He's used the rumoured Sheffield players and filled the gaps in at Belfast and Nottingham by including a notional figure for the remaining players (I think he uses 20 for a forward).
Last season he had Sheffield top, just ahead of Belfast. Sheffield ended up just above his prediction, but Belfast were well below (let's hope the same happens again.).
Whilst my numbers are slightly different, I've also got Belfast way ahead... .we shall see.
Might not be down as most goals for,,,, but we will probably be right up there in the least goals against dept,,,, going to be a tough season no matter what, not too long now for the action to start
Doom, have either you, or your mate made calculations for how you predict defences will perform? Is this possible?
I'm sure that would be far more complicated.
We both tend to look at the +/- on the d and see where they finished relative to the rest of the team.
On that front the Nottingham d are looking good this season, but it also depends on other factors like the quality of the league they're playing in.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't swap Greener for any other netminder in the league and I think we'll have the stingiest defence next season, so I'm certainly not conceding anything to Belfast just yet, but I do think they look very strong.
In terms of goals, those re-signed so far contributed 179 goals in league play last year. Assuming that we have essentially 2 more (starting, we know a spare will be signed) forwards and 2 more D to be announced, that would suggest we wouldn't be too far of the 210-220 goal mark. Leavens and Janutainen I would expect around 20 goal mark for both, so an extra 30-40 goals between them seems a reasonable estimate.
Allen, Neumann and Nicholls contributed 14, 11 and 18 goals respectively in league play.
Non of our re-signed players had ridiculous off the charts years, so I don't think unreasonable to expect similar output next year. I think we're in a pretty good spot overall, especially with the defence and Greenfield meaning we shouldn't concede many.
We both base our total on 12f and 6d assuming all play 54 games. We then apply a reduction factor based on the previous season, because not all players will play 54 games.
Whilst my total is below 200, my instinct tells me we'll be over 200. I apply the same reduction factor across all teams. I suspect because we carry a spare and react very quickly to injuries, the loss of a player probably has less impact on us and maybe our reduction factor should be less compared to the likes of Belfast.
Look at the loss of Petgrave last season, he was our main offensive defenceman and his loss could really have derailed our season, but we hardly missed a beat with the signing of Cormier.
Was that good luck or very good recruitment?.....possibly a bit of both, but it meant the loss of a very good player didn't really impact us. On the other hand, Belfast were massively impacted by injuries and their season derailed during November/December.
It sounds like we're going to be carrying a spare again and with Miceli being so versatile, that will give us options if a player gets injured.
If the rest are correct, the changes to last seasons roster are effectively:
Betker for Jones
Huttula for Nev
Jones and Nev are big losses, for slightly different reasons, but if Betker and Huttula are their replacements, I see this as a break even.
Considering how good we were defensively last season, that would be a huge positive.
Miceli for Kielly
Leavens for Allen
Janatuinen for Neumann
Ulrick for Nicholls
Overall that is a bit of a downgrade, mainly down to Ulrick for Nicholls. You're effectively replacing an experienced pro who has played at the top level with a relatively inexperienced youngster.
Janatuinen would certainly be a risky signing, having only scored a total of 3 goals in the last 2 seasons, but if he's clear of any injuries I would expect him to be a solid performer at our level.
Overall I'd be satisfied with this. It's always difficult folowing on from a successful season because the better players quite rightly get tempted by the bigger offers from elsewhere, but we've done a good job of keeping our best players.
Have our competition caught up and even possibly overtaken us? - I guess we'll be finding out soon enough.
