2011 Draft

[SharksGM]

I know it's a bit early for draft talk but already quite a few picks have changed hands and undoubtedly will continue to do so as the deadline nears. Can we get some feedback on how the draft class might compare to last year's? I think the general concensus was that the 2010 draft was both top heavy and deep, so if the upcoming draft is going to be weaker it'd be nice to know ahead of time how it will compare so we know how to value not just 1st rounders but 2nd-4th too.

On a more general note, I'd like to see more pot boosters in the upcoming draft. That might sound a bit crazy considering there were quite a few in the last one, but there's not really any other way to simulate a boom-or-bust type pick in EHM. Beyond that, it would be nice if the 3rd-4th rounds were filled out with, say, 'safe' picks (4th line forwards/7th defensemen/AHL stars/near NHL-ready guys) and also pot boosters who could be flawed NHL regulars with a boost. There were some of those guys in the last draft but most of the pot boosters were such that they'd be more than just fringe NHLers with a boost - like a few defensemen had a chance at going from Scott Hannan to Scott Stevens. I mean it would be good to have guys like Taylor Doherty as 3rd/4th rounders.

[Parker]

I agree that it would be great to get a preview of the draft class, but if league brass has time I'd personally prefer that the whole contract extension issue be dealt with first. Because of their continuing development, I have a couple guys on my team who are now demanding more money than they were at the the beginning of the season, and I would like to get them locked up before their demands get too much more expensive.

[Commish Bub(NYR)]

Agreed. I think achieving cost certainty is a must for the league right now.

Good lord...I think I channeled Bettman there for a minute.

[Penguin]

Contracts and filling up teams is a must before getting to the draft! Last year, Adam did the draft ratings after the season and it worked out well. It just removes the chance to scout all season long to know if you want to trade your picks or not, but it's not a big deal imo.

[SharksGM]

I agree that it would be great to get a preview of the draft class, but if league brass has time I'd personally prefer that the whole contract extension issue be dealt with first. Because of their continuing development, I have a couple guys on my team who are now demanding more money than they were at the the beginning of the season, and I would like to get them locked up before their demands get too much more expensive.

Well I think the whole point of the new contract system is to prevent exactly that (signing developing players to long term, undervalued contracts) so don't hold your breath.

Contracts and filling up teams is a must before getting to the draft! Last year, Adam did the draft ratings after the season and it worked out well. It just removes the chance to scout all season long to know if you want to trade your picks or not, but it's not a big deal imo.

Filling up teams before the deadline, sure, but there isn't really any rush to get the new contract system in place. And I don't want full ratings for 150 players, I just want a quick summary of how this draft will compare before I trade away all of my picks for zombie Chris Chelios.

[Parker]

I agree that it would be great to get a preview of the draft class, but if league brass has time I'd personally prefer that the whole contract extension issue be dealt with first. Because of their continuing development, I have a couple guys on my team who are now demanding more money than they were at the the beginning of the season, and I would like to get them locked up before their demands get too much more expensive.

Well I think the whole point of the new contract system is to prevent exactly that (signing developing players to long term, undervalued contracts) so don't hold your breath.

I'm not talking about signing a 60OA player to a six-year contract where he'll be 75OA by the start of the second year. I'm talking about guys like Boedker and Korpikoski who continue to develop and improve their points totals, and who are now demanding 50% higher salaries than when I would have signed them if allowed. Paying a guy $1.5M a season instead of $2M a season isn't the same as paying a guy $350k instead of $5M.

[CapsGM]

I actually think it's more realistic leaving extensions until later. How often do we see extensions given out in the NHL between September/January? The majority of contracts are given out in the offseason as that's the best time to evaluate players.

Personally, I think there should be some sort of summer arbitration system for younger players (or at least players coming off ELCs!) because EHM is terrible at it. Of course, it's pretty hard to implement and means more work for GMs (not necessarily the commissioners). I also think it'd be a bit more realistic to lower the UFA age, but that's just me. With the lack of user-friendliness in EHM, we'll never have a perfect contract system without having to do a lot of extra work.

This is coming from a GM who has never taken advantage of EHM's extension system. Nicklas Backstrom is very happy with $2 million per year.

[Commish Bub(NYR)]

I actually think it's more realistic leaving extensions until later. ...

While I don't disagree with your email, it does beg the question as to what the contract and extension system will look like. If it's going to get revamped along the lines of what you suggested (or something like that -- not holding you to it!) then sure, a summer "series of events" might be pretty cool. (And give the GMs more to do and think about over the summer.) If however we're going to use only a slightly modified version of the EHM system, however flawed and "unrealistic" it is, then I for one would like to see it in place sooner than later.

[Virtual Jarmo]

Guys, I apologize that I've been a bit lax on a lot of league issues over the first half of the season. There are so many bugs with a 10-year old program that it's an overwhelming task to even try to tackle all of them. I guess, on some level, the fact that you can only have the same salary each year is similar to a cap hit, so that's something we'll be considering when contracts are looked at. Because, we can make the argument that even a 70 OA player at 22 making 3.5M isn't that bad because he'd be somewhere around 7 or 8 when he's 80 OA and 26. So we'll be taking that in to consideration.

As for the draft class, one beauty of this year's is that I actually got to sit down and watch the World Juniors, so I'll have a better feel for the first and second rounders who are draft eligible that played in the tournament. It won't be complete guesswork based on their scouting reports, point totals taking in to account the league, and then stereotypically basing them off their country. IE, Finnish players were better defensively, Russia players were lower CON with explosive offense, Swedish players were very good two-way guys.

The hardest thing with POT boosters is that, like in the case of the Petter Granberg's of the 2010 draft, they're unrealistically taken high. I guess we don't absolutely have to mirror the NHL draft, especially when you consider that some of the guys in our draft class weren't even drafted or vice versa. If there was a way to regulate who boosts and who doesn't, I'd be more apt to have a larger number of them. I guess I could make them POT boosters but limit their CON. I think Granberg's CON was high 80s or low 90s. That's definitely too high. If I put them closer to 77 or 78 CON, then it's a definite risk-reward scenario.

Now that the holidays are over and my sports betting will slow down after college football, I'll make sure to get Ryan and Nick together and we'll get focused on solving these issues. We are open to suggestions as well. There are a lot of ways we can take the contract issue. The biggest two, IMO, are going to be regulating the draft pick ELCs and then the first full contract after ELCs. It's hard to regulate a good salary cap number with the low ELCs currently and then still give teams enough of a chance to sign extensions to players. At least we're starting to get past some of the initial ridiculous contracts that we started with. The ones that were signed in real life and handicapped teams in EHEC.

It's extremely difficult to cover all of the loopholes. In retrospect, the 30% should have been a yearly increase and then that becomes the annual cap hit. So a guy making 1M would have gone 1.3, 1.6, 1.9 and then the cap hit would be 1.6M instead of just signing them at 1.3. It's a somewhat inconsequential increase, though. Maybe a 50-60-70 system. The stumbling block here is that a 66 OA grinder shouldn't be on the same increase scale as a franchise offensive player. Basing it off OA is a little unfair too. It probably has to be some formula of OF + DF with potential factored in, or something with ceilings. It's a ton of work and something I'm honestly not looking forward to. There are just too many factors to consider. But, it has to be done and I think it will be another landmark development to separate us from the EHM leagues that are still out there.



On the draft class, I definitely want to do it earlier this year. My reservation about that is not being able to base prospects off their end-of-season grades and having to go with their mid-season rankings. Guys like Kabanov fell off the map last year. I want to try and be as realistic as possible. But, I also want to not be doing the draft class and the AHL playoff savefile at the same time. It's a lot to cover. I trust that Ryan and Nick could help with them, but I'm also the kind of person who never worked well in groups and always wanted to do things myself.

Until I get started with it, I'm not sure I can tell you exactly how it's going to go. I haven't even really looked at the draft-eligible class yet to be honest. I know last year was heavy on defensive defensemen, very weak at goaltender, and top heavy. I want to make it more balanced this year, especially in terms of depth at every position.


As for filling the league, I've completely neglected to get back to interested candidates. I had every intention of doing so and then it slipped my mind completely. We had a couple that looked really promising as well. But, for every team I fill, there's another team that will be vacated. It's just a cycle. An unfortunate cycle. There are a handful of lame duck teams and I apologize for that. Activity is still high with the core base, which is what is keeping the league going. It's just a matter of finding those needles in the EHM-world haystack.

Most of all, I need to get re-focused on this. As I said, now that the holidays are in the past, it is the time to get going again on improving the league. Apologies to all of the regulars I've let down by not getting on these league problems. It wasn't my intention at all to appear like I'm abandoning the ship.

Thanks for not jumping on my ass about it. We'll get everything worked out in the near future and I'll start getting draftees together.

[Penguin]

Thata boy Adam!

[Femur]

...but I'm also the kind of person who never worked well in groups and always wanted to do things myself...

hence the frequent masturbation in your adolescence (yes, you just practically wrote a book, and that is all i got out of it...what can i say, i am a child)

[Virtual Jarmo]

...but I'm also the kind of person who never worked well in groups and always wanted to do things myself...

hence the frequent masturbation in your adolescence (yes, you just practically wrote a book, and that is all i got out of it...what can i say, i am a child)

Learned from a team of the best. The Skating Tripods.

[SharksGM]

Thanks for the reply Adam. I brought up the draft mainly because while we were all pretty much happy with how the 2010 draft went, it's pretty clear to me at least that it was too good. If you think about it there are 600 NHL regulars, maybe 800 if you count callups/journeymen who disappear after a few seasons, so considering they come from maybe 15 draft years or so there are really only 40-50 NHL regulars that come from any given draft. And if you look at some of the past drafts on hockeydb, a lot of drafts especially in the late 90s had a large number of first rounders go completely bust. If I look at the 2010 EHEC draft, I'd easily make room on my team for every player picked in the first round. Only Brickley is really a risk to bust, but he's also got a chance at being a late blooming Gretzky if he boosts. Past that, most of the 2nd rounders are going to be decent players even on deep teams and even the 3rd & 4th rounds will probably produce 20-30 NHL regulars between them.

So without making this more long-winded, it seems clear that if we want realistic drafts they can't all be as good as 2010. Sure, it looks like overall skill in the NHL is going up every year and there aren't going to be nearly as many awful drafts as there were in the 90s. Still, EHEC 2010 compares favourably to NHL 2003 which is widely regarded as the best draft of all time, and even that draft had Jessiman, Pouliot and Belle disappoint, not to mention plenty of busts in the 2nd round.

Now as for what to do about it, I know most of the problem lies with EHM. It's basically impossible to make a prospect that's likely to bust without giving them < 50 CON, and then nobody is going to pick them because even if they don't bust they'll have horrible CON their entire career. That's why I suggested make more marginal boosting candidates to fill out the later rounds - guys with 75-79 CON and not many 100+ ceilings, again like Taylor Doherty. Sure, they'll never completely bust like a lot of NHL picks do but at least if they don't boost they'll be no more than career AHLers.

And again the reason I bring this up now is that if the 2011 draft is going to be like the last one, even a late 3rd is like a >50% chance of picking up a low-risk, EHEC regular in 2-3 years. If that's going to be the case again, I'd like to know ahead of time.

[Virtual Jarmo]

The biggest problem with POT boosters, as I said, is that there's no way to regulate how many there are. As far as I remember, they can boost any year up to three years after they're drafted. Obviously, with our sim time, three years off is a long time, but I'd hate to make a batch of POT boosters, say 25, and have 80% of them boost. Take Brian Ward. He was what, CHI's 4th round pick, and he double boosted already and now he's superhuman. I mean, he lasted that long, so nobody pegged him to boost. So I guess in that sense, it makes it all the more fun.

I wanted a deep draft for three reasons. One, EHM shafted some guys on the ceilings. Some guys who are really good NHL players (John Carlson comes to mind) got the shaft at file startup. I wasn't going to go back through and fuck with individual player ceilings to make them more on par. That took too much time and there were other concerns. Two, I didn't want a precedent set to trade draft picks like they were doubles of Pokemon cards. I wanted them to hold more value. A draft like last year's plants the seed that the drafts should be deep. I can alter that for future drafts, make some stronger than others, etc. And three, it was my first time making a draft class. So I wanted to be on the stronger side. I think a big part of the problem was that as I kept making guys, I didn't want them to appear too similar or to be too interchangeable. I think I kind of failed at that, but there's so much to keep track of. I tried to throw in a lot of loopholes like 6' players with a 110 HI ceiling and 74POT. I wanted to make sure that you had to do your homework when rating players. I think my biggest omission was that I missed some of the current strength, leadership, faceoff, etc. attributes.

I realize that I made the 2nd round really strong. Probably too strong. While the draft was top heavy, there was a lot of value for guys in the 2nd/3rd rounds. And that's not very realistic. But what you brought up is right in the sense that there's really no way to make a guy bust. EHM busts guys based on weight and CON. For example, if I had neglected to change Tyler Toffoli's weight from 120, he would have been a complete and utter stiff. There's not a whole lot that I can do to try and outsmart the code of the game.

The only way to circumvent it, somewhat, is to give guys shit ceilings and then they get worse faster, but that still doesn't happen until they're older.

I don't blame you for wanting to know ahead of time, however, I'd play devil's advocate and say that I don't want anyone to know. Because it will dictate how you trade at the deadline. I guess, in a sense, a more realistic way of doing it would be to have you know in advance because the real-life GMs and scouts know, but trading is far easier in a sim league than real life. It might make trading harder to know that it'll be a less deep draft and therefore 3rd round picks don't have near as much value. I guess it works both ways.

There's no doubt the 2010 draft was way too strong. I'm definitely going to scale it back. But, to scale it back to perfection is an impossibility. I would love to find a way to force guys to bust.

I learned as I went along last year. Going in to making the draft class, I had no idea that POT boosters existed. I didn't really know what dictates goaltender development. But now that I'm aware of far more than I was last year, it should go differently.

[CapsGM]

I wanted a deep draft for three reasons. One, EHM shafted some guys on the ceilings. Some guys who are really good NHL players (John Carlson comes to mind) got the shaft at file startup.

[Jets GM]

I think Adam has a point of the complete draft class being released a few days/weeks before the draft. Once we see it we can pretty much predict exactly what the player will develop into, a luxury no NHL scouts have. I'm sure Adam will create a very realistic class that mirrors its NHL counterparts, so doing actual scouting irl about players strengths/weaknesses will give you a head start of the players you want to look out for. Maybe something like inputting or releasing the top 30 CSB players from the midterm rankings this year. It will give you an idea of what top end talent is available, and the depth of the bottom 10 players will give you an idea of what the 2nd and 3rd rounds will look like.

Knowing the outcome so far in advance kinda ruins the fun of it, no?

edit: very ez 4 me to say, i have no 1st or 2nd rounders right now

[Oilers_GM]

Hey Guys Happy new year all!


On the Boom and Bust stuff... this is from the BHL - Banger Hockey League who got it from SFHL. Just throwing it out as an option to use. It's random so you never know what will happen. maybe just needs some tweaks.


=======
The Boom/Bust draft. In order to add a bit more realism, a feature to the draft has been added that will see several players turn out better then expected and several that will not pan out as well as hoped. The changes will occur as follows:

Every draft there will be random rolls of a die (http://www.pbegames.com/roller/) to determine the number of players that will boom (between 6 to 10) and bust (between 4 to 8). Following this, a roll will occur resulting in the predetermined number of players booming and another roll of the predetermined number resulting in players busting. The number rolled (between 1 to 150) corresponds to the spot a player was drafted (ie if a roll of 45 comes up, it corresponds to the player drafted 45th overall).

If a player booms:
The pot is increased as follows:
If already pot of 6 or below - raised to pot of 7
If pot of 7 originally - raised to pot of 8
If pot of 8 originally - remains the same
If pot of 9 or greater - remains the same

Consistency - raised to 76 (left alone if >75). If a player has a pot of 8 or 9 originally (and therefore it is not raised by the boom) their consistency will be raised to 85.

Ceilings: The following ceilings will be raised by 10 points: SH, PL, ST, CH, PO, HI.

If a player busts:
The pot is decreased by 1
Consistency is reduced to 60 (left alone if already below 60)
Ceilings previously mentioned are lowered by 10 points

A player can only boom or bust once. If by the off chance a players number is chosen twice to boom or twice to bust, the will only boom/bust once and a new number will be drawn. If a players number is drawn in both the boom and bust categories, these act to cancel each other out and the player remains as is.

This will be done in the offseason following the draft.

also, this idea is from another league (sfhl) so they get full credit for it
=========

[SharksGM]

That sort of mimics what happens in Real Life (TM), but the numbers sound pretty extreme. On a 7 pot prospect, you're talking about a swing of 10-20 points in attributes with a ceiling boost, plus potentially a con boost too.

The unhappy truth if we want to be realistic is that more players from the lower rounds need to bust, since the majority never pan out, and a few can turn into diamonds in the rough.

[Virtual Jarmo]

Real life CSB released today. You guys can get a jump on looking at the draft class.

[CapsGM]

17 NAMESTNIKOV, VLADISLAV LONDON OHL 5' 11.5" 170 C

my scouting's done

[Montreal Canadiens]

I wouldn't like to see the file edited so much with the "Boom and bust" option. Also, you're going to make some people pretty upset.

[SharksGM]

I wouldn't like to see the file edited so much with the "Boom and bust" option. Also, you're going to make some people pretty upset.

I hope people can get over their prospects not all turning out into key players without taking it personally.

Anyways, on a slightly related topic, I went to the CHL Top Prospects game/skills competition this year since it was in Toronto and it was a lot of fun. I'd recommend it if it ever comes near driving distance of where you live, though I don't think it's held in the US too often.

Back to actual draft talk, I thought about it and figured I'd like to see something like Hockeysfuture rating system (http://www.hockeysfuture.com/playerprojections/). The potential ability is basically the combination of potential + ceilings in EHM. The realistic probability rating is a letter grade from A-F grading how likely the player is to reach that rating, so super-talented high risk picks (think floaty Russians) get 8D's while good Canadian kids like Crosby get 9A's.

There's nothing like that letter rating in EHM, other than POT boosters. So I would like something like that introduced, where an A rating means a small chance of improving/declining after the draft (but most likely stay the same), down to a D that has a small chance of improving and a large chance of dropping.

What exactly declining/improving means can be settled later - I'm in favour of allowing everything from ceilings to pot/con to vary, but not all at once. But I think having a letter rating represent some variability in how a prospect turns out is good, as long as everyone understands how the system works. If you really want to not take any risks you can just draft A players, but those will be in high demand (just like the NHL); in the later rounds where it's down to just 7D's you at least know you've got a small chance of getting an NHLer out of it instead of getting stuck with a guaranteed AHLer. And there would be more strategy involved - you could stockpile late round picks in the hopes of striking big with one of them and often have tough choices between a surefire 3rd liner and a possible top 6 forward who could just bust.

Thoughts?