Would Jake Wylde win the Jake Wylde Trophy?

[Victor 10,829]

The concept of the Jake Wylde Trophy, the league's best “defensive” defenceman is one I argued against for many years – the reasoning being that hits and shot blocks were already taken into account in the Sterling Labatte Trophy discussion, so all an additional trophy would do is 1) muddy the waters and 2) reward mediocre players lucky enough to be on crap teams.

 

Sadly, I wasn't here to apply this logic in S58 when the trophy was actually forced into its hopefully short existence. Based on its 3-season history, hits and shot blocks are used as the defining metric for the Wylde, with the Labatte being watered down to effectively the highest-scoring defenceman (this was often the case before but with consideration for hits and SBs). The results, as I suspected, leave a lot to be desired.

 

The first winner of the Wylde in S59 was Fabio Jokinen, who shockingly had won the last proper Labatte in S58. What's more, the winner of the “new” Labatte was Ay Ay Ron...... who had better defensive stats than Jokinen too.

 

S59 stats:

Ay Ay Ron	Fabio Jokinen
100 points, 255 hits, 114 shot blocks	90 points, 217 hits, 156 shot blocks

 

How one of these can be called 'best offensive' or 'best defensive' defenceman is beyond me. In the past, the Labatte would have deservedly gone to Ron without a glorified runner-up trophy for Jokinen.

 

Peculiarly, in S61, the roles were reversed. Ay Ay Ron led all defencemen in points, and even won the Beketov Trophy with 91 assists..... but was dubbed the best defensive defenceman?

 

S61 stats:

Ay Ay Ron	Mats Johnsson
102 points, 238 hits, 140 shot blocks	95 points, 137 hits, 127 shot blocks

 

It's fair enough to say Ron was better defensively than Johnsson but surely also offensively?

 

Meanwhile in S60, the Wylde went to Dexter Lane, a 42-point player with marginally better hits and shot blocks than Ay Ay Ron. It appears that indeed the Wylde was created for the Dexter Lanes of the world and to make inexplicable decisions between defencemen who would have previously been competing for the same trophy.

 

This was meant to be the introductory rant before the main course which is the actual name of the Jake Wylde Trophy. Jake Wylde is a Hall of Fame defenceman who played between S38 and S45. He won two Labatte Trophies, so there is no indication he was overlooked for higher-scoring defencemen which appears to be the point of the trophy named after him. In fact, he too won the Beketov in one of his Labatte-winning seasons, therefore was very much a member of the elite. But perhaps by digging deeper, I can see that Wylde would have won many more trophies had an equivalent of the Wylde existed in his time.

 

Disclaimer: I will make an attempt to do so but its accuracy can not be guaranteed, considering I can't figure out the logic of 2 of the 3 winners of the award to date. Nonetheless, let's have a look.

 

Season 38

Conner Low	92 points	243 hits	134 shot blocks
Godavari Yumalatopinto	94 points	385 hits	215 shot blocks
Matt Bentley	100 points	208 hits	115 shot blocks
Jake Wylde	60 points	278 hits	170 shot blocks

 

Rookie seasons and all, so it would be unreasonable to expect Wylde to win anything off the bat. It is interesting however to look at the 3 top defencemen of the time. Low and Yumalatopinto ended up splitting the Labatte between them, but presumably Yumalatopinto would have won the Wylde instead and the Labatte would go to...... Bentley I would guess but based on S61 I am not so sure. In which case, the most decorated defenceman of all time in Conner Low would have not won anything this season. To be fair, that maybe should have happened anyway but either way the Wylde/Labatte split probably wouldn't have helped matters much.

 

Season 39

Conner Low	92 points	179 hits	86 shot blocks
Edwin Encarnacion	67 points	345 hits	120 shot blocks
Jake Wylde	54 points	275 hits	125 shot blocks

 

That's a second season of Jake Wylde not winning the Jake Wylde Trophy which would surely go to Encarnacion – the all-time leading defenceman in hits and second in career blocked shots. Considering unlike Wylde, Encarnacion never won a trophy, but would have benefited from a 'Wylde Trophy', perhaps he would have been a more appropriate name for the award....

 

Season 40

Conner Low	101 points	206 hits	119 shot blocks
Matt Bentley	88 points	236 hits	144 shot blocks
Jerrick Poole	60 points	261 hits	215 shot blocks
Jake Wylde	72 points	263 hits	102 shot blocks

 

I reckon in a head-to-head between Wylde and Poole, the Wylde would go to.... Poole. However, I'd also argue for Bentley (obviously) given the recent actual Wylde wins by Ron and Jokinen. Either way, the clusterfuck persists.

 

Season 41

Matt Bentley	102 points	223 hits	105 shot blocks
Jerrick Poole	84 points	254 hits	187 shot blocks
Jake Wylde	51 points	257 hits	96 shot blocks

 

Poole is actually doing bits in a way I hadn't even conceived of when I started writing this article. Apparently this is the man the Hall of Fame has been missing the whole time! We're living in a brave new world, so arise Sir James Lefevre, Sir Till Lindemann, and Sir Pablo Escabar. (I'm not rattling off random names, check out the highest-hitting defencemen of all-time).

 

I've also forgotten about Mr. Encarnacion since by this point I think he had more fights than points, but I wouldn't be surprised if he would also be in the 'Wylde' conversation here.

 

Season 42

Matt Bentley	108 points	214 hits	106 shot blocks
Jack Kowalski	77 points	244 hits	167 shot blocks
Jake Wylde	64 points	240 hits	106 shot blocks

 

I can't.... I can't believe it. I'm not even trying, one scroll through the season index and I find a more worthy winner of the 'most defensive' award. For those keeping count, this is now FIVE seasons into Jake Wylde's career that Jake Wylde has not won the Jake Wylde Trophy. I knew this award was deeply flawed but my expectations have been completely exceeded.

 

Season 43

This was Wylde's first Labatte Trophy season as he got 103 points, 255 hits, and 90 blocked shots. Perhaps he would have even won the Wylde this season, but then the whole Ron/Jokinen, Ron/Johnsson dilemma above suggests this is somehow taboo and the awards committee would have found someone else to award one of the trophies to.

 

Season 44

Similar to above, except I think Escobar's 330 hits and 271 shot blocks would have given him the Wylde win. So Wylde would have to make do with the Labatte.... which he won anyway.

 

Season 45

Jake Wylde	64 points	206 hits	100 shot blocks
Jerrick Poole	62 points	248 hits	149 shot blocks
Jack Kowalski	79 points	281 hits	126 shot blocks

 

The Labatte this season went to Lloyd Light by the way, but I wanted to focus on these fine gentlemen. Whether you prefer Poole or Kowalski, there is no way Wylde is named better defensively than them. That means that the maximum amount of Wyldes that Wylde could have won if Wyldes existed when Wylde played hockey is..... 1. Even that is debatable because it was in the same year as his actual Labatte. Meanwhile, the completely unheralded Poole and Kowalski probably have won 2 each. That is actually farcical and exactly why this trophy should have always remained locked away, far from the public eye.

 

 

I appreciate the intentions behind the Jake Wylde Trophy and understand that there is little recognition for defencemen other than one trophy winner per year (plus potentially playoff MVP and most assists, and in Guntis Petenis' case, a miraculous Campbell/Slobo double). However, the Wylde Trophy doesn't resolve anything, but simply rewards players who either 1) are fine without it , i.e. have their Labattes and Hall of Fame tickets stamped anyway or 2) aren't that good in the first place.

 

If we want more opportunities for defencemen recognition (and indeed all positions), I propose a proper VHL All-Star Team made up of 3F, 2D, 1G (+ a second one if you want), voted on by the awards committee, with TPE attached to it. After all, 2 TPE for awards isn't that much these days so we can definitely spare some more. The Jake Wylde Trophy though..... needs to go. We kept around silly awards like the Virkkunen and Jonsson for way too long and shouldn't make the same mistake again.

[diamond_ace 3,107]

Torn on this. There are parts of it I agree with. If you noticed, the award voting did have a vote for Ron as offensive D this year - guess who the vote was (I was also the outlier for defensive D, having gone Ironside as a member of the 200/200 club for the season). Additionally, I remember the argument against naming the award after Encarnacion was plus-minus, and I've always hated using plus-minus for anything so would have been on board naming it for Encarnacion (in fact I even tried kind of mildly nudging it in Encarnacion's direction during the discussion but it seemed from the initial post with options that he'd basically been ruled out from the get go - another one that was discussed was Yumalatopinto, but they wanted to take the prominence of the member into consideration). 

 

However, I absolutely think the award should exist, because the Labatte was always way too offensively-skewed for my tastes.

[Tagger 2,722]

Oh hey, I was mentioned! You mentioned that you weren't here for the award's induction @Victor so if you weren't aware, the award was actually originally named the Jack Sound trophy, until people asked why there was a trophy being named after him, which led to what it's called today. 

 

As for Encarnacion, it would have been nice to have had a trophy named after him given what he did in the things that it's partially measured on (As you mentioned, all-time leader in hits, second in shots blocked although the guy in first had nine seasons so fuck that shit, most hits in a season for a defenseman as well I believe) but I figured especially with the way I moved around towards weaker teams where I felt I could get the most in those stats, it was never going to happen. 

[Devise 4,475]

38 minutes ago, diamond_ace said:

However, I absolutely think the award should exist, because the Labatte was always way too offensively-skewed for my tastes.

 

You see the problem with this, is that we can't do anything about this presently. Adding Defensive D isn't somehow celebrating the D we know for sure are good defensively. We have no evidence that hits are a "defensive" statistic. We guesstimate, and go with it. Shot blocks are even worse. Despite understanding that they are defensive in nature, as has often been discussed shot blocks have a lot more to do with team make up than any sort of player skill. Tons of players who've put points into D have had low shot block totals. 

 

What you should be saying, is your problem isn't that the Labatte is always offensively-skewed, it's that the sim is. But that is the sim we have. I think the argument against top defensive D has always been, and like Victor I stand behind, we do not have the right amount of sim based evidence to make a clear cut judgement on who is a better defensive player than someone else. 

[diamond_ace 3,107]

25 minutes ago, Devise said:

 

You see the problem with this, is that we can't do anything about this presently. Adding Defensive D isn't somehow celebrating the D we know for sure are good defensively. We have no evidence that hits are a "defensive" statistic. We guesstimate, and go with it. Shot blocks are even worse. Despite understanding that they are defensive in nature, as has often been discussed shot blocks have a lot more to do with team make up than any sort of player skill. Tons of players who've put points into D have had low shot block totals. 

 

What you should be saying, is your problem isn't that the Labatte is always offensively-skewed, it's that the sim is. But that is the sim we have. I think the argument against top defensive D has always been, and like Victor I stand behind, we do not have the right amount of sim based evidence to make a clear cut judgement on who is a better defensive player than someone else. 

Don't tell me what I should be saying. I know the sim sucks at recognizing defense, but I'd rather give defensive credit based on imperfect information than give no defensive credit at all.

[scoop 3,382]

1 hour ago, diamond_ace said:

(I was also the outlier for defensive D, having gone Ironside as a member of the 200/200 club for the season).

Ironside only had 200+ shots blocked because he was an a pure trash team. In my opinion, Ay Ay Ron was miles ahead of him defensively and I'm very glad that the other voters do not share your sentiment that hits and shots blocked are literally the only two things that matter when it comes to top defensive defenseman. I do recognize, however, that there isn't really a good way to universally judge defensive players. Personally, I think if you are going to put so much stock into shots blocked, you have to also consider +/-. They are both team dependent stats, so why discount +/- entirely while basing the decision so much on shots blocked?

Edited August 19, 2018 by street

[Devise 4,475]

44 minutes ago, diamond_ace said:

Don't tell me what I should be saying. I know the sim sucks at recognizing defense, but I'd rather give defensive credit based on imperfect information than give no defensive credit at all.

 

I was basically saying you were saying that already. Not legitimately telling you what you should be saying. Typing doesn't convey tone there well enough, my apologies. 

 

Although as a counter to this, your happy awarding defensive credit based on imperfection, knowing that we could likely end up giving someone credit for something they may not deserve, or vice versa, miss someone who should get credit over nothing? I also don't think we were giving zero credit, as laid out here. Labatte always had consideration for defensive stats. 

[Beaviss 4,956]

There is more information available but you have to expand on it in the old portal to see more stats.Stuff like PK time and success etc. That’s the true stat with +/- to judge who’s best.

[diamond_ace 3,107]

5 hours ago, Devise said:

 

I was basically saying you were saying that already. Not legitimately telling you what you should be saying. Typing doesn't convey tone there well enough, my apologies. 

 

Although as a counter to this, your happy awarding defensive credit based on imperfection, knowing that we could likely end up giving someone credit for something they may not deserve, or vice versa, miss someone who should get credit over nothing? I also don't think we were giving zero credit, as laid out here. Labatte always had consideration for defensive stats. 

In my ideal world, we'd use the version of the sim that has TA and GA. I know such a version exists because we tried it out briefly one preseason and then decided we didn't like the scoring rate or something, but I preferred that even when others didn't

[Victor 10,829]

10 hours ago, diamond_ace said:

However, I absolutely think the award should exist, because the Labatte was always way too offensively-skewed for my tastes.

That's mainly true, as in a certain amount of points was always considered necessary to enter the conversation, but again I don't think it overlooked any of the best defencemen in the league anyway. Any defenceman who was built for the HOF was basically built to enter the Labatte discussion, whichever the came at it (hits or just assists).

 

The Wylde meanwhile is skewed towards.... I don't even know, that's the problem. The main beneficiaries from this appear to be Dexter Lane, Jerrick Poole, and Jack Kowalski.... which I don't think really is hugely merited.

 

Which is why the All-Star team idea I think is viable. The awards committee can say at the outset, OK, we're going to include the Labatte winner but also any really impressive defensive guys for fair representation. If you have 2 teams, that's 4 defencemen slots which should really cover all bases in a single season. So even if points aren't your thing, you still get recognition and TPE (+I would say some level of consideration in the HOF discussion), while the Labatte carries on going to genuinely the most impressive defenceman in the league (based on the limited amount of info we have). The current split is too diluted IMO and I think both awards are weaker for it. I think a player being considered for HOF with 2 Labattes in their current form holds a lot less weight than 2 Labattes in the past.

[TheLastOlympian07 2,388]

I'm not sure why we aren't ok with this when don't we award the best defensive forward for the same imperfect stats basically? im not 100% for this but its a sim league. have fun with it

[Victor 10,829]

14 hours ago, TheLastOlympian07 said:

I'm not sure why we aren't ok with this when don't we award the best defensive forward for the same imperfect stats basically? im not 100% for this but its a sim league. have fun with it

Because the Boulet is awarded consistently to the highest scorers with the most hits, not some random combination of hits and shot blocks.