Question about shield drop and ports

[Tim73]

Hello, Smashboards, happy holidays to everyone! So I was watching Holiday Bash and saw Hugs testing his shield drops after assigning different controller port (Hugs did it in previous set too):

Why he was doing it and how ports affect shield drops?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Pauer]

I'm pretty sure the reason he changed ports was because of neutral starts for the stage they picked. Have a look at the image here and the comment by Armada.
He explains why Hugs was testing his shield drops - when you plug in your controller again, it can happen that shield drops don't work properly because the stick might be reset slightly different.

 

[Tim73]

Thank you! Now I see how plugging your controller while stick is not in neutral position can influence certain things (and shield drops can be affected greatly by this, I guess). I assume you can also reset your controller with X+Y+Start in addition to checking shield drops. Totally forgot about it. Oh and neutral starts too, but I think I haven't seen it before (changing ports for neutral start). Maybe because some players choose ports because of the way how they change throws.