Coaches

[Jiri Hrdina]

The league has had a couple inquiries about hiring coaches.
We do not use coaches. While some teams may be showing coaches on their roster pages, we don't use them in the sim, as they introduced a degree of randomness that detracted from the game.
So if you don't have a coach - don't worry about it.

[TheScorpion]

All I want for Christmas is Greg Gilbert as my coach!

[Swayze11]

I always liked coaches on teams even if they didn't matter. I great scapegoat and cool press roleplaying.

[savardandjokinen]

Yeah I'd like coaches just for the fun sake of it. Not a big deal though

[MJK]

I don't mind having coaches but I sure as hell dont want them influencing how my team or anyone else's team performs.

Could be a happy medium here to allow teams to have a coach they want for posting purposes only?

[MJK]

Double post

[Quigz17]

Is this about me trying to hire Pat Burns and Bryan Murray? Not sure what the probem is...

[Cheese]

I didnt see any difference in the way teams played last year compared to previous? I dont think that there was as much influence as thought. I like the coaches and think they should be a part of the league.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Quigz17

Is this about me trying to hire Pat Burns and Bryan Murray? Not sure what the probem is...

No - we've had several questions about it.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Cheese

I didnt see any difference in the way teams played last year compared to previous? I dont think that there was as much influence as thought. I like the coaches and think they should be a part of the league.

We actually made the change several seasons ago, after hearing many complaints that sim results were too random.
So we looked at two primary ways to reduce the randomness - turning of Momentum, which really allowed teams to go on long losing or winning streaks and turning off coaches.
During that summer, we ran a bunch of test seasons through the sim to evaluate what helped to produce more realistic results, including getting GM input, before the collective decision was to turn of coaches and MO.
I do think it has helped to improve the realism of the sim.

That being said, if people want coaches just for fun, someone can volunteer to facilitate the process and ongoing maintenance. But we wouldn't put them back in the sim.
Part of the challenge with coaches in the sim was there is no fair way to set their ratings. While you can use stats to produce player ratings how do you do it for the coaches? It ends up being completely arbitrary.

[Cheese]

Whether it was a year or two or three...There are still teams that should win that dont, and those that shoudnt that play well. Im sure that a team of GMs can put together a list of ratings for Coaches that would satisfy the leagues GMs and allow us to use them in the game? Why shouldnt we try to do what the NHL does if we are trying to emulate the game by simulator? If a good coach gives a poor team a better advantage so be it, he might get better value for his players helping him with trades.

[Jiri Hrdina]

That still happens with the sim.
This was a decision the league made together, with a lot of input from the GMs, and made several years ago.We made it after we had several of our GMs say they felt the simulator was too random. So we made steps to understand how we could take steps to retain some variability but reduce that randomness somewhat.
This isn't something the commissioners did on their own. We did it with consultation with the GMs and their involvement in the decision making.

The feedback we've heard from most is that they think it has better without the coaches.
It isn't a decision that we are going to re-visit at this time.

[MJK]

I was impressed with the tests the league ran back then, very thorough an Grant is right, the league overwhelmingly voted on an option that did not include coaches because it generated more 'realistic' results. if memory serves correctly, even in Cheese's option above, the weak team with good coaches sometimes won the cup and sometimes came last, it was still all over the place.

We went with the most consistent and realistic result and adjusted the sim accordingly.