The Spirit of Competition in Season 51

[Tagger 2,722]

Coming off the back of the league announcing the implementation of an official rule that makes it publicly clear that teams will not be allowed to put forward purposefully weakened lines with the intent of trying to accrue more losses that in turn would lead to a greater chance of missing the playoffs, I figured I'd flash back to a season where we were forced to make a behind-the-scenes rule regarding the spirit of competition.

 

Season 51 <- Click for Index

 

Back in Season 51, the league had a much more relaxed rule-set and a distinct lack of available players that only served to encourage aggressive tanking to any team that were not set to be in a position to compete anytime soon. There were no restrictions on which inactive Free Agents you could pursue (meaning that non-competing teams would frequently look to 0 TPE players* to fill their roster) and in place of the current minimum player limit was a salary floor of $20 Million, though this effectively achieved nothing given that there were no rules to prevent you from paying a straight $7 Million to a player who was barely any better, if at all, than a CPU BOT. Notably, this also applied to goalies which meant that you could play a 0 TPE inactive goalie in place of the then 175 TPE CPU goalie provided to each team to give a team a much greater chance of losing. 

 

Fast forward to the end of the season and, in the EU Conference, the Helsinki Titans have a slim 1 point lead over the HC Davos Dynamo with three games to go, with the most important fixture being one where the two sides would play each other. What is of note is that, while Helsinki were in possession of their own first, Davos were not as they had traded it away to New York before the pick made it's way to the Stockholm Vikings, a team who were already eliminated from playoff contention and guaranteed a top two pick with their own selection. If the standings stayed as it was, Stockholm would then have two picks in the lottery. They did not though as, in the crucial game between the two teams that still had a chance at making the playoffs, Davos would beat Helsinki 3-0. However, there were two key notes for this game:

 

- Helsinki were playing a CPU created player called TOR G-1, for this game and the two other remaining games of the season. TOR G-1 was a goalie that really should not have been utilized given that it was only created to ensure the games could sim (teams need two goalies in the sim, otherwise it will not let teams set lines), however it was acknowledged that playing him was no worse or better than a team signing a 0 TPE goalie to achieve the same results 

- Having accidentally beat a Seattle team that had already made the playoffs in the previous game, Helsinki went on to remove all three of their human players from the lines. Given that Asher Donovan and Evgeny Nezhmetdinov do not even have a mention in the box score for their final three games, they may have gone so far as to put them on scratches to make sure they did not play. 

 

Funnily enough, having been in the discussions in the BOG when issues with Helsinki were brought up in there, I don't recall if anyone actually brought up the benching of the human skaters. However, this issue did bring to light that there really wasn't any excuse for any inactive goalie worse than the team's assigned CPU goalies to be signed to a team's roster, and so a rule was put in place to prevent an inactive goalie with less TPE than the assigned CPU goalie from starting. Helsinki did not wind up punished for either of these, but they had failed to properly adhere to the salary floor over the course of the season (even with how poorly it was implemented) and had to forfeit a 2nd round pick as compensation.

 

 

*Up until the start of Season 46 (when the base 30 TPE for player creation was introduced), players without carryover would start off with 0 TPE, but were allowed to have their first 3 Point Tasks doubled along with an exclusive 10 TPE training camp. Therefore at this point in time, there were still players about with both 0 TPE (created pre-S46) and 30 TPE (created post-S46)

Edited June 30, 2020 by Tagger

[Victor 11,043]

Classic Higgins shithousery