Im going into the first HGL with the attitude of, "Hey, I will likely lose every game; but, maybe I will sneak a suprpise win through tactics somewhere. If not, look out in Season 2, 3, 4..." :D
Exactly - you are such an experienced manager, that it can often give you some tactical edge over less experienced ones... And, like mentioned, even though you wouldn't reach playoffs for the first season, every win counts towards your all time winning records. :)
Speaking of playoff and the format in question. Still under consideration, but I'd quickly say that the probabilities of implementing the exact previously planned league and playoff system for HGL that I was mentioning yesterday (?) haven't really changed, so most likely we'll stick with the original plan as far as the amount of teams included to post season play is concerned.
Like I mentioned, in Finnish ice hockey league they have exactly 16 teams playing in a league, of which 12 proceeds to postseason play, just like in HGL.
In Swedish 'premier' hockey league, SHL, it's a bit different story with 6 best teams receiving an automatic place to second round of playoff, and only 4 teams (placed 7th-10th) are going through the first round of playoff, of which 2 will accompany those 6 teams in the second round of playoffs.
Again, with 16 teams in HGL this wouldn't work (better than the current system) as we would then have to include less teams (which is somewhat questionable).
Only workaround that I could come up with by quickly thinking it over, should it be necessary to include two more teams to postseason play (from 12 to 14, which I'm not sure at all if it's necessary, as 75% is quite a nice amount already), is that if we would give a bye for two best teams of regular season only to second round of playoffs, and then the rest 12 teams would play for 6 remaining spots on the second round of playoffs. Unless I have an error in my thinking, that would reduce the number correctly till the end, and include 14 teams to postseason play. However, with this system there would be couple of more likely very clear results/massive wins in the first round of playoffs, compared to system used now, so that's definitely a big downside of it (while, having said that, I love these surprise results in sports, but with current system they are a bit more probable to actually happen!).
For instance, the extremities in current HGL league system in 1st round of PO: #5vs12, and 6vs12.
In new system (including 14 teams) would be: #3vs14, and 4vs13.