Proof That Houston Isn’t the Team Playing The Most Out of Expectation

[Plate 386]

It’s normal for teams to be bad. In fact, it’s even okay for there to be bad teams. Teams that don’t do well in the season have opportunity to sell their players to picks and gain spots in the draft. Being bad, in most cases *cough* Halifax *cough*, is temporary.

When I was looking at Houston I was thinking to myself “If Houston wasn’t so bad, what would the league look like?”. I wanted to figure this out with math. So, I made a spreadsheet, put in some numbers, made some formulas, and came out with something neat.

 

I took the TP totals of every team and divided it by the amount of points that team had. If Halifax had 100 points and they had 1000 TP in their roster, then their TP per Point (or TP3) would be 10. I did that with every team, found the average, and then gave or took points away from teams until they were as close to the average as possible.

 

The way I will be showing the results is by giving or taking away wins from teams as they are in the standings now. The team with the least amount of change has played as closest to expectation as possible. I will be going down the list in ascending amount of change from where they are now.

 

Important to note that not all the wins/losses equal out, this is a team by team basis. Let us get into it.  
 

#12

Spoiler

 

#12 Philadelphia, 1 point difference

Current Record: 44 – 14 – 5   
Should be Record: 43 – 14 – 6
Change: 1 – 0 – (1)

Philly is playing the closest to expectation. They have put up a tally of 93 points putting them comfortably in third. If you’re a fan of the Reapers, or you play for them, congratulate yourself on how consistent your team is. They’ll do a deep playoff run this year and I can’t see them being anywhere but the finals.

 

 

#11

Spoiler

 

#11 Las Vegas, 6 point difference

Current Record: 43 – 18 – 2
Should be Record: 40 – 21 – 2
Change: 3 – (3) – 0

Vegas is slightly playing above expectations. They’re a contender in the playoffs and are battling it out evenly with Mexico City for that number four slot in the standings. It will be interesting to see them duke it out for that extra position. Overall, nothing much to say about the small difference this team is playing over where they should be.

 

 

#10

Spoiler

 

#10 Mississauga, 8-point difference

Current Record: 37 – 22 – 4
Should be Record: 33 – 26 – 4
Change: 4 – (4) – 0  

Mississauga is an average team. They are as close to staying above .500 as you can get, without being a .500 team. Nothing bad to say about them. There’s a chance they should be lower than they are now. In terms of playing within their expectations, they’re only 8 points off, and honestly that isn’t too bad. If you’re a Mississauga fan maybe you can put on a smile knowing they have 4 more wins than they should.

 

 

#9

Spoiler

 

#9 Halifax, 8-point difference

Current Record: 20 – 40 – 4
Should be Record: 16 – 44 – 4
Change: 4 – (4) – 0

Knowing that your team is playing a little above expectation is generally a good thing. But honestly, unless you’re playing way above expectations, at this end of the standings you’re only fighting for a draft slot. Halifax has had a great inaugural introduction into the league. Now they’re starting to fall into mediocrity. It will be interesting to see how the GM changes it around within the next couple of years.

 

 

#8

Spoiler

 

#8 San Diego, 8-point difference

Current Record: 9 – 53 – 2
Should be Record: 13 – 49 – 2
Change: (4) – 4 – 0

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that it’s been an 8-point difference between these last three spots. The reason why I put San Diego ahead of all of them is simple. They’re the only ones playing below expectations out of the group. And on our list, we have a lot of teams over-performing. Maybe they can keep up this momentum into next season and squeeze into a playoff spot.

 

 

#7

Spoiler

 

#7 Miami, 12-point difference

Current Record: 26 – 34 – 4
Should be Record: 20 – 40 – 4
Change: 6 – (6) – 0  

Now we’re starting to get to where it matters. And in Miami, playing above their pay grade matters. Especially when you’re clinging onto that 8^th position slot in the standings. Making it into the playoffs might put them higher up on this expectations list if you ignore the points and put in other factors. And even more so if they make it past the first round.

 

 

#6

Spoiler

 

#6 Mexico City, 13-point difference

Current Record: 42 – 18 – 4
Should be Record: 35 – 24 – 5
Change: 7 – (6) – 1

Mexico City is battling with Las Vegas for that fourth spot on the standings. But if my list has anything to say about it, they should be solidly in 5^th place. We will see if they can manage to exceed our expectations further and kick Vegas out of the top three.

 

 

#5

Spoiler

 

#5 Yukon, 16-point difference

Current Record: 18 – 42 – 4
Should be Record: 10 – 50 – 4
Change: 8 – (8) – 0  

Yukon might not even want to be playing above expectation. Yet they are. When you’re a bottom of the barrel team, you’re just expected to play poorly and get a high pick. And honestly, good on the players for playing as well as they are with the tools they have. Sneaking 8 games out on the season is not an easy task.

 

 

#4

Spoiler

 

#4 Saskatoon, 16-point difference

Current Record: 47 – 9 – 5
Should be Record: 39 – 17 – 5
Change: 8 – (8) – 0

Saskatoon is an absolute powerhouse this season. Some of their success might be accredited to McWolf, their GM. Not only are they sitting comfortably in second place, but they could easily fight for that number one spot if Minnesota slips just a little bit. Having 8 more wins under your belt than you should is a great boon to have when you’re fighting for home ice advantage come playoff time.

 

 

#3

Spoiler

 

#3 Minnesota, 21-point difference

Current Record: 55 – 7 – 1
Should be Record: 44 – 17 – 2
Change: 11 – (10) – 1

Holy crap. I could see if people thought that Minnesota might be number one at the start of the season, but this far ahead? Twenty-one points ahead of expectations is high. On this list, it isn’t the highest. Can’t wait to see Minnesota keep up this momentum and bury it in a deep cup run.

 

 

#2

Spoiler

 

#2 Houston, 24-point difference

Current Record: 6 – 54 – 3
Should be Record: 18 – 42 – 3
Change: (12) – 12 – 0

I genuinely feel bad. If my list were the standings (putting that at the end of the post), then Houston would be in the last playoff spot. Instead, they’re last in the league.  A potential playoff appearance is instead destroyed by the all mighty simulation engine. At least there’s always next season

 

 

#1

Spoiler

 

#1 Ottawa, 36-point difference

Current Record: 33 – 28 – 3
Should be Record: 15 – 46 – 3
Change: 18 – (18) – 3

At number one, exceeding everyone’s expectations and blowing them out of the water into playoff contention, is none other than Ottawa. They have more than twice the amount of points they really should. This team literally has no defense, a starting goalie, and a forward core that has one player above 100 TPA at the time of writing. And yet they’re still better than half the league. This is a miracle season as we know it ladies and gentlemen.

 

 

Theoretical Standings

For those of you wondering what the standings would be if each team was playing at their expectations (THIS IS NOT A POWER RANKING). The bracket on the side is the correction you would make to put them where they are actually in the standings;

 

Spoiler

 

1. Philadelphia (Down 2)
2. Minnesota (Up 1)
3. Saskatoon  (Up 1)
4. Las Vegas (Down 1)
5. Mexico City (Up 1)
6. Mississauga
7. Miami (Down 1)
8. Houston (Down 4)
9. Halifax
10. Ottawa (Up 3) 
11. San Diego
12. Yukon (Down 2)

 

 

This was a fun little experiment to get myself back into the league. If you aren’t aware of where teams are/should be, or you know someone that doesn’t know much about the quality of teams in the league, this might be a good article to help them out. I hope that you guys enjoy this little rabbit hole as much as I did. It would be cool if this was a regular thing.

 

Please let me know in the comments where I went wrong. Just for next time, so that when I do another one of these for the start of next season, I can do a better job. This took a few hours to do and I want to make sure that I do them right. If you have any suggestions feel free to throw them down in the comments as well. Thanks for reading, take care.

 

1503 words.

 

[ahockeyguy 110]

I loved this! Had one quick point, but please take these as a sign of great interest, which means you wrote something awesome! A question about methodology: I loved that we have an expected points metric from this. But what if we had taken the TPE from the beginning and extrapolated based on average gains? Or perhaps even more complex, average gains for the number of active players on the team? If we did that, we'd have, in my opinion, a better picture what we should have really expected. Since VHLM players' TPE changes fairly radically (most of us on Miami started with under 100 TPE) vs. some players who are stuck at 250, we might have expected Miami to lose even more than we in fact did. I know there's no way to do that now, but it would be interesting for sure! Score: 9/10

Edited June 23, 2020 by ahockeyguy

[Plate 386]

Thanks @ahockeyguy for the kind words! 

 

Obviously there are too many factors to take into consideration. The methodology doesn't take into account TPE changes, as you stated, and instead just takes a flash point from one specific time and uses that to measure out how good a team should be. Ottawa for example, is playing the "most" out of expectation, but that's because they traded many of their good players early on in the season. You can't take away their efforts from the score that they have now. 

 

If you were to do this again with as much accuracy as you wanted, you would find a player and take their average TPE gains from each week, multiply that by how long the regular season is, and do that for every player. Then you can cap the number at 250 for each player and run a more complex equation to determine the amount of TP that a team would have. You can then follow the same methodology that I used from there to determine how many points a team should have gotten. 
 

In terms of trades, it's really hard to try and figure out what trade will team for what. The markets for players is something completely arbitrary and values are hard to establish. The only thing that I can think of is updating the list every week and running a "power rankings" media spot with it. Set it at a specific time every monday or so. But as you saw, the list of where teams should have been was pretty accurate. For example, Philly was basically spot on. 

 

The issue right now with the methodology is that the wins/losses do not equal out. However, with the way that I did it, each team was within 0.40 of the 33.02 point per tp average. Point per TP is something worth investigating further. It lets us know what teams are allocating their points better than others. It was just a fun little thought experiment that panned out pretty well considering the information that I was given. Just take the list with a grain of salt.

 

[ahockeyguy 110]

I really like it. And my head is spinning with what would have to take place to do what I suggested lol.

[IamMOOSE 361]

Giving an (A) here on the effort and execution of this post. Very interesting methodology with this. I like the idea and calculations of it. In regards to a team like Ottawa, who in your own calculations is so far outplaying their numeric potential, why do you think that is? What aspect of the team do you think (just a guess) is influencing the sim in their favor?

 

This is another article that's added to the growing story of this season. Teams that have overperformed or at least, outmatched their outlook. Another trend I've noticed late in this season is how trades have affected teams in a negative way. It's happened a lot with teams even in the VHL this season in teams like Moscow, Davos, and Vancouver. Teams that have made move to either build towards contendership now or soft retools of their roster but in the case of a team like Moscow and I'll add Ottawa to this as well, they've somehow gotten stronger with less pieces. I just read the fascinating media spot from @diamond_ace about this subject and I feel it ties in nicely with your post as well. Great work Plate!

[Baozi 1,664]

Very interesting take on this. Liked the content thought the spoiler tags kinda annoyed me a bit. Not sure those were really needed. In terms of formatting, everything looks pretty neat and succinct otherwise. I'm not sure how you could spruce up the post with images and coloring, but something else would help maybe alleviate the straight text look.

 

8/10

[Plate 386]

@IamMOOSE I would say that, just by looking at the numbers (provided at the time that I wrote the article anyway, things change all the time) I would say that Mexico City is the one that I would put as the team influencing the sim a bit better than other teams. 

 

Minnesota just has a lot of talent that they bought before the draft. I'm assuming that Mexico also bought, but the core of their group has been around forever. I'm going to do this again at the start of the next season with the mathematical changes that I had suggested in one of the responses I made. 

[Plate 386]

Claiming for my second time. +6

[Plate 386]

Third claim +6