2016-2017 Rule Discussions/Proposals

Discussion point:

Thoughts on adding a rule to the draft, that would keep the same team getting a back-to-back no.1 pick in the draft. Kind of like the Oiler clause.

I'll say no to this simply because of how we are currently on tanking, so for a team to get to the bottom and get the lottery twice would mean they really messed up most likely and need the 1st overall again. Plus what if the situation arrived where lets say, Ottawa wins it this year, so Juuso get's the pick, then next season Juuso makes a trade with Winnipeg for his 1st, then Winnipeg gets 1st overall, would that stop Juuso from getting it twice because he technically did not get it twice but the teams he traded with did.

So there are 2 main kinds of tanking: sitting players on the bench (and thus retaining your roster) and trading away players for future value (picks and better draft position). The later is a solid strategy in my opinion and one that's fair. However, the former is the issue since you're keeping a strong roster and intentionally losing to try and better it - this is why I asked for the rule that was eventually put in place to be considered. Overall, I think we're fine for now, but who knows what the future holds.

Juuso, why don't we boost G and D scoring to compensate for SOG? Instead of de-valuing, we could always add on to compensate. Both ways have the same result, but I'm curious why you didn't talk to it.

Either way, my suggestion is to figure out which new categories we want first and then figure out weighting between them and the old categories to balance it out. It'd be pointless weighing something like SOG if we end up implementing something like else takeaways which then throws balance off again.

Yes, that solution would compensate for the adverse effect on Goalie and Defenseman scoring as a whole, but it causes problems with the balance of the stats as I alluded to in point 2. The issue here is that SOG is strongly positively correlated to the other offensive categories, whereas it is either not correlated or even negatively correlated to our peripheral skater categories. I've run some stats on the correlation between shots per 60 minutes and our other skater categories per 60 minutes:



The figures of note are in the first row. SOG have a strong positive correlation to goals (this is pretty obvious logically seeing as both stats have the word 'goal' in them, but it's worth bearing in mind from a fantasy perspective). We're already rewarding players for goals, so by also rewarding these same players for 'goal attempts', we're adding value to such players by proxy. This will comparatively devalue skaters who get more assists than goals (0.591 correlation for the former and 0.265 correlation for the latter), but the larger impact is on peripheral skater values. Penalty minutes are not at all correlated with SOG, and hits/blocks are actually negatively correlated with SOG (blocks are quite strongly negatively correlated at -0.421, which makes sense as they're a defensive statistic). As I mentioned before, the issue here is that we're only 1 year into our league, and our draft choices and trade targets were based on the initial spread of offensive/peripheral categories. If we all of a sudden increase these offensive categories without compensating for the impact on peripheral categories, then we're undermining the player choices that originally were made.

The average shooting percentage in the NHL is 9.1%. This means that on average every 11th shot a player takes will go into the net. If we were to e.g. add SOG as a category worth 0.1 points, and reduce goals from 3 to 2 points, this would leave the total scoring for offensive players relatively intact. What we would effectively be doing is giving additional value to goal attempts, irrespective of whether of not they end up as goals. I'm perfectly happy for this to be the case, as I agree it can be frustrating to see a player take multiple shots on goal yet end up putting 0 FPts on the scoresheet, but we should not add this category at the expense of penalising other categories.

Would you also want to change assist values then?

I feel like changing the values of goals and assists can get messy. I have the ability to break down values even further. So we can even make SOG worth .05 points per shot. How would that effect things?


Do we also want to see how things will be effected when +/-, takeaways, and giveaways are added into the mix?

I definitely wouldn't want goals to be the same value as assists. It seems weird.

How bad are the stats if goals stay the same and shots are worth .05?

according to fantrax


Nevermind. Misread the scoring page

The differences will be about half as pronounced if we keep the goals the same and add SOG as 0.05. It'll still end up devaluing play-makers in comparison to goal scorers. We could perhaps get away with 0.05 per SOG and 2.75 per goal - I'd need to run the numbers.

On a somewhat unrelated note, does Fantrax distinguish between primary and secondary assists?

Anybody else want to weigh in on anything?

We've had a pretty big discussion and tomorrow I will be sorting through the information to start creating polls for voting.

If you have anything else, please bring it up!

#1. Should we add a shots of goal (SOG) category for next season? If so, how many points?


I think we should definitely add SOG, it is a very positive stat and is definitely a focus for a lot of newer statistics being adopted by the hockey community. I love the idea of adding extra value to our players. I think it would make for closer matchups in our league to be honest. With that being said I think we should look to either make it so SOG is worth 0.1 OR we change Hits and Blocks to match SOG and make all 3 worth 0.2. The second way is what I would lean toward because we would see a small boost from a new category while not creating a larger gap between the value of goalies and skaters. 


#2. Should we add a plus/minus (+/-) category for next season? If so, how many points?


No. I think hockey is moving away from +/- and I think we should leave it out of our league. It's a rule I'm very certain we would remove down the road and since I think that I figure we might as well not add it in the first place. Like many people have said the stat says more about the team than the player. If we add any stats I think we should definitely only add 1 and I think that should be SOG. 


#3. Should we reward goalies for overtime and/or shootout losses? If so, how many points?


Overtime loss? No. Shootout loss? Yes. I think a shootout loss should be worth 1 point


#4. Are there other stat categories that we want to add or subtract for next season?


I would also like to consider adding Takeaways as a stat. I think it would add a lot of interesting value, because it would generally add value to middle players and only a few of the high end players. It would also move a few guys from middle to high and honestly the more high end guys, fantasy value wise, in the league the more competitive it will be. I think I would award 0.5 for a takeaway. 


#5. Do we want to start the playoffs one week earlier so the championship matchup does not take place during the last week of the season?

I think this is a good idea because it does allow the guys who make it far the opportunity to get the best lineups for the finals. I hate to see the final decided because a player was being rested for the playoffs. 


I think if we add anything for skaters we need to make sure we add something or adjust something to keep a balance between goalies and skaters. The league has seemed fairly balanced for scoring this season so I think it's important that we don't lose that by making unbalanced additions/subtractions. I really like the idea of getting some new categories in though. SOG is probably my favourite to add.

This is really interesting. I think it is important that we try to keep balance in the league especially to the point of people's drafting and trading strategies. This really goes against what I said in an earlier post about reducing value on Hits and Blocks to create value for SOG to take, and what I said before was just a bad idea. You're right that if we add SOG we should create that value by either reducing the value of Goals and Assists OR adding Value to Hits and Blocks.