Could A "Dream Team" Work In The VHL?

[MubbleFubbles 1,275]

Something that's been brought up over this season because of the Chicago Phoenix's strong play up to the trade deadline is the effect of having BOTs in your starting lineup. Does having too many BOTs have the negatives that you would think having a 40 at everything player/s on your roster would have or do they get bypassed, basically boosting the involvement of the players playing with the BOTs? So one thing that I figured I'd test was, could a VHL "Dream Team" work in the VHL? Now making a 6-4-1 team of all of the best players in the VHL is impossible due to cap constraints as the vast majority of the best players in the league are in the $5.5 Million bracket and, with $42 Million dollars to play with, you're only going to be able to get a maximum of 7 players on that level of contract in the same team. 

 

So what I did was I made a roster of 5 $5.5M forwards, 2 $5.5M defenseman and the Warsaw Predators goalie Wumbo (who is on $3.5M) to make a team that was right at the $42M cap and see how that team got on in a VHL environment. 

 

Notes before I begin:

- Sim was executed 10 times with what I've been led to believe is the correct sliders that we use along with the 1.1 engine. 

- I had this new team (which I named GOAT) take the role of the Riga Reign since they were at the bottom of the standings at the time of the sims.

- Instead of removing the players I wanted to add to GOAT from their original team, I kept them on their original team and made copies for them for GOAT. This was 1) To see how current teams fare in a simulation of the playoffs and 2) So that competing teams didn't lose the reasons they were competing. This does mean though that scoring does go slightly down though as, even with the BOTs, GOAT offers better defense than the Riga Reign (who actually have 3 BOTs in defense on their own now that I think about it).

- All lines have been pulled from the index that was correct as of the last sim. The only thing that I didn't do was insert the mandatory 8 backup games, so, like the previous note the scoring will be lower because of the lack of BOTs playing in goal. 

 

So this is the roster that I picked out:

 

(The image looks a little small on the preview, but if it's too small to read the roster is:

Pearce - Janser - Lavelle

Leduc - Board Game - BOT

 

Johansson - BOT

Torq - BOT)

 

So of the ten sims:

 

How many times did GOAT make the playoffs?

 

GOAT made it to the playoffs every time, although they certainly left it until the very last minute to make the playoffs at some point. In the spoilers, here's GOAT making it to the playoffs by just 2 points over another surprising team down that low, the Warsaw Predators

 

Spoiler

 

How many times did GOAT finish on top of the European Conference?

Of the ten test sims that I did, GOAT finished on top of the European Conference on five occasions, only just beating the Menace who led the conference in four of the ten sims with Prague finishing first in one of them. However, GOAT would not have won the most Victory Cups, as they only won that trophy in two of these ten sims with the Chicago Phoenix winning 4 out of the 10 Victory Cups, with the Wranglers (2) tying GOAT for Victory Cup wins and the Menace and the Dragons winning one Victory Cup each. 

 

How well did GOAT do statistically?

The players on GOAT would have a pretty large impact on the top of the points leaderboard with every one of the ten sims having at least two on GOAT making it into the top ten in points. Perhaps the most impressive season was Bo Johansson finishing on top of the points standings with 106 points and an incredible 97 assists. A GOAT player led the league in points in four of the ten sims, but what's very interesting is that one player not on GOAT managed to lead the league in points on an incredible five different sims, Brendan Marner, with the other non GOAT-Marner winner being Landon Wolanin.

 

Spoiler

 

How many times did GOAT make the Continental Cup final?

 

Despite GOAT having the best success in the regular season, they could only make the Continental Cup final on two of the ten occasions that they had to make it.  London United and the Moscow Menace both had the highest success rate of eliminating GOAT, with both teams eliminating them from the playoffs three times each, along with one instance each where the Dynamo and the Phantoms knocked GOAT out. 

 

How many times did GOAT win the Continental Cup? 

GOAT didn't have many chances to win the Continental Cup only making the final twice, but they did wind up defeating the Wolves 4-1 in one Continental Cup final but ultimately lost the other 4-3 to the Phoenix. The most frequent winner of the Continental Cup were the Vancouver Wolves who won it on three occasions, followed by the Prague Phantoms and the Chicago Phoenix with 2 wins of the Continental Cup followed by lone wins for London United and the reigning champs the D.C. Dragons, so yes, even in a test-simming environment where they had good success in the regular season against a stacked team, the Moscow Menace does not win the Continental Cup I shit you not. 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------

 

So could a "Dream Team" work? Well the good thing is that there is no guaranteed success that would come from every good player gathering on the same team, and that's for the best really cause I think we'd prefer that teams filled out their roster than played BOTS. At the same time though, it does kind of show that the effect of having a 40 at everything bot play several minutes on your team does not have close to the negative impact that you think it would, as it seems like the best players can make up for having an absolute turnip or two on their line. 

 

If there's any other info from these sims you'd like to know about lemme know as I have the appropriate outputs saved so can get back to you. 

 

[jacobcarson877 2,432]

23 minutes ago, MubbleFubbles said:

with the other non GOAT-Marner winner being Landon Wolanin

I'm taking this as an absolute WIN

[Spartan 4,274]

1 hour ago, MubbleFubbles said:

even in a test-simming environment where they had good success in the regular season against a stacked team, the Moscow Menace does not win the Continental Cup I shit you not. 

I hate this fucking league.

[Shindigs 1,771]

10 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

as it seems like the best players can make up for having an absolute turnip or two on their line

Simon loves turnips, it's been confirmed!

[Nykonax 1,563]

11 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

Pearce - Janser - Lavelle

Leduc - Board Game - BOT

 

Johansson - BOT

Torq - BOT)

i wonder if these are optimal lines. would love to see a forward swapped with a D and see what happens since I feel like on a forward line if 2 of them are good the 3rd one just doesn't matter + the bot on the line would lead to more production I think. Then having a 3rd dman would probably work better defensively.

[Daniel Janser 2,111]

12 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

Janser and his evil (or good? The jury is still out) twin scored a combined 98 goals and 105 apples for 203 points... there must be some kind of record in there

[MubbleFubbles 1,275]

4 hours ago, Nykonax said:

i wonder if these are optimal lines. would love to see a forward swapped with a D and see what happens since I feel like on a forward line if 2 of them are good the 3rd one just doesn't matter + the bot on the line would lead to more production I think. Then having a 3rd dman would probably work better defensively.

So just did ten tests of this, swapping Leduc with Erlantz Jokinen. The results were pretty interesting:

 

Unlike the previous sims, GOAT didn't consistently make the playoffs, missing out on two occasions. They also only won the conference twice compared to the five times they won the previous sims and never actually finished with enough points to win the Victory Cup. 

 

However, they did have considerably more consistent success in the playoffs, making the finals on 5 occasions and winning 4 times, which means they won the Continental Cup three more times than last sim despite having two less playoff appearances. (To make @Spartan feel better, there were two Continental Cup wins for Moscow this time)

 

The one thing that carried over was that Brendan Marner once again led the league in points in 5 of the 10 sims. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by MubbleFubbles

[Shindigs 1,771]

34 minutes ago, MubbleFubbles said:

However, they did have considerably more consistent success in the playoffs

This pretty much matches up with how I "felt" like it works, dmen (beyond 1 high TPE per unit) barely matter in the regular season, but if you don't have them in the playoffs you are usually in a world of hurt, somewhat similar with very low TPE goalies.

[Frank 5,054]

Full roster meta.

[Daniel Janser 2,111]

2 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

(To make @Spartan feel better, there were two Continental Cup wins for Moscow this time)

This did not happen...