Steve

Fatigue is the biggest factor there. Luck goes with injuries too but the more fatigued a player is the more likely they are to getting hurt.
 
Example from the last season for me. My top 2 D I let get to exhausted and yellow fatigue respectively. Once I realized that was happening I "gave the night off" to the exhausted one for the upcoming game. The other one got hurt.
 
Since training will fatigue a player you have to balance high training with time on ice to prevent them getting tired. This will go a fair way into preventing injuries. You still will get them as you can't avoid all of them but this reduces the chances of individual players getting hurt.

I think the next progression to creating more balanced opportunities will be to cap the number of affiliate players. The affiliate system has helped everyone but the IHL and LIHL. There has been a trickle down effect to where SHL teams have less guys to pick from because of GHL affiliates, BHL has less to pick from because of SHL affiliates and so they take all the scraps to be competitive. The IHL is where the drop off becomes dramatic. If there is a capped system more players become available across the board which will trickle down to the IHL and LIHL getting more drops from the BHL. 

For what it's worth, I'm not saying this from the perspective of a manager that has been hurt by the affiliate system. I have a GHL affiliate in Howitzer that would crush a lot of SHL teams, built solely on developing players under the age of 24. Sometimes I think it's laughable the players I have assigned to my affiliate. I love the affiliate feature for developing prospects but in a promotion and relegation system it poses problems for teams in lower divisions.

This might be a issue from when Biscuit was paused during the season turn over. However, the standings on home screen will update once regular season starts.

Not 6. Just 3 for me. This is year 1 of 3 of the transition to younger forwards. After this year I will have 2 forwards whose expiring contracts will not be renewed. The next season 3 more at least. That means that I will be going from 9 29+ forwards to just 4 in 2 seasons time. Never mind that they are mostly players that have either been mainstays of my roster or otherwise largely play some bigger roles on the team. Replacing them wont be easy but it will have to happen sooner or later and I am hoping that a few of these young forwards will manage to grow into what I need.

I hope now that I'v dropped there I'll rise up in the standings   Thought, because I forgot to resign Dubov I'll be inferior state compared to last year so I doubt that

Okay, so this may be a bit weird of me suggesting this, but there is plenty of reason behind removing 3rd rounders.
 
One, a third round pick always has players that are meant to be drafted to the next lowest league. For example, a BHL third rounder could be useful as an IHL pick.
 
Second, they seem to cause a lot of confusion at the draft table. It would be a lot simpler is the format was: (GHL 1st, GHL 2nd, SHL 1st, SHL 2nd, and so on and so forth).
 
Third, there are currently 240 picks, which means that you could say, roughly every season, at least 240 players are generated, and will eventually be drafted. But you also have to take into account that the game randomly generates players around the conclusion of the season (those new players on the FA list with no history? Yeah, that's them). Further, every time someone mismanages their team and a player is "signed in the last minute before the game", those players are newly generated as well. But then looking at the prospect rankings, there are almost 290 ranked prospects. So in total, you have almost 400 players generated every season, and roughly 100 retire per season (using Fishbowl data here). Statistically speaking, that means that the net players generated per season is about +300. Now, I don't know how databases work, but based on Anders' wishes for a new server, this ahould undoubtedly be causing server strain and the game to be slower, which I know a lot of us hate. Think about this long term though, it's only 80 less players generated per season, but let's assume that drafted players play till they're 37. About 19 season in the human competition. In the span of one generation, that's about 1500 3rd rounders, many of which will never turn out, at least for the team that drafted them (which is the whole point of drafting players, right? To have them turn out for your team!). I'd say that's a pretty big waste of 1500 draft picks, and space in the database, which I'm guessing would make the game faster.
 
To sum up the above: GPHM is generating a lot of players, which is contributing to a slower server, and removing third round picks in all 7 leagues (I'm including Mitts as part of the 7) would drastically help make GPHM faster. Based on the facts and figures, every season in every game world, the game adds roughly 2100 players to the database, which logically speaking, should be slowing down the game.
 
Fourth, this is more personal experience, but I've never had a 3rd round pick pan out for me. The best 3rd round pick I ever made (I believe at SHL level) peaked at a 77 rating... On a BHL team. By the time I checked, my team is already in the GHL. Making that pick (and all other 3rd rounders before it) useless.
 
Fifth, if you remove all 3rd round picks, it may not have the biggest impact on higher leagues, but it would make lower leagues MUCH more appealing. I'll try to explain this point below:
 
Here is the current draft structure, and average ratings of the players ranked in that round in square brackets (again Fishbowl data):
 
GHL 1st round -> 1st - 16th [85]
GHL 2nd round -> 17th - 32th [81]
SHL 1st round -> 33th - 48th [76]
GHL 3rd round -> 49th - 64th [72]
SHL 2nd round -> 65th - 80th [70]
BHL 1st round -> 81th - 96th [66]
SHL 3rd round -> 97th - 112th [63]
BHL 2nd round -> 113th - 128th [62]
IHL 1st round -> 129th - 144th [60]
BHL 3rd round -> 145th - 160th [58]
IHL 2nd round -> 161th - 176th [55]
LIHL 1st round -> 177th - 192th [59]
IHL 3rd round -> 193th - 208th [53]
LIHL 2nd round -> 209th - 224th [55]
LIHL 3rd round -> 225th - 240th [52]
 
I didn't bother counting the other 23 players.
 
Now, as you can see, a 72 overall will not be of use in the GHL, A 63 overall will not be of use in the SHL, and so on. Now, remove 3rd rounders from the equation:
 
GHL 1st round -> 1st - 16th [85]
GHL 2nd round -> 17th - 32th [81]
SHL 1st round -> 33th - 48th [76]
SHL 2nd round -> 49th - 64th [72]
BHL 1st round -> 65th - 80th [70]
BHL 2nd round -> 81th - 96th [66]
IHL 1st round -> 97th - 112th [63]
IHL 2nd round -> 113th - 128th [62]
LIHL 1st round -> 129th - 144th [60]
LIHL 2nd round -> 145th - 160th [58]
Gone (But you could leave a few) -> 161th - 240th
 
Now, you won't see much difference from the tops of both tables, but look at the bottom.
 
A BHL 1st rounder goes from 66 OVR to 70.
An IHL 2nd rounder goes from 55 OVR to 62.
A LIHL 2nd rounder goes from 55 OVR to 58.
 
You can read the data how you want, but for lower league managers, this is huge. They are getting players that are 4 times better than they would have with 3 picks. This way, in any league, almost all teams would be able to sign and play their first round picks in at least a small role.
 
Now, those are all the reasons I can think of for removing the 3rd rounder. If anyone can think of a reason for not removing 3rd rounders, I want to see some feedback.
 
Anyways, I think this was my longest post ever, hope you all take this into consideration.

If by multi-year you mean about 6, then yes, I am doing the same and that is my story and sticking to it!

My team is starting to go through what will be a multi year transition as the forward group gets younger and older players get released. It will be interesting to see how much of a fall off there is for my team in terms of results.

Yes, I have been playing a lot of RPG in my younger years. We made a lot of modification and wrote our own set of rules to those games. That's how I came up with the idea to write my own game engine for a hockey manager game. There are a lot of similarities to RPG resistance tables. No total random rolls, all decided by skill and the opponents resistance.

I understand that it’s not very obvious what impact the player profile has, but that’s also by design. It’s not supposed to be too obvious - but at the same time obvious enough so that you can use your common hockey sense to figure things out. And as I can see in this topic so far, you’re already on the right track. However, I have been asked to give a comment on this matter and I’d be happy to. I won’t reveal any secrets but hopefully I can shed some light on this.
 First, it’s important to understand that the player profile is not only used to impact the player’s game performance. It will also influence things like team culture, happiness/unhappiness triggers, retirement age, contract negotiations and demands (including choice of team). When it comes to game performance the player profile will play an important role (it can be the difference between a win and a loss) but it will only act as an addition to the player’s original skill level. That means that if your player’s skill level is high enough it can compensate for his bad profile. But as mentioned above the profile will influence other parts of the game (culture, happiness, etc.) which in its own turn can lead to a bad game performance. Also, both high and low values can be of benefit in different situations. It’s a complex system, just like it should be. And now to RNG. As Rainsilent pointed out I don’t believe there is any good way to exclude random numbers from any game. Depending on what meaning you put into the word random I believe there’s a random factor present even in real life. A top sniper wont score 1 million goals on a 1 million shots even with an empty net. He would probably miss at least one . But I promise you this, there are NO complete random numbers in this game. All actions will be based on skill, trait or other ratings to decide if an action is a success or failure.

No, that is just Karma since I was angling for Council as well and you got him to yes sooner, haha.  
 
But seriously, I've noticed that trades do have some hidden impact on teams.  It's easy to start a downward spiral by doing multiple trades trying to fix what is wrong.  We've seen that with a few of the relegated teams over the past few seasons.  It goes from bad to worse if you aren't careful.  

Well, the team traits are calculated mostly from players traits, so it is exactly the point koekefix meant. The fact the all 3 teams Portland beat in the playoffs have better confidence and winner instinct (especially the winner instinct by quite some margin) and same or similar team work. Also skill-wise Portland was no better and the last 5 games with bad faceoff skills they were overshooted by a lot and spend more time defending themselves.
But that is hockey and they deserved it. They just played really well and it worked, perhaps also good tactics was the reason. I wish them the cup.
 
I agree with rainsilent that Kaila's confidence played role. I also noticed that after trades, the team performance is decreasing. And not only if you trade key position player who cause this with the confidence reset. For example after I traded fro Council who I used only as 3rd line center, my scoring decreased significantly and in 12 games I suffered same number of losses as in the first 48 games. And Council was one of the best players with (almost) point per game production. Of course this is small sample and it might not mean anything, but I noticed something similar before. My guess would be that small decrease of team work and team confidence might hurt the performance, so you would have lower scoring and in my case once the winning streak was over, the team was playing worse then before (during the streak before the trade). And with many GHL teams being very close to each other in quality, that can easily make 2-1 games into 1-2. Most of the seasons before, I did minimum trades and the few were mostly in the beginning of the season. This season I made 4 trades in last 20 games of regular season and the team results got much worse. 

Well, this will happen in every world after some time - GHL will became very even with many 90+ OVR players. For Biscuit, it is already visible since let's say S10 and I believe after S15 the rosters will be limited by cap space (not like you cannot make one offer to superstar in FA you really want, but as you have to let one or even more superstars go as you don't have enough cap space to keep them for next season) and thus even more equal league. Who will manage to hold most of low greed players will benefit, but the dominance, like me and Vandals had in many previous season, will simply disappear. 
It is a good thing, it simulates real hockey, when you have many Stanley cup aspirants and still you can have very surprising teams in the final after all. On the other hand, randomness in the game will have much bigger effect and it may be a problem for very competitive managers as in online games like this, you usually can built a superior team by being more clever, having more knowledge, planning better system (like not starting from top, but hoarding good picks first), having more time to make better deals etc. Or by playing long enough, but that is different story But here with tight cap space, this works only first 10-15 seasons and then you will be simply one of many good teams and you can still win, but your chance for that will decrease.

@rainsilent:
 
I was one of the first to congratulate Marauders with the cup and if he beats the best 3 teams, he deserves it. Hanrahan didn't do it by himself, but he was the best man for sure.
 
Don't forget Hanrahan robbed a game against you as well. I think the previous patch had some flaws regarding scoring as well.

rainsilent, you are right.  I was simply providing data without actually digging deep into it.  I hope no one thinks I am trying to prove solid conclusions with my data.  That's why I add comments like "(in my own mind)" and stated you probably know much more than I do.  Still, I like to provide facts where I can and offer opinions on certain subjects, even if they aren't solid facts.  If others have facts to either support or reject my data, then great.
 
While I'm at it, I don't actually think that the goalies being Tough were the main factor for the upsets.  I hope everyone was able to see the sarcastic humor in my comment.
 
 
I actually made this comment to bouncer a few weeks ago.  This doesn't really relate to the "traits" topic, but I have noticed (with both my team and a few others) that teams perform a bit worse immediately after trades.  Teams appear to "slip up" for a week or two after a trade, then get back to form.  This probably has something to do with the player's confidence not being full, or possibly another factor - and could support my opinion in my original post that a team's Confidence & Teamwork are more important than Winner Instinct.  Again, this is mere opinion based on observations and not solid fact to say that is how the game is coded.  Probably a discussion for another thread.

And what about the opposing teams winner instinct and overall talent level? You can't just look at partial data and end up with a solid conclusion.
 
You guys are also glossing over the fact that the Marauders best players outplayed the Protons best players in the second game. I think the biggest contributor to the Marauders winning the cup is the lack of depth scoring that is going on in this patch as the two teams that had the most offensive depth, the Protons and Vandals, couldn't effectively use it to their advantage. Without that advantage it more or less became whose best players outplayed whose. Also another major factor was the starting goalie for the Protons not having full confidence. To be frank Arttur Kaila did not have a particularly good playoffs. In fact game 1 of the series he had a pretty bad game and cost the Protons the game despite the Protons otherwise completely outplaying the Marauders. I have no doubt that the lower confidence of Kaila played a role in that outcome. I also like how nobody is mentioning that they also beat me 2-1 in the first round even though Hanrahan had 2 very bad games against me.
 
Marauders congratulations on winning the cup. Against all odds you managed to win going though the best teams in the Vandals and Protons. It was fun to watch. Mostly. The first round wasn't so fun.

Nicely Done! Way to take down those Protons! Got to give some mad props to Erzac and BFGore for making it into the GHL next season and also to both the teams who had to attempt a nearly impossible task of promoting via the playoffs. Benoit and his Tomahawks managed to win in their GHL round and Bear Doggit of Horseheads North barely got turned away in a shootout of the last match. Good showing by all of you guys in the SHL- props!

Thanks Steve! Honestly I think it was pretty fluky - my goalie really stood on his head in the playoffs and I doubt I'll have similar results next season which is why I loaded up on picks.

Ambition is a modifier to another talent that is now hidden that used to be visible. That talent was an indication of how good the player could be. Potential. A player with great potential but is lazy will still grow exceptionally fast. A player that doesn't have a lot of potential at all but is ambitious won't grow much at all. What you want to look for in terms of ambition is for what players are growing first then look at their ambition.
 
As for winner instinct it becomes more evident and impactful in closer leagues. Teams with higher team winner instinct will more often than not find ways to win close games. Again though that requires close games and relative parity between teams. I have never had an overly talented team offensively (defensively is another story though) yet I am regularly at the top of the standings in my league. Why? I play the odds of keeping games as close as possible and then winning those close games. If you want to see the impact of winner instinct look at all of the games that your team played where the difference was 2 or fewer goals. That said my team wins games in OT like nobody's business but can't win in a shootout to save their lives.
 
Finally dirty is about manager preference and statistical certainty. Even on the lowest aggression level your team will take penalties. It is an inevitability. So why not pick up a few players lower talented players that have the tendency to take penalties and play them on your lower lines and eat up as many PIMs as they can? Also some managers just want aggressive teams like the "Big, Bad Bruins" of old however be mindful that your team doesn't turn into the undisciplined Jets that regularly burn themselves with too many PP goals against.
 
The rest I think you have spot on although I don't really see the need for Anders to give specifics. That said somewhere in this forum is a record where he did say something along the lines that it goes on a number scale system in that not all lazy players are the same lazy. Basically think of it as a 0-10 system with 0 being most lazy for example and 1 being lazy but not as lazy and so forth.

To add on lazy will also lose skill due to age much sooner. Lazy is only going to impact their growth potential and how soon they decline.
 
Anonymous won't hurt you pretty much at all team performance wise unless you make them captain or assistant.
 
Arrogant players will hurt team chemistry if you have too many on the team. In theory anyways.
 
Nervous will have a higher chance at a bad game the higher the pressure of the game. This said non key positions this trait doesn't matter much at all. For example 3rd/4th line wingers and 3rd pairing Dmen that otherwise aren't playing key special teams roles you want to be much more focused on the player talent fitting what you need in those specific small roles and the salary said player is asking for than if they are nervous or heroic.
 
Finally tough simply determines the standard frequency of penalties and major penalties taken.

As Matt said, I'm not entirely sure what effect nervous and lazy have on games, but from my experience:
 
Nervous and lazy players tend to be inconsistent/streaky when it comes to putting up numbers.
 
Lazy players develop much slower than say, an ambitious or purposeful player.
 
And as said above, nervous players kill your winner's instinct.
 
To be honest with you, I tend to try and avoid players that have bad traits, but I will put the occasional lazy or arrogant or anonymous player in my lineup, because too many green traits I find kill your confidence, winner's instinct, and results, regardless of player ability (believe me, I've had a full team of heroic players, and it does not work, period).

I also think one or two of the attributes in the profile count towards grit as well.  For instance, Tough or Agitator under Dirty seems to me would be gritty players and those not nervous or anxious would probably also help to make them more gritty players than those that are Lazy and don't give up easily.  Not sure which attributes from above or my comment count more towards grit, but my guess is they all influence it a bit. 

If you go to tactics when at your team page and then explain tactics you will find it in the player characteristics part of the description for crash the net, dump and chase and aggressive forecheck. As for what I think I think it is talking about players with high spirit and physical attributes. Maybe speed too. Kind of what you think of when you are talking real life hockey too.

Do you have an example of the wording? 
 
I started looking into the post game comments around team tactics this season to try and make sense of a lot of things.  I even changed a bunch of tactics/lines from game to game and had other managers send me what it said about my team to see where it was different.  I think I had most of it figured out, but then put my research on the back burner (busy job, wife, 3 kids sometimes demand priority ).  I'll pick it up again shortly.

Can't offer a definitive answer, but I do think that a player's role does affect their training. For example, I've had defensemen where their offensive skills, so they are set to stay at home but they'll struggle to increase their offensive attributes. 

Also I've started to believe that their in game results has some effect on how they develop. I have a player where I want to develop his faceoffs, but when I have him on my GHL team he is only taking 5-10 faceoffs a game and isn't improving much. But when he is with my affiliate he's taking over 20 draws a game and his faceoff development sky rockets. So with that, if you have him set to powerforward and he starts hitting more, maybe his physicality could follow suit.