Good day everyone! Now you've probably gathered based on the title this will be a blog about goaltending stats and why they are quite frankly so low in our league.
I've had several people over the last year or two ask me why the Simon simulator hates their goaltenders. It's a funny thing because I've asked myself that same question. Is it the settings? Why are they all vastly underperforming despite having superior ratings to those of the skaters?
It's an issue as old as time since we adopted the Simon T simulator just under three seasons ago. It's one I've never had an answer to until this week!
What's that you say? You're probably sitting there and adjusting your glasses to make sure you've read it right. He has an answer? Tell me he just said that!
Relax, I do indeed actually have an answer but you might not like it. In fact, you may throw something at your screen when I get into a potential fix or improvement shall I say.
The reason why our goalies collectively underperform is the CCHL itself. Nope, it's not a setting in the simulator but rather our league itself.
I recently (starting in January) joined a 31 team league that runs off of Simon and the goalies on the disk they are using have vastly lower ratings than those in the CCHL. Despite the weaker ratings, the goaltenders are performing all at NHL league averages or above if they are an upper-echelon goaltender.
How can that be is likely what you find yourself saying right now and well, I'm here to say that it's the 22 team league vs. the 31 team league.
In the 22 team league, you have guys that are playing on our second or third lines in the case of deep teams where those players on are the first line. In the bottom-six forward group, you have guys in the lineups in a 31 team league that are sitting in our free-agent pool.
Looking at my team in that league, I have four forwards playing in my bottom six that aren't even signed in the CCHL. My defence core has 3 guys in it that are number six defenders in the CCHL and one that isn't even able to get into the lineup in Fort Erie in Justin Holl. Now before you think man that team must suck - it leads its division and is second in the conference.
Obviously, there are different rules to that league but at the core, the depth issue becomes significant when the goaltenders are facing skaters on the third and fourth lines that aren't nearly as talented as what most CCHL teams are marching out daily.
Prior to this, with the NHL growing, I've had a concern for a while now that our rosters are becoming too deep and expensive because there are more players getting an opportunity now and seizing that opportunity. Look at Vegas alone and something tells me Seattle will end up doing alright for itself as well upon their inception. It has, honestly, had me thinking about expansion a lot to try to thin out things a little more across the league.
After doing the review over the past month and really digging into it this week, I've also thought that we might have to go to 24 teams to try to make our goaltending more relevant as well.
Have you thrown something at your computer yet? I think we're at that part of the blog but again I ask that you relax before getting angry at expansion without seeing the process.
It's something that we've been discussing at the executive level for almost two weeks now; a proposal that benefits our teams and does not cause them to lose anyone significant off of their roster. It'll be unveiled in the coming week as a vote. We promise there is a lot to like about it for our existing members so don't blast out a message to the league complaining about it the idea until you've seen it. We aren't talking a Vegas scenario here at all.
One of the questions might be a concern about General Managers but this acts two-fold in that we will be offering a league incentive program for our existing GM's to help in the search and my extensive research shows that leagues have a much easier time finding somebody to take over a new franchise than clean up another person's mess.
In any event, more details will be forthcoming but we as an executive believe that this proposal benefits the CCHL on a number of levels. We hope and anticipate that you, as a group, will feel the same.
Peace and pucks,
Matt
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