EHM The Blue Line

Hey guys,

So since the World Cup of Hockey has been going on, I wanted to see if I could do a manager career. I checked into it last night, and sure enough you absolutely can. Figured why not, and jumped at the chance to see if I could take a bad team (Belgium) and make them slightly better. The only problem is, I have no clue what I'm doing.

Let me rephrase that, does anyone have any tips or tricks to do this? I started in September, hired some good coaches cause financials aren't an issue for international teams, and won all 5 games in my group for the 3rd level IIHF World Championship. I'm guessing the way to get the most out of this is get to a point where you play more than one tournament a year, and hope the players develop on their own. Would joining a club office and producing talent be the best way to ensure that the youth improve?

The NHL Draft had my 3rd goalie Wouter Peeters drafted, and apparently there's a duel national Sean Day who was born in Belgium. Would it be possible to call Day up for international games or is he declared?

Just thought I'd ask!

You won't find out about Day until you try calling him up I think? Also if he plays in a 'big' league that is still going on when the World Championships start then he might not join-up preferring to stay with his club team.

International Management is a fun aside, but there isn't much scope for development really, I only ever do it alongside a 'club' save as well. not sure if Belgium's U20 team is in any playable competitions but might be an idea to keep an eye on them too and 'bring up' some of the youth players if you can?

Always thought it would be fun to take over a European-League side (better standard of play/coaching) and the GB National Team and sign my Brit Players to the Euro team to try and develop them. Maybe also take over a lower-league British team and bring in young foreign players (who my scouts predict as high-potential) and naturalise them so they are eligible as dual-nationals? As a sort of 'Development Program' save?

Not actually managed to do that in a save yet but might give you a bit more to do. Not sure if international teams even get to use scouts, so it's not even like you'd be able to scout loads of eligible players just using the one GM?

If you're looking to manage a National Team that's not one of the typical/top hockey nations, I'd think it'd be helpful when initially creating the game to ensure you select "Add Players to National Team Pools" and select "Full" for Database Size (on the Select Options page) - this would give you the best opportunity for player selection options

Thanks guys,

yeah Belgium's u20 team isn't playable yet. When you sort players eligible for the national team it only has 4 pages of players. Where we're at now, every year the youth academy comes up and immediately can be on the team haha.

I'm thinking this year I'll create a new GM and import some talent. Most of my guys are in the local Belgian league or the Dutch/Belgium league. International teams don't have scouts, which kind of sucks getting a benchmark of how good your guys are. We've had 2 pretty easy promotions in a row, I'm just trying to get to a level where I play more than 1 tournament a year.

I would recommend you to create BeNeLeague from for example DEL League. From what I remember there are 14 teams in both leagues (remember to change league reputation ) It's possible to do by using Editor

EDIT: Found the editor, thought it'd be in the steam files.

Will play around!

It's here. http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... 48&t=16014

You just need to swap teams from DEL (or something else) and BeNeLeague. You can also change reputation, colours and names of the leagues with this editor. To edit league limits about foreigners (There isn't one in BeNeLeague from what I've read sometime ago) the easiest way is to use EHM Assistant created by TBL Forum User Garfild. But there's potential con - some teams from BeNeLeague might appear in second season in Champions Hockey League.

That's how I was creating for example Kazakhstan League (from Danish) when I played with Barys Astana - just to have more Kazakhs in my game and follow development of my younger players

Took the weekend off from this, and came back with some ideas. Going into the 4th year, I would add another GM for a random team in Europe that my players could be fringe players on, signing them, then retiring. Of the 3 or 4 I did that to, nothing really materialized. One thing I kept getting was the language barrier was too much. I'm thinking the best chance to get my players playing at an elite level would be bringing a lot of them to Switzerland.

The national team had 2 promotions, and is now in the 2nd level world championship and way over our head.