EHM The Blue Line

well for this challenge i figured i would do a blog. this should be an interesting team to play.

bigargon's challenge 10 blog

sjsharkz wrote:Oh great...things were just starting to turn....and Auld tore his UCL...and is out for 4 months Goodbye season..hello high draft pick

Ouch! That's got to hurt! Make sure you get a screenshot of Auld's injury if he's a part of your core. You'll need that.

A high draft pick isn't so bad though. Who knows... that player could make the rest of your challenge a success?

bigargon wrote:well for this challenge i figured i would do a blog. this should be an interesting team to play.

bigargon's challenge 10 blog

Good to see someone blogging their challenge team. I did it in the last challenge and it was a lot of fun. The only problem is, it's very time consuming and I just don't have the time to do it for this challenge. Good luck with it though!

bruins72 wrote:

sjsharkz wrote:Oh great...things were just starting to turn....and Auld tore his UCL...and is out for 4 months Goodbye season..hello high draft pick

Ouch! That's got to hurt! Make sure you get a screenshot of Auld's injury if he's a part of your core. You'll need that.

A high draft pick isn't so bad though. Who knows... that player could make the rest of your challenge a success?

Oh yep...I'll get a screenshot right now. Yeah well I'm not the worst team, I just can't seem to string 3-4 wins in a row, something happens....eg: Auld's injury, or Kaigodorov was injured for 10 days...all those types of things...and as we all know...there isn't much solid depth so drafting is going to be so so important!

injuries are killing me two, i have a 3rd d-line of Jones and Yandle because Helmer and Jovocop both decided to go down with 2-week injuries within like a couple days

Wish my challenge team was San Antonio, there 16-2-0 right now lol and thats with no-one but their players they already had and my prospects/players not good enough to play on phoenix

I SWEAR TO ***** GOD I AM ABOUT TO ****ING KILL THIS TEAM

10 ****ING GOALS TO THE ****ING PREDATORS, THE WORST TEAM IN THE darn CONFERENCE. TEN GOALS

Seriously i can stand it, it seems like im the only one whos team will not win anything, everyone else seems to win be above .500 ect. i can't get a single thing to work at all for my team.

I've been struggling a bit since right before the 20 game mark. Auld started slipping at around game 16 or so. At the 23 game mark I'm 13-10-0. I was 12-8-0 at the 20 game mark. So you can see that I'm sliding.

One of the problems with this team is consistency. Too many of the players are streaking. Heck, most of them are playing above their ability. You just can't expect them to maintain that.

darn...just lost Morris for 2 weeks.

2 losses isn't a slide, try being 12-24-1 losing every game by at least 4 goals and as much as 8, not having a single goalie stop anything. And if the players are streaky then i must be using the wrong DB because my players don't streak, in fact they don't do anything but sit in the box and not stop the other team from scoring.

Well it wasn't just the two losses. I had been getting more losses leading up to that than I had been getting for a while. If you're having the much trouble, you want to look at your tactics. It sounds like they might be a little too aggressive, especially if you're always in the box. Also, what about your coaches? Do any of them have a decent discipline rating?

And now Doan is gone for three weeks...ouch

i have my all my hitting and agressive, backchecking etc. set down to normal since about game 5 or so but they keep getting sent to the box anyways.

Discipline ratings
HC-17
AC-10
AC-13
AC-12

Your head coach's discipline should be good enough. I'm assuming man management is okay too?

I don't understand why you're having such a hard time there. I've got all 4 lines set to aggressive and hitting set to hard. My backchecking is normal though. Maybe it's the rest of your tactics? It really makes no sense.

i dunno my team seems to struggle at doing anything right now cept scoring. they will put the puck into the net, but they allow every puck that the oppoents shoot to go in, at times its like 20 SOG to 50 SOG and its starting to get really frustrating that everything going bad when it seems like they should be able to at least do somewhat decent.

If only batdad will share his tactics then i'll think about participating in this challenge ( i got really bored playing normally, i have yet to play with one team past 2009-2010 season ). Anyways, good luck everyone.

Alas,right now my tactics not working so well. Defensively yes, but offensively not even close. I am going to stick with it though and see if maybe it is just a matter of training this team for longer as my staff is not as good as it has been in the past. Not on the same page in terms of styles enough.

Ken Holland got canned in Detroit already. He would not sign with me, but I think that I will be looking for a new coach, and bump Wayner down to assistant...so I keep checking and look for a firing. It will also allow me to dump one of my other bum assistants.


And hakushi..please introduce yourself in the arrivals thread and try out the challenge---you can play 1, 2, 3 or 8 seasons. Does not matter how many, just give it a go if you are interested/

My defense isn't overly strong, but the past few weeks I've chopped and changed my D pairings, and 3rd and 4th line players and it seems to keep everyone on there toes. I'm just really struggling to get secondary scoring but I'm planning for the draft, I'm still an outside chance of a playoff spot though, so I will see how it is with about 20 games left.

And the wheels fall off for me in the second frame.

Reinprect has gone down with a torn ACL for 3 months.

Scouting has picked up big time and I'm crossing my fingers for a top ten pick. The Ducks are also doing naff so hopefully their pick is nice and high as well.

Hmm after 60 games I'm struggling again, I went on a 4-5 game winning streak and thought I turned a corner, but then lost 5 in a row. I think playoffs are out for this year.

I just wrapped up the first 20 games before lunch and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. Had a very nice streak of games going where Fast Freddy Shoestring was dominant to land me at 11-6-3, fourth in the conference, and Freddy at a team leading +13 +/- rating.

Other than Sjöström the team MVP was clearly Jovanovski at 6+11 points. My D-men usually start out nicely in the points department only to disappear as the season rolls along though, I need to figure that one out.

Some awards for the first 20:
Sick rush award: Sjöström - scoring 6 goals in 5 games to take the shared goalscoring lead and a dominant +/- lead.
Mini-Calder award: Kaigorodov - leading the team in points and assists at 6+18.
Making the most of it award: Zigomanis - averaging 8.5 minutes per game and scoring 5+2.
Inconsistency award: Kapanen - I can't figure out if he's good or bad.

I'm still wanting more from York, especially after seeing Lidas' player stats.
Looking at the ratings for the last few games he seems to be getting better though, let's hope it lasts.

Ugh!

I just lost Kaigorodov for 3 months to a MCL injury.
Oh well, time to make up some new lines then, just as these were really starting to roll.

BTW...is anyone else havin Niko Kapanen play like rubbish? His first few games he's had a rating of 6 then he had a rating of 4. I benched him to let him get his head on straight, he does have a handful of points, but man he's playing like rubbish.

Ouch! Reinprecht out for 3 months? That'll kill your season worse than losing just about any other player on the team, IMO. Losing Kaigorodov is pretty bad too but I know in my game, Reinprecht has been the key to my offense.

Loosie, I've been having trouble with Kapanen. He's terrible. He'll play good for a game or two sometimes and I'll think "Why don't I bump him up a line and give him a chance?". Then he quickly reminds me why I have him wasting oxygen on the 4th line.

Kapanen has been rubbish for me... 5.92 in 36 games - most spent on the 3rd line

Kapanen 30GP 1G 5A +1 20 PIM 5.97 avr. I'm hoping I can replace him after the first season.