What "league average" might look like after expansion

[studentized 166]

With two more teams being added to the VHL we will almost certainly see a reduction across the league in terms of the TPA of the average player. Just using S67 data, we get that VHL teams roster, on average, 3.9 centres, 4.5 wingers, 4.9 defensemen, and 1.5 goalies. The addition of the expansion teams should open up close to 30 new player spots. I thought I would look at what this might translate to in terms of quality of play, by looking at how big of a drop off there would be in average player TPE had two more teams existed in S67.

 

For this to actually be a good measure of what to expect in S68 we would need to make some pretty big assumptions:

1. the quality/quantity of newly drafted players and retiring players is similar to years past
2. the players that will fill the new spots will be "below average" players (relative to what we think "average" is now).
3. the TPE opportunities for members are held relatively constant (i.e no significant "TPE inflation")
4. the number of players per team will be kept mostly the same

 

All of these seem pretty reasonable, except maybe the 1) and 2) . Just as a sanity check, the table below shows how the VHLM has grown from season 60 to 67. We can see that S67 is very close to S66 in terms of the number of players and the average TPA of them. The supply of new players should be pretty similar as to what we had this past season, making assumption 1) seem fair.

 

 

Assumption 2) makes a lot of intuitive sense (if you are above VHL average, you'd probably already be playing in the VHL), but there are always outliers for rookies. For example: the highest end-of-season TPA by a rookie (since at least season 60) was Hunter Hearst Helmsley in S66 with a TPA of 551. This put him in the 66th percentile of all players his season, well above average. Since I don't imagine assumption 2) will hold perfectly, my calculations below end up working more as estimates of the lower bound of what league average could look like, rather than on-point measures

 

Because there are only 10 teams in the VHL presently, it actually makes the math pretty easy to figure out what the median player TPA might be next season:
- the current average player is the median (aka 50th percentile)
- two more teams added (out of 10) translates into ~20%  more players per position
- assuming the new players compare closer to the lower end of active VHL players instead of the middle (assumption 2), then the median of the S68 players would be the 40th percentile of the S67 ones.

 

Here's what that looks broken down by position. NOTE: in all of this, I've only looked at players with min 60 GP in the season and goalies with min 10 GP

 

The biggest drop-offs will be noticed at goalie and left wing and the smallest drop-off at RW. None of this is really unexpected honestly (although I was surprised to see a much higher quality in RW players versus LW ones), but it does provide a new benchmark for what teams can aim for if they want to be above average post-expansion. Overall, the best thing about this is that the drop-offs are not too large, which is important for league expansions in general; you don't want quality too suffer too much just to get a few more teams in.

[Beaviss 4,958]

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