RSHL.blog

An analysis of how the rules for Hockey Zone’s secondary league affect whether certain players are played or recruited

Disclaimer

Criticism of the effects of a rule is not to be taken as disparagement of past LC’s.

Similarly, noting how certain teams have approached Beer League is not a criticism of their captains: they are merely playing within the rules set for them.

Navee has autonomy on what rules he chooses for MSHL/Beer League/Whiskey League; this article is to try to show the knock-on effects different rules could have for the upcoming season.

I’ve already posted some of this article elsewhere before, but it bears repeating.
This is going to be relatively long and nerdy with lots of graphs. The intended audience is not really the general population, but in The Era Of Transparency™ it’s best to post it here for anyone to peruse.

In the couple of days I’ve spent writing this, some of it is already redundant. It was going to be a video, but getting it published quickly has become more important, so it’s missing some images but I think it still has value.

The Hockey Zone Population

I wanted to show you a graphical representation of our current player base, but I do not have sufficient access to produce this with up to date data right now.

Going on the data I had from two years ago, we had 230 players. Only 135 of these actually played in RSHL or Beer League.

Many people are completely blind to a huge portion of our population. As far as they are concerned, these players do not exist. And that is understandable: if you only come into the zone to get your one hour of league play each week, how would you know about the trickle of newbies and oldies we get coming into the zone? And if you do come across one, how are you to know whether they are genuinely new or just a regular player aliasing?

Who is #91?
Does #47 even play?
#47: Fuck you Navee, I play more than you do!

But they do exist. I used to message the bulk of these players twice a year. For the less active ones, I already know why many of them don’t play.

Why would we believe an uncomfortable exit interview? We’d prefer to keep pretending they don’t exist.

These are the players we should be trying to get more involved in our secondary league.
We will need advertisements across multiple avenues: email blast; facebook; announcements on other zones’ discords/forums; direct outreach, etc.

Will they actually play?

We need to not instantly drive players away when they enter the zone. Hockey Zone’s reputation for toxicity to outsiders is returning. We will need a concerted effort to get these players into pub, scrim or 2v2, and encourage them to “join a team or make a team™”

♫there is nothing better! ♫

…many of them will play more in the right circumstances.

Source: trust me bro!

#219, someone who barely stepped foot into the zone two years ago, went on to become an active RSHLer.
Sometimes real life will mean that no Hockey Zone time slots suit them, or they are so disillusioned with the zone that they will never return. Sometimes players will only return if their friends do (e.g. #128 would return if #38 also comes back).

I will again be individually messaging all of these players for the upcoming season. Even if they don’t join, finding out why they aren’t interested is still helpful.
I’d have been happy to do this earlier in the discussions for the replacement of Beer League just to prove that there are players out there willing to play. The only reason I haven’t already is because it is more productive to say to someone “hey, join this!” rather than “hi, would you consider playing this in X weeks when rosters open….?”
Nevertheless, I have already started advertising with positive results.

New blood

As well as these less well-known players, there are people active in other zones who could be attracted to play in our second tier who don’t come into the zone at all right now.

There is naturally skepticism about how many new players can be enticed to play, but it’s been done before and can be done again. I will explore later in the article how Beer League hasn’t incentivized bringing in new players.

I am hopeful that we could get multiple MSHL teams formed from groups of players entirely from another zone, much like how lizird strikirs originated from Trench Wars.

Do you think we could get seven newbies?
wtf? I’ll get more than that just on my team!

There are already recruitment efforts under way for this by others, and this is happening unprompted.
To help this further, we need Hockey Zone “ambassadors”. If you are a player who plays both here and in another zone, we need your help to bridge the populations.

There are still players who have trouble adding the zone to their zone list, so I’m hopeful that the interzone portal can be reestablished to make it easier to get to us from Trench Wars (ty RaCka). It would be even better if we can get this from other zones too.

The zone is dead. Only 61 players played pub this month.

Pub and scrim are fed by league activity, and belief that they can start at all each night.
It’s a feedback loop: if pub doesn’t make it to 6v6, or scrim dies after one game, that makes it less likely that people will try again the following night. It’s why getting pub going isn’t as simple as just making an automated Sesh post; has scheduling “Euro Power Hour” ever worked?
This is why getting new blood into the zone is so important: some of these players will become the new superactive ever-present scrimmers in their desire to improve.

Scrim sucks already, and this will make the quality worse.
Get over yourselves. If you want higher quality games, then encourage other avenues that can help with that: ashl, elite league, vet scrim night…
Fuck you big e, we’re all retiring, everyone is calling it a day.

Retirements

We always lose some players from season to season: there is an element of “churn” where as some players leave, others will return. There have been multiple retirement speeches, but is it any worse than any other season? Let’s take a look….

These players didn’t return to play in Season 39 of RSHL:
Thrill, Rage, NCVinyl, Leafy, Vega~, Abvolt, Cereal n’ Milk, Koore69, SuperDan, Xogon, Brethal+ADSL, Roflpocalypse.

These players stopped playing after Season 37:
AfrIcAn PaNdA, BobBarkerCantDie, idkidc1233, Mobey, artofwar, Jurassic, Warrior, AntiAliasing, CCelebornn, Bn-, TheRedRaven
but around that time we also lost these beer leaguers as they weren’t recruited back for Season 7:
Stinging Metal, tj hazuki, awu, Riverside, Lucky boy, Dare, Spartan, wiibimbo, banzi, dad.
These are not just players who played a couple of beer league games to try out the zone; they got significant minutes.

The end of Season 36 had relatively good retention, only losing Kai- and TheWqlf for the big names, but also Funk E, Splenetic, Tool, Miagy, Best, Unabled, pyscho and mvp.

Season 35 was the last icetime for Buck Cat, BananaSquadron69, Ghyslain, King- and memorize, but also saw a host of active beer leaguers lost: stickman, setrix, commodo, temujin, sprackle, nlie, phwami, craigg, warthog, zeebu, shlazzer, squirtle17, gruntster, rumour91, shaft..

Season 34 of RSHL, or Season 3 of beer league, was the last time these players played: tjian, bos, posiedon, nimzo, doriath, goldeye, carlito brigante, felix_da_kat, sexton_furnival, logan6305, hellrazor, Felony, Easton, Snappy, as well as my own two newbies from that season Gauze70 and MrPucku.

Season 33 was the last time we saw Killer Soldier, Edmo, Beat, Tullez, Gambler., Amwhere, So Bad, diakka, Anborn, and lilwade (although he would briefly return for RSFL later).

Season 32 of RSHL, or the inaugural season of beer league, was the last time these players played in a league: droo, nine, justlo, gilder, hutt, mace23, daresay, d money, deno, gotrek, seca., dash, DDPN, Jumper, wO, HockeyBeau and cigar (although like lilwade, he would come back for RSFL).

As you can see, we lose a significant amount of players to retirement nearly every season. Don’t assume hockey zone is on the brink of collapse just because a few more are hanging up their skates.

If you do have a link to some of these old retirees outside of the game, please consider reaching out to them when next season’s rosters open. Even if they don’t have time or desire to come back and play regularly, it is good to maintain old connections and to encourage them to pop into the zone occasionally when they do have the urge.

However, our player pool has contracted recently, and I would suggest that is because we have lost the urgency to bring new players into Beer League rather than people retiring at a faster rate than normal:

The reduction in Beer Leaguers

I’ve analyzed the icetime of players in each season, and split them up into:

• “starter”: averaging more than 2 periods per game
• “rotation”: averaging between 1 and 2 periods per game
• “backup”: averaging less than 1 period per game

Both leagues have seen a reduction in how icetime is shared. Generally, each league consistently has around 65 players getting at least one period per game. What has decreased is the number of backup players:

In RSHL’s Season 32, 12.6 players per team saw the space ice, compared to 10 in Season 39. The league also contracted by a team in each of the last two seasons.

Beer League saw a similar reduction, going from a peak of 14.8 players in Season 2, to 11.2 per team in Season 7.

This has been the worst season for “double dipping” where a player is active in both leagues. We had 13 players getting over 2 periods per game in both RSHL and Beer League, compared to only 3 in season 37.

Now this is not a criticism of those players: the best way you can help keep Hockey Zone alive is to play the game. But it helps demonstrate how another cohort of players has been pushed out.

By the end of Beer League Season 7, only 38 players didn’t also play in RSHL. Compare this to Season 4 where 59 non-RSHLers played Beer League. We’ve lost a third of the people who just play Beer League and it’s not from a significant portion of them being signed up to also play in RSHL.

Beer League rules and their effects

There are four motivations when signing players to a roster:

• Competitive pressure: signing the best players you can; or with the Vet system, signing the players who are undervalued by their Vet Point status
• Population pressure: being willing to take anybody just to be sure of showing 6 to a game
• Friendship groups: teaming up with people you get on with
• and what we can call “the spirit rule”: the willingness to sign, coach up and play an inexperienced player even at the cost of winning games

The NTS rules this season reduced the population pressure, as did our approach to just rescheduling a game if a team didn’t show, often without even charging a postponement. Why would a captain go to the effort of finding a new recruit to fill a gap in their roster when they can safely take a sub from the arena? NTS was meant to be for emergency use only, but I think it stopped some captains trying to recruit their last few needed players. No longer was there a call for viop to go grab a team a random trench warrior if they only showed 5, they would just take Zapata instead. (37% of zapata‘s icetime this season was for teams other than his own, clocking in at nearly 300 minutes, or over 8 games.)

Did the NTS rules also make captains complacent for the playoffs, where they can no longer use NTS? And is this partly why the playoffs have been drawn out, currently looking likely to take a huge 3 months when we’d normally expect them to be wrapped up in half that time?

Beer League’s Vet system doesn’t adequately encourage playing newbies. A beer team currently doesn’t need to play any V1’s or non-Vets.
There is competitive pressure against playing newbies: it’s better to play two V3’s than a V6 and an inexperienced non-Vet.
This anti-newbie effect was worsened this season by increasing the Vet Point limit from 20 to 21 and also decreasing the cost of goalies by giving players a separate (usually lower) goalie Vet Point rating.
Janitors’, Parrotheads’ and South Park Cows’ lineups all cost less under this season’s rules than Season 6, when Vet cost should increase from season to season as players improve and vets retire.

You can see the anti-newbie effect with PieRats. Their players were intentionally rated more harshly after running the league in season 6. But instead of taking on some of the euro newbies out there, they ditched their now expensive goalie Cig Smoke who has ended up with no avenue to practice netting to improve for RSHL, and recruited an underrated mercenary in AFRI to creep under the Vet Point limit for their lines (although they weren’t the “greasiest” team, that honor falls to Under the Influence). They are favorites for a “threepeat” Beer League trophy, and again went unbeaten in the regular season, even though Beer League tries to reduce the “competitive pressure” by having all teams make the playoffs. (And again, this is not a criticism of their approach: lemonaire has done a stellar job at coaching his players, and they are just doing what the rules allow them to.)

The anti-newbie effect can also be seen with CR Pr1sp1ct1’s former players.
Their veterans puker and Dark Kn|ght both played for other teams after CRP dissolved;
Infinite-H and violence also got on rosters, but didn’t take to the space ice.
None of their less experienced players (k-rent, stifini, sunny d, plasma, yeH, rainbow seeker…) found a new home despite beer teams not showing 6 to games.

Having MSHL newbie-focused is something that Navee hopes to address by asking all teams to recruit one or two genuinely new players . But it is difficult to mandate that newbies are played even if they are on the roster: the newbies won’t necessarily show to every game. Moreover, in a league where as much as 60% of the icetime goes to Vets, they are likely to end up competing with other non-Vets for playing time. A relatively experienced 0VP who escaped the Vet list can be much more impactful than a genuinely new player who is still firing slapshots at everyone to try to kill them. Mandating two non-Vets on the ice won’t automatically mean that either of these will be newbies, and that is why MSHL would need captains to embrace the philosophy, not just try to game the system. Even well-meaning captains can find themselves giving their less experienced players the short end of the stick if they go on a run of a few losses, as no one likes to lose. It only takes the perception of one team being overpowered for other teams to creep towards “try hard mode” when our second tier is meant to be not “sweaty”.

Violence approached this as Beer LC by publicly shaming those who benched their newbs:

There was a spirit rule which was mentioned 483838x b4 seasin that teams should add non vets ofir vets when they haf the ch1nce to do
This was made very clear that u should do it and should b chirped by efery1 if u don’t, but there’s no way to penalize it

It is possible to incentivize playing newbies directly by bringing back the “cloneman rule”. This rule allowed Family Matters to play a line which would normally be illegal as long as Cyclone was on the ice. This could be extended to all newbie players who are below a certain amount of career minutes as well as a couple of other hand picked exceptions. It would have to be a large incentive (i.e. allowing an extra 3VP on the ice) and wouldn’t be without risk, as it could cause lineup issues if a newbie suddenly became unavailable mid-game and there were insufficient legal substitutes available.

The Ladder of Vettishness

Beer League has used three different Vet systems. It started out with the best players as Vets, and limiting teams to two on the ice. With the relaxed nature of the league, this worked well with good parity between teams. Juul, who were bottom of the regular season, went on to win the inaugural championship. However, there were already complaints about inexperienced players being benched, or vets taking advantage (stryke racking up an average of a hat trick each game provoked an outcry).

Season 2 and 3 continued along similar lines, but allowed for some vets to not count to the Vet limit as long as they were goalie. Parity remained good; Smoove Swervin’ took both championships despite being only the sixth seed and fourth seed in each respective season. Complaints of experienced players taking advantage continued, leading to RaCka becoming the league’s first Supervet after netting a huge 52 goals. A team could have either one Supervet or two normal Vets on the ice.

Season 4 kept the 2 Vet on ice limit, but also added a rating for each Vet (1-6) whereby the on ice total couldn’t exceed 6 Vet Points. There were also tighter restrictions on who could goalie. Parity worsened, but the championship was still taken by a relative underdog in fourth seed Snake Charmers.

Season 5 threw out any limits to the number of veterans on the ice, instead trying to control their impact by limiting what ships they could play. The Weasel was replaced by the Nightwasp, a significantly nerfed ship; the Shark was also heavily nerfed. Supervets (the top 19 skaters of the zone) had to play in one of these two nerfed ships. The restrictions to who could goalie remained. Vets were banned from one, or sometimes two, ships. Prox to the other ships got a minor buff. Parity remained low, but the nightwasp seemed to be effective at restraining the prolific players: RaCka went from 48 goals in Season 4 to just 3 in the Nightwasp. But the Supervet ship was also used voluntarily for fun by people who weren’t Supervets, with Gold using it to particularly good effect. After just missing out as finalists the previous season, PieRats took their first Beer League trophy after finishing as number 2 seed behind Yacht Rockers in the regular season.

Season 6 and 7 went to the five tiered system that we’re now accustomed to. Vets were given a rating of 1, 3, 5, 6 or 7 Points. Those rated as 7 had to use the Supervet ship: the Nightwasp was moved to replace the Javelin in season 6, while in season 7 the “Nerfbird” allowed all normal 6 skater ships to be available while still forcing the Supervets into a nerfed ship via prizing. In Season 6, teams were allowed a total of 20 Vet Points on the ice, but could use the Nightwasp or Shark for -2 Points to help get them under the limit. In season 7, this “flexing” was kept for the Shark, but removed for the Nightwasp’s replacement the Nerfbird, while the limit was increased to 21 Points. Like Season 5, both Season 6 and 7 saw restrictions to which ships some Vets were allowed to use. Season 7 also saw the introduction of a separate ranking for players if they were the goaltender. Parity between the extremes of the league table remained relatively poor with PieRats going unbeaten both seasons, but the mid-table had some interesting battles.

Season 8 would have continued down the path of the “Nerfbird”, restricting more veterans’ ships via prizing, but allowing choice by the individual player in how this was implemented.

The MSHL panel is currently voting on how to rate each player’s Vet Points. Navee proposed simplifying the Vet tiers to just 3 levels. Many of the panel are underestimating how many people need to be classified as Vets for our expected population, but that doesn’t really matter as we will end up with a way to order people by their average Vet rating, and then Navee can decide where to draw the lines for each Vet Point group.

Theoretical number of Vets needed

In a hypothetical spaceship hockey universe where all players were available for all games, for ultimate parity and sharing of playing time, you would want the number of Vets to be similar to the limits for each Vet Point category: i.e. 20% of the population as 3VP; 40% as 1 or 2VP; 40% as non-Vets.

(this section was going to have images/animations for how to decide how many people need to be in each vet group)

However, not all of the hockey zone population will be interested in playing next season. We can take an educated guess at which players are retiring, or wouldn’t want to play in the second tier. We also need to propose a minimum number of new players who will join; this season saw ~8 players who were either new to Hockey Zone or returning after a very long break so let’s go with that again, although I am hoping for significantly more.

Those retiring will still need a VP level corresponding to their skill/impact just in case they play, but don’t need to be counted in our expected population.

The “ladder of vettishness” is not just about parity, but can also direct who is recruited and played. The skilled players will already have opportunity to play in RSHL; we do not want the non-RSHLers finding it difficult to get onto teams or being benched when this is likely to be their only opportunity for organized play.

We also need to allow for a level of flexibility for substitutions (Vets cannot sub in for non-Vets if they are already at the limit), and the likely availability of different players.

This gives a target of around 65 3VP’s, and 60 players who are 2VP or 1VP.

How the 2VP’s and 1VP’s should be divided depends on the roster limits (we are currently considering 6VP or 8VP). There is no on ice difference between a 2VP and 1VP, and this is one of the negatives of the current proposal: no matter where you draw the line, there is a disincentive to sign the 1VP’s unless it is needed for the roster limit; it’s much better to take an active 2VP, which will likely lead to an arms race to sign these players. The 1VP’s will miss out, whereas this group of players should be being catered to because they are unlikely to find significant playing opportunities elsewhere.

It’s important to have a good read on the likely population size for knowing how many teams to admit. If there is a flood of non-Vets (newbies or not), we want them to find a good home, not find themselves sitting on the bench or going unsigned because of a lack of available playing time that has already been promised to Vets. But also we need there to be enough non-vets to go around for the number of teams with at least 4 per team.

Going to 5v5 could also have an unexpected effect on rosters. People are used to a certain roster size. Having one less skater isn’t a case of just axing one player from your standard team: you can actually remove two because of the way icetime is distributed. Both Vets and non-Vets will need to spread out more than they are accustomed to. If we have combined player pools, there should be more teams than typical Beer League seasons, possibly needing the league to split into conferences.

Ship restrictions

One of the things I liked about Navee‘s proposal is that it didn’t try to dictate which ship people play. And this made sense when it was going to be separate populations for RSHL and MSHL. Any skilled player who wanted to step down to MSHL to help coach the next generation would be able to freely. If, say, The Boogieman wanted to take on a bunch of newbies from another zone and try to keep them in games by goaltending, he would be allowed to.

Ultimately, whether ship restrictions are needed depends on the variability between teams. If every team has a similar amount and quality of Vets playing, then there is less need to reign in their abilities.

Barring the players currently expected to be 3VP’s has been proposed. It would be saying that these players are just too strong for the MSHL. When the plan was for separate player pools for RSHL and MSHL, it gave the 3VP’s the choice of what to do. It is entirely possible that there will be be top players who won’t find an RSHL team that they are happy with, but would have led an MSHL team, who then won’t play at all. It could have a positive effect in not letting non-vets get overrun by the elite players, but it would also remove potential team leaders.

The Separation of RSHL and MSHL

The announcement of distinct player pools with no crossover between RSHL and MSHL caused a (not entirely unexpected) backlash. The resulting poll ran on both 1.0 and 5.0 ended with 14 players in favor of separate populations to 10 players against. This is not a good sample of our player base, but was perhaps surprising with how some players voted against what could be perceived as their own interests (i.e. there were players who could get lots of icetime in RSHL and Beer League who voted for separation).

Separation of player pools changes the entire dynamic to MSHL roster construction.
The bulk of the 3VP’s and 2VP’s would stay in RSHL. Some would step down to lead MSHL teams.
The 1VP’s would be in more demand in both leagues: there would be insufficient 2VP’s to fill the Vet spots in MSHL, and RSHL would have a strong recruiting pressure. Those who are often backup players would be able to parlay this pressure into better RSHL contracts if they chose to do so, where they would be promised more icetime than normal.
The non-Vets in MSHL would have been playing against players more on their own level, as the bulk of the Vets would be 1VP’s.

Even if it was more by accident than design, the balance of incentives for MSHL’s roster construction with the proposed rules would have been frankly beautiful:

• Competitive pressure: only 4 MSHL teams make the playoffs, meaning games matter from the outset of the regular season.
• Population pressure: the demand for all types of Vet would have worked well and maintained balance with the increased competitive pressure. Players of all levels would have been sort out rather than an arms race for one cohort. The roster cap likely wouldn’t have mattered for whether it was 6VP or 8VP.
• “Spirit rule”: I was confident that at least one newbie could be found for each team in preseason for the number of likely teams and the newbies would have found playing time because of the population pressure.
• Friendship groups: caps were loose enough to allow most friends and/or cores from beer league to stay together.

RSHL too would have had higher competitive pressure than normal, and the higher population pressure wouldn’t have been unmanageable. Enough reliable backup players would still join RSHL teams, and if ran well both leagues could be healthy.

We could have seen something like this:

(an image would have been here of hypothetical rosters with names removed)

In comparison, if it’s Beer League by another name, that means many more of the roster spots would be taken by vets.
With a larger player pool there would be a need for more teams, but I don’t think enough would form to completely meet the demand.
Consequently, 1VP’s would be pushed out, and with no other avenue for league time may result in their retirement where they could have been key players in a separated league. Trying to solve this by moving these players to non-Vets would then create another arms race, pushing out less experienced players.
The pro-newbie effect would be reduced as it would be more difficult to find the number of newbies needed in preseason, and the ones we do get would be competing more against the other non-Vets.
It’s not impossible to end up with a well-balanced league where everyone plays, but it means considering extra rules to try to encourage it.
Even if the 3VP’s are banned, the balance of player types and the arms race effect would be worse than a separate league.
Rosters could look something like this:

(images would have been here of hypothetical rosters with names removed for different proposed VP systems, with who loses out shown)

The separation of player pools is not a binary choice. The health of both RSHL and MSHL would have been considered, with contingency plans for if either league wasn’t looking secure in preseason. Partial crossover of the player base could have been introduced as deemed necessary (allowing goalies in one league to skate in the other and vice versa, or allowing those who are below a certain rank in icetime on their RSHL team to play in MSHL).
It is much easier to remove restrictions (i.e. allowing more crossover, relaxing the VP limit, etc.) once rosters are forming than it is to try to add more after the fact (see Empire in Beer League Season 3 who suddenly found more of their players were Vets than expected).

Even if MSHL ended up as having to resort to completely mixed populations after giving ample time in preseason to gauge whether separate populations were viable, it wouldn’t have caused significant damage to attempt it.
MSHL rosters would have been more balanced rosters than a typical Beer League season because of the way vets would spread out at different stages of contingency plans being implemented.
For RSHL, at worst there would need to be a ragtag team formed at the last minute, which frequently happens anyway. The removal of some of the backup players from teams would have created a little more stress with scheduling, but the trend of limiting most of the icetime to a team’s starting 6 has been increasing anyway.

This is probably the last opportunity for a true MSHL rebirth, I don’t think it is likely to happen again.

What is in a name?

None of the proposals for this season were a “status quo” choice. If there hadn’t been a perception that the Beer League name was off-limits, maybe someone would have stepped up and said “I’d just run it back”.

The current Beer League system is not without its problems, but a tried and tested system that people are accustomed to does have benefits.

MSHL always had a separate player pool to RSHL. That doesn’t mean that rules can’t change, but there needs to at least be a similar philosophy behind the league.
The MSHL name gives a warm fuzzy feeling for many players, and would help entice some old vets back to the game. This may even be why some people voted for separate populations in the poll.

Whatever rules are chosen, if the MSHL name is used, this should be celebrated.

If it’s Beer League by another name (or indeed by the old name), rules need to be tweaked to incentivize expanding our player base and playing the players who don’t already get icetime in RSHL.

Hyperbole over the state of the zone is damaging. We are in a much healthier state, and with a larger player pool, than at many other times in our history.
Yet, we are at a crossroads.
Hockey Zone’s decline may be inevitable, but it doesn’t have to happen so soon.