Why are the Prague Phantoms struggling?

[badcolethetitan 1,024]

Just now, badcolethetitan said:

this was essentially my whole point. Too many passing builds with lack of scoring builds will nuke your team. 

and essentially a big reason why PRG is struggling. Give them high end scorers with their passers and I think it works much, much better. Not saying it’s the only reason but it’s one.

[LucyXpher 2,005]

Just now, Spartan said:

I don't think you were around in the meta era, but it was the strat to have as little CK as possible on a team for this very reason. Don't check? Your PIMs are much lower. Now it's tied to BC so if you want high DF, you have to invest into it a little bit at the highest of ends, or you can pay the steep price to avoid it.

The hybrid model makes sense for this just to keep things somewhat realistic-- unless you're Viktor Jensen.  I do believe that hits, even with the PIM trade off, are valueable tho, or at least valuable enough not to feel it's necessary to cancel it out by spending more TPE.  Like successful hits result in a turnover.  I'd love to see someone scrape the index for a season to see if there's actually more value in those turnovers on average than the PK goals against from resulting penalties. 

[N0HBDY 1,169]

Can I claim some of these pieces?

[jacobcarson877 2,662]

My take on stats has always been that Simon offers a range of team values across a season that is relative to the total "talent" a team has. From that, the points, hits, whatever, are generally proportionally assigned based on relevant attributes compared to those other players you are on the ice with. Thats why big trios tend to have less monumental individual success than big duos. You might end up as a unit on the top end of Simon's magic distribution, but if your teammates are just as good as you, the stats will be split 5 ways instead of 2 or 3. So good teams still do better overall, but are less likely to have the top scorers in each category, since they're likely sharing the load.

[LucyXpher 2,005]

1 minute ago, badcolethetitan said:

and essentially a big reason why PRG is struggling. Give them high end scorers with their passers and I think it works much, much better. Not saying it’s the only reason but it’s one.

And here I thought you were accusing me of tanking Prague's season on purpose just so I could get a better 2nd round pick for Malmo!  But yes, PA needs SC since SC is where it either ends in a goal or it's turned over.  Also wtf are these Prague sims.  Two more losses, 3-2 in each game, outshooting opponents 38-32.  Allowed 4 PPG on 10 PKs.  This is more than an offense issue, but an extra goal or two would have helped.

[Nykonax 1,643]

10 minutes ago, LucyXpher said:

right except hits are actually good if they're clean... so there's definitely a line somewhere where DI can actually just waste the points you invest in CK.  Like if you don't want to hit or take pims, why invest in CK?  Or maybe there is something to Spartan's theory where the top rated CK players get the lions share of hits and pims because STHS just compares stats to determine who does what anyway. Point being, don't invest in DI if you have less CK than 2-3 other players at your position? idk lol

I mean I don't think there's actually a thing in the sim as a "clean" or "dirty" hit. I think the sim just does some rng based on attributes to determine if a hit is a penalty or not. It seems like attributes just reduce the total number of hits, not the rng to determine if hits are penalties or not (otherwise we wouldn't see DI decrease the number of hits but rather the amount of penalty minutes).

I did test sims with a team of full 60 DI and it increased overall winrate by like 5%, so I think there is an argument for it to still be upgraded (and this was on a meta team with already low CK). I think it's because DI is almost effectively like -0.5CK, so if you have like 40CK and 60DI, it's basically like having 30ck.

 

8 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Now it's tied to BC so if you want high DF, you have to invest into it a little bit at the highest of ends, or you can pay the steep price to avoid it.

I haven't done the math but surely at some point you can just upgrade BC and DI at the same time to get defense with a no hitting gain for the above reason.
 

5 minutes ago, LucyXpher said:

The hybrid model makes sense for this just to keep things somewhat realistic-- unless you're Viktor Jensen.  I do believe that hits, even with the PIM trade off, are valueable tho, or at least valuable enough not to feel it's necessary to cancel it out by spending more TPE.  Like successful hits result in a turnover.  I'd love to see someone scrape the index for a season to see if there's actually more value in those turnovers on average than the PK goals against from resulting penalties. 

From test sims above I would disagree, each hit on average is about 0.57 penalty minutes (i.e every 4 hits you get a penalty). Which also means on an 80% PK every 20 hits results in a goal against your team. You'd need a 5% chance of scoring a goal off of each hit for it to be worth it, which there's no way that's true in the sim.

[Pifferfish 821]

43 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Frankly I've always been of the opinion that hits are distributed to the top 2-3 players on a team with the highest CK, which I don't think anyone has actively tested, but you have the lowest CK out of the defensemen on your team and then another 2-3 forwards. So the PIMs in my theory would not be flowing to you. But that's just conjecture from my observations as a GM over the seasons and a VHFL fan.

 

I think we like to look at stats in a vacuum a lot, but we're not providing context for these situations. The 92/83 is playing on VAN with a crazy group of scoring forwards, the 93/85 is on TOR with another phenomenal group of scoring forwards. Leitner is not playing with that talent, and isn't driving offense herself either because of the combo of the build being pass first. That's where the scoring defensemen add a lot of value, because they can generate points themselves too. I'm not going to say the build is bad in a vacuum, because it's not. Bo Johansson basically did the same thing, but Shindigs and Mubbles tried to build around that in Chicago and added the scoring players to make it work well. PRG didn't necessarily consider all these variables so you guys agreed to basically make Leitner worse when given the context. 

 

Is it bad to experiment? Not at all, I think there's a lot of people who are going to observe this experiment and make various conclusions about it. I don't know what will be the right one because it's a single example (season), and no 2 teams will look exactly the same.

But that's the point, the build isn't bad, it's the situation of the team as a whole, it's not built out yet. That's the point of those numbers, obviously those pass first guys are on good teams with great teammates. 

[Pifferfish 821]

24 minutes ago, v.2 said:

Someone explain Simon’s Worst Nightmare (@zepheter)

I think he actually functions in the sim as a pass first player. DF contributes to passing totals so essentially when he gets the puck the sim makes him pass and inevitably your goal scorers are quite good at scoring. 90 DF is solid.

[Spartan 4,797]

2 minutes ago, Pifferfish said:

But that's the point, the build isn't bad, it's the situation of the team as a whole, it's not built out yet. That's the point of those numbers, obviously those pass first guys are on good teams with great teammates. 

Yeah but making that decision on a limited window without the pieces in place, trading away 98 1oa all your 99's and 100 1, your situation is not going to get built out. So it comes off like you guys are trolling and all-in'ing a situation that seems very unlikely to pan out.

[Pifferfish 821]

Just now, Spartan said:

Yeah but making that decision on a limited window without the pieces in place, trading away 98 1oa all your 99's and 100 1, your situation is not going to get built out. So it comes off like you guys are trolling and all-in'ing a situation that seems very unlikely to pan out.

I do want to note, all those trade were made and agreed to before I was allowed to be an AGM so I had zero input on them. But by built out I mean we have a lot of player rerolling, Tet needs to get his numbers up on scoring. We need to get less checking. Which is all possible. The other missing piece of the puzzle is the fact that PRG is functionally either below or very close to being under the cap next season already, so while other teams need to subtract to fit in the cap, we are going to slide in nicely to it. Like, right now we have $8m in cap room or something. We were never really going to contend with that situation. It's just not feasible.

 

 

[LucyXpher 2,005]

5 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

I mean I don't think there's actually a thing in the sim as a "clean" or "dirty" hit.

I mean there is tho.  A clean hit is when it records you hitting someone and knocking them off the puck, not taking a penalty. That has value because now you have the puck.  But I'm sure you're right that it just randomly assigns penalties after a number of hits, which is why DI seems to just decrease total hits to help with pims.  There definitely is still some other stuff going on to help limit total hits and pims tho.  Like how Viktor Jensen ever had 0 Pims in a VHL season in S92 is crazy.  I think it was S92...

 

10 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

From test sims above I would disagree, each hit on average is about 0.57 penalty minutes (i.e every 4 hits you get a penalty). Which also means on an 80% PK every 20 hits results in a goal against your team. You'd need a 5% chance of scoring a goal off of each hit for it to be worth it, which there's no way that's true in the sim.

I take your point, and yeah, you're probably not getting a goal for your team on 5% of your hits.  But that also doesn't take into account the value of stopping the opposition.  Every hit and turnover means the other team can't score on that possession.  It would be very hard to see the full value of that parsed out I think with the stats STHS provides on the index, and you're probably still right that not having CK is probably better.  But in the hybrid model we still need CK for high DF and I think it's worth it.  Still on the fence about whether adding DI is worth it because it essentially just doubles the TPE cost of that extra DF

[LucyXpher 2,005]

7 minutes ago, Pifferfish said:

I think he actually functions in the sim as a pass first player. DF contributes to passing totals so essentially when he gets the puck the sim makes him pass and inevitably your goal scorers are quite good at scoring. 90 DF is solid.

yes

[Spartan 4,797]

1 minute ago, Pifferfish said:

I do want to note, all those trade were made and agreed to before I was allowed to be an AGM so I had zero input on them. But by built out I mean we have a lot of player rerolling, Tet needs to get his numbers up on scoring. We need to get less checking. Which is all possible. The other missing piece of the puzzle is the fact that PRG is functionally either below or very close to being under the cap next season already, so while other teams need to subtract to fit in the cap, we are going to slide in nicely to it. Like, right now we have $8m in cap room or something. We were never really going to contend with that situation. It's just not feasible.

 

 

If you guys are going to have like 6 players spend money on rerolls, you're then screwing everyone's depreciation in 2-3 seasons unless you're going to keep everyone's peak builds lower. Also not an optimal situation yknow? Just seems like it was hastily thrown together and it's damage control right now to try and say it can work out. Which sure it can, but the team has no picks for the next 2 drafts and an aging core.

[Banackock 8,557]

Da bearz

[Nykonax 1,643]

12 minutes ago, LucyXpher said:

I mean there is tho.  A clean hit is when it records you hitting someone and knocking them off the puck, not taking a penalty. That has value because now you have the puck

Right which I don't think exists since there's no way to really control whether a hit is clean or dirty. If you define a clean hit as just one that doesn't result in a penalty then yeah, but it's not like you can make your player make more clean hits. You can only make them hit more or less.

[sadie 1,070]

5 hours ago, Tetricide said:

Cool. Two hit pieces against Prague. I must be doing something right for all this attention. Can't wait for the group chat with the Blues!

you’ve been selected by simon for judgment apparently

[badcolethetitan 1,024]

Regardless, looks like I did my job. Forum content was created. Don’t think anyone got so heated to scream at each other and personally attack them. Glad people chimes in and gave their opinions and it was chill I believe.

 

My goal was to create content and unfortunately Prague was the target. I’m sure I’ll create some more to cause some uproar in the future.  

[LucyXpher 2,005]

1 hour ago, badcolethetitan said:

Regardless, looks like I did my job. Forum content was created. Don’t think anyone got so heated to scream at each other and personally attack them. Glad people chimes in and gave their opinions and it was chill I believe.

 

My goal was to create content and unfortunately Prague was the target. I’m sure I’ll create some more to cause some uproar in the future.  

I can appreciate this, much respects 

 

... but also... 

Edited Friday at 04:26 AM by LucyXpher

[Grape 886]

4 hours ago, LucyXpher said:

 

So I should have kept my 99 LD and 61 DI?  I was told that would be trolling... I like the new build better and I think on paper most would agree not knowing which is which.  

And as someone who has built one of the top defensemen in this generation, I think I'd know what a good defenseman build looks like

[Frank 5,451]

Simon be like

 

[LucyXpher 2,005]

17 minutes ago, Grape said:

And as someone who has built one of the top defensemen in this generation, I think I'd know what a good defenseman build looks like

i will not dispute this

 

[badcolethetitan 1,024]

1 hour ago, LucyXpher said:

I can appreciate this, much respects 

 

... but also... 

 

Who will it be in the next week(s) who knows!

[zepheter 627]

Season 8 Simons Worst Nightmare mentioned! Btw guys you gotta have higher DF. Max that attribute out and good things will happen

[Grape 886]

13 hours ago, LucyXpher said:

And here I thought you were accusing me of tanking Prague's season on purpose just so I could get a better 2nd round pick for Malmo!

Cole isn't me. Hes got a lot more finesse and subtly to his criticisms and accusations than I do.

[Kylrad 184]

On 4/10/2025 at 4:41 PM, Nykonax said:

Over the hybrid Era scoring first dmen (>450 TPE) score significantly more than pass first. Also you've gone from 86/79/92 points to a now 62 point pace. Surely your build isn't better than before?

(Sorry should clarify for people not familiar with boxplots. The thick bar in the middle is the average points scored. The top and bottom are the 25% and 75% percentiles. The lines going up and down are the range of the data. So for example the least a score first dman has scored is ~55. The average score first dman is about 80. 25% of score first dmen are below 70 points, 75% are below ~88. The highest was like 108.)