It’s absolutely not a shot to anyone. I’m extremely grateful for a free entry tournament. The competitive side of me doesn’t like the huge gap in team skill and that’s why it would be the best for the league to separate the elite and casual teams. I don’t think anyone enjoys beating teams 10-0 and or losing 10-0. And on top of that, to show up on time to play games and several teams in a row don’t even show because they quit. Like yes I’m happy to get the win for my team but I didn’t sign up to just sit in the DR and collect FF wins. It’s not fun for anyone involved
Either need the different divisions so the bruins don't play the sound tigers, the old school blind challenge, or harsh penalties
Only thing about this is that who decides who’s a top 24 team? Rated R was suppose to be good and look what happened. I like the tougher competition but it would be unfair to some teams to not let them play because the don’t seem as competitive. There’s a bunch of biased opinions on who’s good and who’s not and deciding on that to put those teams in that competitive division doesn’t seem quite right. That’s my only problem with this, and the only way I think to compensate is to just make it a buy in tourney. Obviously free entry tourneys are great and provides exposure and fun for everyone but there is ffs along with the banning problem. There might be ffs in the buy in but again, it’s hard to decide who’s good and who’s not, it seems to questionable for some teams who could deserve a spot but don’t get it because people think they’re not good enough while other teams get in without a doubt that are thought to be good, but they’re not.
There’s different ways to make this fair. We could let’s say have the top 20 teams from the previous season standings automatically get in and the remaining 4 spots are up for grabs in a preseason tournament. If one team from the top 20 quits, or makes a new team, well then 5 spots are up for grabs in that preseason tournament and or we have the 21st ranked team automatically make it in and remain with the 4 spots up for grab
To me, this fix should be simple. We simply take the top 16 playoff teams from this seasons final standings & automatically put them into the elite division. We then have an open bracket tournament with the remaining teams to fill the final 8 spots. The top 24 teams will compete in the Elite division with a regular season lasting 3 weeks. The remaining teams will play In the AA division with the top 4 teams getting promoted at the seasons end. The bottom 4 teams from the elite division will be relegated to compensate.
I like it but two things: 1. Casual teams may not jump through all those hoops just to get into the "big show". But however we arrive at a more rounded out top 24: 2. Three week length either means a ton of games per day, or reducing it to playing each team only once (to maintain 8 games a week) Not to mention the length of time the open bracket would take to complete, this would bleed even further into bad overlaps with LG seasons. As long as LG and this side tournament share space, I do not see how you fix these problems with a different format. Best you could do imo is put a small price to enter and hope it weeds out quitters/weaker comp. But as LG ban buyouts show, losing money to "correct" bad behavior really doesn't work too too well..
I think all of these points are extremely valid and accurate to further growing the brand as we move these events forward with Space. Personally when we partnered with Space allowing us to run larger-scale events that were free to enter I did not expect the forfeit numbers to be as high as they currently are. When you sign up to play in a free event, the expectation is that you play. Clearly I was mistaken, which will now send myself and Tris back to the drawing board as we will have to stiffen the punishments to ensure are hitting the people who give up, but also hold team managers more accountable. I am not 100% sure yet how we can accomplish that. It may be in the form of a team deposit made prior to the event which is refunded once the team full fills its commitment to the league. It will obviously have to be tied tighter to our ban system as well which may lead to us removing playing eligibility for future events from as well.
This is a great idea, you can change the scale of the numbers that get an automatic bid vs who has to play in a pre season tournament to gain entree. But it would work.
Sorry I didn’t respond earlier @Nuge, thanks for taking time to create this post. To anyone who does not know about the ban, it’s a 2 season ban in the ESHL. Because the ESHL is a completely different league than LGHL, or LGFA, or LGBA, we cannot pull people from those leagues mid-season. However, for any future seasons/events for all those leagues, you will be pulled (even if on a contract) until the ban is bought out or served in full for ESHL. As some have mentioned in this thread already, yes it’s going to be a full team ban if you forfeit 25 percent of your games (14/56). However, the post does not mention this, but I can clarify it. Leaving/bailing on a team does not save you from a ban. Neither does the managers not helping nor getting games together does. Players can still field games or pickup players. If there’s an issue, they should ask for tools and we will grant them. We will be looking over all cases as there’s about 5-6 that possibly folded (one has folded on night one). I will be taking some time to go through the rosters and compiling lists of players who have been dropped. If someone was put into a position last second and a team bailed, we aren’t going to punish that player. It’s not fair to the player that a team got handed to them and they get punished for it. The main people that will be looked at is those on the roster day one, and how it’s shaped up so far. At the end of the day, anyone who signs up for the event is committed to playing it. It’s a full team-effort. So why should only a select few get punished? Commitment to an event is key here. Unfortunately, yes forfeit numbers are extremely high as well. We moved the games to a day where no other hockey leagues are an issue (aside from two time slots; 9:00pm in the NHL and 9:30pm in AHL on Wednesday), but teams still cannot get guys to play or be committed for whatever reason. We have given teams an unlimited amount of subs as well. I agree, the ban structure might need to be revisited as this is an event organized for all to play for free, and the winners will get something greatly out of it. Not sure how we can make it better, just need everyone involved to step their game up and prevent issues. Maybe go back to a paid to play league. It will be discussed in time. But, we need everyone to cooperate and finish this season out. Otherwise, I’m not sure what’s next.
ESHL is suppose to be the highest tear of competition and I do think we should not accept everyone who wants to play since it's suppose to be the best competition there is on this site. Mbe keeping it free but make an invite division with higher prices or something like that so we don't have about 5/6 teams who just ff when they're out of playoffs. When we give ff wins to other teams, it boosts their points and put them in playoffs spot because of it. Some teams play Nordiques twice and that's two ff wins which advantage them compared to people who play top teams twice. Make it like the earlier season of eshl. Two divisions.
This is another huge problem.The season was prolonged so that everyone plays each other once to better reflect the final standings but then there was an additional 10 games added in which some teams will play each other twice and even in some cases three times! This defeated the purpose of this long season. This now created an unbalanced schedule for everyone and thus not reflecting the most accurate/fair final regular season standings. Some teams will end up having a harder additional 10 games and for other teams, an easier additional 10 games. This can drastically affect the final regular season standings and thus impact the playoffs as a whole.
I think the best way to do it is to have a set number of teams say 30 of which 16 make the playoffs. Do a weekend tournament for every team that wants to play eshl that season. Top 30 make it, end of story. Teams change rosters so much that everyone has to qualify. This would make the weekend tournament be a super important event. A team like can not make it if they play bad all weekend. You either make it or not based on the weekend tourney. Then you have everyone play each other once and that's it. So that's 4 weeks of games. Which means it would already be playoffs now. The whole division thing was tried before and it was a bad idea and it failed. The weekend tournament means you are either in or out. The bad teams dont play the season. Season is shorter. Playoffs would end under this format right as they are beginning under the current format
You’re not wrong. I actually think that I deserve a ban and have already accepted buying it out as I ended up in this position due to my own ignorance of the rules. I will say that it is incredibly frustrating to play every game then all of a sudden be scrambling to fill a roster every night as people quickly stop wanting to play after one bad night. There’s not much you can do even if you want to play every game when you can only get 2 other people to show up. Again, my fault for choosing who I joined the league with and I should be punished for not understanding that I could be banned.
