand the frustrations around their sudden rise to success. I know how excited my players were heading into the trade deadline, hearing about how all of these recreates were going to come and join teams to help with the playoff push. We had just lost a few D to inactivity, and so we were pretty desperate for some defensive help to maintain our playoff status. I also know how disappointed my players and I were watching every single recreate join other teams in a very minor role. Everyone values different things in the VHLM, whether it is playing time, team success or just vibes, but to think that we had offered none of those is somewhat disappointing. No amount of disappointment was going to make us a playoff contender however, and I know that Mexico having made it this far is only going to encourage the next class to do the same thing. Am I complaining without solutions? Absolutely I am, and I’m not even certain who I’m complaining about. I think recreates have every right to join whatever team they want on waivers just like any other player. If they want to name their players after ice cream desserts, they may as well, because that’s funny and makes for good storylines. Do I think recreates should be forced to join teams like the Marlins just to even out roster depth? Not at all. All I hope is that in the future I can get a couple of recreates to get my team hyped and fill out some core roster depth.

 

Somehow, I’ve made it to almost 2000 words here, so I’ll finish off talking about Landon Wolanin’s build and future. I’ve wormed my way up to 3^rd in my class in TPE, despite a horribly late start and not a whole lot of carryover TPE. I never intended on making it this far and involving myself this much. There is still a lot of TPE to dump into this build, but unfortunately not a lot of improvement to be made. With everything being so expensive now, there isn’t a lot to improve throughout the season. I like to take the offseasons to invest in the super expensive things that I won’t want to do in the regular season, so there will definitely be more DF in my near future, but there is one attribute that I have left to build at some point that would be a prime regular season stat. Depending on how the roster looks in the coming seasons, Landon will soon be learning how to check. He has already made the VHFL list for a few people and would have been a good pick had I invested in checking sooner, but I don’t want to overload the team with checkers, and it will depend on who is joining the team this offseason. I think there is also a bit more offense to be had, but that will depend on Landon actually starting the season before the 20-game mark.

 

2000+ words, claiming randomly for the fun of it

Edited October 22, 2022 by jacobcarson877

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