Sometimes, it’s hard for an organization to know what it really has at time of declaration as well as the caliber of the other teams in the division. It goes both ways, some teams believe they can compete in a division and then lose practically all games.
There is no doubt that unfortunately some organizations sandbag.
Last year, York BT AA played in a lower division in the EJEPL. At playoff time, the EJEPL made York play in the higher (diamond) division. Clearly York was far superior than the teams in lower division, in fact, were better than many teams in the higher division. I would like the DVHL to explore trying this. Of course, this comes with lots of headaches like teams playing in lower division in order to guarantee a playoff spot in higher division and etc. You can’t look at just win loss record but how badly certain teams are crushing other teams. A 10-0 team that wins every game by a couple of goals is one thing but a 10-0 team that wins every game by 10 goals clearly shouldn’t be playing in the division, except AA of course.