Multiple teams was used to push the draft up to a different number of teams, currently we have the fewest entries in a long time. Which definitely will mix up team building a bit. Hopefully we get more people to trickle in.
Is there any support for
@Hockey Outsider 's previous proposal of adding some randomness into the equation, maybe introducing more excitement into the playoffs/RS?
I won't have time to participate in the draft (I'm going into by far my busiest time at work over the next few months) but here's the post I made:
One of my frustrations was that there were so few upsets. This happens because in the ATD, we vote based on what we think is the most likely outcome. For example, if everyone would have voted on the 2003 Anaheim Ducks versus the Detroit Red Wings, I suspect everyone would have voted for Detroit. The prospect of such a weak team beating, let alone sweeping, a division winner, seems preposterous. But upsets - sometimes shocking ones - can and do happen.
(In the ATD, there can be upsets in the sense that a lower-ranked team might be well-matched against a higher-seeded team. The lower-ranked team might have stronger, larger defensemen who would match favourably against the higher-ranked team`s smaller, less physical forwards. If the lower-ranked team were to win, that`s not really a "statistical" upset due to chance, it just reflects an unfavourable match-up).
Before continuing, let me be perfectly clear - since I generally had strong teams, I was a beneficiary of the rules we`ve always used. This proposal isn't based on "sour grapes". On the contrary, my suggestions would have made me (and my teams) much worse off.
The question is - how do we introduce randomness into the ATD? I'll skip over the question about how to do regular season rankings. Let's take a given playoff match-up. We'd need to calculate the probability of a team winning a series. This would be determined by the GMs' votes.
Let's say Team A and Team B face off in the playoffs. During the voting stage, 11 GMs think Team A is better, and 7 GMs think Team B is better. Normally, Team A would advance, because there`s no randomness.
Instead, I propose we assign a probability of 11/18 = 61% that Team A will win each game. A moderator, or another impartial party, can then simulate the result of each game (in a seven-game series).
Using basic probability theory, here's the distribution of outcomes:
Team A wins in 4: 14%
Team A wins in 5: 22%
Team A wins in 6: 21%
Team A wins in 7: 16%
Team B wins in 7: 10%
Team B wins in 6: 9%
Team B wins in 5: 6%
Team B wins in 4: 2%
It's still likely that Team A will win. In this case, they have a 73% chance of victory. (The reason it's higher than the 61% we calculated earlier is because we've assumed 61% is for a single game - the more that are played, the more likely the favourite will win the series). But Team B now has a 27% chance of advancing - under the current system, they would have had no chance.
The biggest benefits? This will, probably for the first time, introduce upsets (due to chance, rather than due to match-ups) into the draft. That makes it better reflect reality than our current "single most likely outcome" format. It should also make weaker GMs more engaged, as they now have a chance to beat tougher opponents. A lot of times GMs would post very little (or nothing at all) when they had a tough match-up because they assumed the result was a foregone conclusion.
I can see a lot of GMs objecting. Nobody wants to be eliminated due to the vagaries of probability theory - but I don`t see that as any different than a President Trophy winner being eliminated in the first round due to a few bad bounces or lucky saves.
I can definitely see the GM of a stronger team being upset if they lose a series due to luck - but is that really any different than a division winner being upset in the first round of the NHL playoffs? It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. (How many of you were shocked, or even angry, by Switzerland shutting out Canada in the 2006 Olympics?) This proposal would make the ATD more realistic, and the perception that there's a "foregone conclusion" would vanish. At the same time, since the results are based upon the GMs' votes, the favourite would still have a higher chance of winning. I contrast that with, say, a coin toss, which is clearly undesirable as it would be entirely based upon on luck, with no need for GMs to assemble strong teams. I think my proposal is a good balance between the two.
(Two technical notes. One, we can probably modify the probabilities to give the home team a boost. We can arbitrarily give the home team a 5-10% boost in each simulation - that would give teams further incentive to assemble a strong team, to get home ice advantage. Two, we can cap the probability at say 80% (even if the voting is unanimous) to mean that every underdog has a shot. Before you say that I`m being too lenient, a team favoured to win 80% of the time would win 97% of all best-of-seven series).
