Preliminary ATD discussion

[jarek]

Hey guys, figured we might as well start this early and see what the temperature is like about certain aspects of the draft. A few things to discuss:

- Yay or nay regarding hidden seeds? I feel pretty confident in saying that the results of last draft would not have changed even if we didn't hide the seeds.

- Yay or nay regarding teams missing the playoffs? I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I felt pretty deflated about not making it to the main playoffs. On the other hand, winning the consolation playoff felt pretty awesome. I think this one warrants further discussion. Maybe there is a way to improve it.

- The annual topic - trading or no trading? I felt there were a couple of trades last year that were extremely lopsided.. and no, I am not willing to discuss which ones or why, let's not go there. I feel that trading, as we currently implement it, too easily allows for things like that to happen. If we are going to have trading again, I really believe we should add some serious restrictions to it.

Anything else that should be up for discussion?

Click to read more...

 

[rmartin65]

I was wondering when this thread was going to pop up. ATD season is drawing near!

Hidden seeding- I am neither for nor against it. I love that we tried it last year, as it showed that people are not just voting based on seeding. Since that has been shown, I think we shouldn't be afraid of having visible seedings. Furthermore, returning to visible seedings would allow us to have home ice advantage again.

Missing playoffs- I think it depends on two things- how many teams we have, and if we do random seedings. If we have visible seedings, we can just have teams get byes.

Trades- I think we keep trades. What happened last year probably wont happen again, as I hope that people become less afraid to veto trades that seem unfair. Especially if they involve a veteran GM and a less experienced one.

Other things

I know it is going to come up, so I am going to put my ideas out there ahead of it- I hate the idea of randomness in determining playoff outcomes. If the goal of the ATD is to build the best teams while discussing hockey history, then randomness has no place. The teams that we deem to be best should win.

Multiple teams per GM- You know... I dont hate the idea, as it could get us to different league sizes. I know people are starting to grow tired of the 25-32 area, so getting to 35 or 40 could be a nice change of pace (since I am opposed to imposing a team limit that prohibits interested parties from playing- if somebody wants to do a 16 team ATD, do that in the ATD off-season. And, of course, teams from the same GM should not be allowed to trade with each other. Ideally they wouldn't pick next to each other either, but if trading is allowed, things are going to happen. We are all adults- dont tank one of your teams. Perhaps we can make the threat of disqualifying a team if people feel that the GM is attempting to help one of his teams at the expense of his other team.

 

[ImporterExporter]

-The biggest issue I have moving forward is the #1 seeds (hidden or otherwise) have and will almost always win. The current format basically restricts the winner from a pool of 4 teams, provided we have 4 divisions per the norm.

Why bother allowing everyone a playoff spot if seeds below 2 have no realistic shot at advancing?

I will suggest that we allow certain esteemed members of the HoH section to vote on our match ups. First off it adds to the number of overall votes, which seems to dwindle year after year and secondly it allows folks who are "outsiders" yet knowledgeable enough with the players and history to add another perspective to the voting.

What about completely random seeding? No voting 1-8 per division like done in the past. The teams all go into a hat and matchups for round 1 are drawn from a randomizer/hat/etc.

-I don't want multiple teams per GM. It's tough enough to manage one team properly, let alone two. Then you have the problem of integrity. What if one team is looking great and the other is not? Do you purposely not draft a player hoping they might slip down to your other team (if say the 2 teams are close enough in the draft order)? How does trading work? Provided we get 20+ GM's, I don't see the need for everyone to take a 2nd team. Just my .02

 

[Johnny Engine]

We could seed the playoffs by draft position, and release the regular season voting for posterity later.

 

[jarek]

I would hope the 2 teams per GM would be completely voluntary.

I don't think any form of changing around how we seed teams is going to affect the playoff voting. The #1 seeds are the #1 seeds because we, as a community, decided they were. It isn't about the number attached to the team, but the personnel on it. The only way to make the #1 seeds not always win every year is to add a random element. That's all there is to it from my perspective.

 

[ResilientBeast]

I would hope the 2 teams per GM would be completely voluntary.

I don't think any form of changing around how we seed teams is going to affect the playoff voting. The #1 seeds are the #1 seeds because we, as a community, decided they were. It isn't about the number attached to the team, but the personnel on it. The only way to make the #1 seeds not always win every year is to add a random element. That's all there is to it from my perspective.

And the random element was universally shut down.

This draft in my eyes shouldn't be attempting to simulate real life hockey outcomes, because that's impossible. I would have been unbelievably angry if my #1 seed was bounced in the first round last year for no other reason except for random chance.

What about completely random seeding? No voting 1-8 per division like done in the past. The teams all go into a hat and matchups for round 1 are drawn from a randomizer/hat/etc.

-I don't want multiple teams per GM. It's tough enough to manage one team properly, let alone two. Then you have the problem of integrity. What if one team is looking great and the other is not? Do you purposely not draft a player hoping they might slip down to your other team (if say the 2 teams are close enough in the draft order)? How does trading work? Provided we get 20+ GM's, I don't see the need for everyone to take a 2nd team. Just my .02

Addressing these points, then we could very likely get a 1-2 matchup within the division which would be in my opinion a disappointment. Those two gms managed to draft the 2 best teams in their divisions and we lose one of the strongest teams in the draft in the first round?

Doubling up would allow us to get back to 32-40+ ATDs which allows us to change the draft dynamic entirely. This isn't really a competitive format and if someone wants to try and game the system go for it. Everyone is usually aware of who is falling and can take them if we want.

Trying to let a guy drop for your other team is no different then making unbalanced trades for draft parity in my eyes

 

[ImporterExporter]

What is the point of having playoffs then once everyone casts their initial seedings, hidden or otherwise. A 1 seed wins 99.99% of the time. So say you have 24 teams. 6 teams per 4 divisions. Why not just scrap all the months of "voting" and matchup discussion and place the 4 teams who were seeded 1st into a 4 team playoff. Everyone else fights for a consolation title.

There is absolutely no point in continuing the status quo of the post draft process. If you have a team seeded 2 or lower, you have zero shot at winning the ATD. And that's fine. But let's not go through the motions with pointless banter and be honest about it right off the bat.

 

[jarek]

Read at bottom for TLDR version.

To be honest, I wouldn't be against just having a regular season rankings, followed by a very short playoff involving only the #1 seeds. In a format with 4 divisions, this would involve a total of two playoff rounds.

That should keep the playoffs short enough to mitigate voter and participation fatigue, while hopefully not losing people who do not make the playoffs. It would suck to miss the playoffs in such a scenario, but almost everyone ends up missing the playoffs so it shouldn't feel as bad.

As IE stated, it would also end up as a very accurate reflection of how the voting tends to go anyways*, so why not shorten the process and eliminate the inconsequential middle steps that end up being little more than a formality anyways?

In the above format, I would limit us to having no more than 4 divisions, or 8 in a very large draft. I would also change the regular season ranking process into a much more focused "division ranking process". Each division would have its own thread, where the participants would be free to go nuts in discussion. I realize there is some potential chaos involved in this, but I think it would be a fair compromise to so many teams missing the "real" playoff - have at least one round where everyone gets a say. With this, I would also eliminate the assassination process.. this would replace that.

The reason I am suggesting this is because clearly quite a few people are not really happy with how things go, and we've already tried about as far as we're willing to go with one extreme (hidden seedings).. so why not try the other end of the extreme spectrum? The goal being to heavily shorten the playoff part of the ATD. With such a short ATD playoff, it may also encourage further MLD participation as, again, the hope would be to mitigate participation fatigue.

One other thing to add: when voting for the division rankings, you would only need to submit your division winner.

*The only time I've ever seen a #8 seed knock off a #1 seed is when one participant poked at as many holes at the other team as he could, and the other participant was simply absent entirely. Yeah.. takes a lot to convince people you deserve to upset another team in this.

TLDR (Proposal to change the playoff format):

- The assassination process would be replaced with a division ranking process. A thread would be created for each division, where each team will have an opportunity to state their case as to why they should win their division.

- A 4 team playoff would follow the above involving the #1 seeds from each division. There would be a conference finals and league finals. This is under the assumption of a 4 division league.

- The reason for this format would be to mitigate voter and participation fatigue, and shorten the time it takes to complete the ATD as there seems to be a sentiment that it takes too long these days. This would open up a better opportunity for further drafts in the year and possibly even benefit the MLD with greater participation due to losing less people (hopefully).

- The other major reason is that there seems to be a strong sentiment that the best team should win.. so this format would cut right to the chase and get on with that. History has proven that all the in-between rounds in the playoffs have largely been mere formalities, so eliminating them should get us to the result that we would eventually get to anyways.

 

[jarek]

One other thing I wanted to discuss. This is obviously completely biased, but there was some talk last ATD about giving the winner of the consolation round some form of reward for that. Possibly in the form of allowing them to select their draft position. Any chance of that having any traction here at all?

 

[seventieslord]

the #2 seeds have a legit chance, and there is also a very real possibility (and probability) that a couple of #2s are better than a couple of #1s. We can't just cut out the #2 seeds claiming that only #1s have a legit chance - it's not true.

So do this:

- An 8-team playoff with the #2 seeds facing off against the #1 seeds, but crossed over from division to division. So every #2 is up against a team that the voters haven't yet compared them to. Going up against your own #1 seed means trying to make a few people change their minds, and their minds are often made up that the #1 is better.
- An 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 or 24 team playoff for the consolation title. Keeps everyone engaged. If I'm the 9th best team I want to win this thing. If I'm 20th overall I think I have a legit chance to upset what is really just an average team.

The consolation was a good idea, but maybe that needs to be where most teams are, instead of where some teams are.

 

[jarek]

Were you paying attention to last consolation round? I'm pretty sure me and rmartin were the only ones that showed up.. at all. If I forgot someone, I do apologize, but hardly anyone discussed anything. I don't think increasing the number of teams is going to change the fact that it is still probably going to be seen as the "loser" bracket.

I also think if we start to include lower seeds, we're again starting to compromise, and quite frankly, I'm done trying to make everyone happy. Every time we try, it just makes *everyone* unhappy. I think my format works because it gives *everyone* ONE chance to have their say. Then the playoffs are simply gotten over with. Quickly. Which I think most people would appreciate.

Not only that, but I think a #1 seed has won just about every single ATD so far. So, claiming a #2 has a legit chance to win the whole thing (really, the only win that matters) isn't really true.

The other potential issue is that even with your idea, if one of the #2 seeds *does* win, you may have unintentionally created an uninteresting series in the following round, where that #2 seed has to once again go up against that #1 seed that we have already decided is better. The only way this would be avoided is if both #2 seeds won, which I find so unlikely to happen, that it is not even worth considering.. and on top of that, I seriously doubt many people, if anyone, truly cares about who won a round in anything but the finals. The only upset in ATD history that sticks out to me is EB vs. markrander.. and for reasons other than it was a #8 upsetting a #1.

Again.. my proposed format is not an attempt to try to make everyone happy. It is an admission of what the ATD playoffs have been and likely always will be - an attempt to find the best team. The voters have already decided who the best teams are in regular season voting. The playoffs will then decide which one of those "best" teams is truly the best. The other issue it addresses is the ATD playoffs being far too long, which quite a few have talked about, and I also agree with that. This distills the format to where we would get to eventually, in less than half the time.

 

[ImporterExporter]

the #2 seeds have a legit chance, and there is also a very real possibility (and probability) that a couple of #2s are better than a couple of #1s. We can't just cut out the #2 seeds claiming that only #1s have a legit chance - it's not true.

So do this:

- An 8-team playoff with the #2 seeds facing off against the #1 seeds, but crossed over from division to division. So every #2 is up against a team that the voters haven't yet compared them to. Going up against your own #1 seed means trying to make a few people change their minds, and their minds are often made up that the #1 is better.
- An 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 or 24 team playoff for the consolation title. Keeps everyone engaged. If I'm the 9th best team I want to win this thing. If I'm 20th overall I think I have a legit chance to upset what is really just an average team.

The consolation was a good idea, but maybe that needs to be where most teams are, instead of where some teams are.

I like this. 1's and 2's are in an ATD championship bracket and the rest of the seeds are in a consolation tourney.

But history has shown 1 seeds win the ATD almost every single time. I don't even remember the last time a 2 (or lower) seed won. It's not surprising. We hold a vote after the draft and people determine who the best (and worst) teams are. Why would that change just because we have 2-3 months of banter and arguments in the matchup threads? People already voiced their opinions. And FTR, I'm not bitter I've never been a 1 seed I just don't want to see us go through the exact same song and dance and have the exact same result time and time again.

 

[VanIslander]

Why not WILD CARDS?

1st and 2nd seeds go to championship round and three of the 3rd seeds (the ones with the greatest voting margin over 4th seeds in their division - easy for the vote tabulator to see, and the tiebreaker could be the smaller gap between 3rd and 2nd seeds) PLUS... the winner of the qualification round gets the last spot in the championship round.

Or, do so with the 4th seeds (instead of the 3rds) if a lot of teams are in the draft, or with the 2nd seeds if there aren't many.
So, have the qualification round BEFORE the championship round begins (we can all watch) and have the q round winner get into the champ round (will be more battle tested, well known and will have a better chance than their earlier regulation round seeding - kinda like the advantage of having played most recently has over the team who has had too many days off before a round and comes out flat). This idea is very much like how the worlds and world juniors work with automatic byes after the regulation round for the top seeds.

 

[ResilientBeast]

We pretty much did that last year and most people were pretty upset with the system they voted on

 

[jarek]

I'm pretty sure all of these different things have been discussed thoroughly already. I have come to the conclusion that what most people want is to see the best team win. I have also concluded that a lot of people hate how much the ATD playoffs drag out. This sentiment is shared by a lot of people every single year.

So my proposal would see everyone get one shot to state their case as to why they should win their division. I envision that this would take 1-2 weeks for everyone to discuss each division. Then we would have two more playoff rounds, each lasting no more than 5 days. I suspect this very short timeline to finish up the post-draft business would seriously mitigate a lot of the fatigue that tends to occur.

Hidden seedings did nothing. The random element seems to be abhorred by just about everyone. I see no satisfactory way to include as many people as possible into the post-draft stuff. So, I posit that we should simply embrace that we would like to see the best team win, and streamline things towards that goal as much as possible. I think that would make the most people happy, and the people who do end up missing out on the playoffs will likely appreciate that the process doesn't drag out as much as it has, and encourage them to vote on the last two rounds.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Why not just vote on team 1 through (whatever # we have) and call it a day then?

Like I said. Teams beyond the top 2 seeds have no shot at winning the ATD. Wasting time debating a certainty is....well, wasting time.

I say the top 2 teams from each division go into their own pool and everyone else can be put into a consolation bracket.

And we need to get the top members from the HoH board involved in the voting. I'm adamant about that. I'm not talking about any random bloke from the main boards but a select handful of willing HoH members who have been around and participated in many of the HoH projects. The discussion every year wanes. There are some votes/round I'd be willing to bet don't exceed 10-15 or so in the ATD.

 

[jarek]

Why not just vote on team 1 through (whatever # we have) and call it a day then?

Like I said. Teams beyond the top 2 seeds have no shot at winning the ATD. Wasting time debating a certainty is....well, wasting time.

I say the top 2 teams from each division go into their own pool and everyone else can be put into a consolation bracket.

And we need to get the top members from the HoH board involved in the voting. I'm adamant about that. I'm not talking about any random bloke from the main boards but a select handful of willing HoH members who have been around and participated in many of the HoH projects. The discussion every year wanes. There are some votes/round I'd be willing to bet don't exceed 10-15 or so in the ATD.

In order to get the HOH guys to participate in voting, they must actually want to do it. It can't be forced upon them.

You also don't seem to understand my proposal. The assassination and regular season rankings will be replaced by division ranking. As soon as the draft ends, 4 threads will be created for each division, and the teams in those divisions will have a chance to state their case within those threads why their team deserves to go through to the playoffs. The 4 team playoffs follow that process. In this proposal, there is no real "regular season ranking" process, although we could certainly release the voting results after the playoffs.

I also want to stress that the consolation idea is absolutely terrible, at least the way it was done last time. I am the *only* person that stuck with it the entire time, and rmartin was the only other one who showed up, and only briefly. How can you blame them? No matter how you dress it up, it is still the loser's bracket. I don't even care what seventies says about it, the fact that he went out of his way to try to encourage people to participate in it is his way of admitting that it is meaningless.

If something substantial, and I mean seriously substantial was on the line, then maybe people would participate. At a minimum, the winner of the consolation bracket should be able to choose their spot in the next ATD, and I don't even think that by itself would be enough to entice people to participate in something that nobody else will care about.

There is another problem as well - if there are more teams in the consolation bracket than in the main playoff, then you risk having the consolation round go on longer than the main playoff.. and if you guys thought voter participation last time was poor near the end, imagine what would happen when trying to gather votes for a meaningless series when the main playoff is already over. I don't even think delaying the main playoff so it could keep up is an acceptable trade-off.. it would only cause the very issue a lot of people hate, dragging the thing on even longer for no real reason.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I don't think most people will participate at intense levels once the drafting is over anyway. Especially once the seedings are shown. It's simple history. What incentive is there for a guy seeded 5th or 6th to argue their case?We've seen it for years now.

Me personally, I'll still put up a decent fight in my defense, regardless of where I'm seeded. But history has shown that more recently voting and in depth banter is pretty fleeting.

All I'm saying is that it really is pointless to have these massive brackets when we know (once the seedings are determined) who is going to win (a 1 seed and in a super rare case maybe a 2).

I did say the HoH folks would have to be willing. I'm not suggesting we try and strong arm anyone but I do believe there are some very knowledgeable folks over there, a few of whom would probably enjoy evaluating our teams and putting their opinions into the mix. Not everyone has the time to do the draft and research but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look to get more people involved, especially if those folks know what they're talking about. The draft itself isn't the "problem", it's more the post draft portions that often see a sharp decrease in participation. Some series get pages and pages of evaluations and others might get a handful of meaningful posts.

 

[jarek]

I don't think most people will participate at intense levels once the drafting is over anyway. Especially once the seedings are shown. It's simple history. What incentive is there for a guy seeded 5th or 6th to argue their case?We've seen it for years now.

Me personally, I'll still put up a decent fight in my defense, regardless of where I'm seeded. But history has shown that more recently voting and in depth banter is pretty fleeting.

All I'm saying is that it really is pointless to have these massive brackets when we know (once the seedings are determined) who is going to win (a 1 seed and in a super rare case maybe a 2).

I did say the HoH folks would have to be willing. I'm not suggesting we try and strong arm anyone but I do believe there are some very knowledgeable folks over there, a few of whom would probably enjoy evaluating our teams and putting their opinions into the mix. Not everyone has the time to do the draft and research but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look to get more people involved, especially if those folks know what they're talking about.

IE, what's going on man? Am I not being clear? You keep talking about 5th seeds and 6th seeds, but all along, I've been saying to have a playoff with only the #1 seeds of each division. In the proposed division ranking process, nobody knows anyone else's seed, because the voting for that hasn't actually been done yet, and that would be the one time that everyone would have a say regarding why they should be the division winner.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I'm fine with that idea in all honesty J. Anything that condenses the post draft process.

But I would like to say again, that getting more knowledgeable people involved, especially for the assassinations and match up threads is an area we need drastic improvement on from say the last 4-5 years. Obviously willing members that are generally agreed upon by the majority but we can all think of a number of folks who aren't necessarily ATD drafters but could certainly add a lot of insight/votes to the mix. (MXD, Tarheelhockey, etc)

 

[jarek]

I'm fine with that idea in all honesty J. Anything that condenses the post draft process.

But I would like to say again, that getting more knowledgeable people involved, especially for the assassinations and match up threads is an area we need drastic improvement on from say the last 4-5 years. Obviously willing members that are generally agreed upon by the majority but we can all think of a number of folks who aren't necessarily ATD drafters but could certainly add a lot of insight/votes to the mix. (MXD, Tarheelhockey, etc)

I have nothing against more extensive participation by non-ATDers.. I just question whether that would happen. It would take a person really passionate about hockey and/or the draft to participate in the discussion/voting, but not actually having a team. That being said, it's worth a shot to ask around.

 

[Johnny Engine]

Sturminator does it every year. Seventieslord used to do it all the time when his competitive fire was in a lull. This is a good thing.

 

[VanIslander]

I don't think most people will participate at intense levels once the drafting is over anyway. Especially once the seedings are shown. It's simple history. What incentive is there for a guy seeded 5th or 6th to argue their case?

Even 3rd and 4th are toast after a round or two at most.

The fact is playoff thread discusssions usually CONTINUE to revolve around the same regular season stats talked about in the regular season seeding discussions on the asassination thread.

Just look at the recent MLD playoff discussions and three stars. Nothing about Chris Drury, who has an impressive playoff and that repeated experience in scoring should be a factor here. Instead just more listing of regular season stats. Heck, last year Yashin was a playoff three star beast here! LOL.

The NHL playoffs are a different animal, and top seeds regularly are upset. But in these drafts the same results as regular season seeding will befall the playoffs if the same arguments are trumpeted. The lack of playoff participation is partially a reflection of it.

It would be nice to discuss the history of playoff hockey int he NHL and big tourneys, but on this board it's an unusual tidbit thrown into bios that falls by the wayside in the playoff voting.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Even 3rd and 4th are toast after a round or two at most.

The fact is playoff thread discusssions usually CONTINUE to revolve around the same regular season stats talked about in the regular season seeding discussions on the asassination thread.

Just look at the recent MLD playoff discussions and three stars. Nothing about Chris Drury, who has an impressive playoff and that repeated experience in scoring should be a factor here. Instead just more listing of regular season stats. Heck, last year Yashin was a playoff three star beast here! LOL.

The NHL playoffs are a different animal, and top seeds regularly are upset. But in these drafts the same results as regular season seeding will befall the playoffs if the same arguments are trumpeted. The lack of playoff participation is partially a reflection of it.

It would be nice to discuss the history of playoff hockey int he NHL and big tourneys, but on this board it's an unusual tidbit thrown into bios that falls by the wayside in the playoff voting.

Bingo. Agreed all the way around sir.