How Does the VHL Need to Respond to Its Growing Player Base?

[Renomitsu 934]

How Does the VHL Need to Respond to Its Growing Player Base?

 

An integral part of rumors for the league over the last season has been the need to accommodate increasingly large classes, as evidenced by large S66 and incoming S67 Entry Draft(s). Many suggested the S66 class was a perfect storm of excellent recruiting and affiliation with other large leagues – but that’s proven not to be the case, as S67’s class now has 91 players that have earned any TPE, including at least 41 that have hit 100 TPE. While that’s slightly below S66’s mark of 50 players of at least 100 TPE, there’s still another update or two left for this incoming class.

 

Let’s set some definitions for ‘retained’ new players versus ‘active’/’inactive’ rostered players so we can start talking about the need to expand or change lines in earnest.

 

First, a ‘retained’ player is a draftee that’s earned at least Welfare (+4) for each of the eight weeks since the last S66 Rankings update (as in at least +32); that means the S66 draft class has exactly 47 retained players (58.7% of draftees) based on my most recent articles’ research.

 

Next, an ‘active’ rostered player is one that’s earned any point task or welfare in the last month or so (ending with the week of May 12). An inactive one is any player that doesn’t meet that criteria; note that any S60 or S61 player saving for regression is counted as active.

 

Where, exactly, does that leave us in terms of the league as a whole?

 

 

 

It’s kind of hard to decipher any meaningful data from the team-by-team tables, aside from maybe the fact that the Legion and Bears are old and the most recent expansion teams are absurdly young. But consider the lower portion of the table, where I’ve marked the total active defensemen (D), forwards (F), and goalies (G) in each phase of their career.

 

Active S66 VHLM players >150 TPE are included to suggest which of this year’s draft class are likely to be called up come next season. More importantly, this brings to the surface exactly how much hidden impact is still left in this unusually large class – among them studs like Saskatoon defenseman Rusty Shackleford (293 current TPE), Ottawa center Jordan Tonn (266), and Minnesota’s Mat Tocco (265), who I’ve covered in previous articles.

 

Let’s do some simple math, shall we? If we take likely call-ups (i.e. exclude inactives, low TPE S66 players) from the VHLM, we’re left with 57 forwards, 25 defensemen, and 8 goalies between S64-S66 (all current early-phase players). What are the implications of this?

 

1)     We have enough defenders for 2 per team – plus change – with just S64-S66 players

2)     Similarly, S64-S66 has enough forwards for nearly two full lines (6 forwards)

3)     Lastly, we could nearly fill the league with S64-66 goalies as starters.

 

Remember that this isn’t even taking into account incoming Season 67 Entry Draftees – but to be fair, there were only 23 active draftees from the Season 66 class that went straight into the VHL, and two of them went inactive. But we want to give the best argument against change and conservatively estimate S67’s draftees relative to S66 – let’s suppose we have 50% draftee retention for a slightly smaller class (40 players), and that they’re roughly distributed into a 9F-4D-1G arrangement, or roughly 25 forwards, 11 defenders, and 4 goalies.

 

This means that, between S64-S67, we have 82 forwards, 36 defensemen, and 12 goalies – enough for nearly three lines of forwards, roughly 4 defenders per team, and slightly more goalies than we need.

 

Numbers don’t lie, and even if we lost an additional 10% of players at each position we’d have enough for 2.5 lines of forwards, 1.5 lines of defenders, and a starting goalie for every franchise plus one.

 

Point Made. What Do We Do?

 

To answer the question above, we need to know the league’s priorities – for example, how much they want to preserve the current structure of the league. Here are just a handful of the considerations the BoG, administrators, and current + future GMs need to think over:

 

1) How important is ice time?

2) Similarly, how important are league-wide stars?

3) How important is team recognition?

4) How do we engage a larger player base?

5) When do we make the change?

 

Elephant #1 – Ice Time

 

Ice time is one of the most important issues to discuss with regards to player engagement, and begs the question: does the league expand, change the number of lines, or limit ice time by endurance?

 

The league can’t simply afford to tuck this problem away and hope for the best without any adverse consequences, because an adjustment of some sort has to be under consideration provided the larger classes. Unless the recruitment team is immediately dissolved, we can expect classes to be significantly larger than the Season 65 Entry Draft at the very least, and that’s simply not amenable to the current league structure as-is.

 

Let’s suppose we were to strictly expand to fit our current player-base – and, to play it safe, let’s suppose every regression-phase player retired. Right now, this season.

 

From S62-S67, we’d have 94 forwards, 49 defensemen, and 16 goalies, and assuming we’re sticking with our current arrangement of 6F-4D-1G, we’d need about 15 teams to accommodate the forwards specifically. As we expect, we’d see a shortage of defensemen and essentially no backup goalies, which would probably be nightmarish, and frankly a 5-team expansion is ridiculous. With 12 teams total, we would see roughly 9 forwards, 5 defensemen, and 1.25 goalies per team, which is probably a little more manageable; it also requires a line expansion, which I’ll discuss in a moment. But many members are pretty tired of expansion after Moscow and Malmö, and it’s likely that some members are tired of being moved from team to team with little to no agency.

 

The current paradigm of 2 skater lines for forwards/defensemen and 1 goalie (+backup) has worked well for the vast majority of the league’s existence, save a few teams being pretty light on defenders. But new players typically want to make forwards (or compromise and make offensive defensemen), which has slowly skewed draft classes in favor of forwards over the last few seasons. More importantly, team success in the league as-is is based on compact rosters of high-TPE players. It makes logical sense and has also been the case this season. The Helsinki Titans – runaway Victory Cup winners for S66 – have 80% of their forward playing time focused on six players, while rookies like Ludvig Sederstrom get 15% of total even-strength time. Similarly, the North American Conference-winning Calgary Wranglers rotate between the same six forwards, while the Vancouver Wolves (with a higher average TPE team vs. team, even when including 57 TPE G Patrick Vigneault) give more time to their rookies.

 

Is it ‘wrong’ for Calgary and Helsinki to win this way? No. It’s not ethically, legally, or morally wrong in any sense. They’re playing within the rules of the league, and possibly didn’t even plan their rosters around this tight 11-player rotation. Beyond that, line coaching, astute trading, and mortgaging the future has without a doubt been an important part of their success. @Quik has done a damn good job assembling a crack team of players this season. But that doesn’t mean the league shouldn’t change.

 

Changing the number of lines was probed in Project jRuutu, @jRuutu / @Beaviss, which revealed that the majority of the league was in favor of change at least to 3 mandatory forward lines. But it’s worth noting that a very significant minority of the league – 37% of votes – opted to keep the current set-up. We’re not going to discuss GM players here, as I feel they’re an added dimension to this argument that’s a bit touchy and frankly has only a modest influence in favor of action on behalf of the league – the GMs are well-aware of this factor, as are the BoG and administrators. And frankly, I think that a handful of the ‘keep as-is’ votes can be swayed just by the volume numbers showcased in the introduction to this article. Were we to change with respect to lines, the current suggestion of 9 forwards, 4 defensemen, and 1-2 goalies using the Louth rule actually very neatly fits the current distribution of players written out above.

 

Elephant #2 – ‘Star Power’ and Team Recognition

At least part of the reason most of us participate in sim leagues is a chance to fulfill a fantasy of being a star player in a hockey league. Maybe that’s just me projecting – but being able to follow a single player that you’re solely responsible for at least in part points toward that mentality.

 

Part of being in a larger league means a little less overall recognition, even if GMs were to become more adamant about recognizing players on an individual basis. I’m not about to start tagging 30 players in each of my articles, and neither will many, if any Media Spot or VSN writers. Part of this argument ties in to the ‘ice time’ factor outlined above, but lower overall player statistics due to deeper teams, or less time in the limelight because of more teams is effectively inevitable. To be honest, I’m not sure that individual recognition can be completely addressed by the league with any solution. That is, recognition will HAVE to decrease because of a larger player base. That makes the highs (like MVP/MOP) higher, but only for the one or two players that achieve it per season.

 

The change most amenable to retaining ‘star power’ (individual recognition) is probably expansion, because it allows players to stand-out better within a division or conference and permits more ‘first-line’ ice time for comparison. A decrease in ice time due to endurance or line number changes, on the other hand, doesn’t allow for gaudy numbers and buries lower-level players on major league teams for the majority of their career. I’m no formal VHL researcher, but my intuition tells me that isn’t an indicator for increased player retention. It’s a step in the more realistic direction, of course, but a deviation from one of the original intents of the league. More importantly, though, player and team recognition seem to work in opposite directions as the league grows.

 

  || 

 

When comparing larger leagues (in terms of # of teams) like the SBA to the EFL and VHL, I anecdotally feel as though it’s harder to connect with a tremendous number of teams. But since the SBA is limited to five starters, they’ve needed to start with and expand to a larger number of teams – at present, they have 24 college/minor league teams and 16 major league teams. If you asked me to name even five of the SBA teams, I’d be hard-pressed to in spite of being on an NCAA team for nearly two full seasons. It’s hard to feel engaged in a league where the brands don’t ‘stick’ – and I worry that the league may move in that direction if forced to expand too many times. I felt comfortable naming most of the VHL and VHLM teams by the time I finished my first season in the VHLM, and definitely could at least recognize their logos.

 

Part of this is because the VHL has relatively fewer teams – but another part of it is because administration and the BoG painstakingly ensure teams are distinct and recognizable. Rapid expansion isn’t conducive to this, but I have little to no concern about the staff’s ability to maintain this level of brand identity if they continue to select good GMs.

 

Elephant #3 – When Do We Make the Change?

 

I'll be quik. I think the league should make a change, and relatively soon.

 

Last season, there was a lot of hesitance with respect to expansion and line changes, but we need to understand that change was once on the horizon, and now is in plain sight. Change should happen in the next season or two unless we want competitive balancing to be around who can acquire the smallest core of high TPE players and leave tons of draft picks – and more importantly, new members – in limbo or buried in the fourth line of an absurdly deep, young team.

 

Maybe for the next season we leave a ‘soft’ (i.e. unenforced) 3 F line requirement in while trying to figure things out. It isn’t easy to keep long-term GMs, and sussing out just the right candidate(s) will be hard. We could take a season to give current managers a break from losing players to expansion and start a search for a great pair of expansion GMs.

 

The best option is probably to change line requirements and expand. People are resistant to change, but unless we expect a considerable slowing of new members and/or a sudden drop in player retention, we can’t dig in and hope that the league stays precisely the same.

 

What would you do in the BoGs’ position? Do we need additional seasons to run the numbers, or is the league's current state enough for you to make a move?

[Beaviss 4,957]

This is the best right up of my argument for expansion ever..... Thank you @Renomitsu

 

12 minutes ago, Renomitsu said:

The best option is probably to change line requirements and expand. People are resistant to change, but unless we expect a considerable slowing of new members and/or a sudden drop in player retention, we can’t dig in and hope that the league stays precisely the same.

 

This sums it up perfectly.

[Dil 1,760]

Continuing to expand every season isn’t something that should happen. More lines.

[Renomitsu 934]

10 minutes ago, DilIsPickle said:

Continuing to expand every season isn’t something that should happen. More lines.

I agree, and it's frustrating for players trying to make a name for themselves to be handed off to the most recent expansion team.

 

I just also know that a sizable portion of the league's old heads don't want to mess with lines, but I'm all for it.

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

A very good article that puts out the pros and cons of all decisions in an unbiased way.

 

Only thing I'd point out is that in regards to the poll about if members would prefer 2 or 3 line teams is that I feel a poll like this is going to be biased towards whatever the new plan of action is, given that those interested in the change are going to be more likely to click on the article.

[Renomitsu 934]

24 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

Only thing I'd point out is that in regards to the poll about if members would prefer 2 or 3 line teams is that I feel a poll like this is going to be biased towards whatever the new plan of action is, given that those interested in the change are going to be more likely to click on the article.

That's absolutely true, and worth considering. The question then becomes, 'how does this change our (hypothetical) course of action?'

 

I'd be interested to see what the balance would be if the choices were something like (1) line changes w/o expansion or (2) expansion w/o line changes, just to see what would be pushed back against the least if done first. I'm not sure if the league can afford to do neither - and I feel like those wanting to remain at two lines would be split between 'no change, period' and 'I'm reluctant, but am alright with expansion.'

[Beketov 9,025]

10 hours ago, Renomitsu said:

 

Changing the number of lines was probed in Project jRuutu, @jRuutu / @Beaviss, which revealed that the majority of the league was in favor of change at least to 3 mandatory forward lines.

Personally I found 2 issues with this. First, and more simply, I hate the idea of forcing roster minimums. It just feels wrong to say teams will be punished for not having a certain number of players and giving them a certain amount of ice time. It’s micro-managing the teams to a degree I’m not comfortable with.

 

Second, I find any public poll like that is going to be skewed. Specifically in this case newer members will tend to think they want whatever gets the league closer to “NHL Level” without considering what that actually means for the league. People can say they want 3+ lines but then they also say they don’t want to player the lower minutes those 3rd lines end up with; you see the issue.

 

Obviously I don’t want to keep rapidly expanding, I’ve made this clear in the past. I don’t think it’s remotely sustainable let alone cost effective. We’ve added 5 VHLM teams and 2 VHL teams within the last 4 seasons I think. If we keep doing that it will inevitably bite us in the ass. Unfortunately teams are clearly proving that winning with fewer lines is not only possible but recommended so things are incredibly challenging to balance.

[Renomitsu 934]

2 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Personally I found 2 issues with this. First, and more simply, I hate the idea of forcing roster minimums. It just feels wrong to say teams will be punished for not having a certain number of players and giving them a certain amount of ice time. It’s micro-managing the teams to a degree I’m not comfortable with.

 

Second, I find any public poll like that is going to be skewed. Specifically in this case newer members will tend to think they want whatever gets the league closer to “NHL Level” without considering what that actually means for the league. People can say they want 3+ lines but then they also say they don’t want to player the lower minutes those 3rd lines end up with; you see the issue.

 

Obviously I don’t want to keep rapidly expanding, I’ve made this clear in the past. I don’t think it’s remotely sustainable let alone cost effective. We’ve added 5 VHLM teams and 2 VHL teams within the last 4 seasons I think. If we keep doing that it will inevitably bite us in the ass. Unfortunately teams are clearly proving that winning with fewer lines is not only possible but recommended so things are incredibly challenging to balance.

 

I agree that forcing roster minimums would be a pretty big ask of VHL GMs, a headache for simmers/whoever audits lines, and nightmarish to figure out the logistics of. In essence, we'd be asking every GM to carry 14 players at a minimum, possibly 16, and likely forcing bigger/desperation contracts on lesser players in order to meet that minimum - there are a lot of problems with making rosters more rigid, and I've sampled only a small portion here.

 

I also agree with you in regards to the public poll - it will be skewed in favor of change just based on the subset of the user base the title attracts. Also, losing ice time sucks, and I know that without having ever played or followed hockey. Losing it disproportionately in unregulated rosters probably stinks too. We don't see many players from Riga or Davos touching the 90+ point mark, and it's a miracle that Reencarnacion has managed 97 points on the thirtieth most minutes of any forward (1884 this season vs. 2000 for all 100+ point forwards), making him the third most-efficient scorer at 1.02 pp20. As a complete aside, Jet Jaguar has been having a monster rookie season with just <1500 minutes played and 90 points scored.

 

At the end of the day, I understand only a small portion of the logistical difficulties in deciding the future of the league. I've never led one or even really stayed around for more than 4-5 seasons at a time, and perhaps it's unfair for me to make an article like this without more qualifications.

 

All I ask, really, is that we continue taking a serious look at what the league will do for an expanding player base (a great problem to have, don't get me wrong) and am thankful that we have admins and commissioners that are willing to meaningfully write us back.

[Rayzor_7 741]

This was amazingly written @Renomitsu

The amount of depth to it and the fact that you brought solutions and not just the problems is great!

 

As for the solutions, I think all of them have very good potential. It'll be up to board members to decide what the best course of action is. I would like if they polled the league on it but at the same time I can see why they may not. 

 

I'm going to avoid the specifics for each thing as I think that's already well discussed but I like a lot of these options.

[Shaka 228]

Always a good problem to have. 

[Kyle 667]

Great article, I have to say I'm really shocked at how the league has bounced back. Last player I had it really seemed like the league was against the ropes and dying. We had a lot of veterans of the league kinda all leaving or becoming much less active within the same time span. And our recruiting wasn't doing well enough to have people replace those guys. For awhile our league desperately relied on recreates. Seeing it more healthy than it's ever been as well as the new portal and the ability to update through it has been huge. Not to mention a lot of people in power positions now aren't names I really recognize, which is definitely a good thing.

 

Recruiting was always a huge issue for us and I think we chalked it mostly up to sim leagues not being as popular as they used to be, but I think the use of the portal and the easy streamlined way of updating has made things easier for people to integrate. As well as the ability to obtain TPE a bit easier, because it used to be a bitch if you wanted to hit 1,000 TPE haha. So great job to the recruiting team as well for finally getting their hooks in and pulling a lot of new members in. 

 

Well done to the guys who really turned the ship around and have made this league more popular than it's ever been. A lot to be proud of fellas  @Will @Beketov @Quik

Edited June 16, 2019 by Kyle

[Devise 4,475]

Just want to add to chorus that this was a very well written and done article. I read it last night and wanted to collect some of my thoughts before responding but well done.@Renomitsu

 

While the talk around what specifically we are doing as the player base has grown has slowed a little behind the scenes, there still very much has been active conversation about the best course of action. Some have argued in favor of more rapid expansion, or as this article suggests opening ourselves up to the possibility of more regular deep rosters. As was mentioned above roster minimums are not something we want to full on impose, and because of that if teams can still win with the "VHL Standard" of roster size tons of players are either not going to find teams, or find good spots. Obviously this has to be addressed because that isn't good for the league. I will say though I do appreciate how articulate you were in terms of presenting the argument from both sides here. Mostly because I think those of us who aren't in favor of such reactionary rapid fixes, have been here long enough to understand that just because you have the desired intent when you enact a change doesn't mean the league is going to take to it, or use it the way you anticipate. Things like quik expansion, or forced roster minimums obviously can fall into those categories. 

 

That said I do think we need to do something I think some of us are just a little stumped as to what. Expansion as needed is and always will be something we have to explore, to a limit of course. I am a firm believer that provided we continue to expand one team at a time as needed, allowing said team an opportunity to have a decent roster like we have the last two VHL expansions is good. Although I totally recognize that it alone isn't enough, and all it does in terms of fighting the larger player base is slow down the bleeding for another season or two at best. 

 

Ultimately, our goal is to try to find a way to accommodate as much of the larger player base as possible. Not just in terms of teams and homes, but also good fits for their players. Right now and what seems to be being organically pushed is a hybrid from the VHL standard of line set-up with deeper rosters. However the situation we find ourselves in now is a majority of the player base not really thrilled with individual statistics due to the heavy league parity coming from every team being able to compete to some semblance of a degree. No win is really a gimme, even against the worst teams in most cases. This is in spite of the fact that many teams are employing different approaches. So while the hybrid model has shown success in that sense that GM's can be encouraged to not stick with the standard VHL line system, at the same time it is also hurting not just stats but stats relative. Players/members not feeling like earning TPE really is the only factor can lead to members retiring/leaving just as likely as them not having homes can. 

 

I think we need to do our best with salary cap changes to accommodate and adjust to this hybrid method of team building. I know the Prime Cap aspect has had some controversy but as we continue to re-think and expand it, I think something there could be done to adjust even more emphasis on benefits of having a larger roster. However to combat the overwhelming league parity I honestly think we need to look at in-house solutions. While it has long been a standard to treat the VHLM as an entry-point league, I do think forcing players to stay down in the VHLM for longer is pretty much needed. The VHLM has an ability to expand more rapidly than the VHL due to stability from recruitment and the recycling of some of the current player base. That level of change has less overall impact on the structure/stability of the league than it does in the VHL.

 

Thus to me it seems a logical course of action would be to both increase overall player careers to 10 seasons and up the cap in the VHLM from 200 to even as low as 300 would make a dent to be honest. I realize some members may not like playing another season in the VHLM, but being able to extend your career two more seasons to make up for it seems like a fair trade off. We could still incentivize members who wish to only play out the 8 seasons by offering better carry-over for retiring before your 9th or 10th season. The trade off would be probably having to restructure contracts, which needs to be done anyway. It's silly that we pay prime level salaries for players on veteran seasons when overall TPE and depreciation is much lower. A rookie, prime, and veteran contract system seem logical in this instance with Rookie 1-3, Prime 4-7 and veteran 8-10. Ideally, slowing the pace at which players enter the VHL, combined with limited expansion as needed and an emphasis on larger rosters should house members as we need. Adding extra seasons should at least give members who feel the parity is too harsh more seasons/more opportunities to find their niche. This would also lessen the blow of having to play less minutes in some seasons. 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2019 by Devise

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

I don't want to quote @Devise and take up a whole page so I'm just going to add a couple of thoughts:

 

• I think TEMPORARILY the best move to to continue to use larger than usual rosters - most likely 9F/4D/1or2G. However, the end goal should be to primarily use 6F/4D/1or2G, for all the reasons that are usually stated
• Next season I think we need to actually slow down on recruitment, and perhaps not even run any active recruitment drives. I know this won't be popular with the  @Recruitment Crew , but we have to get our house in order
• I don't see how adding extra career length will help alleviate this problem, even with an increase in time in the minors. I think it would actually have the opposite effect, as players won't be removed from the player pool for an extended period of time.
• This is all going to make HoF and award voting very messy, as some players will be playing on smaller rosters and some on larger rosters with less playing time. Either way, it'll be harder to make comparisons to past players with these changes in the league.
• I think the time of true backup goalies is coming - at least starting our your career as one. Again, this is something that's going to affect goalie stats.
• It may be time to start expansion proceedings in the BoG, perhaps for S68.

[Beaviss 4,957]

I think we need to be proactive and not reactive when it comes to expansion. As @Renomitsu explained we don't have room with the prospect coming up this next season from last season's draft let alone the season's. Who cares if we expand x2 and the rosters are a little shallow for a season? Me and the recruitment crew can fill the league up every season easy. Half way through the season I have to stop Recruitment anyways.... I think if you want the league to be bigger and better we need to prepare in advance instead of waiting till there's a problem. 

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

14 minutes ago, Beaviss said:

I think we need to be proactive and not reactive when it comes to expansion. As @Renomitsu explained we don't have room with the prospect coming up this next season from last season's draft let alone the season's. Who cares if we expand x2 and the rosters are a little shallow for a season? Me and the recruitment crew can fill the league up every season easy. Half way through the season I have to stop Recruitment anyways.... I think if you want the league to be bigger and better we need to prepare in advance instead of waiting till there's a problem. 

 

Personally, I don't believe that bigger = better. You lose some of the closeness of the community when it gets too large.

[Beaviss 4,957]

6 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

 

Personally, I don't believe that bigger = better. You lose some of the closeness of the community when it gets too large.

 

The league was super close around 1 1/2 years ago and it almost died. The more members we have the better imo. More members = more activity = more fun. 

[Beketov 9,025]

10 hours ago, Beaviss said:

 

The league was super close around 1 1/2 years ago and it almost died. The more members we have the better imo. More members = more activity = more fun. 

You’re really over-simplifying things for your argument though. One could just as easily say 1 and 1/2 years ago we had more teams than we could realistically sustain with the amount of quality players we had, it works both ways.

 

People are too quick to forget that this isn’t 100% about the numbers. We look at it like math and are trying to fit 100 people into 80 spots or whatever but there needs to be a balance. If we simply expand to accommodate numbers we forget about the members that make up those numbers. At the end of the day people don’t like losing or playing for shitty teams so an imbalance will always be struck and that imbalance is made worse when rosters are spread more thinly. We had to contract not purely because of a total number but because people were massing to the best teams while rebuilding teams were left with nothing. My fear is we expand too much and end up in the same situation but exaggerated as 1/4 of the league would be in its first 3 seasons and be terrible. Congrats, you aren’t on an expansion team: you make the playoffs. There’s not much fun in that.

 

We’ve also seem the last two seasons that draft classes have been huge but post draft retention has been way down. @hedgehog337‘s latest articles kinda hit home for me how few draftees have stuck around despite us having our deepest draft ever. If you look at pure numbers sure, the league might need more teams, but if you look at how long those members stay I’d argue the outcome isn’t as good. You talk about being proactive but you’re doing it to an extreme, expanding to fit draft classes that we don’t know the quality of yet. Sure, a draft could have 40 players that immediately go up to the VHL and need spots but it doesn’t help the league if those spots are open and yet 3/4 of the players go inactive within a season. I’m all for making sure active players have ice time (within a good balance) but I don’t want to expand just so inactives can have top line minutes.

[Acydburn 1,607]

4 hours ago, Beketov said:

You’re really over-simplifying things to for your argument though. One could just as easily say 1 and 1/2 years ago we had more teams than we could realistically sustain with the amount of quality players we had.

 

People are too quik to forget that this isn’t 100% about the numbers. We look at it like math and are trying to fit 100 people into 80 spots or whatever but there needs to be a balance. If we simply expand to accommodate numbers we forget about the members that make up those numbers. At the end of the day people don’t like losing or playing for shitty teams so an imbalance will always be struck and that imbalance is made worse when rosters are spread more thinly. We had to contract not purely because of a total number but because people were massing to the best teams while rebuilding teams were left with nothing. My fear is we expand too much and end up in the same Aristide but exaggerated as 1/4 of the league would be in its first 3 seasons and be terrible. Congrats, you aren’t on an expansion team: you make the playoffs. There’s not much fun in that.

I'm not sure if I fully agree with this. I've only been in the VHLM for one season now so I may be a bit skewed in my views, but I would love to be an an expansion team to prove that you can be competitive right off the bat and i'm sure others can agree. If this is a road that the league is going down, why not do something similar to the NHL and have an expansion draft? That way you can get some half way decent players and be semi-competitive off the bat without a roster full of rookies. If the teams are 6-4-1 then you're allowed to protect 7 or 8 players, draftees included, or something similar. Unfortunately I think you'll always have people who think they deserve first line minutes when they truly don't or always want to be on the team that wins the league in points. I think that is such a small number (but the loudest) and it skews the league. I would like to think, i'm not the only one who wants wins/trophies given instead of earned.

[Beketov 9,025]

Just now, Acydburn said:

I'm not sure if I fully agree with this. I've only been in the VHLM for one season now so I may be a bit skewed in my views, but I would love to be an an expansion team to prove that you can be competitive right off the bat and i'm sure others can agree. If this is a road that the league is going down, why not do something similar to the NHL and have an expansion draft? That way you can get some half way decent players and be semi-competitive off the bat without a roster full of rookies. If the teams are 6-4-1 then you're allowed to protect 7 or 8 players, draftees included, or something similar. Unfortunately I think you'll always have people who think they deserve first line minutes when they truly don't or always want to be on the team that wins the league in points. I think that is such a small number (but the loudest) and it skews the league. I would like to think, i'm not the only one who wants wins/trophies given instead of earned.

We do have expansion drafts, we have with all of the VHLM expansions and both the VHL ones. It isn’t just teams of rookies for sure but the expansion teams certainly aren’t getting the superstars either and it shows.

 

I don’t deny some people would want to play for expansion teams, Hell I almost went to Malmo in FA. I just don’t think expanding in-sustainably makes sense just to have a pile of new teams that we can’t fill with active players. It’s easier to expand than to contract; I’d rather avoid doing the latter again.

 

I’m also not 100% anti-expansion I just think we need to slow down for at least a season. We can’t be adding 4 teams in 3 years and expecting things to just keep running perfectly; especially when 2/3 of draft classes will go inactive. I don’t believe GM’s are of the mindset that they want to draft people and never sign them so I would expect that more ice time will naturally open up as more players are drafted so long as we keep the cap reasonable to allow for that. Obviously within reason but there’s no rule saying you can’t have more than 11 players so it will happen naturally and create better parity in the league than having 8/12 teams in the playoffs and the other 4 being expansion teams.

[Acydburn 1,607]

3 minutes ago, Beketov said:

We do have expansion drafts, we have with all of the VHLM expansions and both the VHL ones. It isn’t just teams of rookies for sure but the expansion teams certainly aren’t getting the superstars either and it shows.

 

I don’t deny some people would want to play for expansion teams, Hell I almost went to Malmo in FA. I just don’t think expanding in-sustainably makes sense just to have a pile of new teams that we can’t fill with active players. It’s easier to expand than to contract; I’d rather avoid doing the latter again.

 

I’m also not 100% anti-expansion I just think we need to slow down for at least a season. We can’t be adding 4 teams in 3 years and expecting things to just keep running perfectly; especially when 2/3 of draft classes will go inactive. I don’t believe GM’s are of the mindset that they want to draft people and never sign them so I would expect that more ice time will naturally open up as more players are drafted so long as we keep the cap reasonable to allow for that. Obviously within reason but there’s no rule saying you can’t have more than 11 players so it will happen naturally and create better parity in the league than having 8/12 teams in the playoffs and the other 4 being expansion teams.

I agree with what you're saying, I think waiting a season is the best method and see how things work out. I'm not sure what the S68 draft class looks like, I know the S66 and S67 are of decent size. I would be curious to see the VHL retirees/VHLM members moving to VHL ratio. I would also be interested in the amount of members who create a player and go inactive within 3-4 weeks. 

[Beketov 9,025]

Just now, Acydburn said:

I agree with what you're saying, I think waiting a season is the best method and see how things work out. I'm not sure what the S68 draft class looks like, I know the S66 and S67 are of decent size. I would be curious to see the VHL retirees/VHLM members moving to VHL ratio. I would also be interested in the amount of members who create a player and go inactive within 3-4 weeks. 

Our retention rate immediately has been much better but we’ve noticed lately that activity is dropping off post-draft so around the 1-2 month range. That heavily skews data for stuff like this because it means huge draft numbers but it doesn’t matter if 75/100 people are inactive before the end of their rookie season.

 

Right now the ratio is definitely higher of people joining than people retiring but that’s to be expected. This season is retirement for the S59 players and we didn’t get these major sized draft classes until at least S63 or S64. The ratio will naturally even out a bit once we hit those draft classes retiring.

[Motzaburger 1,590]

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