OMG67, you make lots of worthwhile points (and have touched on a lot of things I'm investigating for my article series). I typically don't do this, but there's so much here that I'm going to break it down point by point and add my input.
Why does anything need to be done about it?
The league is competitive. Each Conference is going to have bottom feeders. Each Conference is going to have two top teams that will compete through the deadline. One conference may have more than two but the bottom line is each conference will have two to comprise a solid Final Four.
These are pretty vast generalizations, to be honest. I'm not sure the West had any bottom-feeders this year. Guelph's record was brutal, but they went 10-9-1 against the Eastern Conference and played by far the league's hardest schedule. Saginaw went 12-5-3 against the East and was +15. I know you'll defend Ottawa at the very least, but it's possible the East had the league's five worst teams this year. Mississauga embarrassed Peterborough in the Conference Finals. Some of that is Missy's strength, but are you really comfortable pointing to a flawed Petes team that got embarrassed out of the playoffs as part of a solid final four?
I realize this year was exceptional, but you can't very well make these kind of blanket statements and not acknowledge these exceptions. I've presented a fair bit of evidence why the league isn't competitive at all!
After the deadline, it is possible depending on what teams buy and sell, that the balance may tip one way or the other. Mississauga and PEterborough both had solid teams. They both beat top rated teams in the West throughout the season. Mississauga lost something like 4 games from January 1st on. Neither team really participated heavily at the deadline. That created a wider divide between them and the other top teams in the West that did heavy weigh in at the deadline. The Final was very competitive. Four of the five games were by one goal.
Again, I'd push back on your Peterborough assertion (a bit ironic as we were arguing opposite sides of that particular debate a few weeks ago!). Peterborough went 4-4-2 against the West's Big Five; not bad, but still more losses than wins. Missy went 4-8, and then 1-4 again in the Final. Sure, the Final was competitive, but it was still a 4-1 series win in which Erie outscored Missy 17-12. The fact that we're pointing to this as a point in the East's favour isn't exactly reassuring.
Peterborough absolutely went hard at the deadline (Paquette, Black, Korostolev). Missy made more of their moves earlier in the year, but they had a mediocre record in January. But even if we ignore all this, how is standing pat at the deadline and taking one's chances as a 70-30 underdog in the OHL Final a good strategy? That hasn't worked since 2006.
2015-2016 -> Both Kingston and Barrie had very solid teams to represent the East.
2014-2015 -> Oshawa, Barrie,and North Bay were all solid. OShawa won the Memorial Cup
2013-2014 -> Oshawa, North Bay and Kingston were all solid. None of them participated int he buying at the deadline
2012-2103 -> Belleville, Barrie, and Oshawa all solid
2011-2012 -> Niagara, Barrie, Ottawa and Brampton all solid
2010-2011 -> The Top Eastern teams were above the top Western teams
2009-2010 -> Barrie was the class of the league with 9 losses. Ottawa and Missy both over .600
One thing I'm currently trying to do is create a metric for OHL contention. What, exactly, does it mean to be a contender in a given year? I'm probably going to poll the forum about it (and get about three replies), but one thing I've noted is that no team has won the league in the modern OHL with a goal differential of less than 70 (OS in 2011). I decided to test this benchmark out as a way to measure contention. (It's obviously a crude metric, but it's what I have so far, and it's probably more accurate than regular season points total.) I pulled all of the teams that met this criterion. In ten of the last thirteen seasons, the West has had more such "contenders" than the East. In two seasons they were tied. In only one season did the East have more "contenders" than the West, 2010-11, and the one West contender, Owen Sound, won the league anyway. In total, the West has had over twice as many contenders as the East. There were even four seasons in which the East had no contenders at all!
So, really, what we are generally seeing is a couple Western Teams put up phenomenal seasons. Those seasons tend to be much more impressive than the past. It used to be quite an achievement to have a team with 100+ points in a 68 game schedule. Now 100 points isn't so special.
This was not true this year, and while I haven't had time to run the numbers on many past seasons, I think the eyeball test at least suggests it's not really true. Seven western teams have won championships since 06-07. One Eastern team has. You can argue that teams like Guelph and Owen Sound have been mediocre in seasons when they haven't won championships; I'd counter that teams like the 2012-13 Storm and Attack would have been highly competitive in most Eastern Conference years--and would certainly have made that list you put together.
The West is the overwhelming winner of Championships the last 15 years. They tend to have teams more willing to trade away gaggles of assets for one run. To be honest, this strategy started with London in around 2003. The Eastern teams tend to be a little more conservatively run. PRior to the new "cycle" of trade to buy and trade to sell, the East won 7 of 9 straight from '92 to '01.
So, what I can surmise fromt he real numbers is that the East does have solid competitive teams at the top of the conference but they have a greater tendency of not participating as heavily in the trade deadline auction as buyers. They are more conservative and that is creating about a 12 point gap in the standings between the top 2 or three in the West to the Top 2 or 3 in the East.
I don't have time to test this theory now, but I do have the data to do it and probably will when I have time. (The
Draft Pick Database does have the last two seasons of trades logged.) I talked about how Mark Hunter created the modern, cyclical, super-team OHL at the 2005 trade deadline in
a previous article. But if you're right (and I like the theory and I think it's quite plausible), the question is why the Eastern teams are being run like this, if it's not bringing them championships. I was pretty clear in my article that the pre-2004-05 years of the 20-team OHL were pretty even, even spending a couple paragraphs talking about how the Mississauga IceDogs skewed the numbers, so I'm not sure why you're bringing up data from that era--let alone the early to mid 90's, which predates the two-conference format!
Another issue is the draft manipulation. I am not talking about teams doing illegal crap but moreso the players and families trying to position themselves within a comfortable territory from home. Much of the powerhouse Midget teams reside in Western Toronto area where the population base is highest. Therefore, those players that have the power at the top of the draft tend to be able to stay closer to home. This hampers the Eastern teams ability of getting their hands on those players as families are less willing to go to the four teams out East (now three with Belleville in Hamilton) and up North with Sudbury and North Bay. So there are five teams int he Eastern Conference that are handcuffed with Geography. It is harder for those teams to recruit as aggressively as the core GTA area teams can.
We have also started to see more solid American players sign with the American teams. So, Erie, Flint, and Saginaw are doing a better job at recruiting than say Plymouth did 15 years ago.
These are all areas of inquiry I'm pursuing and planning to write about in the article series, and it gets at my core project: why are the Eastern teams falling behind, and what can we do to fix it? To be honest, I'm not quite sure why you're arguing in some places that the discrepancy isn't that severe and elsewhere pointing to reasons why the Eastern Conference has trouble competing with the West. (And even elsewhere that the disparity, if it exists, doesn't matter.) Your arguments sound more like a holistic defense of the Eastern Conference than anything else--which is fine, but I've made pretty clear, and I think others have too, that this isn't a "whose conference is best" competition, which I personally have zero interest in.
The Eastern Conference may not have a steady flow of 105+ point teams but they do have a steady flow of 90+ point teams. There is nothing wrong with 90+ points. London's consistent high performance raises the bar int he West. Western teams try to run with the Knights and make the appropriate trades to stay in sight. The Eastern teams may not feel the need to do so because there isn't a consistent team sitting at the 105+ point level. In a 7 game series, anything can happen if your team is healthy, solid with a strong goalie.
As long as the West has London performing at a high consistent level, you will have weaker teams selling to the other teams trying to catch London in the West. So, really it is the post deadline where the gap is created.
No team has won the league with fewer than 97 points in the modern OHL. Moreover, how happy were Kingston fans about putting up 97 points in the regular season only to fall to an underachieving IceDogs team in the second round? Was Kingston's season a success? I'd probably argue that it was, but I know a ton of fans (probably the majority) would disagree with me.
London is a big focus of my upcoming article (Knights fans, take note!). But I think your previous argument is a better one for why the disparity exists in the modern OHL. London built the model for anyone to see, but the Western teams, mostly due to geography, are better able to implement it. I'm not convinced that the Eastern teams are willfully choosing to, again, take their chances as 70-30 'dogs in the Final. If they are, it's bad management, because it's not working.
There's also pretty compelling evidence that, in fact, anything can't (or doesn't) just happen in a seven-game series in the OHL. In the article I
mentioned earlier, I talked about how upsets are steadily dwindling in the OHL playoffs. If I can pull this data, the Eastern teams can pull this data. Why aren't they changing a strategy that isn't working? I admit that I haven't run any advanced statistical analyses on the likelihood of some of these outcomes. (Side note: if anyone has talked to DiscoStu lately, I'd love to get in touch with him.) But even the more rudimentary analysis I'm doing suggests that this isn't a fifteen-year Finals fluke.
In closing, while I have tons of respect for your viewpoint, it just isn't convincing to me, for the reasons outlined above. I find this a fascinating topic, though, and I really do enjoy talking about it. I hope you found the article somewhat interesting, at the very least.