A Plea to the Admin Team

CopperAndBlueGM

Registered User
Mar 9, 2017
119
41
My plea is to rethink the approach to re-rates for goaltenders.

In talking to a few GM's at the draft that many feel similarly. I understand some others may be loving this years random ratings as it's a means to solicit a King's ransom in assets from other GM's but I ask your consideration for the good of the league stability.

I know for a number years I've been away it has defacto been accepted to take the ratings from another source and accept it is based on only one year as well as the fact that backup goalies get assigned unusable ratings just b/c they don't play the majority of the games. While it's been accepted it doesn't make it good.

This years ratings are particularly extreme if the range between goalies with some NHL starters also now being given unusable ratings. There also doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to them.

Apparently Carey Price sucks, based on the ratings, while Kari Lehtonen is a stud.
I had planned on releasing Antoine Bibeau from my prospect list but now apparently, despite even having horrible stats in the AHL will be signed as my best rated goalie and won't be that far back from Carey price.
I could fill this thread with a never ending list of unexplainable goalie ratings but will spare you as all you do is need to look and understand the frustration GM's are feeling.

Goaltenders are one of the largest financial commitments, and hardest to replace, key contributors and shouldn't be just left to random rating instability.

I know all too well from the past how painful and hated doing ratings were in the past and appreciate the ease of just saying we're going with this but I ask you as overseers of the league stability to reconsider.

I also know that the usual refrain is we all have ratings challenges we can use but when the ratings are illogical to start with it's all too easy to highlight other anomalies as a benchmark making that a far from rational approach.

I invite all GM's who feel similarly, or those opposed, to simply chime in with a yea or nay to revisiting goalie ratings thinking of the league itself not your individual team.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Brent Burns Beard

Brock

Registered User
Feb 27, 2002
12,196
3,628
The GTA
ohlprospects.blogspot.com
Drew,

I think this would have been much better served as an email to one of us and not an open forum discussion as these never end well.

We switched from creating our own ratings because it was a headache, inconsistent and it yielded weird results.

Last year we switched to actually purchasing a ratings package, the top rated one on the market, and the feedback was generally good. This year, we used that same ratings pack. This is to make things consistent and to actually provide consistency on how ratings are constructed from year to year. And to actually have a whole set of ratings because mixing and matching creates a headache for our mighty SimGod, as well as the admin team feeling that the mixing and matching creates oddities and it is not designed to be utilized that way as the people creating these ratings sets do test them.

There simply are not many ratings sets out there...at all. You've got your pick of a couple and trust me, the others are not any better. They're much worse.

I admit, the goaltender ratings are a tad odd this year at first glance. But they're based on stats from last year. One of which is not wins, which the creators of the ratings package feel are a team stat and not an individual stat. Am I happy with the way they came out? Absolutely not. I have Matt Murray rated as about the 45th best goaltender in the HFNHL. But, the method is consistent if you look at it. You use Carey Price as an example. I know Sean was expecting Price to have terrible ratings. So this is not a surprise to him. Plus...Price was awful last year. But he was expecting that because he knew how the ratings were constructed last year. Again, that consistency is extremely important IMO.

Plus we'll still have ratings challenges as we always do. And that's the compromise IMO.
 

Lord Stanley

Revoluccion Leader
Feb 24, 2003
773
113
In your head
revoluccionsoup.sauna.ca
I like that we are using an outside source for our ratings. From previous experience in other leagues when the league does their own ratings things get ugly. People argue relentlessly about the ratings and don't tend to look out for the good of the league but rather the good of their own team. I don't know that that didn't happen with this ratings pack we are using nor do I know what stats were used to create them. I am fairly certain though that nobody in our league was influencing the process for the betterment of their own team rather than the league as a whole.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MatthewFlames

HFNHLOilers

Registered User
Dec 13, 2008
1,238
119
Brampton
Kari Lehtonen being the whipping boy.

Here it is

Henrik Lundqvist better numbers double the games 79OV
Phillip Grubauer same games better numbers 75 OV
Connor Hellybuck vezina candidate gets 81OV Rinne with slightly better numbers less games 86OV
James Reimer 72 OV same numbers more games
Same goes for Keith Kinkaid.

Doesnt seem to matter if you play 60 games at a high level or close. This is just a short list of goalies all out of wack. I could probably make a case for every goalie in the league to raise or lower. Which just shows how awful it is for goalies
 

MatthewFlames

Registered User
Jul 21, 2003
4,678
812
'Murica
Since we're discussing --

Any changes that are made should be made for next season (18/19) - I know that GM's have already moved assets based on these ratings and it would be extremely unfair to them to suddenly change the goalie rankings after they've spent to upgrade.

This happened last year - I made a trade before the ratings came out - swapping goalies - and I got killed by it, so I understand the frustration, but overall this ratings switch was much needed and has been overwhelming a positive step for the league.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fooladelfia

Brock

Registered User
Feb 27, 2002
12,196
3,628
The GTA
ohlprospects.blogspot.com
Another thing to look at...

I think you guys are putting way too much emphasis on OV. This is extremely flawed in terms of weighing value for goaltenders in the SIM because of all the non stat based ratings for goaltenders.

As an idea, here's a breakdown of the ranking of the goalies based upon their stat based rankings (or at least an average of a few of them like SK, AG, RB)

Pekka Rinne
Antti Raanta
Sergei Bobrovsky
Connor Hellebuyck
Andrei Vasilevskiy
John Gibson
Marc-Andre Fleury
Jonathan Quick
Roberto Luongo
Devan Dubnyk
Frederik Andersen
Philipp Grubauer
Carter Hutton
Semyon Varlamov
Tuukka Rask
Ben Bishop
Henrik Lundqvist
Jacob Markstrom
Mike Smith
Kari Lehtonen
Corey Crawford
Darcy Kuemper
Juuse Saros
Ryan Miller
Brian Elliott
Cam Talbot
Martin Jones
Jake Allen
Jimmy Howard
Jonathan Bernier
Karri Ramo
Michal Neuvirth
Jaroslav Halak
Antti Niemi
Robin Lehner
Aaron Dell
Anton Khudobin
Braden Holtby
Curtis McElhinney
James Reimer
Keith Kinkaid
Alex Stalock
Ondrej Pavelec
Alexandar Georgiev
Cam Ward
Casey DeSmith
Cory Schneider
Malcolm Subban
Matt Murray
[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Is it perfect? Far from it. But I think it paints a better picture than OV does. And it does reflect the stats we saw last year reasonably well.

If we then continue to use Kari Lehtonen as an example as Zac did...

Lundqvist is ACTUALLY rated better than him based on the actual performance based ratings. So is Grubauer.

Hellebuyck is the 4th best rated goalie, behind Rinne at number 1.

Reimer and Kinkaid are actually the 40th and 41st rated goaltenders in the SIM, again based on actual performance based ratings.

There will always be anomalies. Guys like Holtby, Price, Murray, Schneider being rated pretty low. But...they didn't have very good years and our ratings are based on that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MatthewFlames

Canuck09

Registered User
Jul 4, 2004
2,040
197
Vancouver
I think Brock's last post puts it in a little better perspective but I'll chime in with a few of my thoughts...

OV is useless for the most part. I know it's the easy comparison so we all use it but it means very little because of how it's calculated. When ratings packs are made I don't believe they're designed with OV in mind because it's an individual league setting and not a standard across all. It's not a EA Sports type thing where everyone gets the same end result, ours can be completely unique. And on the topic of goalies & OV, our formula was tweaked years back when Ville was doing ratings as I tried to adjust our OV to line up with his rankings better and haven't touched it since.

I don't want to paste the ratings pack fine details on a public forum since the creator sells them for money but the core stats that are used in different ways on different ratings are: Goals against, Save %, ES Save %, SH Save %, PS %, GP, GP over last 2 years, career regular season & post season GP. All goalies are ranked in these categories, whatever ratio of each is combined into each rating category and then they're assigned values. I'd wager that if we knew the formula and stacked everyone together based on 2017-18 stats everything would make perfect sense. Are they ratios each of us would agree on...perhaps not. Is there any perfect combination of stats that create perfectly objective ratings...I don't think so.

Starters vs backups are definitely handled differently in these ratings. In the past all starters were ranked in one big group then backups the next. These ratings care more about the core stats then cripple a backups ability to play lots of games by giving a low EN rating. If you'd like to trade for a NHL backup with high ratings because his underlying stats were strong you run the risk of injury and constant exhaustion because of low GP.
 

Canuck09

Registered User
Jul 4, 2004
2,040
197
Vancouver
And for those wondering, here's the various OV formula the Sim has...
 

Attachments

  • HFNHL OV Formula.JPG
    HFNHL OV Formula.JPG
    124.5 KB · Views: 5
  • Like
Reactions: MatthewFlames

MatthewFlames

Registered User
Jul 21, 2003
4,678
812
'Murica
And for those wondering, here's the various OV formula the Sim has...

Interestingly, we can alter the OV formula any which way - we could probably change it so that it totally reflects the list order that Brock showed a couple posts earlier. But that wouldn't affect a single thing in the sim itself, as it ignores the OV.

In fact, we can actually just turn off the OV in our outputs - that's been an option for the last decade and I was in a league that did that.

Plenty of goalies with "bad" ratings last year did pretty well (hello, Stanley Cup Finalists) and of course players like Jon Quick still performed despite low OV caused by his injury two seasons ago.
 

DrSense

Registered User
Oct 4, 2017
783
899
Having helped generate ratings for many years, all I can say is the current system of taking others ratings is the worst option...except for all the others.

That is say, nothing good comes of us doing the ratings. And these are the best on the market. Plus, having them before free agency is so much better for the league and free agency. I had to overpay to swap out goalies because my starter last year had a bad year, but ...that's what happens when the players you sign or trade for suck. You pay for it. Dearly.

Roll with it people. Lots of time to adjust things based on the fact your goalie sucked last year.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Canuck09

MatthewFlames

Registered User
Jul 21, 2003
4,678
812
'Murica
A thing I do like is that there is suddenly value in having a decent second goalie. Having Reimer last season covered my buttocks (not that it got me into the playoffs). But a good (oooh that was my downfall.. need one a good one) second goalie can cover unexpected injuries etc., which is much better than the old system where we had starters play 75 games and backups were valueless.
 

Regal Beagles

Registered User
Feb 28, 2013
460
60
Having been hooped by Quick’s stats last year, this should not come as a surprise to anyone this offseason.....especially for goalies who had injuries.

The +5 ratings challenge is still there right? So make your case. It sucks but I think it’s a rule that needs to be changed mid-year for the following season so those dealing at the deadline know what they may have next year.
 

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

-->