The 10 Most Drastic Risers and Fallers in Two Years of CHL Tracking Data
The CHL has a unique appeal compared to the NHL. Lower-quality hockey, no doubt, but there’s no replacing the insane swings in player and team quality from year to year.
A basement team can suddenly become a powerhouse in the span of a season as their young draft picks mature into stars. The opposite happens, too. Look no further than the Acadie-Bathurst Titan, who won the Memorial Cup in 2017-18, only to win 20 of their next 132 games — junior hockey!
To understand the wackiness that is the CHL, I started manually tracking events three seasons ago. In the last two seasons alone, I’ve tracked nearly 900 games with the same definitions, allowing for year-to-year comparisons.
While I haven’t tracked every team in the CHL, all-in-all, 286 players were eligible for a two-year comparison. I ave