EHM The Blue Line

2nd season with Vermont went a little better ..
Okay only 10th instead of 11th is not so big an improvement but 34 instead of 20 points definetly is. Several of the new players did very good. Most of them i expected to do, like Grant Owen and Troy Davidson.

But one player surprised me a lot.

He did develop his wristshop from 44 to 50 but i thought to get his commitment mainly for a 4th line reliable player His great mental abilities led me to this conclusion ... he stepped up as my topscorer of the season wih 31 points in 34 games.


For the upcoming season we got a few nice players to commit to the University of Vermont hockey team:

Bryce Misley Center out of Calgary. He had an okay season with the Oakville Blades scoring 21 points in 53 games.
Jesper Kokkila Defender out of Espoo, Finland 17 points in 60 games with Chicago steel along with 64 hits. His bad part is his low teamwork
Graham Slaggert Forward out of South Bend. 15 points in 59 games with Madison Capitals, but he is a defensive forward so his +16 is more the story of his game. Or his amazing 370 Hits.
Jacob Pivonka A great right wing out of Woodridge. 53 points in 50 games with the US National Development Team U18. Amazing Wristshot allready.

I will have a smaller but probable more skilled roster next season. Especially curious if the surprise players like Couturier can keep up and how the new players can step in

Yeah in lower leagues quick players with good mentals and above 7 in their core tech can easily be top scorers. You really don't need a lot in the way of tech down there. I've had 40 goal scorers in the NHL with 10 slapshot and 12 wristshot who were just quick and had good mentals+hiddens. So at College level you can get away with a lot less than that.

I'm at newyears in the 2nd season with Seattle now. The season went off to a flying start with us winning the first 7 games in a row. Then after the shootouts (that we lost) in game 8 Val Nichushkin somehow got injured for 8 months. No idea how he managed to get injured in the post-game, but that's EHM for you. He was at 10 points and 8 goals in those 8 games so losing him the entire season would sting a lot. But at the end of October we were 1st in the Conference with a health point gap down to #2 and things were looking very promising, apart from Timothy Liljegren (who isn't Injury prone) managing to get injured a staggering 4 times in October. As soon as his skates hit the ice he instantly twisted his knee, and no I didn't play him through day-to-day injuries. That theme has pretty much continued with me having played only 2 of the last 31 games with less than two top 6 players injured. It's been relentless.

By mid November all goalies began to consistently overperform their previous records against us by several % and out PP took a nosedive from 21% to 14% in less than a month and has been stuck down there since. So we're being goalied to the high heavens right now. Went from 1st overall with room to breathe to 9th in November and have slowly crept our way into the 8th spot by January. We just can't stay healthy or score to save our lives. Not to mention Elliot really isn't about that whole "making saves" thing, he much prefers losing us games that shouldn't be possible to lose.

In slightly better news Liljegren has finally stopped getting injured every game though and he's scoring at about a 0.7 PPG rate in his rookie season. On the downside he was at -12 +/- at one point not too long ago. He's not playing as the defensive defenseman on his line so it's not even his fault. It's just somehow every single goal we concede happens when he's on the ice (but not his d-partner, i expect someone is doing douchebag shifts when caught up the ice and Liljegren is paying for it) he also has an uncanny talent for going for a line change after making the 1st pass causing him to not get the + from being on the ice despite getting an assist.

Linus Ullmark who we acquired to be our backup for this year has been positively atrocious, not just by having a subpar SV% but mostly because he too gets injured as soon as he even thinks about getting on the ice. Overall our Physios have been earning their pay this season. It's really demotivating when you keep losing purely to goalie performances and injuries, but what can you do? At least if we manage to choke out of the playoffs again this year we have a completely disproportionate chance of winning a top 3 pick again.

As far as point production goes our top goal-scorer (18) and scorer (35) after the first 39 games is Evgeny Dadonov who has been stuck doing it all by himself on the 2nd line since Tyler Kelleher got injured and missed almost a whole month. Tlustý has also been out injured for some time, as has Eriksson Ek and just about anyone else who has a net positive effect on us winning. This season has just been a cruel joke thus far, due to our goalie injuries we've actually had to try out 19 year old Maxim Zhukov in net for two games, and sad as it may sound it's quite possible he's our best goalie at age 19. But I know young goalies can't generally sustain that level of performance if they get more games and I don't want to start burning years off his entry just yet. But first signs are good that he may be the long-term solution to our goalie situation.

Now to just cross my fingers that we start winning games again and can make at least a playoff appearance, I have about as much faith in Elliott as I'm sure Calgary fans do in real life. So I don't see us going anywhere if we get there. But I've won cups with worse goalies before, so you never know. We've shown we can put together impressive runs at times. But that was before Nichushkin stepped on a Lego and ended up getting an 8 month injury (as you do), and being that we're essentially a new franchise we have no depth at all yet. So we can't just replace a guy who was looking like a Rocket Richard winner in the making. Especially since now that I'm past the first season I'll only build through the draft, so no UFA/RFA or trading for players/prospects. I can only make 2 trades for 1-2 non-1st round picks a year, and I used both in the off-season to get rid of two dead-end prospects before anyone else figured out they would never make the NHL. So I picked up a 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounder for this year's draft. Should go a long way towards filling the gaping void that is our depth charts.

Bad news for our ambitions for the upcoming season:

Tampa Bay Lighning have snapped up dynamic winger Ross Colton from Vermont. He has signed a deal worth 1.1 million $. He was drafted 118th overall in the 2016 draft by Tampa Bay. In 58 games for Vermont he scored 19 goals ands 12 assists. He has been our best player and will be all but impossible to replace. We can understand his decision of course and wish him all the best.

On the other hand we organized a small Tournament with Vermount and three teams out of WHL .. und we won the torunament against those upstarts

The 17/18 regular season has now come to a completely unnecessarily exciting end. We had some injury issues throughout March madness in the form of Brouwer, Elliott, DeMelo and Kulak, meaning we were out 2/3 of our defensive defensemen and our starter (again). We had a pretty sour run in the middle and although we at one point in March found ourselves up in the dizzying heights of 5th we ended up tanking all the way down to 8th by April due to the aformentioned injury issues.

Heading into the 2nd to last day of the season we were in 8th with 90 points and Dallas were in 9th with 88 points. The kicker was that we were playing each other that day, making for the most important game of the season. Considering Antti Niemi had put up a 30 save shutout the last time we faced Dallas I wasn't exactly liking our chances, but a win would secure a playoff spot for us. Luckily for us Benn was out injured so we faced a weakened team, leading to a 5-2 win after we had netted 2 EN goals. Securing our first appearance in the playoffs in the 2nd season of the franchise's existence. Considering how close we were to making an exact repeat of last year's calamity it was quite nice to make it this year. On the last day of the season we ended up beating Arizona to climb back to a 6th Overall finish in the West as we ended the season on 94 points, a single point ahead of SJ at 93.

The two big positive news of the season (besides making the playoffs) were in the form of Evgeny Dadonov and Timothy Liljegren. Dadonov really turned up the scoring down the stretch and ended his first season back in the NHL with 42 goals and 70 points. We also signed him to a two year extension at 8M a year. He ended the season on a 7.99 AvR with a +25 rating too, so alround a very good season. Our "real" rookie in the form of Liljegren ended the season with 47 points in 75 games and lead all rookies in scoring by a 9 point margin. I had him running the point on our PP1 unit since Wideman's offensive production fell off a cliff for this season, so he also lead all rookies in PP scoring with 17 points as well as being the tied 3rd best PP producer on our team. His attributes (other than his skating) are all still very, very raw. But getting that close to 50 points in his rookie season despite the injuries he had to start it off was a very good sign for the future. He more than doubled the point production Nolan Patrick had in his rookie campaign, so it seems like my somewhat unconventional choice of passing up a potential #1 center was a good one.

We ended this season as the 3rd highest scoring team and the 3rd most shooting team despite not having our top scorer and shooter for all but 8 games of the season, which was a pleasant surprise. Our goalies were also slightly less bad ending up around league average in SV%. However we were still firmly in the bottom half when it came to limiting shots and goals against, but at least we had the 9th best PK in the league to make up for our abysmal PP production. The West is incredibly competitive in this save and we had about 5 teams fighting within 4-5 points of each other around the wildcard spots all season long.

Heading into the playoffs I decided to shuffle the lines around a bit. I've gone for a more top heavy lineup and slightly changed shift lengths to give our top two lines more icetime in the playoffs as well as swapping out some wingers. Going into the playoffs this is what our lines will looks like:

and this is what our player stats looked like for the season, as you can see Wideman had the same amount of points in a whole season as Nichushkin did in 8 games; His career is just over at this point.

Tyler Kelleher is still being incredible for how low his PA is and the fact that he went undrafted. This season he also remedied the issued with the defensive side of things in his rookie season to end on a solid +24 rating.

We faced the Oilers in the first round and since they have Greiss as their goalie and he has .85x against us over the two seasons we've played it looked like a pretty favorable match up. We started the series by winning 4-1 in their building. Then in game two we blow a 2 goal lead to go into overtime where Lucic finished the game. Back in our barn we win the first game, putting us up 2-1 in the series. This is where things get dumb, Greiss has been putting up his mid/high .8xx performances as usual up to this point and Elliott has been pretty decent. For the remaining 3 games Elliot fails to get over a .87x and Greiss puts up three .93x performances in a row to carry the Oilers to a 4-2 series win all by himself. So in classical EHM fashion we got goalied, literally nothing you can do about it; which is why it feels so cheap. At least our young players will get two shots at gaining playoff attributes this year since Stockton are still in the Calder Cup, so Liljegren and co gets to play in two playoffs in one season.

Third season with Vermont is over. And it has been my best in the end so far. 7th place with 43 points. Not expected after i only won 1 games out of the first 10. But we were able to turn things around. Fred Couturier, the surprise topscorer of last year, did well a surprise season again. He scored 16 goals and assisted on 19 more for a total of 35 points in 34 games. We found that he is especially productive when paired with Troy Davidson (27 points in 28 games). Craig Puffer, who has been on his final year would have to take the duties of Colton who was signed away by Tampa Bay. In the preseason he has been our best scorer, but timely at the start of the season who got two injuries (1 week and 1 month). As a result he was only able to play 22 games - 15 points in those games. Of the freshmen of course Jacob Pivonka has been the star - 7 goals, 10 assists in 32 games and he won a gold medal with the US junior national team.

For the third time in as many years Boston University won the regular season and finally they were able to overcome Boston College and win the Hockey East title - they went on to aviever what the College couldn't and winning the Frozen Four in the finals against the Michigan State Spartans
A few great players commited to the University of Vermont for next season.

LW Grant Silianoff from Edina, Minnesota. He scored 87 points in 60 games with Muskegon Lumberjacks in the USHL. He posesses a great wristshot, workrate and incredible speed.

C Conor Beck from Wilmington, Massachusetts. Coming from a 51 points season with Milton Academy in the NEPSIHA. Creative, strong Face-Off specialist.

RW Walt Gaudreau from Coniston, Ontaorio. Only 19 points in 60 games in the SIJHL. Nothing amazing, but physically good.

RD Erik Ross Two-way defenseman out of Ottawa, Ontario. He got 7 points and a -19 with Westr Kelowna Warriors in the BCHL. Gives absolutely everything and will wait for the right pass.

LW/C Marc-Andre Noel called Papa Noel is a defensive forward out of Chatham, Ontario. Just 5 points in 58 games with Sherwood Park Crusaders in the AJHL is not a good sign.

RW Thomas Thorpe two-way forward out of Toronto, Ontario. Only 3 points but a +13 with Minnesota Iron Rangers in the SIJHL.

LW/RW Tyler Hartley two-way forward out of Kanata, Ontario. Despite lacking great skills in any field he put up 19 points in 55 games with Des Moines Buccaneers in the USHL. He thrives in big games though and is a hard working player.

Next season also will be the last season of a great many players, among them some of the biggest stars of the Catamounts: Fred Couturier, Troy Davidson, Erlends Klavins, Stefanos Lekkas and many more will leave us. So the new ones have to get accustomed to the team fast to take over more responsibility the year after. It looks like the competition gets weaker now that many stars of Hockey East going to NHL teams and their affiliates. We have at the moment 4 foreigners (not north americans). The chairmen would allow up to 5.

I'm glad that you seem to have fun, Robert.
Btw version 9.6 will have Alps league so you can play with your hometown Kitzbuhel

Alessandro wrote:I'm glad that you seem to have fun, Robert.
Btw version 9.6 will have Alps league so you can play with your hometown Kitzbuhel

Thank you Alessandro. I think i will not play with Kitzbühel though i think but it is great how much work you and many others put into making this game so enjoyable for the community

Speaking of Jacob Pivonka, I just went through the 2018 draft last night (and it took forever because it was a pretty weak draft, lots of hard choices). We ended up picking Jacob Pivonka 19th Overall with our first pick of the draft. He was scouted as 1st line talent with all 10 comparisons being to a more talented Eberle. He put up 96 points in the 60 odd games he played in the USNTDP last season, and he ticks all the boxes except for 12+ consistency for a franchise sniping winger.

Because EHM is great at generating goalies there were all of 1 good goalie in this year's draft (and that's because he was premade), so we really have to put all the eggs in the Zhukov basket, but he's coming along nicely in the AHL. Judging by this years Calder Cup run he has horrible Important Matches though, so he'll need work on that front before he's a proper NHL starter.

I had hoped to pick up a lot of Two-Way talent this draft, both on the blueline and up front. But this was purely a goal-scoring and offensive defenceman draft. So our 2nd pick went to Scoring pure offensive winger Samuel Fagemo. He's one of those prospects who always went the CHL route in last year's database so I've never had a chance to utilize him in Sweden. So it would be nice to get to see what he can do for once, but really I just picked him because he was the lowest risk prospect available at the time. As the save progresses and we get more depth I'll start doing more high risk, high reward picks; For now I will be taking the safe pick every single time though, because we need everything so I don't have to cherry pick roles and draft for holes since everything is a hole right now. The player I was contemplating taking over Fagemo was actually Grigori Denisenko; he's been an undervalued sleeper every singe save I've done in EHM and he's a playmaking forward, which we really need. Currently our only real playmaking forward is Tyler Kelleher, the rest of our offensive forwards are all Goal-scoring forwards. In truth most of them don't actually score goals though so they kind of end up being sub-par playmakers anyways, and I'd rather have some real playmakers. There's also a Two-Way aspect to Denisenko's game which means he might be able to fill into that Two-Way role I was hoping to fill since he's got good decision making, which is key for a good Two-Way guy. Being able to pick him up with my next pick was really fortuitous.

It was after those first "good" picks that the draft really took a turn, there were no players AT ALL in this year's mid rounds that were scouted to become 2-3 liners and 2nd pairing dmen. Well, there were like 3-4 of them but they all had huge glaring flaws that made them completely undraftable. So I spent a lot of time contemplating this last pick, there were no good choices at all. So I went K'Andre Miller, because frankly he's an enormous vaguely Two-Way winger who has the potential to be good IF the scouts have his potential wrong. He's got the Mentals, Hiddens and Size to be a huge (literally and figuratively) player for us if he goes above and beyond. The other choices that made sense around 80th generally had a bit higher potential as far as PA went (based on the scouts at least) but they didn't have all the other things needed. After that we picked up David Gustafsson who is another player I've never been able to get to use in Sweden, who I was contemplating getting with the 79th Overall pick as well. His biggest flaw is the 7 in Teamwork, which isn't exactly ideal for a playmaking center. But if he's better than scouted that might grow just enough to hit acceptable levels by his mid 20s.

Van Duynhoven, Berglund, Hughes and Westerling are all Offensive Defencemen with varying degrees of defensive awareness, size and all above average (or better) speed. Some of them will (if they grow) eventually see use as Two-Way Defencemen for me and some may fight for the 2nd and 3rd pairing Offensive Defencemen roles as Liljegren will have the 1st Offensive Defenceman role filled for at least the next 14 years or so.

With our 2nd to last pick we take the Swedish goalie Samuel Ersson who was the least atrocious goalie in the draft and who reeks of draft sleeper. After drafting him and getting the post-draft pessimistic scout report he suddenly was being compared to Fleury by 3 of our scouts, so it looks like I might be right on that one. But because he's not got set attributes in the database he's got a 1 in Rebound Control, almost no Anticipation, not enough Reflexes and way too much Glove, Blocker, Passing, Pokecheck and Stickhandling. Because the goalie role attribute spread isn't working as it should. For anyone familiar with Lennon Blixt from my Jets save, Samuel Ersson is the player whose face I borrowed to use as his face. That may have also had some part in why I wanted to pick him.

With the final pick we get Swiss Forward (he plays across the line) Axel Simic who is a quick Playmaking slightly undersized guy who almost perfectly fits the mold for what I want my bottom 6 Offensive forwards to look like.

Only 4 of the 11 players picked were considered consistent this year, so as mentioned a less exciting draft than last year's. Although our top 3 picks are all can't miss NHL talent, probably even can't miss top 6 talent.


Since we're past the draft we've also had the Award Ceremony, to the surprise of absolutely no one Timothy Liljegren won the Calder. But in more impressive news Tyler Kelleher won the flipping Lady Byng!

Not bad for a guy who technically doesn't have high enough CA to be considered even a 4th liner. I've had guys with more CA on my 2nd line in the second tier of Sweden, for reference. But he's got essentially perfect mentals and incredibly polarizing distribution with high values in all the important offensive attributes and just about nothing in anything else (his 2 strength being among the more impressive examples). Dadonov slotted into 2nd behind him and I'm starting to have a team where I can have all three Lady Byng finalists be my players, which I generally see as one of the first steps towards building the kind of team I like to use. If you never take pentalies and are fast enough to force a lot of penalties from the opposition you're going to win more often than not. The strongest form of Defence is being on the Power Play, even more so back in the day when players always dumped the puck and went to line change when they got SH breakaways. But it's still really, really good.

Wideman set his sights on retiring as we got knocked out of the Playoffs, Brouwer didn't want to resign, I didn't want to resign Boyle or Fontaine so we're now in a spot where our Core is starting to get really young. The only really old player we have left is Elliott and we've got a lot of players on absolutely ridiculous contracts to hit the Salary Floor despite the amount of entry level contracts we have. I purposefully signed all my prospects on 900k entry-level deals to have them give near maximum cap hits to make hitting the floor easier. But even with that I have some barely 5-6 defencemen on 4+M$ a year deals, Elliott on a 7M a year deal and everyone's favourite 5M$ man in the form of Andrew MacDonald doing his best paperweight impression just to make sure we can hit the floor (with about 90k wiggle room). This means that as soon as we get an injury to a non entry-level player, we'll face fines because the LTIR doesn't work like it should in EHM.

The reason Ryan Murphy was waivered back when we picked him up in season one is that he's got this thing that sometimes happens to prospects where they just suddenly start to slowly but surely decline. It doesn't matter how much you play them, which practice schedule you have them on, or what accolades they get. They will just keep declining until they are completely useless, and I've seen it happen enough times that it's quite easy to spot it. I knew Murphy was like that already in the 1st season but generally players tend to be able to keep up a performance fitting of their old attributes for at least a season before they start being completely useless. Not sure why that is, but it's consistent behaviour. As a result I did choose to keep him around until his contract ended, and he was very solid this last season despite how low his attributes have gotten. But I chose not to resign him for this next season, meaning he's also gone to free agency. He was still considered a 3 star in trades until the trade deadline but the AI was well aware he's in tank mode so they wouldn't touch him. And despite the amazing last season he just came off no one is approaching him at all in free agency. So sadly his career will be a short one, or more likely, a European one.

Will you maybe post you database Shindigs?

I really enjoy your reports Shindings

Shindigs, what are the tactics you are currently using for the current team you have. I remember seeing the tactics before but cant seem to find them now.

NHL19 wrote:Will you maybe post you database Shindigs?

Yeah, sure. Apart from adding Seattle I've just done some balancing passes of goalie prospects and added swedish/finish prospects that are already on the 2018/2019 draft pages over at Eliteprospects. I think there may still be some kinks in it because I remember I had to fix some small stuff by editing the team/farm team with the savegame editor after I'd started already. But I don't think it was anything major.
Dropbox link

Here are the logos for the db, just put them in the same folders as all the others in your steam workshop folder:
Huge: Large: small:

redrobert81 wrote:I really enjoy your reports Shindings

Glad to hear it, I think it's funny how we keep having players overlap between our saves despite being in two very different leagues.

MJalove wrote:Shindigs, what are the tactics you are currently using for the current team you have. I remember seeing the tactics before but cant seem to find them now.

A very slight variation of the ones I posted before, nothing really worth mentioning has changed. It's tiny things like swapping the puck dumping on the BP and slightly altering my line icetime setup from 30:30:30:30 with Overload on, to using 30:30:30:20 with equal. Because apparently some people think using Overload is cheap even though you can get the exact same icetime with equal and quite conservative ice time settings.

The ES tactics are over here. It's about half-way down the page.
The PP/BP stuff is over here. It's about half-way down the page again. But with PP it's more about your manpower than your tactics, or I'm doing something horribly wrong with it. Because the only time I've had actual good PP was when I had my late Jets save dream team. This team still has horrible PP manpower, but at least managed a 17% in the first season and 15% in the second (the decrease was due to having no Nichushkin). So if you have less than that my tactic may get you an increase, I guess.

Unless I'm forgetting someone (which I might) I may have just recorded a new personal record for growth from someone that isn't Erik Karlsson's regen (because being his regen is cheating) in the "draft to first season"-period. The guy I drafted 139th Overall had a bit of a draft sleeper feel to him. I was right to trust in that feeling because this is how much he grew from Late June to early October:

36 attribute points gained through training in one off-season for a 5th rounder? I'll take it! Not every day you have a 5th rounder make the team out of his first camp, but he's our new Two-Way(ish) 5-6 guy for this season over Kulak. This is what he looks like the day before the first game of the season:

Not entirely sure how he's lacking game fitness. That does happen sometimes out of camp, even with him playing a tonne. He's looking like one of my biggest draft steals of all time for now though. I chose to not tick "generate no extra players" for once so he's a generated player. But having 16 in both key technicals for an Offensive defenceman, decent speed, incredible defensive mentals and decent decisions makes him the kind of guy who could do well in a Two-Way role too. I'll give him a season at it to show what he's got at least, and if it doesn't work out I'll just have him retrain to play RD and be the 2nd pairing Offensive D behind Liljegren more than likely. Seems I'll have a very Swedish blueline going forwards. I'm partially hoping he doesn't do well so he'll get a lot of 5 rating games so I can discipline up that Determination, it's his only real weakness of note. His Anticipation and Creativity will get more than good enough with experience.

In other roster news I'm going to play Jacob Pivonka on the 2nd line as RW even though he's a bit too raw for that to be a sane move. I just really want to see what he can do. For the 1st of my two trades of the season I also decided to deal Morgan Klimchuk to LA for their 2nd round pick in this year's draft. He was going to get demoted to the 4th line after me giving him a huge shot at the 1st line due to injuries last season. He was a calamity defensively and nothing to cheer for offensively (by EHM standards) and being demoted to the 4th line made him start to decline slightly as a player, so I struck while the iron was hot. To take his place on the 4th line I brought up Nolan Volcan (160th Overall last year) from the AHL. He scored 69 points in 68 games in his rookie season in the AHL and already has 17 Slapshot, 15 wristshot and very solid mentals. Sure he's severely understatted to be in the NHL, but that's because much like Kelleher he has no defensive attributes what-so-ever. But when your job is to be the scoring threat on the 4th line that frankly doesn't matter, and his offensive ability is top notch.

Adam Fox is also getting a 2nd shot at the NHL this season as the 2nd pairing Offensive Defenceman, and I'm not entirely sure if he's going to be up for it. But here's to hoping. To fill the 3rd pairing Offensive defenceman role in place of retired Dennis Wideman is a kid I picked up from College in our first season named Brady Ferguson. He looks somewhat similar to Victor Westerling, just a 5 years older version with no further room for growth and worse mentals. But unless he starts scoring own goals there's essentially no way for him to be worse than Wideman was last season, so the only way is up.

The second to last roster change is Dillon Dubé getting a shot at being 4th line Center now that Boyle is no longer with the team, my scouts can't quite decide on him but some think he might eventually have 2nd line talent in him. For now he's a slightly underskilled 4th line Power Forward. The final and possibly biggest roster change is that Maxim Zhukov is going to get his rookie season as backup to Elliot. I'm going to start them on a 4:1 split in Elliott's favor but if I start seeing a theme in Zhukov's SV% being high enough I'll progressively increase his starts over the year. In the two starts we saw out of Zhukov last season as well as his start in an exhibition game during the pre-season he's actually on a disturbingly high SV%. So here's hoping he can carry that through a season as we slowly start to ease him into the role as our starter for many years to come. Assuming he doesn't suck, cause that would put a spanner in the works.

Oh and Joel Eriksson Ek's younger brother Olle who is a goalie low rolled his PA and won't be playing in the NHL at all. I was looking into drafting him last year had that not been the case, but it was.

All that leaves us with this lineup going into the 18-19 season:


Oh and before I forget: If anyone's wondering who won the Olympics, it was Canada (shocking I know) with USA in 2nd and Switzerland(!) in 3rd. They knocked out Sweden in the Semi-Finals and beat Finland in the bronze medal game against all odds.

redrobert81 wrote:I really enjoy your reports Shindings
Glad to hear it, I think it's funny how we keep having players overlap between our saves despite being in two very different leagues.

Indeed very interesting

Tyler Kelleher had another good season in my world he changed teams again and has been with Krefeld in the DEL - 49 points in 52 games. He stays with Krefeld this time

redrobert81 wrote:

Shindigs wrote:

redrobert81 wrote:I really enjoy your reports Shindings

Glad to hear it, I think it's funny how we keep having players overlap between our saves despite being in two very different leagues.

Indeed very interesting

Tyler Kelleher had another good season in my world he changed teams again and has been with Krefeld in the DEL - 49 points in 52 games. He stays with Krefeld this time

Yeah, the AI would never play him in the NHL. Which is fair, the only reason it works is because using personal tactics with players who have good hiddens tend to make them overperform like crazy.

Speaking of things the AI does, Toronto waivered Kadri and because of Vasilevskiy being out for surgery most of last season Tampa played this guy as their backup:

His SV% on the season was better than/equal to most other backups in the league, because AI goalies cheat to get up to a certain minimum level no matter how bad they are. It's really necessary because of how horrendous the AI is at signing competent goalies, but it does feel really cheap when a goalie like that outperforms your "proper" backup/starter. Especially because he would be conceding about 12 goals per game if he was your goalie.

Newyears update again, this season has been pretty bleak so far. We sit 1 point outside the playoffs despite being the highest scoring team in the league. We've managed that feat despite having almost every single goalie in the west increase their SV% against us by at least 1% from last season. Our goalies have also been so bad this season thus far. Looking at both our shot% and SV% it doesn't look like like we're doing worse than any of the previous seasons, but the issue is the distribution. The reason we're the highest scoring team is that we've had multiple blowouts against Eastern Conference teams that make it look like we're shooting like normal. In those same games our goalies have also been completely needlessly good (who cares if you win 8-4 or 8-1?) while our shot% and SV% in the close conference games that actually matter have been horrible. It's also one of those years where we lose every single shootout for some reason, same shooters that won us a majority for 2 straight seasons, but now they can't score in the shootouts no matter what; I had the exact same thing happen once in Vancouver. Add to that a ridiculous 5% PP conversion for the first two months of the season and it's no wonder we're stuggling. I haven't changed anything worth mentioning PP wise, it's just a product of us being goalied really hard.

I was also playing around with trying to add "skate with puck" for some of our quicker playmaking players. For Liljegren it completely killed his point production, 1 point in the first 20 games with "skate with puck" on, 25 points in 17 games after I turned it off. So that setting is still beyond useless, which is good to know. I also tried putting it on Dadonov for the PPs to see if it would have any positive effect there, but to no avail. I had apparently also turned it on for Nichushkin in his ES personal tactics, the problem being I'd forgotten I did that. So our 2nd line have been underperforming as a result. That's now been remedied and I'm hoping for a miraculous comeback in the 2nd half of the season.

Our defensive core is slowly improving though, so that's nice. Adam Fox started the season scoring at almost 1 PPG pace, but got hit with a 3 week injury. Currently he sits at 19 points in 30 games as he's scored a grand total of 1 point in his 9 games after the injury. Victor Westerling ended up taking over the 2nd line Offensive defenseman role when Fox was out injured and he really took off there with almost 1 PPG pace as well as going from 0 +/- to +11 in 7 games. When Fox came back that lead me to want to try out Victor Westerling as 1st pairing Two-Way Defenceman together with Timothy Liljegren. He's put up 6 points at +6 in the 9 games he's played up there, which is more than Dylan DeMelo had done in the previous 30 games up there. So needless to say he's staying up there for an all Swedish top pairing. Joel Eriksson Ek is currently sitting on 40 points in 37 games despite having taken over the slightly more defensive Two-Way role on the first line. Jacob Pivonka is currently on 27 points in 37 games, which has him in tied first place with Kirill Kaprizov for rookies. Now that Nichushkin is taken off "skate with puck" I'm hoping that line will start firing again and that Pivonka will pull away in the lead for rookies, but it remains to be seen if that will happen.

On the goalie front Maxim Zhukov has shown flashes of brilliance, but as I talked about before he always plays amazingly in the game where he doesn't have to. He did put together a run of four .92x+ games in a row that lead to a much needed win streak for us in early December though. He's also grown a decent amount during the course of the season and hopefully he will start to get a bit more consistent down the stretch, but I doubt it as this season seems quite cursed from a goalie perspective.

Curse confirmed:

I guess Zhukov will really get to show what he's made of now...

After losing my patience with how much our guys were underperforming I decided to shuffle the lines a bit, early signs are good:

Power Play is still useless though...

Preseason is over, all went good. Lots of wins there, though we lost all matchups against the WHL this time. Best scorer in preseason has been - not surprising - new star Grant Silianoff (28 points in 19 games). Here is a little scnapshot of his abilities





We do not believe he will be able to play a long time for us, because the NHL teams usually grab those players fast. He has been a 2nd round pick 40th overall by the Vancouver Canucks and his rights are still with them.

Our lines going into the season will be:

Why Silianoff and Pivonka on 2nd line? Because Davidson and Couturier have more experience in the NCAA being both on their junior year while Silianoff is a freshman and Pivonka a sophomore. Besides Davidson and Couturier have shown they can produce like crazy. Every month the lines are changed anyways according to production.

All in all it looks like a strong team, and the same is seeing the board as they want us to reach the playoffs this year. Won't be easy, but many opponents lost players into the NHL

I think this game hates me:

I'm now stuck with my 3rd stringer as my starter for the next 3 weeks. Great!

Maxim Zhukov is my backup goalie he has to lead me at the start of the season as Lekkas is injured for 3 weeks. If he plays well enough he might even end in being the starter as those two are so similar.

redrobert81 wrote:Maxim Zhukov is my backup goalie he has to lead me at the start of the season as Lekkas is injured for 3 weeks. If he plays well enough he might even end in being the starter as those two are so similar.

And the cross-over continues haha.

Leading up to that injury we were on quite the comeback though, we won 11 games in a row taking us up to 4th place. As it turned out that buffer was just enough to see us finish in the playoffs again despite all the horrible luck we've faced this season. If it hadn't been for two separate 3-game droughts on Joel Eriksson Ek's behalf down the stretch he would have won the Art Ross this year. Sadly Ryan Strome went on an insane scoring streak at the exact same time as Joel got his two droughts causing him to win the Art Ross with 91 points, ahead of Joel's 88.

Timothy Liljegren also managed to set a new franchise record for scoring as a defenceman (which is made slightly less impressive by the franchise being 3 seasons old) with 57 points, which also saw him lead all defencemen in the league this season. His +/- also improved massively from last season, ending up at +24, there is a very real possibility he will be a Norris finalist in his sophomore season.

After doing the slight change in my lineups Pivonka really started firing, sadly he had an injury down the stretch which was no doubt part of why Eriksson Ek didn't score around that time. The two of them have quite good chemistry, whereas Nichushkin and Pivonka were a trainwreck when they played together. He ended the season with 65 (36+29) points, leading all rookies by a 4 point margin. I doubt he'll get the Calder though because the guy in 2nd has him beat by 10 in +/- and has .51 AvR higher than him. But you never know with EHM, it's metrics for who gets Calder doesn't exactly follow logical sense. It could really go either way, or they could randomly throw it at Maxim Zhukov out of left field. But I doubt that since it's essentially impossible for goalies to get the Calder, I had Holtby's regen win the Vezina without getting the Calder IIRC.

We still lead all teams in shooting as well as scoring at the end of the season, but our SV% was still below average even with the huge upswing by Zhukov during that 11 game winning streak. We managed to salvage our PP% up to 14.1% despite the absolute nightmare start we had. Our BP never really got going this season though, couldn't really tell you why. But probably in no small part because of the questionable goaltending.

Speaking of questionable goaltending we're heading into the playoffs with both out starter and backup still listed day-to-day. So that should be fun, Ullmark has played so many games in a row and been so bad that if we're forced to use him for the entire series we're not going to get past the Canucks. Because of amazing scheduling we will play the final game of the season and the first game of that series as a back-to-back.

I have just been successful with something that I have not been able to do for more than three seasons. I had a european player from a european league commit to my college. He is not a good player though.

Gustaf Ahnelöf from Brynäs J18 is willing to commit to Vermount

We got Maxim Zhukov back from injury after the first game in the Vancouver series and ended up dispatching them in 5. Zhukov had a .93x in that series and we were looking quite good. Sadly though we were faced with the Ducks in the next round and despite targeting Gibson's weakness he still put up a .931 performance to Zhukov's .881

As far as the shooting went we were really close though, had the goalie matchup been more favorable I think we would have been able to make it through to the Conference finals. Even with that huge SV% difference all but two games were still odd-goal wins for them. Had Zhukov put up the kind of performance he did against Vancouver we probably would have won in 6 or 7 games.

At least the whole team got another nice playoff run to get some more experience under their belt. Pivonka was our top scorer with 11 points followed by Eriksson Ek and Jankowski tied on 10. We have also put pen to paper on an entry-level deal with Ryan Poehling for next season, and since he won the Hobey Baker this year I'm looking forward to seeing what he can add to the team next year. I'm planning on starting to fill out the 3rd line with talent for next season so we have 3 producing lines rather than the two we have now. Our first two lines are producing Contender numbers, it's just that our 3rd and 4th line are just anchors at this point. Our top 2 lines were sitting on about +20 rating and our bottom 2 lines on -20 this season, so the difference between top 6 and bottom 6 really was day and night.

I'm looking to hopefully add one of our wingers we drafted last year (Denisenko or Fagemo) to the 2nd line so I can move Nichushkin back to his natural RW position. With Poehling coming in as a Two-Way scoring presence on the 3rd line with Kelleher's unquestionable playmaking ability, I think that just might be enough to turn that line around to be a line with a real positive impact on our win rate. Currently they are a somewhat double edged sword as they produce a somewhat respectable amount of points but concede goals like it's going out of style.

Well ... my best season so far and still we were not able to achieve the goal that the board set for us. And that mainly because we got injuries to key players left and right. A great season nontheless with 61 points in the end. Zhukov has been phenomenal in many games and awful in quite a few too. But still he was the starter as Lekkas couldn't really show is abilities after his early injury. How has freshman Grant Silianoff done? One word - amazing. He set new records for my lifespan. Due to an injury he played only 28 games scoring 26 goals (1st in the league) and assisting on 16 more for 42 points (3rd in the league). New personal franchise records in goals, points, points by a freshman and +/-.

Several star players were on their last year, especially we will miss our two amazing winger-friends Troy Davidson (89 points in 90 games) and Fred Couturier (94 points in 97 games). Another interesting thing - this season has been the first in which no team out of Boston has been taking part in the Frozen Four.

We were able to get a few nice players to commit to Vermont for the upcoming season again, which is definetly needed as we lost so many star players:

C Ashley Lefrenière power forward out of Myrnam, Alberta. Didn't score and only played 9 games with Whitcourt in the AJHL. A small strong two-way center brings his A-game every night and excels under pressure.

G Bradley Vilardi hybrid style goaltender played out of Cold Lake, Alberta. 39 games with Whitecourt in the AJHL posting a 88 % save percentage. He has a strong desire to win. One of the new backups for Zhukov.

LW Carl McCulloch offensive playmaking forward out of Banff, Alberta. Only 16 points in 60 games with Bonnyville in the AJHL though. He is a purely attacking player who gives absolutely everything.

LD Dylan Okeley defensive defenseman out of North Andover, Massachusetts. 46 points in 60 games with GNG-Poland in HS-ME is pretty amazing for a defensive defenseman. He plays a steady defensive game and rarely has a bad game who hits well.

G Ed "the flying" Gilmour a butterfly-style keeper out of Drumheller, Alberta. He played 25 games in the BCHL with Wenatchee psoting a 90.8 % save percentage. Another one to backup Zhukov.

LW Gary Ammon a two-way forward out of Atlanta, Georgia. He scored 57 points in 49 games with Tri-City in the USHL. He gives hsi all on both ends. Drafted in the first round #30 by Pittsburgh in the 2020 draft.

RW Gustaf Ahnelöv an offensive playmaking forward out of Grängeberg, sweden. Played only one game with Brynäs J18 in S18-1. He looks to score at every possibility and brings his A-game every night.

LW/RW Ivan Morozov a goal-scoring forward out of Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. He scored 39 points in 42 games with Severskie Volki in the NJHL. He likes to play in an offensive role but has to improve his consistency.

LD/RD Oscar Power a defensive defenseman out of Welland, Ontario. 7 points in 42 games in the SIJHL and a -7. He is a solid defensive defenseman.

LW Tommy Maisonneuve a skilled forward out of Calgary, Alberta. He scored 37 points in 58 games with Wenatchee in the BCHL. He is a fantastic two-way talent who needs to improve his consistency.

What does Gustag Ahnelöv's attributes look like. Because based on the two things you brought up from his scout report he should be a lock in for 1 PPG production as long as he has decent mentals and solid speed. Because Consistency and 17+ offensive role at that level should be amazing.

We've gotten past the draft and award ceremony in Seattle. Dadonov picked up the Lady Byng this season and Pivonka ended up as first runner-up for the Calder behind the Swede who I assumed would win it. Liljegren didn't even get a finalist spot for the Norris despite being the top scoring Defenceman. He honestly looked better off than the 3rd finalist based on stats. But the Norris always tends to be a bit wonky in EHM. Next season he should be able to push for his first Norris though, if all goes well.

The draft was a weird one, there was an almost complete lack of top end talent by the time we got our first pick at 19th Overall. There wasn't a single player I was excited to pick, despite the Dman expected to go 7th Overall still being around. I've been burned by players with Low Adaptability before and he had that, so I wasn't willing to pick him up since a low adaptability russian isn't exactly a low risk first pick.

Our first pick instead went to Offensive Defenceman Jeremiah Goulet. He's scouted as a 1-2 guy with comparisons being made to a more talented Ryan Suter or a Morgan Rielly. Those are not bad comparisons. His post draft pessimistic reports instead compared him to a poor man's Ryan Suter, so we can assume he's somewhere in between those outliers. He isn't considered consistent, but he's good in big games, Relaxed and Professional. His mentals aren't ourstanding, but solid and he's going to be quick once he's finished growing.

The second pick went to Two-Way Playmaking Big Center Samuel Poulin, who is considered a 1st line Center with comparisons being made to a more talented Victor Rask or a Brock Nelson. His post draft reports instead compare him to David Krejcí. So he's looking like a very solid Playmaking addition to the spine of our team some years from now. He's still a very raw prospect so he will be spending at least one more season in the Q. He is also considered a consistent player as well as a very professional one, he does however need to work on his decision making and isn't the most loyal. His contracts will end up being bigger than I'd like as a result, but you can fit at least one forward with shoddy loyalty under the cap. I chose to sign him to have him do off-season training with the team regardless of how raw he is, as I do with all prospects who aren't in College. It almost always speeds up their development a lot.

Our 3rd pick went to the Finnish Sniping winger Viljami Ruusunen. The scout reports said he was a 4th liner but every single comparison was to a more talented Johnny Hockey or like Johnny Hockey, so I decided to take a chance on him. After being drafted our reports have him as anything from 1st line to 4th line and still being compared to More talented Johnny/Johnny. So it looks like he might have what it takes. He's considered a consistent, relaxed and professional natural scorer who needs to work on his decisions making. Dadonov is getting older by the year (as is customary for human beings) and I'd like to guarantee we have a replacement by the time he's "done". Currently Samuel Fagemo and Viljami Ruusunen are the two prospects who will fight for that 1st line Scoring LW role.

The other player who I was contemplating picking with our 3rd pick was Czech Two-Way Pointman Daniel Matejcek. However I felt like it wasn't quite an impactful enough pick so I rolled the dice that he'd still be around for our 4th pick, and he was. He's being called a 5-6 guy but being compared to Ryan Ellis and Joakim Ryan. If he ends up like the former he's more of a 3-4 with upside and the latter is more of a 7th guy. So the pick had risks, but it was a horrible draft so that was always going to be the case. After being drafted he's being compared to Philip Larsen, and frankly if he ends up like him he's well worth the pick. He's a consistent, mellow, loyal player with a penchant for scoring goals. Overall being able to pick up a Two-Way defenceman this late in any draft is quite rare. The fact that his hiddens are as good as they are is just gravy. His PA may not be the best, but he is quite rapid with 20 teamwork and 13+ in all other needed mentals. If he ends up in the upper/middle range of where he's projected he will most likely run the point on our 2nd PP unit and play either 1st or 2nd pairing as the Two-Way guy for years to come. He's not quite NHL ready yet by should be in 1-2 years. If off-season goes well he might steal the 5-6 Two-Way spot off Dylan DeMelo who is currently in the middle of having a breakdown due to being demoted to a 5-6 guy.

Our 5th pick went to the guy who looked to be the best/2nd best goalie in this year's draft, Austrian Huge netminder Mickael Rauter. He isn't considered consistent which is a huge no-no, but as a backup you don't necessarily "need" to be consistent. The scouts all call him a third stringer, but at the same time he gets two comparisons to a more talented Ben Bishop, three to a Marc-André Fleury, one to a poor man's Ben Bishop and 3 to Garret Sparks. So he could go either way at this point. Regardless picking him up 109th overall means we didn't spend big to get him at all. With Linus Ullmark being lost as a waiver claim to LA we need to keep filling out our goalie prospect pool when possible. Elliott has begun losing his legs and as fun as having a 7M$ a year backup who is losing his legs is, we need other long term options.

Our 6th pick at 139th overall is big Offensive Playmaking Center Lee Crane out of Michigan Wolverines. He was actually ranked 171th by ISS but every single scout had him as a 2nd line talent with comparisons being made to Evgeny Kuznetsov. After being drafted those comparisons were brought down to a poor man's Linden Vey. So this guy is really up in the air as to what he's going to become. But picking up 2nd line talent that's considered a Relaxed, Loyal, Big game performer who only needs to work on his decision making at that stage in the draft is very strong. As much as this draft lacked sorely in "safe" top end talent, there was a large pool of potential steals in the later rounds. It remains to be seen how he develops in College. My goal is for him to become a very good 3rd line centerman some years from now. He's rapid and has Top tier mentals though so he'd be able to make a fine 4th line center at the very least even if his growth isn't massive.

With our 7th pick we got another player that was scouted as 2nd line talent by all scouts in the form of Offensive Two-Way winger Randy Lyle out of Sarnia Sting. It's quite rare to see someone with the Two-Way (Allround) role and 17+ Offensive role coupled with sub 10 defensive role. So he's interesting for that alone. Add in that he's a 6th round pick with 2nd line potential being compared to a poor man's Jeff Skinner and I'm sold. After being drafted his comparisons changed to a poor man's Matt Puempel, which is a lot less exciting. But it remains to be seen where in that range he lands. He's considered a Relaxed, Strong Character that performs in Big games, but he's not the most professional. With some discipline we should be able to deal with that when/if it becomes an issue. In line with pretty much every one else I've picked he's rapid and has some pretty good mentals, the only real hole being 10 determination and since his professionalism isn't the best that may take some time to remedy. But a guy with his upside in the 6th round isn't that common.

Our final pick went to another rapid player in the form of skilled two-way winger Trevor Zegras, who is considered 3rd line talent but being compared to Brandon Saad and Pontus Åberg both before and after being drafted. So the potential upside is huge for this 7th round pick. He's considered a Relaxed, Loyal, Natural Scorer who needs to work on his decision making and doesn't work that well under pressure. But he's picked to be a bottom 6 guy. He won't be under that much pressure.

That concluded this year's draft and as little faith as I had in the early picks the potential late steals somewhat made up for it. In the interest of saving time I no longer pre-scout draft like I used to. Had I done so I would have opted for doing the 2 trades this years for a 3rd+4th instead of a single 2nd round pick. Because really the talent in the 2nd round was quite comparable to the ones in the 3rd and 4th. The 2nd trade of the year was getting rid of K'Andre Miller+ a 2nd round pick some years down the line for Boston's 2nd round pick (31st Overall). I'm allowing the 2-for-1 trades from the Coyotes challenge since I am building a team from scratch.

Summarized this is what our draft looked like:

and for anyone wondering what Jacob Pivonka looked like while making a strong run for the Calder:

again proving you don't need high CA to do work in the NHL. His potential is still being compared to Phil the Thrill, so I'm looking forward to that. He's grown a fair bit in the off-season already.

Unfortunately Ahnelöv isn't that good ... but he is a player who wanted to come from europe into my College

Speed and Stamina is nice though, and anticipation, creativity and flair are very useful on the PP. Couturier didn't look like much either when he joined me and he has been almost 1PPG.

He pretty much looks like you'd expect for an Offensive Playmaking Forward at that level. They have very low defensive and shooting by default. His playmaking attributes should be enough for him to do work, especially with the high offensive role value and consistency. Might be a bit of a trainwreck defensively though.

Speaking of trainwrecks our season started about as abysmal as a season can. At the end of October we were 14th in the West with a SV% of .87x (2nd worst in the league) and a shot% of 8.54% (2nd worst in the league) and a PP% of 5% and a BP% of 57%. Needless to say we were being goalied about as hard as possible. I decided to do yet another line shuffle, since apparently Nichushkin becomes useless as long as he doesn't have the exact right line mates. From the 1st of November to the 19th of December we got 33 out of a possible 44 points, putting us at 1st place in the West for about 12 hours. We then proceeded to have the goalies we faced put up .96x+ SV% against us 3 games in a row, then finally winning the final game of the year putting us in 6th place on Jan 1st. Based on how the season started I never could have hoped for that upswing. Pivonka has been insane, sadly he's tailed off a bit during mid/late December; At one point he was sitting on almost 2 PPG, and he had 20 goals at the 27 game mark. Now he's on a more sane 45 points in 38 games, which no longer sees him lead the league in goals or points. Kane and Panarin have teamed up to pass him in both categories.

For the rookie reports we have Grigori Denisenko and Ryan Poehling to talk about, Denisenko was going to start this season on the 4th line as the playmaker but as part of the line shuffle he became the new 2nd line LW playmaker. He currently sits on 38 points in 38 games, with 27 assists (league 3rd). Poehling also got moved up to 2nd line Center ahead of Jankowski as part of the shuffle, he now sits on 35 points in 38 games as the Two-Way forward on that line. Our atrocious start saw almost our entire team drop into a -10 +/- hole. But everyone except the 4th line has managed to climb out of it into the positives. Overall the team was starting to show signs of a president's trophy capable team in November and December. But our goaltending is still a bit too inconsistent, we really just need time for Zhukov to get old enough to be able to play at his full potential. Pivonka is showing what kind of play he is capable of though, we just need another scorer of his magnitude to take over for Nichushkin eventually. As good as it's been to have Val, he's not quite good enough to be one of the two snipers in my Top 6. He also has a nasty habit of getting injured at the worst times. It's entirely possible that Samuel Fagemo will take over his role in a year or two. For next year I'm probably looking at moving Denisenko up to the 1st line LW playmaker role, as Dadonov has been quite disappointing this year and doesn't look like he wants to resign with us.

That would make for a Denisenko - Eriksson Ek - Pivonka first line, with close to the exact kind of mix of players I want. I'd prefer if Eriksson Ek was a proper Two-Way forward rather than a Sniper(Physical) with decent Defensive role. But Denisenko is an almost pure playmaker and Pivonka can score for fun. That puts us on needing a pure playmaker for the 2nd line to play with Poehling and Fagemo going forward. Assuming Zhukov keeps showing promising signs and there isn't a super good goalie available in the first round I'm probably targeting a Playmaking winger for this year's draft. That way I'd have a "completed" Top 6, which means I can focus on finishing up our Defence and then just draft for depth and minor improvements rather than essentials. There is a world in which we have Samuel Poulin move from center to LW to be that solution as well, all scouts reports still have him as being a very good player in the future. But it's too early to tell for sure, at least he's got pretty good G/A ratio for filling that role. It would also mean that I'd have two guys who are 188cm tall on the first line and two guys who are 191cm tall on the 2nd line, which would be an odd coincidence.

The last prospect news is that Viljami Ruusunen who I took a chance on now has every single scout saying he's a 1st line talent, being compared to Johnny Hockey. So it looks like that's going to pay off, and based on his 11 goals and 1 assists so far in the AHL he's about as pure a sniper as you're going to get. Now he just needs to get his tech up to NHL level and we're good to go, since he already has 18/18 acc/speed. It's going to be hard to pick which one of him and Fagemo gets 2nd and which gets 3rd line duty. Honestly though the way I have it setup 2nd line and 3rd line should get the same icetime. But apparently with "equal" forward usage and two lines both using 30 second shifts doesn't equal the same icetime in EHM, because that makes perfect sense.

Edit: Right after writing this Pivonka went out with a 2 week injury, came back and played one game, then went out with another 2 week injury. That should pretty much shatter any chance of the Art Ross and Rocket Richard, right?
His first game back he puts up a 2+2, and in his 2nd game back he does this:

I guess he wants some silverware...