What Have I Been Up To?

I haven't been posting much recently, but I have a couple of excuses. I've been hard at work on a couple of projects for a number of months now. One is coming to fruition very soon, while the other will be ongoing for some time.

The latter is an update I've been working on the Point Allocation system. I haven't made any changes to the essence of the system, however there was one thing I was still dissatisfied with. In cases of good offensive players playing in low-level leagues, the league quality adjustment was such that they would wind up with an elite-level offensive rating, and a worst-of-the-worst defensive rating. This is because the quality adjustment applied equally to each player's offensive and defensive points.

Take a forward with 10 offensive points and 0 defensive points, for a total of 10 points allocated before the quality adjustment. The quality adjustment is such that his total value should be 6 points rather than 10. Previously the adjustment might have resulted in the player having 8 offensive points and -2 defensive points. The new adjustment will be more like 6 offensive points and 0 defensive points. I believe this better reflects the reality of the adjustment. A star scorer in the AHL is going to lose more offensive production than defensive when going to the NHL.

This means I've been going through all completed Point Allocation results to revise this adjustment, and of course have been doing up many new league-seasons' results as well. It's a lot of work, it's ongoing and will be for a long time to come.

You'll see the results of the other project within the next month or so. I've written a book entitled On His Own Side of the Puck: The Early History of Hockey Rules. It covers the original rules of organized hockey from the 1870s, where they came from, and how they change in the subsequent decades. It includes the complete text of the rule not only for hockey, but for many other nineteenth century sports as well. Over the next couple of weeks I'll post some excerpts from the book. I'll be selling it through blurb.ca, and should have both print and ebook versions available. No one has ever examined the early rules of hockey in this amount of detail. Stay tuned.