EHM The Blue Line

Means you are not setting your tactics for passing/stickhandling/deking well for the players in question. Some guys (jovonovski) cough up the puck a fair bit because they like to play around with it and make creative plays. Other guys (Willie Mitchell) do not because they make the safe play every time.

You have to be careful setting your passing and puckhandling tactics for individual players..especially D-men.

To get more takeaways..you have to have fast guys who can close the gap and play a tight gap. As well, they have to be able to be aggressive with their sticks (Lidstrom)

I am thinking about deleting this game because it appears that tactics simply don't matter. During my current Canucks campaign it seems as if tactics have no effect on the play and performance of my team. If I play a finesse, trap or run and gun system my team always struggles to dominate and wins solely due to Luongo and I keep the same tactics over many games. My team has improved (on paper at least) since I last posted about my terrible power play. I have added Redden, Van Ryn and Zherdev and I have only lost Salo and an aging Naslund. My top six is made up of Malkin, Sedins, Havlat, Dawes( who looks very good) and Zherdev( only one year removed from a 100 points season on the Columbus). One would think this lineup is good enough to be better than a nearly bottom 10 offense in the league. I would absolutely love to be a team that outscores their opponents (like the Crawford Canucks) than a team that out defends their opponents ( like the currents Canucks). Thus, in conclusion, how in the name of all things holy do I get my team to play an offensive game rather than a pathetic defensive one. Thank you. Once again I apologize if this is the wrong location for such a question.
Thank you.

Your coaches may be the problem.

About thos eTactics , i have a good Questions Guys . I use Units Default Tactics For Each of my units .
But Every Time i must Save And Skip for my second Line Chose as Example Physical or Offense but that change the Tactics of the First Line so i must Save for every Line And After Charging each units strategies !!

i just can't figured out why ? and in the same time some people discourage me too change my Tactics because that confused Players ? is it true ? .

thanks

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly but I think might want to choose the option under Advanced Options to "Use Unit Tactics". This lets you assign a tactic to each line, rather than all of them.

If you use "Set To Default" and choose a default tactic like Physical Offensive, that will change the tactics for all of your lines. You should avoid using "Set To Default" because that tells the computer that this is your default tactics, meaning that it should use it for everything unless you tell it otherwise. You can use this as a starting point though. Write down the various tactical settings that show up when you use one of the defaults. Then you can go in and set up that line with those tactics yourself (not using "Set To Default"). Plus, as you learn more about the game, you're going to find that those default tactics just don't work as well as what you can do if you develop your own tactics.

Read the EHM guide as well. And this whole thread. You may be surprised at what you read...and it will likely answer at least your 3rd or 4th question above.

I've seen various threads about tactics and team composition, but never really one thread where guys lay out how they try to setup their team and what sorts of tactics/philophies they use. I'll start with mine. Keep in mind I'm fairly new to the game so I'm still learning. Here are the main questions:

1 - Basic philosophy (all out offense, balanced, defensive minded, etc)
2 -Number of scoring lines
3 - Number of checking lines
4 - Line composition (Scoring Line 1 - two great snipers and a great passer at C for example)
5 - General tactics


For my team

1 - Leans towards offense, but has solid 2 way guys for the most part
2 - 3 scoring lines - Current lines below
Laad-Staal-Vrbata
Walker-Brindamour-Williams
Salmelian-Belanger-Weinhandl
3 - 1 checking line
Dingman-Betts-Ortmyer
4 - I try to balance my lines with a good passer/scorer, a power/grit guy, and a sniper
5 - Top 2 lines are set to offensive and high tempo (still playing with this) as are the power play lines
Currently playing 4 F and 1 D on power play
4th line is defensive oriented....I've not mastered matching lines yet....still need work on reducing shots against and PK

Moved this to the tactics thread because it's still about tactics. Please try to not create new threads if a usable one already exists. - B72

Basically, I try to select players based on their line. Line 1 is for very speedy players, line 2 is for skilled players, and line 3 is for young but hopefuls.

1 - Rough n Tough defence
2&3: 2 scoring lines, 2 checking lines
4 - Mix n match of Power Forwards, Two-ways forwards, Grinders and Defensive specialists, sometime with one skilled enforcer or two.
Ex: Morrow-B.Richards-Dumont (line1) or Hagman-Halpern-Lehtinen (line 3)
5 - Maximum pressure, maximum coverage, match my checking lines against their scoring lines. Anyone who can hit, hit real hard. Strangely with those settings I tend to score more on 5 v 5 than on powerplay, I usually spend at least 15 minutes in PK per game also..

I've got a mix of good defensive forwards: Madden, Hagman, Primeau, Hollweg, Dingman, Mair. So I take Madden, Hagman, Primeau, throw them on the 3rd line, set their tactics to very defensive, and very hard backchecking. I set line matching to 1x3, 2x2, 3x1, 4x4. I'm expecting this defensive line to shut down the opposition top line. WRONG! 3 games in a row, everyone on the line -3 each game. Total domination against. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to change the unit tactics (I think I used board play and positional)? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

yes you need to set unit tactics. It would also help if you posted all your slider settings since one thing can make it go all out the window.

Ok, here are the setting I was using (and thanks very much in advance for any critiques! Also, just saw the tactics thread, so my appologies for not posting there):

Hagman (LW), Madden (C), Mair (RW)

Unit tactics:

Faceoffs: Madden
Playmaker: Madden
Shift Length: 40 secs
Defensive Coverage: Zonal
Mentality: Very Defensive
Aggressive: Normal
Backchecking: Very Hard
Gap, Pressure, Hit, Tempo, Pass, Shoot, Dump: Normal.
Breakouts: Board Play
Neutral Zone Offensive: Positional
offensive Zone: Overload Slot
Forecheck: 1-2-2
Neutral Zone Defensive: 1-2-2
Defensive Zone: Positional
Offensive Faceoffs: Point Shot
Defensive Faceoffs: Basic


Personal Tactics:

Hagman:
Mentality: Very Defensive
Aggressive: Aggresive
Backchecking: Very Hard
Gap: Normal
Pressure: Heavy
Hit: Hard
Tempo: Normal
Pass: Normal
Shoot: Not set in personal tactics
Dump: Not set in personal tactics
Shoot/Pass: Shoot
Fighting: Not Allowed
Carry Puck: No
Join Rush: Yes
Player to check: None

Madden:
Mentality: Very Defensive
Aggressive: Normal
Backchecking: Very Hard
Gap: Very Tight
Pressure: Very Heavy
Hit: Normal
Tempo: Normal
Pass: Normal
Shoot: Not set in personal tactics
Dump: Not set in personal tactics
Shoot/Pass: Pass
Fighting: Not Allowed
Carry Puck: No
Join Rush: Yes
Player to check: None

Mair:
Mentality: Very Defensive
Aggressive: Normal
Backchecking: Very Hard
Gap: Normal
Pressure: Heavy
Hit: Hard
Tempo: Normal
Pass: Normal
Shoot: Not set in personal tactics
Dump: Not set in personal tactics
Shoot/Pass: Shoot
Fighting: Not Allowed
Carry Puck: No
Join Rush: Yes
Player to check: None

I'm thinking that for starters, I should change to Man coverage and set dumping the puck to very often.

Moved the d-line question here. This is the thread for it, since it is essentially a tactics question. Please read through this thread, and also through the knowledge guide. Defensive tactics are difficult in this game. Have to have the right players, and one thing I find extremely important is anticipation.

Who's your 3rd pairing d? Depending on who it is I'd adjust your gap control. I'd set dump up a setting and passing and shooting down 1 setting. Try this out for 10 games. The rest of it looks fairly decent. I'd look at other players if it doesn't work. Dingman works well for a defensive player. I also like Ortmeyer and Betts, but those 3 tend to work as a 4th line checking line.

Batdad is totally right about Anticipation. That's actually one of the most overlooked attributes in the game and one of the most important, IMO.

Gap Control should definitely be set tighter than that. My general rule for gap control is if Acceleration and Speed are 17 or great, set Gap Control to very tight. 13-16, set it to tight. 10-12, they get set to normal. If they're lower than 10? They're not on my team. I usually give a little bit of lee way if one of the attributes misses the mark by one or two if the other one is okay. For example, a 15 Acceleration and a 18 Speed, I'll set them to very tight.

A couple of thoughts:

Depending on the speed/acceleration of the players, you'll want to modify the Tempo. Don't put plodders at high and don't put jets on low. If they are 15+ in both, I'd bump tempo up some. That should keep them moving and allow them to use their speed.

Conversely, you could slow it down some and reduce the amount of time the opposing offense has the puck. I did this between quarters with my Canes team and limited Dallas to ONE shot the entire quarter. It's modified keep away, but the other team can't score if they don't have the puck. If you want to play this way, I'd also lower the shooting and passing to safe and selective at minimums.

You might also want to keep your forwards from joining the rush. They aren't out there for offense, if someone gets a breakaway, then let them have it, but don't expect them to be as good defensively if they are continually skating up and down the ice. Have both D-men set for No as well. This will keep everyone from getting too far up ice.

If you want to maximize your offense and work off the keep away theory, make 2 of the forwards passers and only have one shooter who is set to selective. Same for the D-men, both as passers. This will keep the puck cycling around and hopefully keep the other team on defense.

I'd watch the games and see where teams are scoring from against this line. Are they breakaways or close in shots? If breakaways, backing off the offense will help, while keeping the area around the goal clean will reduce the stuff in close.

Whatever changes you make, keep them for 10 games or so to see if they are effectice. Also look at your practice settings to make sure your defensive guys are being trained in defensive areas.

Tried the tweaks and had much better results. They actually appear to be holding down the opponents first line now. Seems to work better in home games which makes sense since I have the last line change option.

Couple of followup questions though:

Does anyone have any thoughts on guidlines to use when choosing to go Zone vs Man coverage? I've always left at Zone, but want to explore Man coverage a bit more. When is best to chose Man and when is best to chose Zone?

Also, regarding gap control, you seem to go with tighter coverage than I usually do, so I will continue to try this, but do you go as "tight" with the D as well, or do you back off a bit with them?

Thanks in advance!

I don't really use zone. I'll try it if nothing else is working but otherwise no.

Gap control I'll keep the same for defense.

After going through all my knowledge and a fair amount of experimentation to try to sort my team out, its come to the point where I just have to scream for help and ask someone else to give me some tips!

Coming off the 2008 Stanley Cup title with the Avalanche, I get my new team together, basically re-vamping the defence through free agency as the original is fairly weak and over-expensive. Out goes 4 mill a year Adam Foote for a guy just as good for 1.5mill, and a couple of similar swaps for 1-2mill players getting rid of Liles, Leopold etc. All this saving leaves room to snatch Scott Neidermayer out of free-agency. He might be getting a bit old (35) but he's still the best defenceman on the game.

Forwards remain reletavly un-changed, Patrik Kane coming into the 3rd line after spending last season in the juniors (moving Laperiere down). Other than that I think its exactly the same set up, just all my prospects a year older so a little more skilled. My thoughts... the same amazing offence with an improved defence. The Stanley Cup should come easily this time (last time was a close race for the Presidents trophy eventually lost to Ottawa). Come the playoffs Flames took me to 7 games (they had 3rd best record in the league behind me and Ottawa), Kings seemed to do well but were easily brushed aside, first rouder was a sweep over Vancouver, and final was easier than expected after Ottawa fell in the first round of the playoffs (Who said games aren't realistic?? )

Now I'll post the team so you can see what I've now got (remember this is an improvment over a Stanley Cup winning side)...

Goalies - Nabokov & Wieman/Markanan (only Nabokov gets a start).

Defence...
Matvichuk - Neidermayer
Blake - Boynton
Trnka - Macias

Forwards...
St. Louis - Sakic - Svatos
Wolski - Statsy - Federov
McCauley - Richardson - Kane
Dingman - Hollweg - Laperiere

Not too shabby. Those forward lines are identical to last season except Lappy down to the 4th line to accomodate Kane, and the original 4th liner who was so important I don't know who he was, has gone. Defence is completly new except for Blake (Last years was something along the lines of Blake - Foote, Liles - Leopold, Vernace - Belak).

As for my tactics, they've always been switching between 2 to keep the opposition sides guessing. Always involved the top two lines attacking and aggressive, hard backchecking, pressuring the puck a lot... basic thinking, these lines are better than anyone else can put out there, so we should be able to be attacking and score a lot of goals. 3rd and 4th lines are checking lines, not expected to put up any numbers, but deliberatly players with good 2 way games... well, at least the 3rd is. You can see my 4th line is pretty much told to go and punch anyone within 10 metres!! Tactics switched between a Wings Cross approach, and a Crisscros with Triangle in the zone. Breakouts are always positional.


What besumes me is that this approach has won me a Stanley Cup last season, but now with a better side, I'm getting nowhere. I've changed things around a lot, Blake's only just come off the top line. Tried making my top lines more defencive, I've removed the line matching... moved tactics to overload to get the top guys on more often etc.

What really bugs me aswell is looking at the time on ice for my last few games, looking at my 2nd line... Wolski gets 20, Statsny gets 13, Federov gets 23... now these guys aren't playing together all the time with those numbers. Special teams shouldn't make a big differance as they're on the powerplay together, and I only killed 4 penalties that night. And none had fights or anything to take them off. Looking on all lines, my players seem to give more and more minutes to the better players rather than the players I've put on the top lines! As you can see, Federov is getting similar minutes to my 1st line, whilst Statsny gets less than some of the 3rd liners get!

Woops forgot the mention...

During games, I'm being outshot 2:1 on many occasions. This was also the case last season, but it didn't really bother me when I was winning 80% of my games. I was on normal shooting. I've pumped it up to heavy, and now some nights I can just about match the opposition for shots, but I still often get outshot 2:1!!! I let a rediculous number of shows on Nabokov. On a winning night, he'll face 35 shots and save 32/33. On a bad night he's going to face 50 shots... luckily he's a pretty good nettie and very often puts in 9/10 or 10/10 performances... but still means I'm letting in an extra goal or two per night than nessicerry!

In terms of my league position, I'm floating around 12th.

I'm moving this to the tactics thread as it seems best suited to go there. - B72

@miked1991:
Different things that come to my mind...
- you've changed barely all the defense. So your guys there may just not be used to play together, and not used yet to play with the forwards. As Dmen are the starters of every attacking play, this lack of chemistry can be the reason of a struggling offense. Just let them play.
- if you face 35-50 shots on a regular basis, with or without a Cup ring, there's a big problem in your defensive settings. Maybe a too relaxed gap control, or maybe you always use the same forechecking and neutral zone positioning and therefore have been figured out. But clearly, there's something to correct there.
- if you always shoot two times less than your opponent, it means you're around 15-25 shots per game... That's clearly not a lot for an offensive team. No wonders though: you always use the same breakouts, so you've been figured out there and teams know what forecheck to use to prevent you from creating offense.
- i don't know in your game, but for me McCauley has always been a big time disapointment. On the other hand, Dingman has always done wonders for me, way more than a simple enforcer role, and he won the Selke trophy several time for me. So i'd really suggest to switch them and use Dingo as a tough checking guy rather than an enforcer.
- as for your icetime issues: are you coaching the game yourself? If not, did you check that your head coach uses the lines you make and the tactics you assigned? Else, well... it's just one game... pretty strange, but that kind of things can occur.
- finally: did you set any personnal instructions for your guys to get the most of them? Tough job here is to find which sliders need a special instruction and which ones should be ignored by using the line instructions instead. And obviously adapt those personnal instructions to both what the player can bring on the ice and what you want him to bring in the system of his line without ruining the system by a wrong choice.

Shadd666 wrote:@miked1991:
Different things that come to my mind...
- you've changed barely all the defense. So your guys there may just not be used to play together, and not used yet to play with the forwards. As Dmen are the starters of every attacking play, this lack of chemistry can be the reason of a struggling offense. Just let them play.
- if you face 35-50 shots on a regular basis, with or without a Cup ring, there's a big problem in your defensive settings. Maybe a too relaxed gap control, or maybe you always use the same forechecking and neutral zone positioning and therefore have been figured out. But clearly, there's something to correct there.
- if you always shoot two times less than your opponent, it means you're around 15-25 shots per game... That's clearly not a lot for an offensive team. No wonders though: you always use the same breakouts, so you've been figured out there and teams know what forecheck to use to prevent you from creating offense.
- i don't know in your game, but for me McCauley has always been a big time disapointment. On the other hand, Dingman has always done wonders for me, way more than a simple enforcer role, and he won the Selke trophy several time for me. So i'd really suggest to switch them and use Dingo as a tough checking guy rather than an enforcer.
- as for your icetime issues: are you coaching the game yourself? If not, did you check that your head coach uses the lines you make and the tactics you assigned? Else, well... it's just one game... pretty strange, but that kind of things can occur.
- finally: did you set any personnal instructions for your guys to get the most of them? Tough job here is to find which sliders need a special instruction and which ones should be ignored by using the line instructions instead. And obviously adapt those personnal instructions to both what the player can bring on the ice and what you want him to bring in the system of his line without ruining the system by a wrong choice.

Thanks for the tips, I'll reply to each in turn.

- Since changing Blake to 2nd line defence (a game before posting on here) things seem to have turned around. I've taken about 12-14 points in 8 games moving me up from 12th to 6th in the conferance. Perhaps it was just getting used to things, although the turn around seems to have been very quick. Also funny how I started the year with 5 home games, winning just 1, and then 3 weeks later can go on a 5 game road stretch and win 4 of them!

- Gap control has always been very tight on my top lines (not so much for the checkers)... and I've turned it down to try and help my defence (I was seeing players on the match engine going towards a player on a 1 on 1 and being beaten easily... also leaving the backdoor open far too often).

- So solution here to to change the breakouts aswell as the neutral zone and offensive zone settings regularly?

- Your game seems to have developed very differantly to mine. McCauley fits in well on the 3rd line with his style, puts up a fair few points un-expectedly. Seems to just be the perfect 3rd liner, not good enough for 2nd though. Dingman on the other hand is probably the quietest of the 4th liners, although he does fight the least. His stats are far behind McCauley's, but I could try moving him forward at some point I guess.

- I always coach myself yes. I wonder if it is the special teams that cause it as my PK does include Lappy which explains why he gets many times more minutes that the rest of the 4th line.

- I set whether or not to shoot/pass, if they can fight, and the "Carry Puck" and "Join Rush" options. The rest I just leave them as they're unit tactics... too much to do unit and also personal tactics I think!

For the breakouts, yes, change it from time to time.

For McCauley/Dingman, it really depends on your game. I know i had McCauley 3-4 times in one of my teams, and he always has been a disapointment for me. I had Dingman in about 15 different teams, and he has been bad only once. But maybe you've got a nice McCauley and a bad Dingman in your game, or maybe they adapt very differently to your tactics than to mine. As long as it works for you, don't change anything

Hi guys, am in my first season into a Pheonix Coyotes franchise. After playing using defensive and hard hitting systems previously I decided to try a fast, attacking system. After 72 games i'm in 2nd place on 87 points which is better than I than I thought I would do but as i'm not used to playing this kind of game I wondered what some of you guys would try tactics wise?

My team is currently:

Sturm - Reinprecht - Doan
York - Scatchard - Vrbata
Jokinen - Rasmussen - Balej
Sjostrom - Beech - Dingman

Scott Parker & Kilger are scratches

Jovanovski - Morris
Berard - Boynton
Ballrd - Warrener

Aebischer
LeNeveu

I use the same tactics for all lines at them moment:

Breakouts - Free Flowing
Neutral Zone off - wings cross
Offensive zone - Positional high
Forecheck - Positional
Neutral zone defense - 1-2-2

Mentality - Offensive
Agressiveness - Normal
Backchecking - Normal
Gap Control - Tight
Puck Pressure - Heavy
Hitting Tempo - Normal
Passing - Creative
Shooting - Normal
Dumping - Normal

If you're looking for more scoring, you should bump your tempo up to High instead of Normal. Maybe bump shooting up to heavy. I would also lower dumping to rarely or almost never. I also like my gap control set to very tight but I also tend to set that up in the individual player tactics based on their skating ability. While you're in the individual player tactics, make sure to set you shooting/passing preferences, shooting frequency, passing, and all that. I find it really makes a difference. You may want 2 passers and 1 shooter among your forwards. I also like to set one of the defenseman up as a shooter if he's got a high Slapshot attribute. If you've got him set to Barrage (shooting frequency), he'll be that big booming shot from the point and then hopefully your forwards will be in position to tip in the puck.

If you really want to get crazy, you can set your mentality to very offensive but I would only suggest this for your top line. In fact, the rest of those tactics would probably only be good for your first two lines. I don't think your bottom two lines could pull it off. I don't think it's ever really wise to use the same tactics for all lines unless you're icing an all-star team.