EHM The Blue Line

Those are some very good ideas but what I needed help with in the first place was the draft itself; rules, how draft order is determined etc.

NHL -
Picks 1 - 14 are determined by reversing the order of the non playoff teams. So the team that finished 30th overall will pick 1st overall (well before the lottery they will be slotted in that spot).

Picks 15-30 (playoff teams) are determined in the order the teams are eliminated from the playoffs (AFAIK). When teams are eliminated in the same round the team that had the least points during the regular season gets the earlier picks.

There is a lottery that takes place for all non playoff teams. The winner of the lottery moves up 5 spots from their original spot, and in turn pushing the 4 teams ahead of them down one spot. Therefore no team can lose more than one spot through the lottery.

These are the odds that each team will win the lottery;
30th........... 25.0% (250 combinations)
29th........... 18.8% (188 combinations)
28th........... 14.2% (142 combinations)
27th........... 10.7% (107 combinations)
26th.............8.1% (81 combinations)
25th.............6.2% (62 combinations)
24th.............4.7% (47 combinations)
23rd.............3.6% (36 combinations)
22nd............ 2.7% (27 combinations)
21st.............2.1% (21 combinations)
20th.............1.5% (15 combinations)
19th.............1.1% (11 combinations)
18th.............0.8% (8 combinations)
17th.............0.5% (5 combinations)

Here is the exact rules of the draft according to NHL.com;

The order of selection among the Member Clubs in each season shall be determined in the following manner: (amended in 2007 to provide for points iv and v below)

A composite of all Member Clubs shall be prepared by placing:

First the Clubs which failed to qualify for the next preceding playoffs in the order of points earned by each of them in the regular schedule of the preceding season starting with the Club having the lowest points total and followed by the Club having the next lowest points total, and so forth.

The Clubs which participated in the next preceding playoffs (but had not been ranked first in their respective Divisions and did not make the Conference Finals) in order of points earned by each of them in the regular schedule of the next preceding season starting with the Club having the lowest total points and followed by the Club having the next lowest total points, and so forth.

The Clubs which had been ranked first in their Divisions during the next preceding season (but had not made the Conference Finals ) in the order of points earned by each of them in the regular schedule of the next preceding season starting with the Club having the lowest total points and followed by the Club having the next lowest total points, and so forth.

The Clubs who lose in the Conference Finals in the order of points earned by each of them in the regular schedule of the next preceding season starting with the Club having the lowest total points and followed by the Club having the next lowest total points.

The Club which loses in the Finals shall select next to last.

The Stanley Cup winner shall select last, thus, positioning all Clubs on the list.

In the event of a tie for any position, such tie shall be resolved by application of the rules governing the determination of final League standings. The resulting list shall constitute the order of selection.

Tie-Breaking Procedures:
At the conclusion of the regular season, the standing of the teams in each Conference shall be determined in accordance with the following priorities in the order listed:

First place in each of the three (3) divisions seeded 1, 2, and 3.

The higher number of points earned by the Club.

The greater number of games won by the Club.

The higher number of points earned in games against each other among two (2) or more Clubs having equal standing under priority (b) and (c) **

The greater differential between goals scored for and against by Clubs having equal standing under priority (d).

So ... positions 15-30 are set after the playoffs, while 1-14 are set by a weighted lottery.

OT: I'd be furious GM if my team was last in the league and someone would take my 1# pick from lottery

i think it would be great to customize nationality of players for leagues - that is something that ootp allows you to do and i think its great. They allow you to just go in and change the numbers...

Nationality - %
Canadians - 60
Americans - 20
Swedish - 10
Finish - 5
Russian - 2
Slovak - .5
etc

And the draft class would take those numbers to start the player creation process.

Again, making this dynamically changing based on things in the game world would be ideal.

But this works with 1 league only. If we plan to have more than 1 league, then this can't work

As this is something that is essentiell to the quality of the game for me i wanna give my 2 cents on this topic too.

Some things have already been mentioned but i will jsut describe my perfect system here:

1. Possibility of busts and surprises

What really was rather weak in EHM was the lack of busts and surprises of players, so following things should be imlemented to help here:

1.1 Random changes of potential

Yes , not everything is planable ad from time to time players should jsut get a boost to attributes or potential out if thin air.

1.2 Decreasing and increasing of attributes through performance

This should be altered a lot, because performance is actually what makes a star or determines a bust. So changes of attributes should be based a lot on actual performance. In real life a season can totally destroy a player or make him a star out of nowhere. Just think Redden or the players the wings often establish as satars out of nowhere. So changing attribute should happen quichkly according to on ice quality. Also achievment like winning cups or awards should make it likely to improve your mentals.
In EHM you just had those players who always performed and always remained their quality or just never could amount to anything...this leads us to point...

1.3 Get rid of hard capped talent

This was an absolutely annoying thing, because no matter how good your players performed the game suddenly decided they wont go anywhere from here. In real life talent only determines if you get a total dominating force in your game, but not the average guy...if someone really had no talent he wouldnt be in the game in the first place , so everyone should be able to get rather equal if his career runs good (see point 1.2) . Their might be absolute top talent that cna go above some level ("said to be the next great one") but it should be very rare, and those guys also only have the possibility to go above some capped talent for other players, but have to have good games to get there. They might also never get drafted if they have a horrible run in juniors. So what really would determine a player is his current ability, theres no hidden talent. If a player is talented IRL they are judged as this because they perform well, not because there is some hidden magic called talent that lets them advance magically over others. You can determine though who might make it by his current ability because it gives him a better chance to perform well and therefor get better in time. This would also allow for interesting very realistic drafting, because you can take a look at guys and sse they are rather developed in certain areas which might not fit thier current league and let them develop there very good like techs in juniors, while when they enter the NHL they better have their physical attributes in place or they will suffer some bad games and therefor decline, because of bad play.

2.0 Scouting

While the points above are more player development, that is the founding stone to fun in drafts lets get to the real thing.

Scouting should in general be a lot less accurate than in EHM. I agree that scouting should be based on budget perhaps. I dont like the idea of just setting a budget and be done. This would result in a much to general approach and lameness again.

Heres an idea:

At the beginning of the game scouts get available which the teams can invest their budget on. This could be done in a "scout draft" where the biggest team in financial terms gets the 1st pick etc...

Also a bigger team should have more slots for scouts available. After the draft you assign the scouts from your drafted pool to those slots. The scouts have predetermined years they stay on your team until they hit the draft again, so that adds a little element of strategy.

There could be additional regional scouts preset that are at the team from the start and just scout the local area, or this could be just done by giving random basic knowledge of local players. This could lead to a local preference as was discussed earlier a little.( Also drafting and having local players in the team could up your revenue a little and push up your financial standing, this could be built inot a whole module where fan happiness determines revenue partly, and you have to get certain players your fans want, but thats a different point)

The scouts themselfs should be specialised.

There are scouts that work like EHM scouts, you send them to scout a special player and they return with a very vague estimation of his attributes (should only tell you his strenghts and weaknesses compared to the other players in the league basically), no numbers .

There are also scouts that cover only a certain area like Scandinavia, Quebec or leagues . Those give you depending on their ability an even rougher estimation of a prospects current strenghts and weaknesses.

The taks is to combine the special and area scouting with the area scouts giving you a list of interesting players , while the special scouts have to be assigned to them to get more precise info, but always very vague compared to EHM.

With the "no talent" system in place your major way to know if a guy is good or not is just the vague reports of your scouts, that you can have only on certain players, your main estimate is their league performance.

There could also be inlcuded a few events like a european signing bringing some basic info on some players from his old team, same with youth players coming in.

For the NHL itself i wouldnt even bother to scout and just lay the attributes out straight, because ein EHM its like that anyway cause your scouts do that within a few weeks anyway. With no fixed talent in place, you decide if the player could do better on your team and get a star with you cause you use him better.


3. Drafting

Just some ideas:

- prospect "xy" is deemed the next great one, if you dont take him with your first pick fans are upset (with known effect to fanhappiness and revenue)

- Prospect "xy" doesnt says he doesnt want to sign with a minor team, risk taking him and having to trade him or see him in juniors totally (nie adition to the hopefully KHL risk)

- Draft could get a nice picture with the board in background with the names of the palyers and team logos while the player receiving his jersey in front.



Thoise were just some ideas, i missed more than i explained i guess, what i mostly want to see is more non predictable development and judging of players mostly on their on ice performances, not some magical talent. If a player is good in juniors hes talented and can make it in NHL, or not simple as that.
Would like to hear some feedback.

Beukeboom wrote:Thoise were just some ideas, i missed more than i explained i guess, what i mostly want to see is more non predictable development and judging of players mostly on their on ice performances, not some magical talent. If a player is good in juniors hes talented and can make it in NHL, or not simple as that.
Would like to hear some feedback.

I agree with your view - drafting should not be black and white. Here are some comments:

Beukeboom wrote:1.1 Random changes of potential

Yes , not everything is planable ad from time to time players should jsut get a boost to attributes or potential out if thin air.

I'm not sure a random change in potential is the way to go about it. It doesn't "feel" like a natural or realistic way in which a player would or would not progress into an NHL (or any other league) player. I would suggest that a similar outcome could be achieved by implementing the following:

1) A less predictable potential rating. I feel the difficulty with EHM is that players' PAs have been set too high. At such a young age and so early in development, you can't realistically say that Player X will in the future achieve a current ability rating of between 130-160. It would be much better to say 90-160. I don't like the -1 to -10 PA ratings in EHM - I think they're too narrow. The -11 to -15 are in my view much better as they allow for a much wider spread of potential. I wish there were more of these wider PA ratings.

2) Rather than having a random attribute or PA change, I think we should instead look at what factors might limit a player's ability and prevent him from performing to his current ability and/or his potential ability. Factors could include:

* Can't cope with the pressure;
* He might be homesick (some people find it hard to be far away from home - not everyone, though);
* He's not getting enough games and/or practice;
* The style of the tactics and/or coaches is too different to what he's used to and/or he's not good at adapting.
* The player struggles to adapt to a faster or more skilful level of play;

Factors such as the above would limit a player's ability to develop and result in them either playing at a much lower level for the rest of their career (i.e they never reach anywhere near their PA) or they simply don't make it anywhere and retire. This would provide a more natural reason for a player not reaching his potential rather than simply adding a random change. Of course the factors above could be randomised to some extent - so that simply having one or several of these factors does not guarantee that the player's ability to reach his maximum PA is affected.

Beukeboom wrote:1.2 Decreasing and increasing of attributes through performance

This should be altered a lot, because performance is actually what makes a star or determines a bust. So changes of attributes should be based a lot on actual performance. In real life a season can totally destroy a player or make him a star out of nowhere. Just think Redden or the players the wings often establish as satars out of nowhere. So changing attribute should happen quichkly according to on ice quality. Also achievment like winning cups or awards should make it likely to improve your mentals.
In EHM you just had those players who always performed and always remained their quality or just never could amount to anything...this leads us to point...

Yes, having a bad season should somehow have a medium/long-term effect on a player. They should, however, still have the opportunity to be able to turn things around - perhaps this could be linked to mental attributes?

archibalduk wrote: I'm not sure a random change in potential is the way to go about it. It doesn't "feel" like a natural or realistic way in which a player would or would not progress into an NHL (or any other league) player. I would suggest that a similar outcome could be achieved by implementing the following:

1) A less predictable potential rating. I feel the difficulty with EHM is that players' PAs have been set too high. At such a young age and so early in development, you can't realistically say that Player X will in the future achieve a current ability rating of between 130-160. It would be much better to say 90-160. I don't like the -1 to -10 PA ratings in EHM - I think they're too narrow. The -11 to -15 are in my view much better as they allow for a much wider spread of potential. I wish there were more of these wider PA ratings.

2) Rather than having a random attribute or PA change, I think we should instead look at what factors might limit a player's ability and prevent him from performing to his current ability and/or his potential ability. Factors could include:

* Can't cope with the pressure;
* He might be homesick (some people find it hard to be far away from home - not everyone, though);
* He's not getting enough games and/or practice;
* The style of the tactics and/or coaches is too different to what he's used to and/or he's not good at adapting.
* The player struggles to adapt to a faster or more skilful level of play;

Factors such as the above would limit a player's ability to develop and result in them either playing at a much lower level for the rest of their career (i.e they never reach anywhere near their PA) or they simply don't make it anywhere and retire. This would provide a more natural reason for a player not reaching his potential rather than simply adding a random change. Of course the factors above could be randomised to some extent - so that simply having one or several of these factors does not guarantee that the player's ability to reach his maximum PA is affected.

Agreed. Add to that various confidence/will-breaking events, such as not being drafted, or coming from a strong junior career to an average season in the ECHL, and we have a more realistic portrait already. Quite a few players who may lack work ethics or confidence will simply be destroyed if they have always been the best player in their league and suddenly find themselves average in their first pro season. A recent exemple would be Stanislav Lascek, who went from an excellent player in the QMHJL with reasonable chances to make the NHL to a pretty much hopeless player playing in the French Division 1 with Cergy-Pontoise within a mere 5 years span. Unprofessional players can also screw up their potential by not putting enough efforts in reaching it (overconfidence).

On the other hand, less good players must still have a shot if they work hard enough.

- YZG

Beukeboom wrote: 1.2 Decreasing and increasing of attributes through performance

Yes this is a must

archibalduk wrote: 2) Rather than having a random attribute or PA change, I think we should instead look at what factors might limit a player's ability and prevent him from performing to his current ability and/or his potential ability. Factors could include:

* Can't cope with the pressure;
* He might be homesick (some people find it hard to be far away from home - not everyone, though);
* He's not getting enough games and/or practice;
* The style of the tactics and/or coaches is too different to what he's used to and/or he's not good at adapting.
* The player struggles to adapt to a faster or more skilful level of play;

These are great too. I'd also suggest injuries, especially serious injuries. Anytime you miss playing time your risking future development. Also dedication to training, particularly off season training. Dedication like that usually leads to a better results and not doing so should hurt the player.

Age should play a factor too. They longer it takes to increase your CA the more your PA should decrease or become harder to reach. Though I think EHM does that already.

I've always thought that the PA should be more elastic rather than a set number. So that if certain events occur over a career (good seasons, confidence, etc) the PA should increase as teams start to see better potential in you, and decrease as negative events occur (poor performance, injuries, lack of confidence, rising age, etc.).

This is a good brainstorming. I only add that I do hope that players develop a bit slower in this game than in EHM. In EHM we have too many 16 years old with rating higher than veterans. In fact usually the WJC are played with plenty of 17 and 16 years old which is completely unrealistic

empach wrote:You know you could take this idea even further and give your coaches a preferred player type, like rough or skilled, two-way or offensive. Then you could set up more levels of chemistry between the GM and coach, and the coach and his players. To have a smooth running team you'd ideally want everyone on the same page.

I like this. It works with the "player models" discussed in another thread.

I've also got an idea for something to possibly add to the players involving "player cliques" but it doesn't really belong in this thread.

archibalduk wrote:

Beukeboom wrote:Thoise were just some ideas, i missed more than i explained i guess, what i mostly want to see is more non predictable development and judging of players mostly on their on ice performances, not some magical talent. If a player is good in juniors hes talented and can make it in NHL, or not simple as that.
Would like to hear some feedback.

I agree with your view - drafting should not be black and white. Here are some comments:

Beukeboom wrote:1.1 Random changes of potential

Yes , not everything is planable ad from time to time players should jsut get a boost to attributes or potential out if thin air.

I'm not sure a random change in potential is the way to go about it. It doesn't "feel" like a natural or realistic way in which a player would or would not progress into an NHL (or any other league) player. I would suggest that a similar outcome could be achieved by implementing the following:

1) A less predictable potential rating. I feel the difficulty with EHM is that players' PAs have been set too high. At such a young age and so early in development, you can't realistically say that Player X will in the future achieve a current ability rating of between 130-160. It would be much better to say 90-160. I don't like the -1 to -10 PA ratings in EHM - I think they're too narrow. The -11 to -15 are in my view much better as they allow for a much wider spread of potential. I wish there were more of these wider PA ratings.

quote]


But what speaks against a PA less world?

I mean for example a guy with all 1s enters the game world and is assigned to a junior team, at the same time a player with all 5s enters the legue which is already a lot for a young guy in a 20 level system. PA doesnt exist.
Attribute changes are solely based on performance with special bonus for awards, titels, palyiing with vets perhaps etc.
By having better ratings from the start the guy with the fives probably will play better. Thats his "potential". But at the same time the guys with only 1s could be used better and have lots of good games , while the 5s gu sucks , so the 1s guy coould catch up.

It also would make drafting more strategic. Do you really wanna risk bringing the guy with he undedeveloped atts in early and risk him having bad games and stale or even get worse?

In EHM a player more or less always profited form plaing time in NHL and good training, with a CA only, performances based system, rushing could be a real disadvantage that might ruin your player.


Tó make it a little more interesting we could also include "magical" talent again by having specialties for players to get via scouting , (perhaps with special scouting abilitites of scouts) like :

"intelligent" : gets random chances to improve some mentals
"athlete" : gets random chances to improve physicals
"technically gifted" : gets random chances to improve techs
" sloppy genius" : Lots of random chances of attributes throughout his career, can be bad or good
"Mr. Reliable" : Development a lot less based on random chances than with normal players, perhaps purely performance based.
"Showing talent but nothing else yet" : Development rather slow in first years and capped, random hidden decision is already set if and when he looses this cap and slow development and from there got chances of random bonuses. Could be the non playing performance based late bloomer, or just a great star , when random generator decides he looses cap and gets devleopment bonus early. Could also loose it with 37 or never and be a total bust.

Surely more ideas here to come up with, but i guess its claer what i mean.

This would make the system very variable while still based a lot on performance too, while avoiding a hard cap.

Also would add whole new dimesions to scouting and drafting, like scouts that are specialized on those hidden atts in general, scouts that find special kinds of those palyer preferably, teams that prefer a special type of player.And of course forces lots of strategy on the drafter, take risks or not, when do i need the player if he succeds , has the player the potential to round his atts with his ability etc...

Alessandro wrote:But this works with 1 league only. If we plan to have more than 1 league, then this can't work

sure it could- You'd just see different figures and nationalitys. In euro leagues these numbers would be based on things like the limit of non-homegrown players as well.

dave1927p wrote:

Alessandro wrote:But this works with 1 league only. If we plan to have more than 1 league, then this can't work

sure it could- You'd just see different figures and nationalitys. In euro leagues these numbers would be based on things like the limit of non-homegrown players as well.

Well you talked about creating regens. How can leagues work if you generate let's say 5 players a year?

Regens? Hopefully only if you cant spot them like in EHM.

Alessandro wrote:

dave1927p wrote:

Alessandro wrote:But this works with 1 league only. If we plan to have more than 1 league, then this can't work

sure it could- You'd just see different figures and nationalitys. In euro leagues these numbers would be based on things like the limit of non-homegrown players as well.

Well you talked about creating regens. How can leagues work if you generate let's say 5 players a year?

nah, i was never talking about regens....i don't like regens

The 2011 or past NHL official guides have a great breakdown of the draft - by nationality, league drafted from (Major Junior, College, HS, Euro etc) for every draft year with breakdown of teams. Some of these stats may come in handy to help with your game.

NHL Entry Draft History, Notes & Statistics:

http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=31922

dave1927p wrote:

Alessandro wrote:

dave1927p wrote: sure it could- You'd just see different figures and nationalitys. In euro leagues these numbers would be based on things like the limit of non-homegrown players as well.

Well you talked about creating regens. How can leagues work if you generate let's say 5 players a year?

nah, i was never talking about regens....i don't like regens

The 2011 or past NHL official guides have a great breakdown of the draft - by nationality, league drafted from (Major Junior, College, HS, Euro etc) for every draft year with breakdown of teams. Some of these stats may come in handy to help with your game.

If the percentage thing for nationalities is only for creating custom leagues/using existing leagues to play in a fictive, game-generated world, it's nice. But as a general control for new player creation once a new game is created, I have a problem with that. New players should be generated wherever worldwide the facilities to train them exist, from Canada to Mongolia; returning to set values such as in the freeware EHM would be a colossal step back.

But I guess a tick box could be checked by those who prefer to keep the same percentages forever, though. The home leagues of those players who get only a 0.5% of players would just not be playable; in any case, with such restrictive values, the user would probably not want to play in another league anyway.


- YZG

Make it 2 days?
Site be different every year with a Podem where Teams will come up and annouce the Pick or Trade?
Have the GM'S on the Floor to discuss about Trades?
Top Players left on the Board?
Team Needs?
Commentary?
Don't need to Create Players for it if you have a Feeder Leagues to it like College and High School.

In EHM when you look at a scouting report of a young player(NHL draft) you usually get a comparable. e.g. ( a better version of Bill Guerin) or something along those lines. What I'd like to see would be maybe 5 similar players listed in order of similarity. Of course projection are only that, but it would make figuring out a player's approximate type and future a bit easier and more fun.

Much more a longer term thing to consider. I would say this would apply more to the minor North American leagues below AHL and ECHL and leagues in Europe outside of maybe the top 6 or so. Coaches in smaller teams are much more reliant on the information they get from friends and ex team mates. For instance an elite league coach in the UK or top league coach in France probably doesn't have the luxury of a scouting network especially not in another continent. I would suggest if you are a coach in such leagues you could build up relationships with players mainly those you have worked with but maybe even others you have been in close negotiations to sign but don't quite get them or even opponents you have gotten on well with. You could ask previous team mates or coaches of a player even if you don't know them well for a reference for that player. The better you know the person the more detail you will get and perhaps less liked to sign a bad player. You could also look at local media reports on the player so basically you look in a couple of different areas for references and make a decision based on that. Likewise other coaches may ask you an opinion on a player they are thinking of signing and how you respond positively or negatively and how that player turns out could have an impact on your reputation from that coach and to a lesser extent further afield if they are spreading word. You could have scouts that don't work for a single team and so work in a freelance role. The advantage being these guys could be cheaper you could pay them a salary or commision on a signing. The downside of doing this is that they may recommend that player to other teams and even if you sign him he may get headhunted once that again hears of a better offer. The likes of the UK elite league both club and player can give two weeks notice though in eastside it only seemed to account for the club giving notice and not the player.

Also would like to see players approaching teams sometimes. Look at what period of time this may happen more for instance after NHL training camps or as AHL/ECHL teams cut their roster. Players could have a status like wants to play in Europe (similarly to younger players wanting college or major junior hockey) this would happen say when a player is not good enough for NHL this could be based on some sort of stat that a player wants to try a new culture. Some players may go to the smaller European leagues initially to try it out then if they do really well go the likes of the German DEL. For imports a key factor for attracting a player is if there is one or more other players on the roster from his country or speak his language.

There are quite a few things I can think of in this but that would be going more towards contract negotiations and salary than just recruitment.

Don't know if this idea has been posted, but how about each club having preferred areas/nations/leagues to draft from, depending on their knowledge(much like the new FM does with a club knowledge). A thing that is quite present in real hockey as can be seen with Detroit(swedes), Montreal(the tendency to always pick a quebecuois) and so on. And something else, when drafting, clubs should take into account the current status of a player, if he's a rising star in the KHL, for example, and makes 1.5mil per season with Avangard, clubs should think twice about drafting him.
Another thing to talk about is the KHL junior draft, will this be added in the game?

Nightmare wrote:Another thing to talk about is the KHL junior draft, will this be added in the game?

We have modified the database to allow this yes.

dabo wrote:

Nightmare wrote:Another thing to talk about is the KHL junior draft, will this be added in the game?

We have modified the database to allow this yes.

haha love the image clip!