rainsilent

1st. Counter to what Steve said yes Anders gave a clear definition. However it was in a chat shortly after Anders added the ability to trade into the game. Someone asked what counts as fair when they were seeing some trades between a few select human teams with CPU teams that they didn't see as balanced. The problem is that Anders then never posted it in the forums and so other managers (not just GHL managers in Biscuit but managers at all levels in all leagues) started summing it up by using the saying of don't offer a trade to the CPU that you would not accept if you were the team receiving the offer. 2nd. It isn't "our rules." It is Anders' rules that he is asking us to abide by and help enforce more or less via the report feature. 3rd. I didn't say your abuse over a year. I said trades like what you did has been considered abuse for over a year. Two drastically different things. Finally yes this is a forum but your different point of view on abuse is that it is perfectly ok because everyone can do it. Such a point of view will only ruin a game via making open cheating of the game ok. Contrary to what you think at least 2/3rds of the trades with the CPU I see happen now are actually rather sensible trades for both teams. Thus the abusive trades like some that you made are not as common as you think. It is one thing to make your team better via trading. Everyone is trying to do that in a trade. It is another thing altogether however to make your team better via giving nothing of quality in return for great quality players. No human manager would accept such a trade offer. Shortly after trades were added to the game one game world had a rampant issue of a few managers almost immediately striping all of the AI teams they could of all talent available via trades very similar to some of the trades you made and that you think are ok and not abuse. The game world pretty much had to be reset because a few teams had all of the talent and it completely ruined it. If I am not mistaken Anders even banned the player that did the most excessive abusing for the trades and another eventually got banned for creating multiple accounts to get the players from CPU teams after by trying to make it look like human to human trades. Bottom line is that Anders has already set the precedent in the past regarding abusive trades with the CPU and has, more or less, asked us, the managers that play, to police ourselves while he continues to work on improving the game by using the report feature. If you don't agree with, and thus like, the precedent that Anders has set and we follow then you shouldn't play this game. However if you think your trades were in no way abusing you are welcome to go to Anders about it. I wouldn't hold your breath however based upon some of the trades you made.

Managers were raising awareness to the managers that don't pay attention to trades to what you were doing. Getting enough people to report someone for exploiting the CPU teams takes time. As I said it isn't something done overnight. It takes time. In your case it happened to take 3 weeks. The more managers actively watching the trades the faster people abusing the system get reported. Unfortunately most managers are more focused on their own teams than watching what other teams are doing, which isn't a bad thing per se and perfectly understandable. Also managers are usually given a chance and get a message sent before an active attempt to get enough managers to report them is taken up to have them suspended via the report system. I am sure you experienced that yourself no? What you did has been seen as abuse and punishable in some way for about a year now since trades were first introduced. Problem is that the report system is relatively new so early abusers could almost get away with it unfortunately. There weren't enough managers watching trades for trade abuse and when caught Anders had to be messaged within a certain time of the trade for anything to be done before Anders couldn't do anything about it due to too much time passing. In regards to the complications that is why Anders ended up more or less asking managers to use the report system to police trades until the trade system can be worked out fully.

It took 3 weeks to get enough people to report you to the game to suspend you. That manager is likely to get a suspension as well but enough players have to report them first. That will not happen overnight. Edit: This isn't a good solution. First all draft picks should be locked. Second what determines top x? Overall, which is mostly meaningless, or position in the lineup, which is just as meaningless? The best way to prevent abusing the CPU teams while still allowing CPU trading is; 1st by getting more strict with the trade values of players (Too many players with great trade values,) 2nd restricting the number of players involved in the trade and the trade value difference of involved players must be equal (aka no 2 good trade value players for a great one. It must be great for great and no greater difference than a 2 to 1 or 3 to 2 with no more than 3 players available to be added per side,) 3rd improving the computer trade logic in regards to what is coming its way vs what it is giving up (This would prevent the CPU from accepting a trade where they give a highly skilled relatively young great trade value player for an old vet that isn't near as talented yet still has the same trade value.)

Hello Gore and a late welcome to Biscuit. Just by giving a quick glance of your team the statistics point to a somewhat iffy team D as your teams biggest weakness. Your PK is good, your starting goalies stats are ok but your goals allowed on the whole is kind of bad. Outside of that your team looks to be a rather solid BHL team. If you have any questions feel free to message me in the league.

Not strictly. Look at the numbers your goalie is putting up. If they have a 3 GAA and a 910 save percentage that, in this game, isn't too bad. It isn't good but it isn't necessarily on the goalie. More physical players get the highest game ratings in the current meta of the game. That means that players that play more physically are going to have inflated ratings and those that don't are going to have under inflated ratings. It isn't too unusual to see players that aren't particularly physical having nearly a point a game have average game ratings of 72 while physical 4th line players have average game ratings of 75+. If you want to know who to blame regarding defensive woes you have to know how to break down the information the game is giving to you. The key thing to look at however, since we cannot watch the games play out, is via the player stats and not strictly the game ratings. It is very possible for your goalie to have 4 goals against, a 60 or worse game rating and have all goals be on the opposing teams power play. That isn't a goalie having a bad game for example. However your goalie being the only player without a blue or green game rating may mean that your goalie may not have had his best game. Keep this in mind. Your goalie gets a game rating hit for every goal against. His fault or not. You could have a few defenseman make a bad play that results in a few goals against and the defenders in question still can "make up" for their mistakes. A goalie can never "make up" for a goal that went in in the same way. Once a goalie lets in two goals it is very unusual to see them get a 75 or better rating and once 3 goals goes in seeing them with a game rating above 70 is rather rare as well as they would have to pretty much be the reason it didn't end up in a 7-0 thrashing.

Personally I love seeing a lot of injuries and I say this with the fact that at one point I had 5 starting forwards injured for longer than a week at one point in the current season. In the past too many teams only had one or maybe 2 scratch players on their team. Now you have to save cap space for extra players in case of injury.

No. I never claimed that you were stupid. I said that your claimed reasoning for it being ok for you to cheat the system is based around a perceived in game issue that doesn't exist. That is a poorly thought out and exceptionally weak argument. Frankly what anyone in Biscuits GHL needs to have more than a slight chance to win the cup is have a certain team let go all of the players they got in the same way you built your team. By exploiting the computer teams through trades. They have dominated for the past 3.5 seasons because of it and will for about 4 more unless they decide to change that by their own decision. You would have no impact on me winning or not. Oh and there is no "getting even" with someone who a fair number of people go to for advice and help because of how good they actually are at managing their team when the only way you can win is by relying on exploiting the game. You would be better off leaving quietly now rather than making yourself look even more like a stuck up child before you go.

Computer trading in of itself isn't cheating no but I have pointed out too many times in this forum that exploiting flaws in a game to your advantage is cheating. That means that exploiting computer teams via trades is cheating. That is exactly what you are doing in your trades. Your point is massively flawed, poorly thought out and exceptionally weak as a result. A new manager doesn't need to make trades with computer teams unless there are too few human managers to try to trade with. Unless you are in the GHL (which a new manager will never be able to be in) or on the brink of reaching the GHL you should not be concerned about the GHL, top teams or top players. They are completely out of your reach in every way. You should only be concerned about your league and what you can do in it. Also the edge will never get bigger unless you stop learning the game and resort to things like what you are doing to "catch up" to a perceived gap that isn't there to begin with. Regarding new teams getting to the GHL it is completely within the realm of possibility to have a very competitive team your first year there. I am the perfect example of that. To my knowledge I am the most recent team, and one of the very few, so far that has made the playoffs their first year after promotion in the GHL for this game world and it wasn't by fluke. No it wasn't easy. It was rather difficult. It should be. You are a SHL team promoting to the GHL. Be realistic with your expectations. Honestly I still think that I would have been better off team wise staying in the SHL for one more season but I made my very unexpected promotion to the GHL work. Every offseason there are a number of quality GHL players to grab for the at least 2 teams that rank up into the GHL. Yes the top talent is maybe a total of 3 to 5 players but you only need 2 maybe 3 such players. My first year I grabbed 3 such players out of about 6 or 7. Two forwards and a defender. I then grabbed a few role players to fill out my team and my team played well enough to get into the playoffs. On the way I traded 2 of those top players for a top goalie and 2 lesser skilled forwards. Yes the trades were with computer teams but notice that I traded 2 top talent players for one top talent player and two lesser talented players in return. I didn't try to finagle top talent away from computer teams via giving a number of lesser players in return. Trading with computer teams is not a problem. Exploiting the computer in trades to get an unfair advantage is a problem. No exploiting the computer in trades is not an answer to a bigger problem. There is no bigger problem. The only problem there may be is your own inability to learn and improve yourself as a manager and exploiting the computer in trades is not the solution to that problem. Never, in any multiplayer game, is using in game exploits of any kind to your advantage an "answer" to a "problem" perceived, proven and known or otherwise.

I didn't add in reply to your second because it would be completely redundant and I was aware. Why run a conversation in pointless circles? I only wanted to reply specifically to that because, even though you weren't per se intending to, by making a broad everybody statement you pretty much did. As for moderators there are too many issues there for me to like that route. First the number of leagues that actually need computer trading is likely not that high. Personally I think the cutoff should be 8-10 CPU teams as a minimum. Basically the league has to be particularly sparse regarding human managers. Second is bias and opinion regarding the moderators. Yes I know you said outside of the game world but the whole someone knows someone can still apply. Also, and even bigger to me, is that everyone will have different opinions on what qualifies as a trade that is exploiting the CPU. When we had this discussion in the forums about a year ago there were people that had the view that any and all trades with the CPU were exploits no matter "how fair." Finally the biggest issue is how difficult the idea of certain leagues only being able to trade with the CPU teams would be to implement. As much as I don't like everybody being able to trade with CPU teams I don't know if a halfway idea like what we are talking about is doable. With that in mind between the two of nobody being able to or everyone being able to with a more strict trading system which, in general, is best to go with? Personally I think the more strict trading simply because teams without access to certain functionalities of the game is a bad thing just because they are not in a league with enough human managers to make trades remotely doable. Neither is a good solution to a bad problem though.

This is the only reason this comment should receive some heat. Trying to pigeon hole everyone who has the same stance is wrong in more than one way. Not everyone who wants computer trading to remain in game wants it in game for their own reason. OK, maybe I am the only one that is like that but the only reason I want to see it remain in the game is so that in leagues with lower population human managers can still trade. I've said before if there were a way to implement the ability where trading with the CPU were only available if a certain number of teams in the individual league (note I am, and have been saying league not game world) were CPU than that would be the ideal way to do this. Otherwise I see no reason for a team like me to be able to try to trade with AI teams where there is 1 AI team in the GHL this season.

The restriction of 30 days on team or 15 games played makes a lot of sense. It still allows teams to be able to trade away players that they will lose via demotion that they signed in the offseason or early season while getting rid of quick sign and trades.

First there is no in game meter that truly gives an idea on what is and isn't a fair trade. No the two ownership groups being ok with the trade is not a trade balance meter. Second ripping the AI off via a trade is an exploit. Using in game exploits to your advantage is against the rules. Hence why it is an issue and hence why there are people complaining about it.

Also look to see what skill dropped in rating. If it is faceoff on a forward then it is nothing to even worry about. That being said shown great potential doesn't mean that the player is going to develop quickly or even much at all. How hard you train them and their ambition have a lot of say as well.

Offensive tactics are now up. Sorry about the more than week long delay.

Updated again with just the opening segments in both of the advanced sections.

In all fairness to Peter he was well known by the NHL teams when he was younger thanks to international tournaments. The issue was that he lived in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Until he risked his, and his family's, life to "cross the border" he was untouchable. As for such players they exist. Or should. Unless I haven't been paying attention Anders has yet to ""turn off" a few players randomly being generated each off season.

It said such in the in game help files that were there previously.

Any penalty for a forward (I haven't noticed one so if there is it is very small) playing C is more than negated by said forward winning draws, or at least in giving your team a better chance to win said draws over a C with less faceoff skills. Winning a faceoff is the easiest way to gain possession. A center can be better on the wing but only in performance. Also there is no overall stat balancing thing here in this game. Overall means nothing besides maybe the starting point for determining player salary demands. Let player skills determine everything and pretty much ignore overall.

You didn't. As I tried to explain (I was pretty sure it was going to look that way but I just have a very direct approach to a conversation. I try to dial it back but it is difficult at times.) I gave that list for you to look them up so you could form your own opinion. I am not a fan of telling people what to think or making them think that I am absolutely right. I would rather give you reliable information and let you decide on your own. Hence giving you the list of players and asking you to form your own opinion. I will share my stance and opinion but outside of absolutes I would rather people make their own opinions and decisions. It is why I didn't tell you and Wizard that you had to play players on the off wing in game. Instead I gave the positives and negatives, both in real life and in game, and then left it open ended as to what you should do.

Yes and no. Yes in the sense of reality that some players do and don't like it and players can pass the puck better and protect the puck better with the puck on their natural side. No in the sense that this is a game where, just like reality, it is easier to score on the off wing. There is no yes part in the game minus your own personal preference whereas there is the benefit of better scoring on the off wing. So if there is no known same side benefit but there is an off-wing benefit in game why not take advantage of the side that gives the advantage? The it factor is a phrase in America that is used to describe intangibles. I figured this would be an issue but didn't know of a better way to put it. For D I haven't noticed a difference whatsoever. However regarding off-wing it is more difficult because passes are much harder to make and receive and it is much harder to protect the puck from defenders however the benefit is one timers are easier and more effective as well as shots where the player starts with possession are much more dangerous because of a much better angle to the net. Regarding power forwards they are about as defensive as snipers and playmakers. Meaning they can be defensive but they definitely are more offensive in focus. Several of the best both current and in history were not known for their defensive prowess. A power forward is an offensively focused player that plays a power (can include lots of hitting but doesn't have to) offensive game rather than a finesse game. The all around player is more the two way type. Also just because a player hits doesn't make them defensive in nature at all. A power forward is great on almost any line. They are great options on offensive, two way and energy lines. However they may not be great options to have on checking lines. Getting hits has nothing to do with defense unless you really stretch it far in an argument saying that it can force turnovers. Defense is the most important thing on a checking line and a power forward by pure definition is not about defense. That doesn't mean that there aren't good power forwards that are good defensively. Let me list a few players that are, at least refereed to on occasion, as power forwards and tell me if you think they are defensive in nature. I don't do this to be rude in any way. Rather I do it so you can look at the type of players that fit the power forward mold so you can get a proper idea on what a power forward is like. Joe Thornton (its Jumbo Joe for a reason,) Milan Lucic, Shane Doan, James van Riemsdyk, Peter Forsberg, Eric Lindros, Alex Ovechkin, Brendan Shanahan, Owen Nolan, James Neal, Rick Nash.

Player basics has been updated.

Saved 4

Player Advanced To start this section off I will give the biggest mistake I see regularly from many managers regarding players. Overall fixation. Overall means nothing. Yes, it means nothing. Seriously it means nothing. No really. It means nothing. Ok, it means something. But only what you can expect a player to ask for when it comes to contracts. Beyond that it means about as much to you as the favorite color of that person you don't know driving a boat somewhere in an ocean nowhere near you that you will never meet. The player's individual skills are what is important. Let me give you an example. 2 players. Player one (P1) has an overall of 80. Player two (P2) an overall of 79. The mistake I see many managers make is going for higher overall players in FA when they don't need to and playing higher overall players higher in their lineup over more skilled players. There are at least two mismanagement issues happening here that I will get into much more deeper later. Let's look at the skills of the players I gave as examples. P1 | P2 Spd 85 | 75 Pas 75 | 85 Pct 85 | 85 Sht 75 | 85 Def 75 | 75 Phy 85 | 75 Spi 75 | 75 End 85 | 75 Fof 85 | 85 P1 is nothing more than a 4th line SHL or GHL checker or a poor choice for a BHL offensive forward whereas P2 is a player, depending upon the talent of the league, that can potentially play a 2nd or 3rd line offensive role in the GHL. Player roles. How to identify them and using that to determine how to put your team together. To be good at doing this yourself requires that you do a little bit of homework. Specifically scouting. More specifically scouting your league. To identify what roles a player can fill you need to know what the general "best" of your league is. You basically want to find out what the best 20 of x look like in your league. For instance I know that I have two of the best 9 playmakers (passing and puckhandling skills combined) in my game world (I used to have 3 of them but I believe in giving something to get something from the AI aka I like to make fair trades with the AI) in Mikulas Rakita and Waide Rose, yet they are 84 and 83 overall respectively. They are the two lowest overall of the top 9 but there is no reason they should not be in any other teams top 6 forward group. There are only 7 other players that are as good playmakers in the entire game world. How about a more extreme example. There is a 79 overall player in my game world that is one of the top 19 playmakers of the entire game world. The next closest of the rest of the 19 on overall is 83. That player should be playing a top 6 forward role in the GHL because again there are only 18 other players in the entire game world as good as they are as a playmaker. Yes, the player is pretty much crap outside of his offensive skills but he is the perfect example of a role player. He is an amazing offensive GHL talent relative to the current league and should be playing in a top 6 role. That is how you identify the roles a player can potentially play but how do you determine where to play them in your lineup? Creating a lineup sounds easy to do however it is a lot easier to mess it up than it is to get it right. This is where I see a lot of managers getting it wrong. The first thing I do when making a line is to decide on whom I am building that line around. Choose a player for each line and then find 2 complimentary players to play alongside them. I prefer to build around my centers. It makes things rather straightforward. No matter the 4 players you choose the next step is building the lineup around those players via finding players that complement the players you are building each line around. The key to doing that well is identifying the strengths of your players. If the player you chose for your first line is a sniper you want to get a playmaker to play with him and the third be good, but not great, at both just in case either one of the other two players have a bad game to prevent the line from being shut down. Likewise, if the player for the 2nd line is more of a playmaker you want to be finding a shooter and another who can do a bit of both. What about if the player is a two way forward? Well, the key thing to remember is that, at the end of the game, the goal is to score more points than your opponent. This means that you want your more defensive lines to be able to contribute offensively as well every once in a while. Thus when building those lines take a look at their offensive skills and build them with that still in mind but with less emphasis. So this is my IHL team's roster. Something you will notice is a lot of centers. It wasn't intentional. That said let me go over how I built the lines and why I did what I did. First I chose who I would build the lines around. As I said I prefer to build my lines around my centers. The 6 best centers I have are, in no particular order, Chenard, Keef, Gagnier, Spiva, Sibelius, and Sibley. Of those 6 I went with Gagnier, Chenard, Sibelius, and Spiva. I built my first line around Gagnier. He is my best offensive center and you want your first line to be your best offensive line. That said Gagnier is a do everything offensive player which means I want to pair him with a playmaker and a scorer. The idea behind that is if any one player on that line has a bad game the other two can comfortably take up the slack without much difficulty as, no matter what, there is still a playmaker and shooter. My best playmaker and my best scorer are Fausher and Mckennon respectively so I put them with Gagnier. For an offensive line you want to focus on offensive talent no matter what tactics you are using nor the rest of the skill set of the player in question. Even if everything else skill wise is bad if the player has some of the best offensive skills on your team play him in your top 6. I built my second line around Chenard. At this point, things got tricky for me because you want your 2nd line to be your 2nd best offensive line however that couldn't have been done if I gave Keef his own line as he is my 2nd best playmaker and I don't really have a suitable 3rd playmaker for a top 6 playmaker role. Thus instead of giving Keef his own line I put him on the wing here and gave the line a shooter in Markkula for the best offensive balance I could manage. The 3rd line is where you ideally want to start really striking a balance between offense and defense. While this line isn't ideal in that manner I know it should be an ok line as it was my best line in the LIHL the season prior. The center is Sibelius and the two wingers are Hoy and Lymburner. Again if you look you see a playmaker, scorer and a third that can do a bit of both on that line. As I said prior this helps assure offensive balance on the line making it harder to shut down. The 4th line can easily be a do anything line that you can scrape together for specialist purposes. I've created checking and energy lines with my 4th line and found success with such set ups both times by finding the right players. However, this line is just what is left with what I have. It is centered by Spiva with Stpeter and Wahlstrom as the wingers. While it isn't ideal and is kind of ho-hum with nothing really interesting going on I didn't really have an option at this point.

Team Advanced To start this section off I will give the 3 most common mistakes I see managers make and add the key reason to why so many people struggle to do well as a manager of a team consistently. 1. Too many big contracts, especially in term (aka length). The only reason you should give a player a contract longer than 3 season is because you can guarantee that they will be a major player on your team for the entirety of the contract from the moment they sign until the season that contract ends. Major being core of your offense, defense or #1 goalie that is exceptionally talented relative to your league. Everybody else you should be signing, and if you want resigning, to deals 1-3 seasons in length. A rule of thumb to use is having no more than 6 or so players with contracts longer than 3 seasons. 2. How young can you go? There are a number of managers that are obscenely obsessed with having a young team. I have seen a post before of a manager offering a 25yo player looking for a young player in return. 25 IS YOUNG! Yes you want some young players but you want some vets too. A veteran player gets a veteran experience bonus to their play making them typically play better than younger players of equal talent. At the same time players develop more the more they play. The key is striking a balance between youth and vets on your team. Keep in mind you also have draft picks that will turn into players every year. Even if you don't bother with the draft you are pretty much guaranteed to be getting 1 player than can make your roster in 3 seasons time. Having a roster full of young players is a potential disaster as you could be forced into letting go a young and talented player. 3. Role players are key. As much as you need offensively talented forwards you also need defensively talented ones as well. As much as you need defensively talented forwards you need defensive puck movers as well. I have seen one manager get as many of the top talented forwards as possible and not bother about D or goaltending. I have also seen a team with 4 lines of very good offensive forwards struggle because of no defensive forwards despite very good D and very good goalie. I have also seen a team that had 6 great defensive Dmen but could not pass the puck and again struggled. They were all missing key components that are needed to make a successful team. Something as "simple" as not having a handful of quality defensive forwards can make an otherwise top 6 talent team in a league finish bottom 6 in results. Just as important as having those key role players is also utilizing them correctly in your roster. The one key reason players struggle with manager games is because they forget one key aspect of what a manager needs to do. Balance long term with short term. Too many managers focus on the current and very near future and it bites them big 3 or 4 seasons from then. This is most commonly seen in excessive youth movement teams and on teams that give out too many long term contracts. Time for me to start on the bigger part of this. However before that a forward note. The most important thing has nothing to do with the players on your team, the tactics or anything in game really. It is all about you. More specifically you identifying what kind of team you want. What do you want the identity of your team to be? That is by far the most important thing. Do you want an all out speed team like the Pittsburgh Penguins? A physical team like the Boston Bruins? A skill possession team like the Montreal Canadiens? Without an identity for your team it is more likely to end up relying mostly on random luck for good seasons and looking mostly like the Edmonton Oilers of the past 6 or 7 seasons on a more long term basis. The big thing here is identifying what you want the identity of your team to be, to stick to it and never lose sight of it. The identity you create for your team is the foundation for your team and the basis of which everything else relies. The second most important thing is again you. Specifically you learning what you need to know. Now that I have said that let us look at how that applies in the most obvious way to your team. Tactics. First and foremost the "core" tactics. The core tactics are the basis of how your team will play on the ice. These core tactics are all under the tactics section and are; Offensive tactic, Defensive tactic, Power play and Penalty kill. These dictate the foundations of how your team plays on the ice. You should choose them based upon what I said above regarding your chosen team identity. Also once you make a decision on what you will use stick to it as changing one of these will have profound negative impacts to the play of your team for an extended period until they get familiar with the new core tactic. So what is the difference between them and what kind of players skill wise do you need to make them work successfully? Tactics disclaimer: I would love to get deep into the details of these tactics but honestly I can't. The tactics in this game have been simplified to a great deal to the point where multiple and very drastically different things are combined into the same categories. For example in the offensive section below almost every NHL team crashes the net and plays dump and chase to some degree while having a puck possession focused offense. Honestly though the tactics being this way is likely for the better for newer players so as not to overwhelm them. Offensive tactics Crash the Net: This is very simple. Puck and players to the net. In real life this isn't a tactic so much as it is a way of life. Hockey players are preached to crash the net. "Go to the net and good things will happen," "throw the puck to the net because anything could happen" and "there is no such thing as a bad shot" (there actually is) are things you commonly hear if you watch NHL games. What do you need for this tactic? Players high in the physical attribute. Bigger sized players are also a plus. The good about this tactic: You only need one skill to make it work and it is very simple. The Bad: You NEED one skill to make it work or it will not work at all, it is heavily reliant on your players to have higher physical skills and be bigger than the opposing defensemen for it to work, it is simple and very easy to counter. This tactic is the least efficient tactic out there and the most reliant on the opposing team being weak to it makes it pretty much not worth it. This tactic isn't garbage. it is just over reliant on a few things making it a very situational tactic at best. Using a situational tactic all of the time isn't exactly an ideal situation. Dump and Chase: This is all about getting the puck deep and then getting the puck via a strong forecheck. This tactic is less about skill and more about the defensive posture of the opposing team through the neutral zone. If the defensive posture is "up" then a dump and chase is a very good tactic to use. However that is in a real hockey game. What do you need for this tactic? Speed and physical skills predominantly. Like above bigger sized players are a plus. The good: This tactic is all about using your teams physical attributes to the greatest possible effect. It isn't overly reliant on puck skills. The bad: Due to the aggressive hitting nature of this tactic over aggressive players will take a lot of penalties, considering that your team will take more penalties off of the bat as it is that could really kill any momentum your team builds on a regular basis making it difficult for your team to generate much offense. This tactic is still very reliant on a players physical skill so not having a lot of forwards with high physical ratings will hurt this offense a lot. This tactic and the tactic above are the two physically focused offensive styles. The dump and chase is the more versatile of the two as it is less reliant on the opponent and their skills and more about your own players and theirs. Puck possession: This is all about controlling the puck in the opponents end by passing the puck around. This tactic is the basis of most modern hockey offenses. Even the LA Kings use a puck possession offense with a heavy influence of physical play whereas the Chicago Blackhawks use a more finesse based puck possession style. What you need: Puck handling and passing and then more puck handling and passing and then even more. The Good: This tactic is all about the puck skills of your players. This is the most difficult offense to stop with a skilled team. The bad: This is the most difficult offense to run because it is exceptionally reliant on the puck skills of your players. This tactic is very high risk high reward in nature. As a result if you don't do things right things can very easily go very wrong with this tactic. You don't need fast or physical players but that will definitely help. Transition rushes: This is all about counter attacking quickly. Get the puck and get it up ice quickly trying to create odd man rushes. However in the real life game this is not an offensive strategy per se and more another part of the game altogether. What you need: A lot of skating, passing and puck handling. The good: Very aggressive and fast offensive tactic that aims to take advantage of both the speed and skill of your players. The bad: This tactic has the most demands from the players as they need to be fast, good puck handlers and passers. Like puck possession this is high risk high reward but it is also the tactic that demands the most out of the players which demands the most out of you as well as you need the right players for this tactic to work. Also this tactic has some reliance on the opposing team as well making it that much more harder to implement successfully. Defensive tactics coming up hopefully shortly.

Player Basics This section is all about the basics you need to know about your players. Player skills and roles combined into one, profiles and training will be covered here. Player skills and roles: First I am going to break down the players into 3. Forwards, defensemen and goalies. The reasoning relates to one skill. Faceoffs. Anybody can play the center position. However you want the most highly skilled players at faceoffs to be taking faceoffs no matter if they are a center or forward. On that note faceoffs shows how good a player is at faceoffs. Skating shows how good a skater the player is. The importance of this skill is relevant to the team tactics you choose to use. That, along with other such information, will be covered later. Passing and puck handling show how good a player is at passing and puck handling. Combined these two skills are used to determine how good the player is at playing in a playmaker role as a forward. Shooting is about how good a shooter the player is and alone is used to determine how good the player is at playing a sniper role as a forward. Defense shows how good the player is at defense and is used to determine how good the player is at in playing the two way role as a forward. Physical is a representation of how physical the player plays. This is used to determine 2 roles. In the power forward role physical is combined with shooting and passing to determine how good the player will be for that role as a forward. A power forward is a forward that plays physical and has offensive skill. Physical is also used in combination with the players actual size (height and weight) to determine how good of an enforcer role the player can fill as a forward. Spirit, according to the old help system was a determination of how willing the player was to block shots and how hard the player back checked. Basically I sum it up as how much the player is willing to put into each game in terms of giving it all for the team. In terms of player roles this is used to determine how good a player would be as a grinder in the forward role. Endurance shows how much the player can do before getting tired. You may have noticed that I didn't include defensive player roles. The reasoning is simple. I don't think they work quite the way they should. So far as I can tell for a defenseman to be good at the two way role a defender has to be good in a defensive or offensive role first. There is a reason that I think this. I have never seen a defenseman that was only good at being a two way. However all the time I see a defender that is good at being offensive or defensive. If a requirement for one role is to be good at another first i don't think something is right. The question then inevitably turns into what skills are most important for my forwards/Dmen? Well that is mostly determined by what team tactics and to a lesser degree line tactics you chose to use which again will be covered later. However I will say a few things now that I think are more basic. First will be the concession that, arguably, the most important skill for a majority of your defensemen is defense and everything else is secondary. Second that you will need some passers, scorers and pk players. Also right handed players are more likely to score more than left handed players. If you see two players with 85 in shooting with one being left handed and the other right the right handed player will be more likely to score more goals. So far as I can tell that is the only difference between right handed players and left. That being said you don't need to have but maybe one or two right handed shooter. Also player overall means nothing outside of base values for contract negotiations with players. The players individual skills are much more important than a players overall. An 85 overall player is not instantly better than an 81 overall player because of higher overall. Height and weight seem to not matter too much however the game ratings given to players is biased to physical players. What about goalies? Goalies have their own skills so covering them separately seemed to be appropriate. Also there is an order of importance for skills when it comes to goalies that will pretty much never change. So here are the goalie skills grouped in order of importance and what they show. (And before anyone gets upset about me revealing something so "important" this stuff should be obvious to everyone outside of managers relatively new to hockey management games that know nothing about hockey. Also this is a guide. A guide is meant to help a player get better. A good game guide gets into the details of a game so players can understand what and why things work the way they do in game. Moving on.) Reflexes, positioning and athletics. These are the three skills that directly relate to a goalies ability to make saves and that is the primary function of your goalies. Reflexes show how quickly your goalie can react, positioning how well the goalie is at positioning themselves to the puck relative to the net and athletics is how mobile the goalie is. Puck control and spirit. These are two "modifier" skills. Puck control is how well the goalie can control their rebounds and spirit is again how all out the goalie is willing to go. The last two skills pretty much don't matter. Endurance and Puck handling. Puck handling is how well the goalie can play the puck. Endurance seems to mean nothing on a goalie since all goalies seem to be able to go the same number of games before getting tired. Also goalies that are tired seem to show no drop off in play due to fatigue. Player Profiles: First it needs to be said that there are 2 hidden traits. Potential and greed. Potential is how good the player can be. Greed is how much money the player wants. The visible traits are ego, dirty, leadership, big games and ambition. Ego is how big of an ego the player has. Players with bigger egos can potentially be locker room problems. Dirty is how dirty the player plays. The more dirty they play the more likely they are to take penalties. Leadership is how good of a leader the player can be. Big games is how well a player can handle pressure. Ambition is how much desire the player has to be the best they possibly can be. Training: Training can be focused one of three ways. Offensive, general and defensive. The differences between them is dictated by the team tactics you choose as those dictate what your players focus on training the most. Intensity is how hard the player trains. There is no reason to not be training on hard. Even if a player is all 99 they should be training on hard because it helps them keep that rating. Hard intensity training can also help delay a players regression due to age. If a player is getting tired give them less playing time so you can keep them on hard training.