2021 EHE Playoffs & Draft Lottery

[Kevin]

Just 5 days left in the regular season and the playoff picture is still faaaaar from certain! A big difference from last year, eh? Three teams battling for one spot in the Gretzky Conference. Four teams battling for two spots in the Lemieux Conference. It's still possible that the 6th-place team in the Atlantic could have nearly the same number of points as the 3rd-place team in the Metro and still miss out. Or that the team with the 3rd-fewest number of regulation wins in the entire league might actually make the playoffs! It's going to be a wild, wild ride!

Our regular season in both leagues concludes this Saturday, June 12. I would like to run Saturday's sim pretty early in the day so that I can get everything prepared for the playoffs as soon as possible. I'm planning to begin NHL playoffs on Tuesday, June 15. My preference would be to start the day before but that seems a bit aggressive. I do know that the three opening-round series' already set will be starting on the first day of the playoffs: Chicago vs. Colorado, Los Angeles vs. Vegas, Florida vs. Buffalo. Not sure if it'll be Philadelphia, Ottawa, or neither starting on Day 1. NY Rangers, Dallas, Arizona will be starting on Day 2.

The NHL schedule should be pretty consistent once again for this year's playoffs. I try my best to consider real-life building availability when building the playoff schedule but live arena events are still pretty limited. I expect most series will be played every other night on the *schedule.*

AHL playoffs typically start 2-3 days after the NHL games begin, since the first-round is best-of-five. I cannot predict how this schedule will be yet because geography is a major factor of AHL playoff format. Houston vs. Manitoba will certainly be a weird first-round matchup. Lol!

I am planning to speed up the sim schedule once again in the later rounds since we started the season late and didn't condense the season. My goal is still to have the playoffs completed by July 31, even though that seems quite unlikely. The first round will absolutely be run as one simulation per day, as normal. The second round may be sped up to two simulations on some days, like it was last year. The conference finals most likely will be and the Cup finals will definitely be run with both leagues having a game each night. Of course, no team will have two games simulated on the same day and "off days" do still count in favor of your players' condition/health.


Now then, for the formalities...

As every year, teams in the playoffs are expected to always have valid lineups, since this is the reason you are playing sim hockey! You will have one warning for the entire playoffs if your lineups are out of compliance. Anything more than that will result in a fine, which will be double the regular season amount. Any games that lineups are not submitted at all for (blank lines) will result in an automatic fine, just as it was during the regular season.

Teams also have the ability to call up as many players as they want for the NHL playoffs -- However, the simulator still requires you to dress a 20-man team at both levels, even if you no longer have games. Be careful with this if you want to adjust your playoff rosters beyond the usual regular season limits.

Only players who met the AHL Clear Day requirements are permitted to play in the Calder Cup playoffs. Attempts to assign any other players will be rejected and do count towards the one lineup warning in the playoffs, so if you are not sure of a player's eligibility, look it up or ask first!

As alluded to earlier, the AHL playoff format does not necessarily follow a traditional 2-2-1 or 2-2-2-1 schedule. Because of this, our website can have trouble showing who is actually leading a series while it is being played. Please closely follow your game results to verify whether you have won or lost a series!


Now what about the non-playoff teams!

I'm hoping to record the 2021 EHE Draft Lottery sooner than later. I have to return to a normal in-office work routine next week, so that timing kind of sucks. I might be limited to doing it on a weekend.

The only change to this year's draft lottery format is the inclusion of the Seattle Kraken, who will have the same odds as the 29th-placed team in the regular season. Three numbers will be randomly drawn (1st, 2nd, then 3rd) and matched up to the list of numbers that teams will be assigned to, based on their odds of winning, to determine which teams will own the first three picks in the draft. At that point, the draft order from 16 to 1 will be announced. For the second straight season, the Montréal Canadiens have already clinched the highest odds of winning the draft lottery. We are not doing the NHL's new draft lottery format this year but it will be up for discussion in the summer.

The official odds will be posted after the regular season has concluded.

[BlackhawksGM]

Three cheers for Kevin, one of three of the hardest working commishes in the biz!

[Kevin]

Three cheers for Kevin, one of three of the hardest working commishes in the biz!

Haha I'll take it. I had kind of a shitty weekend trying and failing on a couple of projects I'm trying to do for our website. I appreciate the encouragement!



I should also remind everyone that this is the final week to submit your intention of being involved in the Seattle GM lottery. I figure if you're interested, you've already contacted me. But just in case, Monday night is the deadline for this.

[batesy]

Three cheers for Kevin, one of three of the hardest working commishes in the biz!

Well said.

[blues_shaun]

Kudos

[Kevin]

Here is the Draft Lottery Lookup Chart for everyone's randomly-assigned "lottery balls."


The odds of winning the EHE draft lottery are exactly the same as how they are determined in the real NHL:

MTL: 16.6%
EDM: 12.1%
SEA: 10.3%
VAN: 10.3%
FLA*: 8.5%
CGY: 7.6%
WPG: 6.7%
WSH: 5.8%
STL: 5.4%
DET: 4.5%
PIT: 3.1%
CAR: 2.7%
NJ: 2.2%
TOR: 1.8%
CBJ: 1.4%
ANA: 1.0%

* from San José

[Kevin]

The second round of the playoffs will begin on Monday, June 28, the same night the final game of the first round takes place. The purpose of this is to navigate around Canada Day and U.S. Independence Day in the schedule. Ottawa vs. Florida will be the series that begins on Monday. I don't recall if the sim is going to consider this as Day 15 or Day 16 but this will be considered all as one day in the eyes of EHE.

Four more series' will begin on Tuesday, June 29: Flyers/Rangers, the Dallas series, Charlotte/WBS, San Diego/Henderson

The remaining series' will begin on Wednesday, June 30: the Los Angeles series, the Houston series, Belleville/Rochester*

*The only AHL series that will be 2-2-1-1-1 and not 2-3-2




I'm hoping I'll have some time to do the draft lottery on Sunday. Otherwise, it may be another couple of weeks before I get a chance to.

[Kevin]

Since we were able to successfully merge a couple of playoff days this weekend, that now means that the Conference Finals will begin on Tuesday! We'll have a day off on Monday and begin the third round with both Days 31 and 32 being simulated on Tuesday, meaning all advancing teams will have a game played that night.

The AHL Conference Finals have been set and both will be a 2-3-2 format. Officially, Houston will host Henderson on Day 31 and Belleville hosts W-B/Scranton on Day 32 to kick things off. Houston earned home ice by beating out Henderson in points percentage by .002!

In the NHL, Ottawa will host the winner of Philadelphia/NY Rangers starting on Day 31. The Gretzky Conference Finals is completely up in the air but it should begin on Day 32.

Though again, this is all in terms of the simulator and rest days. Both Days 31 and 32 will sim on Tuesday.

Going forward, there will be "double-sim" days more often than not. However, no team will have two games simulated on any one real day. Player condition will recover as it normally would as if the games were simulated on separate days. If a GM requests to keep their day off because they need the time to make a lineup adjustment, then the second simulation would be pushed to the next night and only one would be run that night. Here is the current plan:

Expected sim schedule -
Tue. 7/13 - Day 31/32
Wed. 7/14 - Day 33
Thu. 7/15 - Day 34
Fri. 7/16 - Days 35/36
Sat. 7/17 - Days 37/38
Sun. 7/18 - Days 39
Mon. 7/19 - Days 40/41
Tue. 7/20 - Day 43

*if necessary

[Kevin]

We have an improbable Game 7 on Tuesday night! All the remaining series' have already concluded. Thus even with the delay on Sunday's planned double-sim that didn't happen, we'll still be on schedule to begin the Cup Finals on Thursday night! We'll probably be doing double-sims through the remainder of the playoffs, depending on injuries and also Eric's availability while I'm on vacation.

The W-B/Scranton Penguins will start off a 2-3-2 series as the host against the Houston Aeros on Day 45.

Then the Dallas Stars will host the winner of the Ottawa Senators/Philadelphia Flyers series starting on Day 46.

Both of these simulations will take place on Thursday night.


Here is a very rough draft of how the schedule might go:

Wed. 7/21 - Days 45/46
Thu. 7/22 - Days 47/48
Fri. 7/23 - Days 49/50
Sat. 7/24 - Day 51 - around 5-6pm EDT!
Sun. 7/25 - Day 52 - Eric sim
Mon. 7/26 - Day 54 - Eric sim
Tue. 7/27 - Days 55/56 - Day 55 is Eric sim at 9pm, Day 56 is Kevin sim overnight
Wed. 7/28 - Day 58

[Kevin]

We might start the Cup Finals tomorrow because Dan is going to be out of town this weekend and we'll try to thin out the sim schedule a little. Plus I still need to talk to Eric about the weekend. Tommy and Ian, are you ok with this?