EHM The Blue Line

I'm struggling a little bit with the way penalties are handed out in the game, to say the least. I haven't yet seen a game really turned around by an inspiring fight performance, so the upside of fighting isn't clear to me. And the seemingly inevitable game misconducts -- I'd guess no fewer than 75% of all fights engaged in by my players set to fighting "Allowed" were met with my player (only) receiving 5 for fighting, 2 for instigating, a 10 minute misconduct, and a 10 minute game misconduct -- mean there's a massive, massive downside. Would I be much better off just forbidding my players from fighting?

I believe that by not allowing any of your players fight could result in some of your star players fighting. By allowing some players to fight you are also making it clear to others that they should not drop the gloves.

I've find the above to be true. You can get some strange players fighting if you don't allow anyone too. Fights will occur regardless.

By having a couple of "fighters" in your team you alleviate that. Even if you don't believe in having an enforcer as such, get a Clifford, Martin, Roussel type player along with an Iginla, Stewart, Benn type player and they'll do a vast majority of your FM's.

Although this version of EHM seems to hand out an extraordinary amount of GM's along with it's Instigators.

You'll find most enforcers in this game can still put up a handful of pts across a season. Good enough for a 4th liner with the added benefit of fighting.

Sometimes you get strange players fighting no matter what you have as status for others. I had Scott Laughton set to berserk.encouraged for 6 games. In that six games Raffl, Voracek and Streit all had scraps despite being set to no fighting. Laughton? No fights til the 6th game. Simmonds on aggressive and allowed? No fights.

Jacob Trouba is set to aggressive/allowed for 26 games...no fights.
Klefbom--aggressive/allowed---no fights 24 games.
Stone normal.allowed-no fights 25 games

Raffl? Easy/not allowed-2 fights in 26 games.

In my challenge now in 2nd season have only Simmonds and Rinaldo set to Allowed and they dont fight much...funny thing is that normaly when i score 1st then it comes to a fight but if im behind then only if i would put on encouraged. So i think it makes sense and its realistic.

1st season of Challenge 36 with Flyers when i played on 4th line with J.Scott - Rinaldo - Stortini and all had on Allowed...and if i put them on Encouraged well there was a fight everytime they were on ice almost. So basicly you need to scout and find a player described as "Enforcer" and he will do damage...either to you or the opponent!

Batdad, havent had any fights in my game that RAffl was involved.