The Official TBL Practice Thread

Post by **Danny** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 4:49 pm

bruins72 wrote:I've always had trouble with training, so I use one someone posted here before. I can't be bothered to go look back and find out who posted it originally. I've been using a 3 intensive/3 medium set of schedules for quite a while now. It features two different conditioning or preseason type of schedules, one for defense and one for forwards. Then it features 2 different offensive schedules (on top of the two I mentioned) and 2 different defensive ones. Plus it has the goalies one and the general one with all mediums. It works okay, I guess. I do end up running into trouble with some players though. There are usually a couple of my top line guys that I have to drop onto the general schedule after a while because I get the "tired" message in their conditioning.

So maybe it's time for me to try this other system out? I'm thinking for starters, only having 2 things on intensive might be good.

I personally only use one pre-season schedule. Conditioning, Skating, O and D skills all on intensive. Way too risky in terms of injuries you might say, but I haven't really had any serious injuries in the offseason. In our challenge I had Hagman out for a week in the 2nd offseason, that's it.
I put all players (except for goalies) on that schedule right after the last game of the season and continue to use it till about 3-4 days before camp begins. Then I rest everybody to be 100% for the camp and assign everyone the pre-season schedule again. After the camp I just assign them to their usual regular schedules. I'm aware that the players...uhm "go on holidays" at some point, at least that's what I read a while ago somewhere, so they don't really practice during that time, but I keep them on that schedule nonetheless, they have to come back at some point eventually, and since the game doesn't say when I just leave them on the pre-season schedule to start practicing right away.
Like I said the 3 aforementioned schedules are used most frequently, I do have 3-4 others which I use for specific players, for instance I noticed it helps Dingman to keep up his strength at 20 when he practices skating and conditioning on intensive, so I switch him between the defensive skill schedule and the fitness schedule every month. He has improved in everything so far, apart from the mental attributes.

harmonica · Post by **harmonica** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 4:53 pm

All of my training schedules has it at least at medium. For defensive training schedules it goes to intensive.

It is a huge help with positioning, which is always one of the more important skills that I want everyone on my team to have, as well as anticipation. I always try and boost those up as much as I can.

Having a HIGH QUALITY goaltender coach is very important. You will want 90+ in his coaching and high mental attributes to make sure the job gets done, also try and get somebody who is technique based.

EDIT: I also have different schedules based on how much ice time the players are getting. I want my team to be at 100% as much as they can be and don't want to see players saying they need a rest until the end of the year after a long game.

For the guys getting a lot of ice time, I will have two intensives and the rest on medium. For those who don't play a lot I give 4 intensives and the rest medium. I have a notepad text with about 20 different schedules I use. When training a position I only have one intensive.

I am constantly rotating schedules to 'keep the players on their toes'. All players can get higher stats in any skill, unless they are coming to an end of their career. Increasing players in skills they don't normally use is exponentially better than just focusing on them. Example: Cairns is a beast of a stay at home guy and great for his paycheck and being a 6th or 7th dman. On medium training to all, his defensive skills and conditioning will rise, while I make sure he does get time doing that, I also make him do all the offensive stuff as well. Raising a bunch of stats is much better than just focusing on what he is good at.

harmonica · Post by **harmonica** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:41 pm

Who practices during the off season and who doesn't? What kind of schedule do you guys use?

I tend to make a conditioning schedule for everyone to use.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:44 pm

I tend to keep my guys on some sort of a conditioning schedule in the offseason but I take them off of it once I see they're at the point where their condition starts to plummet. Then I keep them off until they're back up in the 90's. They usually end up on no practice for about a month, IIRC.

Post by **batdad** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:45 pm

My off season sched is nasty nasty.

I call it "warmers" for bench warmers. The boys are not playing...but they need to work out. I see dramatic increases on this sched which I run pretty much the hole off season, tired or not. I give em a day off once they get the little orange tired thingy...but then back at it.

All categories are on intensive. Tis mean I know. Usually around 2nd week of August guys start getting tired...but not injured very often.

Goalies have all their areas on intensive as well. Cond, Skat, OSkill,Dskill,Goalie, Tactic. I never even bother teaching them shooting.

I start it 1 week after playoffs end.

I once saw Gilbert Brule go from 13 to 15 in faceoffs, and Rick Nash from 17 to 20 in wrist shot in the summer. All other atty's were up too.

harmonica · Post by **harmonica** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:52 pm

The Blue Jackets developing young players properly? INCONCEIVABLE!

Those are some quality improvements during the off season, good job!

Have you noticed your players getting tired midway in the season?

I used to run pretty hard summer training, but I have lowered it to the point where they maintain an almost 100% condition until the tired status comes in August. You can squeeze in a lot of training for guys with good condition, plus I find players develop better for me when they are at a high condition percentage. Also, during the season I push my players REALLY REALLY REALLY hard, so I have seen a difference by giving them 'resting' time in the summer.

Yet another reason why I love this game! There are many ways to accomplish success in the game.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:53 pm

No kidding? I am SOOOOOOOOO trying this!

Saranis · Post by **Saranis** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:12 am

seriously, INT all summer long sounds like a trap to get us all doing something stupid. Oh well, what have we got to lose.

white knight · Post by **white knight** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:16 am

I did something simular on my Quebec Remparts game, worked out splendid. Of course, you don't play as many games in QMJHL as you do in the NHL but still it's a great way to fastly improve your players attributes.

Post by **batdad** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 5:23 am

Have you noticed your players getting tired midway in the season?

Not Nash or Brule. A couple of other lesser players yes. Nose Picker (Alex Picard for those who do not know of CBJ) did a little. But he had gone from basically all 12 and 13s to all 14 and 15s by the end of the first summer (between 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons, so I live with a bit of this, and generally decrease their practices in about February when needed.

V4ND3RP00L · Post by **V4ND3RP00L** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 12:00 pm

This might be the wrong thing to do for most practices in the NHL, but I run everything on intensive during the whole season. I find that most of my young players can deal with it and they have no problems all season long.

Now, the older players like Recchi, Guerin, or anybody over 30 are somewhat problem free with injuries, but can't handle the practices themselves.

I find that I can easily turn most of my defensemen into great contenders. Also, my goaltending becomes solid and then most of my forwards who still have potential to grow, they do very well.

Older players like Recchi will keep most of their offensive skill up the whole 5 or 6 years that I have them around, but their speed tends to go down very badly.

FromChaos · Post by **FromChaos** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:03 am

If you have the AI control practice, does it usually work out?

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:02 am

Not usually, in my experience. When I let the AI handle practices for my AHL affiliate, they'll have guys that are tired (like 30% condition) and still practicing. They also seem to set most of the roster to "general". I think you can get more out of the players if you do it yourself.

jackknife77 · Post by **jackknife77** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:03 am

batdad wrote:

All categories are on intensive. Tis mean I know. Usually around 2nd week of August guys start getting tired...but not injured very often.

I did that once and i got a lot of players turning sad because of the training..

V4ND3RP00L · Post by **V4ND3RP00L** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 5:19 am

I find that you shouldn't expect your affiliate clubs to do well with practices. Better to do it yourself.

I never have them get sad about all the practices.

sjsharkz · Post by **sjsharkz** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:53 am

I've used different types of schedules during the season, and for pre season, mostly in the pre season I start them training on intense skating and conditioning on July 1st, and leave them on it until about 2-3 days before my first game in October. Then I put them on there regular season schedules, which is 3 intensive, 3 medium, then the playoff schedule where I taper off a little, so they stay fresh, and also if ive been on a long road trip, I tend to give them a few days off practice completely, to rest up and stay fit and sometimes after playing back to back games. It seems to work okay, and as I said, helps keep them fresh.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:01 am

batdad wrote:My off season sched is nasty nasty.

I call it "warmers" for bench warmers. The boys are not playing...but they need to work out. I see dramatic increases on this sched which I run pretty much the hole off season, tired or not. I give em a day off once they get the little orange tired thingy...but then back at it.

All categories are on intensive. Tis mean I know. Usually around 2nd week of August guys start getting tired...but not injured very often.

Goalies have all their areas on intensive as well. Cond, Skat, OSkill,Dskill,Goalie, Tactic. I never even bother teaching them shooting.

I start it 1 week after playoffs end.

I once saw Gilbert Brule go from 13 to 15 in faceoffs, and Rick Nash from 17 to 20 in wrist shot in the summer. All other atty's were up too.

I entered my all my players' attributed into my spreadsheet right after the regular season ended (before the playoffs). Then I went through my playoffs and as soon as we were eliminated, I switched every single player on my roster to this all intensive schedule you use. I also brought up all the players I could (no waivers needed) from my farm team and put them on it too. I kept them on it for pretty much the whole summer. Once training camp started, I put all the try-out players on it. Then I took everyone off of it once the preseason ended. On October 1st, after putting everyone on normal schedules, I recorded their attributes again. So these results are changes between April and October.

Lots of guys went up 1 point (I use the 1-20 scale for attributes) in things. I'll go through some of the multi point jumps...

Morrisonn : AGI STA both +2 STR +3
O'Marra : STA STR both +2 POS +3
Hannan : TEA DEF GtO PAS WRI all +2 STI +3 DEK +4
Michalek : DEF +2
Blunden : DEF POS SLA WRI all +2
Vrbata : DEF +2 SLA WRI +3
Bolland : POK POS +2

Using the goaltending training on everyone really works. Almost all of my guys went up at least one in POS because of it. Not including the ones I already mentioned above, these guys went up 2 because of it...

Aucoin, Visnovsky, Seabrook, Handzus, Smolinski, Sutherby, and a whole bunch of my AHLers.

I also noticed increases in some mental stats that I always thought stayed the same throughout the whole game. I saw 1 point increases in ANT, CRE, and DET in addition to the normal INF and TEA increases. There weren't as many of these increases as their were skill ones but there were a few of them. I was really surprised by this.

I'm going to try White Knight's practice schedules (with the special PP and PK routines) in my second season of the challenge. I seriously suggest people go with EVERYTHING set to INT for the offseason though. It works wonders!

Oobla · Post by **Oobla** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:27 am

bruins72 wrote: Using the goaltending training on everyone really works. Almost all of my guys went up at least one in POS because of it. Not including the ones I already mentioned above, these guys went up 2 because of it...

Aucoin, Visnovsky, Seabrook, Handzus, Smolinski, Sutherby, and a whole bunch of my AHLers.

Goaltending training helps skaters improve positoning? I'm not doubting you, it's just kind of... strange

. I'll have to try it.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:30 am

Oobla wrote: Goaltending training helps skaters improve positoning? I'm not doubting you, it's just kind of... strange . I'll have to try it.

Yup! I thought it was strange too. It didn't make sense to me, so I never even thought of trying it. Somebody mentioned it above in this thread somewhere, so I tried it. It works! I highly recommend it!

harmonica · Post by **harmonica** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:50 am

I'm glad to hear you guys have tried it out.

Oobla · Post by **Oobla** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:40 pm

bruins72 wrote:
Oobla wrote: Goaltending training helps skaters improve positoning? I'm not doubting you, it's just kind of... strange . I'll have to try it.
Yup! I thought it was strange too. It didn't make sense to me, so I never even thought of trying it. Somebody mentioned it above in this thread somewhere, so I tried it. It works! I highly recommend it!

Well, I suppose I should use it then... I'll just pretend it's not called goaltending training... it'll be called... positioning training

.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:56 pm

Well... I tried the tactics that White Knight posted for about half the season (up to Dec 31st) and decided to go back to what I was using. I won't know for sure until I log my attributes but I don't think any of my players' attributes have gone up. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that some may have gone down. I think it's because of the training areas that have been put at "light". I'll post again with some figures after I log them in my spreadsheet.

Goaltending training to boost the positioning attribute is definitely good though!

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:36 pm

Oh yeah! That's BAD! Real bad!

This training schedule brought down the physical and defensive attributes for about 2/3 of my roster. I highly recommend NOT setting any of the parts of training to "light" or you will see decreases. Keep everything set to at least "medium".

harmonica · Post by **harmonica** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:05 am

Yah, never go below medium, even during the playoffs. It is better to give days off when needed than light training.

I try and keep the core of my team the same so I really don't even need a tracking sheet most of the time, however I will keep it up to date 3 times a year.

Players who are getting under 10 minutes a game can almost permanently be set on all intensives.

harmonica · Post by **harmonica** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:51 am

I keep forgetting to ask this question, so here we go:

Do people tend to have one or two coaches working on goaltender practice?