Comparing Team Schedules

[Sidekick]

I'm in the corner of 1-16 seeding come the PO's...especially when year after year it seems 4 of the top 5 teams are in one Conference.

Totally agree. Especially in this league, where travel really isn't all that bad.

..but should that ever happen, the scheduling would have to change too, no?

 

[AttackSound]

Saginaw only plays OS twice and that's ok with me. Did not know about Barrie playing OS that much.

To shine some light of Owen Sound's schedule for some interesting facts Owen Sound's schedule isn't very different to most teams around the league if you break it down. Where Owen Sound makes up for certain matchups is the distance from particular rivalry teams in their own conference Owen Sound has a very unique rivalries and there as follows.

Barrie (x6) to make up for the distance to the Soo

Erie (x6) x2 sets of doubleheaders and a single game in each city

Guelph (x8) evenly split between the two cities

Kitchener (x8) evenly split

London (x6) evenly split

The rest are all pretty much self explanatory if you find a map of the league that's up to date and start by drawing distance lines from Owen Sound outwards to every other team's city. As for Barrie and Owen Sound the fact is that both the Attack and Colts are the shortest distance in travel time clocked at just under 2 hours apart highway 26 makes up for the 7 and a half hour trip to Sault Ste. Marie. Similar teams like Erie and Niagara and Soo and Sudbury have all had some type of cross conference rivalry for many years

 

[Otto]

I'm in the corner of 1-16 seeding come the PO's...especially when year after year it seems 4 of the top 5 teams are in one Conference.

In a perfect world, there is no way the owners would go for it though. Expenses aside the prospect of an Erie/North Bay or Ottawa/Sault first round match up is enough to get it shot down.

At the very least I'd like to see the teams re-seeded when they are down to the final four

 

[ScoresFromCentre]

Well there appears to be this narrative that, if the schedules were reversed, the Knights would be home free, in 1st place and on cruise control right now if the schedules. I disagree. Determining strength of schedule is far more nuanced than just looking at games against Barrie and Guelph (as I was trying to demonstrate with the Kitchener vs Sarnia example).

This is absolutely true, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Strength of schedule is a piece of the puzzle--a piece that overrates OS slightly relative to London. But I think OS's points total might actually underrate them, as this is not the same team that spent the first few months of the season languishing in sixth. You could make a similar argument for London with respect to Parsons' injury woes.

The Attack are and will be a sexy playoff pick because they've been the most consistent down the stretch of any of the contenders. London, on the other hand, will be less popular because they've struggled. But people proclaiming a "second-round exit" for London right now are going a bit overboard, in my opinion. That might be their most likely playoff outcome (statistically, barring a first-round upset by Kitchener, Flint, or Sarnia, two of the "big five" will lose in the second round, while one will lose in each of the first round and conference finals, and one will either win the league or choke in the finals), but I think it's still less likely than that slate of other outcomes.

A good tip for playoff prognostication? Don't sleep on talent. Teams can gel at unexpected times, as we saw with last year's Niagara team. And this London team is talented.

 

[fishfan51]

Well there appears to be this narrative that, if the schedules were reversed, the Knights would be home free, in 1st place and on cruise control right now if the schedules. I disagree. Determining strength of schedule is far more nuanced than just looking at games against Barrie and Guelph (as I was trying to demonstrate with the Kitchener vs Sarnia example).

Sounds like a balanced schedule is what is needed before the league entertains the though of going to a 1-16 format.

 

[EvenSteven]

I'm in the corner of 1-16 seeding come the PO's...especially when year after year it seems 4 of the top 5 teams are in one Conference.

It does make some sense until you factor in the strong possibility we'd be playing teams from the other conference as opposed to fierce rivals.

When I go into the playoffs, I want to play, and hopefully beat, teams I don't like that I've been playing more often during the year. Teams that we have a "history" against.

I'd rather watch a heated (even though today's rules make this harder) series vs a hated rival than a series vs a team from the east who have only been my building once and who's players I barely know, (save for a couple of their stars) let alone dislike. Under the current format, even though Kitchener only hosted, say, Plymouth one more time than the east teams per year, we were more likely to have playoff "history" with them.

Under a 1-16 format, the likelihood you'd play rivals in the playoffs could be near non existent and therefore, IMO, much less entertaining. Beating a rival in the playoffs is much more satisfying, just as losing to one hurts much more.

 

[EvenSteven]

In a perfect world, there is no way the owners would go for it though. Expenses aside the prospect of an Erie/North Bay or Ottawa/Sault first round match up is enough to get it shot down.

At the very least I'd like to see the teams re-seeded when they are down to the final four

That makes sense if we are trying to get the best four teams into the final four, but doesn't solve the issue of, like this year, one of the top teams in the league going out in the 1st round (ie. 4 vs 5 in the west).

But as you said, in the very least, it would be something.

 

[PhlyerPhanatic31]

It does make some sense until you factor in the strong possibility we'd be playing teams from the other conference as opposed to fierce rivals.

When I go into the playoffs, I want to play, and hopefully beat, teams I don't like that I've been playing more often during the year. Teams that we have a "history" against.

I'd rather watch a heated (even though today's rules make this harder) series vs a hated rival than a series vs a team from the east who have only been my building once and who's players I barely know, (save for a couple of their stars) let alone dislike. Under the current format, even though Kitchener only hosted, say, Plymouth one more time than the east teams per year, we were more likely to have playoff "history" with them.

Under a 1-16 format, the likelihood you'd play rivals in the playoffs could be near non existent and therefore, IMO, much less entertaining. Beating a rival in the playoffs is much more satisfying, just as losing to one hurts much more.

How silly of me....I keep forgetting not everyone is a London fan. Everyone is our RIVAL.

 

[fishfan51]

I'm not against 1-16 seeding.

However, I don't see the point of divisions or conferences if their just going to do away with them at the most important time of the season. In addition, if they went with 1-16, I think they should go to a balanced schedule where every team plays the same amount of games against every team.

I know the travel argument, but the WHL doesn't seem to have any trouble travelling much farther distances.

If they were to award a division winner a top 4 seed regardless of points, I think it defeats the whole 1-16 point.

 

[EON]

I'm not against 1-16 seeding.

However, I don't see the point of divisions or conferences if their just going to do away with them at the most important time of the season. In addition, if they went with 1-16, I think they should go to a balanced schedule where every team plays the same amount of games against every team.

I know the travel argument, but the WHL doesn't seem to have any trouble travelling much farther distances.

If they were to award a division winner a top 4 seed regardless of points, I think it defeats the whole 1-16 point.

How about a system like the Q has? They have three divisions, division winner gets a top 3 seed. After that, their playoffs are 1-16. They have much longer distances to cover than the OHL does.

 

[fishfan51]

How about a system like the Q has? They have three divisions, division winner gets a top 3 seed. After that, their playoffs are 1-16. They have much longer distances to cover than the OHL does.

Again, IMO it defeats the purpose. A team with the 2nd most points can be in the same division with the team with the most points but is now the 4th seed?

 

[TcNorth]

Last season Flint played Saginaw and Windsor "8" times.
This season Flint played Saginaw and Sarnia "8" times.

Only 35 miles separates Flint and Saginaw and about 60 miles from Flint to both Sarnia and Windsor (depending on border time). I suspect the same next season.

 

[ScoresFromCentre]

At the very least I'd like to see the teams re-seeded when they are down to the final four

I like this idea as well. It might need to be tweaked a bit: you could restrict it to cases in which the top two teams are in the same conference, or, if you wanted to put a premium on finishing first in a conference, guarantee the top seeds in both conferences the top two seeds in the semis (this would effectively make the third round a "crossover" round, in which the lower seed in each conference "crosses over" to the opposite conference to face its higher seed). But the point is that it prevents the top two teams in the league from squaring off before the league finals, which is happening now for the third time in the past four years ('15-'16, '13-'14). As an added bonus, in years in which one conference has both the #1 and #3 overall teams (historically, this has been Kitchener or Plymouth) the #3 would have had a chance to earn a spot in the finals by taking out the #2 overall team in what could be an exciting series.

I'd also look at guaranteeing division winners a top three seed in the playoffs, not a top two seed as currently structured. Teams that finish second overall in the regular season, like Guelph in '03-'04 or Erie in '13-'14, should get at least two rounds of home ice advantage, in my opinion. This could have the added benefit of making the last few games of the season more competitive (for example, Owen Sound would have an incentive to pass SSM this year). Unfortunately this still doesn't completely fix messes like '13-'14 and '04-'05 where the top three teams in the league were all in the same division, but those are reasonably uncommon.

 

[OSA]

Can we just do away with the divisions and just have 2 conferences of 10 teams. Balance the schedules between conference opponents a little better and a few extra games dedicated to geographic rivals.

 

[ScoresFromCentre]

I finally ran the strength of schedule numbers using both the OHL's points system (RW/OTW/SOW = 2 pts, OTL/SOL = 1 pt, RL = 0 pts) and the HockeyDB points system (RW = 5 pts, OTW = 4 pts, SOW = 3 pts, SOL = 2 pts, OTL = 1 pt, RL = 0 pts). No big surprises here: Guelph and their 28 games against the West's Big 5 had by far the hardest schedule in the league. (Guelph's average opponent finished with a better points total than the Mississauga Steelheads.) Despite having the same common opponents as Guelph, Kitchener's SOS is actually a fair bit lower than Guelph's because the teams played each other eight times (and Kitchener was much stronger than Guelph this year). Mississauga and their 34 games against the East's bottom six comfortably had the league's easiest schedule.

The West had the top seven teams in terms of SOS, with only Erie, OS, and SSM coming in below average thanks to their conference crossover games and being strong teams themselves. SSM had the third easiest schedule in the league. (Note how much stronger Windsor's schedule was than SSM's--the difference is two extra games against each of Erie, London, and OS vs. four extra games against Sudbury and two extra games against North Bay.) London's schedule was also a fair bit stronger than both OS and SSM's--I don't think it's unfair to argue that scheduling cost the Knights the third seed in the playoffs. Ottawa snuck in an above-average SOS by virtue of playing 24 games against Kingston, Oshawa, and Peterborough, three of the top four teams in the East. OMG67 has argued in the Peterborough topic that the Petes faced an light post-deadline schedule--the numbers certainly bear him out, as they had the fifth easiest schedule in the league.

Note that these numbers are biased--I did not remove the teams' head-to-head results in assigning their winning percentages for the purpose of calculating their SOS. (So, for example, in calculating Kitchener's SOS, the opponent's winning percentage I used for their eight games against Owen Sound included OS's 7-1 head-to-head record against the Rangers.) In a perfect world, we'd have unbiased numbers, but that would be much more difficult to compute (at the very least, we'd need more accessible head-to-head data), and the effect is likely minimal. But for the curious, unbiased numbers would typically move the stronger teams up slightly (they cause their opponents' records to fall) and the weaker teams down slightly (they cause their opponents' records to rise)--so you might want to adjust the numbers in your head accordingly.

TEAM ------------ OHL -- HDB
Guelph ---------- .602 -- .553
Saginaw -------- .581 -- .530
Sarnia ---------- .580 -- .531
Kitchener ------- .578 -- .530
Flint ------------ .570 -- .518
London --------- .566 -- .515
Windsor -------- .564 -- .514
Ottawa ----------.555 -- .502
Erie ------------- .549 -- .499
Barrie ---------- .545 -- .494
Kingston ------- .542 -- .489
Niagara -------- .540 -- .487
Owen Sound --- .539 -- .489
Hamilton ------- .535 -- .482
Oshawa -------- .534 -- .481
Peterborough -- .534 -- .482
North Bay ------ .534 -- .481
Sault Ste. Marie .530 -- .479
Sudbury -------- .529 -- .476
Mississauga ---- .520 -- .468