canucks

Hi, today i want to discuss the player ratings in gameplanhockey. Here is the ratings view of my roster. 
 
A rating is numbered from 1 to 99 and as you can see from the screenshot they are highlighted with colors that we already know. Green is best, Blue is good, Orange is mediocre and Red is bad. There are 9 different player ratings for skaters and 7 for goalies: Player ratings (skaters) 
1. Skating
"Speed and acceleration but also the agility of the player."2. Passing"The players ability to find a teammate and deliver a pass without the puck being intercepted by the opponent."3. Puck Handling"This rating will tell how good the player is to keep control of the puck, deke, deflect shots and protect the puck."4. Shooting"A combination of shooting power and accuracy. It´s not the only rating used to score goals but it sure is one of the most important."5. Defence"The players ability to read the opponent, backcheck and being in the right place when the opponent is trying to score."6. Physical"The players ability to use the most of his body, deliver hits, getting the upperhand in the crease and avoiding to be run over by the opponent."7. Spirit"The players fighting spirit and determination. The rating tells you how hard the player backchecks, follows through and blocks shots."8. Endurance"Players with high value of endurance can take more ice-time without being fatigued and they also recovers faster."9. Faceoffs"A rating most used by centers but is important to every player stepping up to the face-off spot." Player ratings (goalies)1. Reflexes"The goalie reflexes and the ability to react to hard and accurate shots"2. Positioning"The ability to stand in the right place before the shot or scoring opportunity is created"3. Puck Control"The ability to control the puck at heavy traffic or prevent dangerous rebounds on hard shots."4. Athletic"An agile goalie moves quickly from side to side and can make those impossible saves even if lying flat on the ice."5. Puck Handling"How well the goalie can take part of game play, set up the first pass or poke check the puck away from the opponent."6. Spirit"The goalies fighting spirit, determination and ability to not be disturbed by heavy traffic in front of the net."7. Endurance"Goalies with high value of endurance can play more games in a row without being fatigued and they also recovers faster."   Looking at my roster i see that: - I have 4 centers with around 83-85 in faceoffs skill. Not bad, but no real specialist.- My skaters seem to excel in spirit, apart from Ezekiel Sheehan who already was nominated for release.- Best skater is winger Juan David Martin (89), but he combines it with low endurance (59).- Best passer is defender Anton Akulov (86), who also has the best rating in defense (89). On the downside, he has the lowest Puck Handling (40), but that rating seem only to be important for offensive defenders, so a very good defender.- Center Marlon Heintz is the best puck handler and shooter (both 77). It's unfortunate that he has only 57 endurance. He also doesn't belong to the group of best faceoff-takers.- Most physical player is defender Youri Bouffard (94)- Winger Chance Shumaker has the best spirit (99). To the max! He also has the most endurance (93) and has great skating (85). Combine that with a potential of Natural Talent and we are perhaps looking at the best player in the team.- Looks like Matias Gorman is going to be the starter goalie, thanks to his 81 endurance. Nicola Saint Arnault will serve as backup.- Team is lacking a real offensive defender. Ioan Floyd is listed as an OFD, but his shooting isn't really impressive (67). This is definately an area i will try to strengthen. That's it for today. A quick glance at the player ratings. Next up will be contracts.  

Howdy, time to discuss the fourth and final roster view, contracts! Related to this i will talk a bit on roster management and finances.
 
 
Contract view

 
Contracts in an European style game world are pretty easy to understand. A contract consist of a length, years remaining and salary. Furthermore a player can have one or two clausules in their contracts, represented by the letters R and S.
 
R = Release on relegation, player will become FA when team demotes to a lower league S = Salary increase on promotion, player will earn more when team is promoting to a higher league.  
P.S. at the moment i don't know how much a player will earn more after promotion, i will follow up on this when i know the answer.
 
Also, a very important detail presented on the contract view is the contract happiness of a player. Sometimes players want a bigger contract and sometimes they want to move to a bigger club. In both cases the player will become unhappy with his contract. In the latter case you can't do anything about it.
 
Currently, the highest paid players in my team:
 
GK Matias Gorman ($450.000) W Chance Shumaker ($391.000) W Alf Haugland ($243.000) I'm a bit surprised about Haugland's contract. He is a grinder and i didn't mentioned him before in any post. He has natural talent and is purposeful, but the other 4 characteristics are in red. He has high spirit (94) and is a phisical player (89). He is good in skating (76), endurance (75), puck handling (73) and passing (71). A nice player for an energy line, but i believe his contract is too much. I might consider to release him to make salary room. Speaking about salary room, let's show the team finances. 
 
Finances
 
Click on Team -> Team Info
 

 
The finances is listed on the team info page at the top right. The finance overview is simple and consists of 4 numbers:
 
Salaries: total salaries of all players Salary cap: a maximum of salaries. Current offers: salary spent on contract offers and salary locks due to releasing players (more on this later) Free space: the difference between salary cap and the combined number of salaries and current offers.   
As you can see i don't have much free space left, so i will be focusing on improving that first in the coming weeks. Also take note that the salary cap is dependent on the league you are playing. Here are the numbers in each league:
 
Gold - $50.000.000 Silver - $12.500.000 Bronze - $3.500.000 Iron - $1.250.000 Lower Iron - $625.000  
Roster Management
 
In an European style game world you have a couple of options to manage your roster, namely:
 
Releasing a player from his contract, he will immediately become a free agent (FA) Offer a contract to a player from the FA market. The player will make a decision in a couple of days. Adjusting an existing contract of a player. Sometimes a player will want more or even less. Keep an eye on player demands regularly.  
That's it for today. Talked a bit about the financial aspects in the game. Next i will be discussing training.

Hi all, today i am going to explore training in gameplanhockey.
 
To setup training, go to Team -> Action -> Training...
 

 
As you can see, setting up Training is straightforward. For every player you only need to select two things.
 
1. Type of training
Offensive focus more on offensive skills, Defensive focus more on defensive skills and General focuses on both. But beware, the skills that will actually be trained are also dependent of the tactics that are currently in use. Tip: use the training information of individual players to spot the skills that are most important for certain tactics as these are not publicly available.
 
2. Insensity
Players can train easy, medium or hard. It's wise to let scratched players train hard as they don't play. Players that play a lot of minutes should train easy if they want to stay fit.
 
 
Show training result
 
Players train every simulation day. You can follow the training progress of a player by going to the player page, click on the Rating tab and finally click on the 'Progress' tab. Here is an example:
 

 
Individual skill changes are difficult to spot (so it's probably wise to save some screenshots for future analysis), but thankfully when the overall rating of a player changes (either positive or negative) you will be notified through messages in your manager inbox. They contain the words 'Assisant impressed by [player]' or 'Assistant worried about [player]'.
 
That's all for today. Training is very easy. The difficulty lies in spotting which skills are actually trained, but i leave that as exercise