EHM The Blue Line

kev90 wrote:When looking at the practice screen under the attributes view, what's the interval at which the green and red colored attributes numbers reset (showing grey again) ?

It seems pretty random. also that screen lies sometimes. It will show attributes with no gain as green, attributes with loss at grey and attributes with no loss as red whenever it feels like it. That screen is very rarely useful for anything.

StormCloudsGathering wrote:I'd like to propose an idea to atleast test to Shindings, and it's that an AI Team will generally develop prospects faster, but never better, than any configuration with a human GM. I have about 800 hours in EHM but I only have one save in regards to any testing, and it's in regards to the piddle-poor quality of the drafts from 2021 to 2025. But, something I have noticed through actual playing is that while the AI Develops young players consistently faster than humans, humans develop older players consistently better.

Players who would develop on the "general" schedule do indeed develop faster with the AI. The AI doesn't really try to get any type of logical training setup etc. It's a very niche field where presumably Riz did what someone making a game this big solo has to do, he prioritized. And putting time into making the AI have stellar skills at managing coach setups and who trains what/intensity etc. would be a very poor use of time. So from my understanding they all just go general all around and then (presumably) have a % modifier on how fast they develop prospects, to keep up with the player. This means that technically a prospect that would grow on general, which is a big if. A lot of players simply won't. They would have a more "bursty" growth, i'll get into why later. However, prospects that would only grow on one of the more niche schedules will never develop with the AI. Because a % modifier on not growing, still leaves them not growing.

Having played the NHL much much more I've gotten a more complete image of how prospect development works, and to an extent a completely pointless insight into how scouting works.

Players have their careers cut into phases, each phase is 2 years long. By the phase that ends at either 24 or 23, depending on the age at creation, a player will have hit their PA if you used the correct schedule and played them in the correct league. This means that there is a hard cap on how fast you can max out an NHL prospect (the bursty nature i mentioned, they still cap at 23 but hit each cap on the way faster). For forwards, it's by 23/24, Goalies and Dmen seem to be 25/26 which matches up with their later "peaks". What this means is that if you have a player on the perfect schedule, unless they start with like 80-100 CA at 17 and are gonna be 180 PA by 23 (looking at you Auston Matthews) they will eventually hit their "age gates" or enforced PA caps that happen every 2 years where the player simply cannot grow beyond that (except age linked attribute gains, like faceoff and Positioning) someone like Matthews has essentially limitless growth until he caps. I'll use another example to clarify how this work, Linus Weissbach, I picked him up in the 7th round because I know him from playing 1.7k hours in Sweden. He's always a late bloomer, so my scouts probably under-rated him. This is how his career looked for us:
Phase 1-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17: Drafted in the 7th round, very low attributes. 11 Acc and Speed being the least bad non-mentals.
18: Ended his first season in the ECHL, he didn't do well on points but showed some gain in the first half, but then crashed back down in the 2nd half.
Phase 2-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19:2nd Season in the ECHL, first half he takes off like a rocket gaining 35 attribute points from Oct 1st to Feb 1st, 2nd half of the season is another 30 attribute points. He's now good enough to be a top player on my AHL team, compared to barely making the ECHL team at the start of the season.
20:First NHL season, he hits his age PA cap in pre-season. Sitting at 3rd/4th line CA, no gain for the rest of the season.
Phase 3-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21: 2nd NHL season, he hits a new phase and instantly start growing his attributes again. Caps by end of season, due to being capped and having a 7.0 rating in the playoff he gains +important matches, temperament and pressure. But he's age PA capped. So his shown attributes have to decrease by the same amount to make room for the gain (probably what caused the perceived "crash" at the end of season 1 in the ECHL as well).
22:still age gated, nothing happening.
Phase 4-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
23:hits his full uncapped PA, which was only about enough to get back the shown attributes he lost to gain playoff attributes(18 Acc, 17 Spd, 17 Sti/Pas/OTP/Dek). Asks for a raise in his new contract and gets his RFA rights traded to Toronto for a 2nd and 3rd rounder, not shabby for a 7th rounder who was almost cut from the ECHL.

In this entire time-period he was always in the right league, or on the right schedule. But he still couldn't grow at many point in time. Because he needed to become the right age, this means never give up on prospects before they're 23 in EHM. You can lose "late" bloomers doing that.

So if a guy who was growing on a schedule suddenly stops, don't panick. If that happens it's a sign you're developing him so well that he's hit his cap. You literally cannot develop him faster than what you're currently doing. Also if a small temporary drop in attributes happen. Don't panic. This also happens, my Michael Rasmussen ping-pongs his attributes up and down every few months for no apparent reason. The net result is positive, but it's a really odd thing that happens, especially with low professionalism players (if you see "slack" in the scout report, stay away)

In europe as previously mentioned (i think) you start on II Nor, then if that doesn't work (give the player at least until pre-season ends before giving up on a schedule, unless it's a top prospect, then if there is no gain by Aug 1 you can change) you swap to IM Nor, leave him on that until you record attributes again Jan 1st. If there is no gain by then, or even a loss, swap to MM Nor.

In the NHL you start on MM Nor, then follow the exact same procedure but in the reverse order MM Nor -> IM Nor -> II Nor. Also in the NHL I record attributes at Oct 1, Feb 1 and Jun 1. Rather than Sep 1, Jan 1 and May 1 in europe, since it matches the season dates better. Also keep in mind that there is a slight risk in doing the top prospect swap at Aug 1st. You can get a false negative on the schedule "not working" because he's at his age gated PA until he hits his next phase. So don't be afraid to try MM Nor again if you cycled through IM Nor and II Nor in pre-season+first half of season and nothing happened with them.

I've all but stopped using ML Nor. It sees some use in Europe but the main three in the americas are MM Nor, IM Nor and II Nor. I haven't played in the CHL for a long time, because that awesome issue where you can't sign your bantam prospects that used to be a thing really put me off that league. So I can't speak for it. But if I were to start playing it, I would use the exact same trial and error method I use in the NHL, aka. MM Nor -> IM Nor -> II Nor. Note that the vast majority of your forwards will end up on MM Nor, a few will end up on IM Nor. Maybe 1-2 will end up on II Nor. Your Dmen will generally be split between MM Nor and IM Nor, unless you draft a lot of swedes. Then probably a third or so will be on II Nor, don't ask me why swedes need that schedule, they just do (both forwards and dmen). The age of a player doesn't really seem to matter when it comes to schedules. Players who start the game at 23 or older will still grow until they hit their PA. But anyone starting younger than that, as well as all newgens and regens will be capped at their PA by 23-25. At that point just leave them on whatever schedule got them there. There is a single, somewhat rare exception. I know that part of the formula for deciding what schedule a player needs is their Natural Fitness, and players can gain enough Natural fitness before they turn 23 to change what schedule they need to be on, this is very rare. But if a player shows a loss in attributes for 2 straight recorded periods (for example both in the Oct 2-Feb 1 and Feb 2-Jun 1 recordings) and you didn't do something silly like demote a core player to the 4th line. You can assume they need to be moved up 1 practice schedule so either MM->IM or IM->II.

I suggest recording your players attributes in a spreadsheet of some sort to keep track of them, since the green/gray/red in the practice screen is about as reliable as a swedish train (which is to say, not at all) I personally use a spreadsheet I made myself which only tracks the attributes that are believed to be changed by training and have known connections to specific training schedules. One probable change is that Off The Puck seems to be linked to Tactics, not just Teamwork. But I haven't been able to prove that entirely, mostly because I don't care to. But in Nor-1 and Swe-2 where you have limited coaching options, you often get a really really bad tactics coach. And then you see that roughly 80% of your team has a red on OTP in the practice screen, which we don't trust. But still, it's some incidental evidence of OTP being linked with tactics training.

Since the MM, IM, II Nor package is good enough to reliably hit the age gates on anyone who isn't a generational talent. There is no reason to optimize the schedules beyond this point, I have come across 2 prospects who didn't cap their PA under me in 2100 hours and countless prospects. So although the success rate isn't 100%, it's close enough that it does not matter. I'm sure there are some small things I do that I forgot to mention. But as you use this you'll develop pretty good game sense for when you need to do what with your prospects. Some love the minors, some need to be playing bottom 6 in the NHL on the correct schedule. Eventually you'll learn how to get the most out of all your prospects and the biggest upside of it is that you can constantly cycle prospects in your bottom 6. So you always have high skill, but slightly too low PA for top 6, players down there on entry level contracts. Which makes rolling 4 skilled lines a breeze. When their entry ends, if they're not top 6 material you just place a qualifying offer that they won't take. Then trade their rights for 2nd/3rd round(ers) and get in new prospects of similar quality until the cows come home. Because when you can cap out any player's PA at the exact same time their rolled entry level contract ends, you get some absurdly underpaid players on your roster. And that is so strong in a salary capped league.

Edit: Just noticed I hadn't posted IM Nor here before. But it's just Con/Ska being Intense/Medium with everything else the same as the others, as expected.
Edit2: Clarification, not ALL Swedes need II Nor. It's just much more common that they need it. Linus Weissbach from the example was an MM Nor player, despite being swedish. You do the exact same trial and error approach with swedes as anyone else. It's just that a somewhat odd amount of swedes end up on II Nor, compared to their NA counterparts.
Edit3: Upon further reflection I'm fairly certain goalies and dmen also hit their final phase at 23 when they are newgens/regens/young prospects at game start. The downside with playing in sweden a lot is that all your good prospects get signed to the NHL before you get to see them finish. But now that I've put more time into the NHL it does indeed seem like everyone is capable of capping out at 23. Beyond this only Positioning, Faceoff and Mentals can still grow. Since those are tied to age/experience and continue to grow until the player starts declining with old age.

I will try this , but to be honest all this practice/developing players(prospects) stuff has been grey area for me in EHM 1.

Shindigs wrote:

kev90 wrote:When looking at the practice screen under the attributes view, what's the interval at which the green and red colored attributes numbers reset (showing grey again) ?

It seems pretty random. also that screen lies sometimes. It will show attributes with no gain as green, attributes with loss at grey and attributes with no loss as red whenever it feels like it. That screen is very rarely useful for anything.

The real attribute scale is at least 1-99, maybe even larger than that, and the colours probably reflect changes in the "raw" attributes that the game uses.

A9L3E wrote:

Shindigs wrote:

kev90 wrote:When looking at the practice screen under the attributes view, what's the interval at which the green and red colored attributes numbers reset (showing grey again) ?

It seems pretty random. also that screen lies sometimes. It will show attributes with no gain as green, attributes with loss at grey and attributes with no loss as red whenever it feels like it. That screen is very rarely useful for anything.

The real attribute scale is at least 1-99, maybe even larger than that, and the colours probably reflect changes in the "raw" attributes that the game uses.

Attributes change in chunks of 5 at the time. I was using the 1-99 scale for a long time while recording attributes to see if this was indeed the case. It was not, so I swapped back to 1-20.

I mean I guess it could be doing that back end and just not updating the shown attributes until +/-5 is reached when using the 1-99 visuals. But that still doesn't really explain when it says your player is constantly red on stickhandling (one of my goalies) but his stickhandling has consistently grown until it capped out at 11. And has never decreased, also I did bug report that the green/gray/red wasn't working a long time ago. So it may have been fixed since, but since the example of the goalie with red stickhandling is from 5 minutes ago, I sincerely doubt it.

In other news:
I normally trade away players who are losing/about to lose their legs, so had no idea this happens. But I have an aging Blake Wheeler who just put up 109 points, so I'm keeping him around until he retires. And at first he was losing Physicals, then physicals and metals, then finally technicals, physicals and mentals, then this season something odd started happening. His physicals are starting to be dangerously low (10ish) but his mentals and technicals have started growing again. He's got better Technicals right now than he did at his peak. And obviously the lack of his former pace hadn't hurt his production at all. In fact he just had a career high season. Maybe he's trying to be Jagr, who knows?:S

Shindigs wrote:

A9L3E wrote: The real attribute scale is at least 1-99, maybe even larger than that, and the colours probably reflect changes in the "raw" attributes that the game uses.

Attributes change in chunks of 5 at the time. I was using the 1-99 scale for a long time while recording attributes to see if this was indeed the case. It was not, so I swapped back to 1-20.

From EHM07 the Attribute scale was 0-255 http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... g+the+code (I suspect it's similar/the same now, but don't "know" that it is)

If setting practice is important for prospect/player development, does it mean I should take care, or at least setup, of practices in my farm team or should I let AI do it ?

Filip Croatia wrote:If setting practice is important for prospect/player development, does it mean I should take care, or at least setup, of practices in my farm team or should I let AI do it ?

Your farm team is an AI controlled entity that just happens to be affiliated with your NHL team. So it has all the same benefits the AI does when developing prospects. Also because of how the PA phases work it doesn't necessarily matter if a player who isn't "ready" or you don't have space for in your roster yet doesn't grow at full pace. Barring very rare cases your AHL team will be able to grow them fast enough, generally not as fast as you yourself could. But the time it takes to control both your farm teams as well is a very poor return on investment.

What I usually do is any player who is very exciting I'll sign right after I draft them and have them up in the main team over summer/pre-season to figure out which schedule they will need as well as seeing if they are at a PA age cap or not. This gives me a measuring stick for when I send them back to juniors/down to AHL/ECHL for the season. I'll take my first round dman that I drafted last year Mark Kayumov as an example. He's russian and was on a contract in the KHL, so I signed him as a "regular player" rather than a prospect. Since this seems to ignore the contract and sign him instantly rather than at the end of his KHL contract. Over summer he sat on MM Nor and gained 30 attribute points. I didn't have roster space/cap room to play him that season though, so I had to send him down to the AHL. Either the 30 had put him dangerously close to his age gate, or he really doesn't like what the AHL is cooking. Because he only gained 8 attribute points over the whole season. However this meant that by the time he got back to the main team for the following off-season on MM Nor he instantly gained another 30 or so (haven't recorded for that period yet, but he's almost on par with my #1 dman now). This is because a player with high PA and low CA on the correct schedule gains attributes at such a rapid rate that the limitation isn't time. It's which age gate he's in.

To take an extreme example to better explain what I mean. If Mark in our case wasn't with us in the summer, and we just left him in the AHL forever, and the low gain there wasn't from being age gated but rather him not being able to grow on general. At 23 we decide to give a very underdeveloped Mark a shot in the NHL due to a long-term injury in our top 6. When we pull him up and put him on MM Nor he will take off like an absolute rocket, he's got no age gating since he's at 23, so full access to all his PA. Within his first season he should be at or very near his PA despite being massively underdeveloped for 5 years. Draft busts in EHM aren't created through circumstances, they are generated that way. If a player has high PA. He will eventually reach that, even if you are roleplaying Vancouver and do your very best to completely ruin his development for the longest of time. There is no opportunity cost to messing up 1-2 years of a prospect's development (other than him being worse for those 1-2 years). All that means is he will be growing faster in the final years of his development. This is why using the trial and error method rather than trying to figure out from attributes which schedule a player should be on has no negative side-effect worth mentioning. Any time you lose trying to find out which schedule to use will be made up once you find the right one.

On a pseudo-related note I'd like to just point out that one of the load screen hints in EHM is very, very misleading. It's the one that reads something like "unless a prospect is incredible, playing him too many minutes may stunt his development". I've never ever seen this and I've been using 16 year olds as my 1st line center+captain in Swe-2 for ~1700 hours. What this load screen hint is actually saying is something like this "Prospects that are good enough that you want them to be top 6 can handle being played in your top 6. Prospects that are only good enough that you will want them in your bottom 6 can handle being played in your bottom 6." I've never seen a prospect develop slower or even stop developing from too much icetime. In fact every single time I've tried using a guy I normally run as bottom 6 as a top 6 he's developed faster (but eventually hit his age gates). Regardless you wouldn't try developing your bottom 6 players in the top 6 (because they're not good enough to ever play there, duh) so all this hint really does is confuse and mislead. I completely disregard it for that reason. Also unlike real life it's very possible to develop a top 6 forward in your bottom 6 with it being only a tiny bit slower (still caps at 23 regardless though). Very rarely there will be issues where they regress, but that's only if you give them a core player contract, play them top 6 for some time and then demote them to the 4th line, 3rd line is still fine though. But if they are actually top 6 material they will have shown that by the time their entry ends, so that should never happen in practice anyways.
I personally avoid doing so though, since that way your player's contract won't roll enough that the entry ends at age 23. Which means you won't really know what he'll look like when he's finished growing as you sign his bridge contract. If the player is good enough that you want to play him regardless that's a no-brainer. But if it's more of a longshot prospect it can be beneficial from a cap management standpoint to let his contract roll in the minors/major junior for a few years first. It won't negatively impact his finished PA. It will just delay when he becomes good and when his entry level contract ends. Because frankly you only need 6 top 6 forwards and 4 top 4 dmen at a time. So having your future replacement come into his own later, to coincide with when your current top 6 players will want a pay raise (read:get traded for 1st rounder(s)), may be a good thing in your grand plan. It's about developing smart more so than developing fast in that case.

Edit: I've forgotten to mention, with the new change to how resetting off-season fatigue works. You no longer have time to play a lot of pre-season games. Most seasons you only have time for about 2, some seasons you don't have time for any. It takes about 5-6 days of having your players on resting after the end of training camp to get them all back to 100% condition. Resetting their fatigue. If you don't get this done before the season pretty much your entire team will suffer fatigue until the Christmas break (if you even get one, some seasons you pretty much don't).

Edit2: Having gone further into my Jets save I've noticed another thing. Since unlike the premade NHL players most generated players won't have particularly high Natural Fitness, there is a slow but steady move towards IM Nor and II Nor being more common, when I had all premade players I had the most MM Nor, followed by IM Nor and a very small amount of II Nor. Currently the split is roughly 50/40/10 for II/IM/MM with almost entirely generated players.

This was a while ago, but Shindigs... would MM Nor mean Medium Cond/Skating and medium everything else, or low everything else?

StormCloudsGathering wrote:This was a while ago, but Shindigs... would MM Nor mean Medium Cond/Skating and medium everything else, or low everything else?

Been a while since I posted all of them so might as well get them all in the same post here. I really should put all the current info in a guide of some sort here. But I've been a bit burnt out on EHM after finishing up my last save. I intend to do it at some point soonish though. Until then here are all the current schedules:
II Nor
Con: Intensive
Ska: Intensive
Tac: Medium
Off: Intensive
Sho: Intensive
Def: Intensive

IM Nor
Con: Intensive
Ska: Medium
Tac: Medium
Off: Intensive
Sho: Intensive
Def: Intensive

MM Nor
Con: Medium
Ska: Medium
Tac: Medium
Off: Intensive
Sho: Intensive
Def: Intensive

Goalies
Con: Medium
Ska: Light
Tac: None
Off: None
Sho: None
Def: Light
Goa: Intensive

When starting a new save putting everyone on MM Nor and then ramping up towards II Nor if they don't grow on MM Nor/IM Nor is generally the best idea. Once you're far enough into a save that all players are generated rather than premade it becomes the opposite; You start with II Nor and then step down towards MM Nor if they don't grow in II Nor/IM Nor. The reason for the change is that premade players in the TBL database have much higher average Natural Fitness than players randomly generated by the game, and which schedule a player needs has correlation with how high their Natural Fitness is.

As long as you find the correct schedule any player who is premade should hit their PA at age 21 if you played them in your top 9 in the NHL from when they were 18-19, or by 23-24 if you let them sit in the AHL until they were 21+. For generated players they can hit their PA at age 19, or 21-22. I have no idea why it's faster for generated players, but it is.

I should note that because your players cap at their PA so soon you will start seeing some decline in attributes in your players after a few years of being peaked. When that happens don't freak out and start changing things, there is a small possibility their Natural Fitness got high enough that they need a change in schedule, if you record losses to Skating (on IM Nor) or Conditioning (on MM Nor) for two consecutive recording periods (I record 3 times per year, so each period is 4 months) you can move them up 1 schedule. But generally speaking when a moderate to big loss of attributes across the board happens out of the blue it's because your player earned some combination of Temperament, Important Matches, Anticipation and Creativity due to age growth of mentals and playoff growth of hidden attributes. Even though you may record a loss of 5ish trainable attributes the player is in fact still at his PA, it's just that Riz didn't make it so these age/playoff based growths actually give the player more PA. As a result of that somewhat questionable design decision your player has to lose skating/teamwork/technical attributes to "make room" for the newly gained attributes under the PA roof. Overall the gain of those attributes will make the player better than the attributes they lost though, so it's a net positive.

In the latter stages of my previous save I also started doing a slight variation of how I deal with newly drafted prospects; The most exctiting ones I will instantly sign regardless of it they are CHL players, rather than wait until they were AHL eligible. The reason I do this is that I get to put even the CHL prospects on my own training schedules in the off-season. Why is that important? Well, it saves A LOT of time on figuring out what schedule that prospect needs. After I sign them they will all go on MM Nor/II Nor depending on the stage of the save, and I'll put a note on all of them for July 31st to give me a reminder to look at any gain they might have gotten on the schedule at that time. Most prospects will have gained anywhere from 1-15 attributes at that point depending on their PA and phase. The ones who haven't grown at all (or even recorded a loss in very rare cases) will then be swapped to IM Nor and stay on that until I record attributes in early October. That way I already have a 66% chance to know which schedule every single one of my prospects needs to be on when they are still just 18 years old. When the season starts I just send them back to juniors as usual. At June 15th the next year they come back to our roster and if they recorded no gain on the first two schedules I can now try out the 3rd one for an entire off-season. In the vast majority of cases they will grow much faster on your training schedules than they did in the CHL, so you will end up with more NHL ready players faster.

In the rare(ish) case that they showed no growth on either of the 3 schedules there are generally two possible reasons:
1. He's a draft bust, your scouts will keep claiming that he's got 1st line potential until he's like 27 at least. But he's actually at his PA when you drafted him, it happens.
2. He's at his PA cap for his current age. Some players will have already gotten to their max for age 17-18 and won't show any growth until during the season when they turn 19. In that case you'll just need to cycle through all the schedules again just like you did the previous 2 off-seasons. It's a bit annoying, but there's not much you can do about it. I had Tavares' regen not grow at all on anything until he turned 20 and went from looking like a bust to a 1st line Center in about 6 months.

As you can see they both look the exact same* until one starts growing like crazy, and the other doesn't. So don't be too quick to label a prospect a bust (much like in real life). But if you've had a player on whichever schedule he didn't decline on at all while still showing age based growth in stuff like Positioning/Faceoffs and he's hit 23 years of age. You shouldn't tear your hair out about not being able to make him grow; If it hasn't happened by then the problem isn't you, it's him. These schedules have a 100% success rate on NHL prospects as long as you use them correctly, unlike the scout reports that make you think there's still more to come from that player. Draft busts are very common in EHM (generally you have at least 5 busts in your average 1st round of the draft) so you should get a fair few of them over a longer save, even if you're very good at drafting.

*The one thing you can sometimes use to differentiate between the two early is that players who are at their age cap tend to still get a slow trickle of physical attributes until they hit their next phase; Players who are busts generally don't have that trickle effect. That's not 100% though, but just know that if that trickle of physical attributes is happening that's a good sign.

Actually this post ended up being a non-exhaustive guide of most things I use in practice these days. I haven't touched too much on coaches though, but I just use a spreadsheet I made to pick those anyways. The choice of coaches doesn't seem to matter that much either, as long as they are serviceable you get about the same results.

So Shindigs, do you play a lot of preseason games or just run the training camps and focus on practices as the best way to prep for a season?

Draisaitl wrote:So Shindigs, do you play a lot of preseason games or just run the training camps and focus on practices as the best way to prep for a season?

I used to run as many pre-season games as I could, but after 1.4 the time it takes to reset your players' condition all the way up to 100% after training camp ends is 7 days. Due to how the season start/training camp timing works out in EHM this means that some seasons I have time to put in 2 pre-season games, but some there is no time for any pre-season games. I've noticed no real difference on early season performance or player growth between the seasons with/without pre-season games.

When I play in Europe I do spam upwards of 15 pre-season games though since there is no training camp. However goalies (at least in 1.3 and earlier) didn't gain any match sharpness from exhibition games at all, meaning that from season 2 onward every single goalie will lack match sharpness until ~15 games into the season; This is a bit of an issue in leagues with only 30 or so games, for obvious reasons.

On another note I'm giving the CHL another try and so far using the European/late NHL approach of starting with II Nor and working down to MM Nor as needed is preferred, very few CHL players have high enough Natural Fitness to warrant MM Nor and if you put players who need II Nor on MM Nor they can lose A LOT of attributes very quickly, whereas if you put a player who should be on MM Nor on II Nor they either are completely stagnant or lose very little attributes (generally). So it's a lot safer to work down from II Nor in the CHL leagues in general. Oh, and don't start a WHL save with the "no extra players" option turned on. There are a total of 6 players in the first WHL draft if you do...

Thanks Shindigs - do you ever put players on the rest schedule to get them back to 100% fitness?

The only time I use rest at all is when a player gets the "Rst" symbol, but it's a losing battle at that point. Back in the days players turned pretty useless when they suffered even light fatigue (aka. they can't hit 100% con without resting, but no "Rst" symbol yet). Now players can play half a season through "Rst" and still hit 90+ points, so I don't even bother. If we have a week off or christmas break or olympics and I happen to see someone get stuck on 98%-99% I'll obviously rest them for a day or two until it goes away. If I have players that I know are prone to getting the "Rst" towards the end of a season I'll rest them the 3rd day of a 3 day break any time I can as well as during weeks off and whatnot to try and slow down the "Rst" as it probably has some negative effect, however minor it may be. But for the most part it's fire and forget with these schedules. Any player who does get fatigue will gain enough Natural Fitness over 3 or so seasons on these schedules and 20ish minutes of icetime that the problem will sort it self out over time.

Oh and I obviously use it for ~7 days at the end of pre-season as I previously stated. But if you don't bother to ever rest players during a season there won't be any noticeable backlash.

You will get some practice injuries here and there as the seasons progress, but when the choice is between "no player progress during the season" or even "player decline during the season" and "your average player missing 3 days a year while growing like wildfire" I personally pick the latter. And then just make sure to not draft injury prone players, cause who needs that drama in their lives?

Once I read at hf boards that if you put player to practice on light (some of categories) causes player to decline in attributes . That was written by guy who played thousand of hours . He talked about ehm 2007, so I am curious is that true and is it same case (eventually) with this EHM as well ?

It's sometimes true. If a player has low enough natural fitness (it seems to be that at least) they can sometimes have a light in skating and still gain skating though, while other players can lose skating while on moderate skating because they have low natural fitness. With light in tactics there is a loss, but it's so slow it will pretty much take you years to notice it. Besides players can lose/gain teamwork in a quite odd manner. It's not rare for a player to lose 1 teamwork over summer and then get it back at the start of the season without any change in practice. I haven't used the schedule that's on Light skating for a long time though, essentially everyone ends up on II Nor, IM Nor or MM Nor. So Light never comes into play, except in the goalie schedule. Goalies, as per usual, are a bit weird. But the schedule I use for them always gets them maxed out by the time they are able to due to the age restraints. Also with goalies you only really want them to gain certain attributes, so if you can create a schedule that causes them to gain minimal amounts of attributes they don't need in favor of attributes they do need, that's pretty much a win. The only skating attribute you really care about is Balance, of the two defensive attributes you only really want Positioning, not Pokecheck (as much). And since Positioning is both a Goalie attribute and a defensive attribute you gain plenty of it from the Intense in Goalie anyways, as Positioning is generally the 1st attribute to reach 20 in a higher PA goalie. You could potentially get slightly more out of some goalies by using Intensive Conditioning instead of Medium, but goalies get so much of their growth from match experience that training seems a lot less important for them. All my goalies with reasonable enough PA to end up in the NHL end up with at least 17, but generally 19-20 agility anyways. Same with Stamina, and you don't really care about Strength.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I haven't seen anyone mention having a different practice schedule for your starting and back-up goalies. Why not work your backup harder when he's not playing, and give your starter a bit of a break when he is playing? When I change up my goalies, I swap their practice schedules too.

#1 Goalie:
Con - Med
Ska - Med
Tac - Int
Sho - None
Off - Light
Def - Int
Goal - Int

#2 Goalie:
Con - Int
Ska - Int
Tac - Int
Sho - None
Off - Int
Def - Int
Goal - Int

Hey, I know there hasn't been much discussion on this for a while, but I did a couple of quick sims on my own and I haven't been able to find the correlation between the effectiveness of the 3 schedules II Nor, IM Nor, and MM Nor to natural fitness.

I started with the Erie Otters in the CHL, where I know their natural fitnesses would be low, started early in July, and tested out all 3 schedules on all skaters with 3 different saves. I did cheat using EHM Assistant to see natural fitness, but you know, in the name of science. I simmed through January 1st with 1 week of rest before their 1st game, and found that basically for everyone, II Nor was the best, which was expected.

However, the next test with the Edmonton Oilers and Pittsburgh Penguins in the NHL was where things got weird. I know that the natural fitnesses in the NHL will be higher, so I expected MM Nor to be used a lot more, but there seems to be almost no correlation between natural fitness and stat gain. It would seem like most everyone under natural fitness of 70 on the 1-100 scale, equivalent to 14 on the 1-20 scale, would have II Nor as the best for stat gain, and perhaps everyone above 90 on the 1-100 scale, equivalent to 18 on the 1-20 scale, would have MM Nor as the best for stat gain, but there were a lot of abnormalities as well. I think a couple of players with natural fitnesses of 95 or above actually preferred II Nor, and pretty much no one consistently wanted IM Nor.

I tried another test with the Erie Otters where I actually manually edited the players' natural fitnesses to around 65-85 with increments of 1, and this test gave me the worst results of all. The results were all over the place, essentially everyone preferred II Nor, even the players with natural fitnesses of 80+, but with sprinkles of players wanting MM Nor even at lower natural fitnesses like 70.

Of course, I only ran these 4 sims (Erie Otters, Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Erie Otters modified) for each of the 3 schedules, but I was hoping from the extensive study that Shindigs did, I would've found an easy correlation. As it is, I'm just totally confused and am wondering if there are other hidden factors such as age in addition to natural fitness, or if it's mainly small sample size that I am not finding any obvious winner. Obviously there will be randomness for each save such as injuries or poor performances, but again, I'm really finding no correlation at all.

Shindigs, if you are still actually here and are still interested in the game, would you mind checking the hidden natural fitness variable next time you test these? Thanks!

Question for Shindig/anyone who knows a lot about practice:

If I am the GM of an NHL team, what would you recommend? I am having trouble reading through everything you have posted, it is great but I just don't understand all of it. Is there a simple practice schedule I could follow for NHL players, and if not, is it a big deal to my player's development if I just leave practice to the coaches?

If I was at my computer I could link you something but I'm at work currently. I'll reply to you later if anyone posted something.

Only thing I could say is that I wouldn't trust the coaches.

Artoo_Detoo wrote:Hey, I know there hasn't been much discussion on this for a while, but I did a couple of quick sims on my own and I haven't been able to find the correlation between the effectiveness of the 3 schedules II Nor, IM Nor, and MM Nor to natural fitness.

I started with the Erie Otters in the CHL, where I know their natural fitnesses would be low, started early in July, and tested out all 3 schedules on all skaters with 3 different saves. I did cheat using EHM Assistant to see natural fitness, but you know, in the name of science. I simmed through January 1st with 1 week of rest before their 1st game, and found that basically for everyone, II Nor was the best, which was expected.

However, the next test with the Edmonton Oilers and Pittsburgh Penguins in the NHL was where things got weird. I know that the natural fitnesses in the NHL will be higher, so I expected MM Nor to be used a lot more, but there seems to be almost no correlation between natural fitness and stat gain. It would seem like most everyone under natural fitness of 70 on the 1-100 scale, equivalent to 14 on the 1-20 scale, would have II Nor as the best for stat gain, and perhaps everyone above 90 on the 1-100 scale, equivalent to 18 on the 1-20 scale, would have MM Nor as the best for stat gain, but there were a lot of abnormalities as well. I think a couple of players with natural fitnesses of 95 or above actually preferred II Nor, and pretty much no one consistently wanted IM Nor.

I tried another test with the Erie Otters where I actually manually edited the players' natural fitnesses to around 65-85 with increments of 1, and this test gave me the worst results of all. The results were all over the place, essentially everyone preferred II Nor, even the players with natural fitnesses of 80+, but with sprinkles of players wanting MM Nor even at lower natural fitnesses like 70.

Of course, I only ran these 4 sims (Erie Otters, Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Erie Otters modified) for each of the 3 schedules, but I was hoping from the extensive study that Shindigs did, I would've found an easy correlation. As it is, I'm just totally confused and am wondering if there are other hidden factors such as age in addition to natural fitness, or if it's mainly small sample size that I am not finding any obvious winner. Obviously there will be randomness for each save such as injuries or poor performances, but again, I'm really finding no correlation at all.

Shindigs, if you are still actually here and are still interested in the game, would you mind checking the hidden natural fitness variable next time you test these? Thanks!

Been away for a long while due to health issues, but I'm back for now.

Honestly there seems to be a lot more in play with player development than just natural fitness. I know that professionalism has a fairly large impact on off-season training. Since players with the "Slack" traits (1 professionalism) always slack off in the off-season. Presumably ambition also plays a part in it. That's why I use trial and error to find the right schedule for my players. I begin with II Nor, if they don't gain at least 5 points by August 2nd (with prospects from the most recent draft) I'll swap them to IM Nor until end of camp. As you'd imagine in about 2/3 of the cases players will end up growing on either II Nor or IM Nor and that way by their first possible season you already know which schedule to keep them on. Some players won't grow at all between the draft and end of camp; This is either because they needed MM Nor and you didn't have the time to get that far in the trial and error yet, or commonly it's simply that they are up against the cap of CA they can reach at their current age. When you put the same player back on II/IM Nor after they come back from the CHL/minors at the end of the season they usually get those nice 20+ growth spurts over summer, since they now are one year older and have progressed to their next age based CA cap.

Essentially being pragmatic about it I just decided to stop my research into the exact reasons why players need either of the 3 schedules that I have all players on. Because since player growth is almost always hindered by their age regardless of the schedule you have plenty of time to find the right one; There is essentially no opportunity cost to just using trial and error with a 100%(ish) chance to find the right schedule for a player by the time he's 19 (for NHL purposes). He will cap out between 23-25 regardless of if you found the right schedule the day after you drafted him or the year after you drafted him. Most top end 1st round prospects will have such high CA that they barely grow their first off-season after the draft anyways.

In my personal experience at the NHL level my split is normally 40% II Nor, 50% IM Nor and 10% MM Nor by the 2nd season of a save, as the save progresses you normally end up with a lot of Defencemen on MM Nor, most forwards on IM Nor and only a smattering on II Nor. Also keep in mind that since Natural Fitness grows with age/playtime/whatever voodoo magic you prefer over time a player will often start out needing II Nor when he's young, but then progress to IM Nor once he gets a bit older; That is not always the case though as some stay on II Nor for their entire career.

The goal was never really to figure out 100% of how all of practice works; The goal was to figure out how to get prospects to max potential as soon as possible. When I realized that age gating was a thing I stopped trying to optimize beyond the point I had reached, as clearly trying to do so wouldn't give any practical benefits.

leafsrock67 wrote:Question for Shindig/anyone who knows a lot about practice:

If I am the GM of an NHL team, what would you recommend? I am having trouble reading through everything you have posted, it is great but I just don't understand all of it. Is there a simple practice schedule I could follow for NHL players, and if not, is it a big deal to my player's development if I just leave practice to the coaches?

Just follow the trial and error method I outlined above. The schedules I mention (II Nor/IM Nor/MM Nor) should be somwhere at the top of this or the previous page.

Generally be patient, if a player loses a small amount of attributes over a period while using a schedule he previously gained attributes on; Don't panick, this happens and generally they bounce back in the next few months. However if a player loses attributes/a prospect stop gaining attributes for a much longer period it might be worthwhile to swap to the next schedule in the order to see if that stops the decline/gets them going. If it doesn't just go back to the previous schedule and hope it's just a temporary thing.

In rare cases some players will just flare out for no obvious reason though, in the 15-16 db Andreas Athanasiou always started to lose attributes until he was out of the NHL if he didn't win a Cup in his first ever season in the NHL. Over 10+ saves he ended up flaring out both for me and the AI every single save after having a great rookie season. The only exception being the one time he got a Cup in his rookie year. I have absolutely no explanation to why that worked as it did, but it did. By the 16-17 db it no longer happened to AA, so whatever caused it was changed.

Hi everyone, been reading this thread and trying stuff out the best i could, and im not really sure about what to do with training in the NHL off-season. The all intensive thing was patched if i understood correctly, English isnt my native language so i may miss stuff sometimes

But seriously, what should i do in the summer? Ive googled to find the answers, and there is just really not unanimous answer there. Do i train them like crazy, do i put them on resting for the summer or what. Sorry if this does not belong here and forgive me for my noob-ish question... thank you all in advance!

I always put them on intensive in all categories as soon as I'm out of the playoffs and put them on rest 1 week before the training camp.

philou21 wrote:I always put them on intensive in all categories as soon as I'm out of the playoffs and put them on rest 1 week before the training camp.

Same here. I keep them on intensive training over the summer. Some of them might receive a good boost by Pre-season.

uknownick wrote:

philou21 wrote:I always put them on intensive in all categories as soon as I'm out of the playoffs and put them on rest 1 week before the training camp.

Same here. I keep them on intensive training over the summer. Some of them might receive a good boost by Pre-season.

Thank you guys, really appreciate it! Getting the hang of the whole practice thing in this version, i was god awful in 2007.