EHM The Blue Line

Hi I'm not familiar with this forum so hopefully this is a good place to post this,

So i'm playing in a online league(INHL) as the Sabres and I've encountered a wierd pattern now where my players in their mid to late 20s are suffering large decay spreads of 1-2 points across ALL technical, physical skills, and about half their mental skills. No one else in the league has reported the same issue as me as well as have a clear idea on whats going on. We're 7 or 8 years into the game and I've been playing since the second season. I don't have alot of experience in single player as i find it dreadfully boring due to the bad AI to play, so I can't compare my experience in this online league to moth else. I don't have any hockey background outside playing EHM for the past year and a half so I have to go off of what I mostly read here and what others tell me.

Let me set up some context information. I have some of the best coaching in the league with amazing mentals in the needed areas with 17-20 technicals. I DON'T have a conditioning style coach but the coach on conditioning duty is this guy:


My practice has assistant coaches doing 1-2 duties, head coach on 3 duties. Practice this season has been 2-3 intensives and others medium/light. In previous seasons I've done full intensive for players(people recommend I do this but I wasn't seeing the growth i was expecting to have so i changed it this season), I've always had my starting goalie on 1 intensive(conditioning) and mediums/light as he had faster fatigue issues when i went higher(But I do swap in the back up goalie when he is fatigued).

For tactics i do 40 sec shifts on 1-2 line and 20 on 3-4, with normal forward usage/overload defensive. The shift length and overload seem like the popular options in the league so I don't think i'm doing anything different in tactics.

This issue is happening on players who should be lines 1-2 players(top 6?) players. The scout reports put them as very promising players, their AvR and general performance are good and they seem to have bright futures.

One of the first players I've noticed this happen to is my goalie Connor Hellebuyck. He had been performing like a top 5 league goalie with 0.915 SV% and sub 3.00 GAA, AvR of about 7.6. At 30 years old he ate a chunk of decay right before the end of the last season shown before.





This season his performance has noticably dipped to more of a middle of the pack goalie with lower stats across the board. From what i've been told goalies 'peek' around 33 so I figured maybe he was unlucky or overworked or something which lead to a earlier old age decay but his attributes have been steady since that decay drop.

This season I've had a couple players hit by this drastic decay.

First up is Defenceman Dunn





The only unique difference Dunn has had is he went from 1st line time last season to 2nd line time this season But at 28 it seems strange to suddenly have a jump in decay when he's done nothing but have growth so far with no period spent at a 'peek' longer then a season. With being on the 2nd line it seems really strange for him to be overworked in any way as he's was very respectable 1st/2nd line player


The most recent player this stat decay has really sent alarm bells ringing for me. Its a prospect I drafted(and i imagine is random generated?) thats had nothing but years of growth. First is when I drafted him(im including this just incase it helps)



This is him at the beginning of this season, its missing a fair bit of growth he had even this season through out his technicals and physicals many stats had 1 or 2 points of gain.



And I know it doesn't show it but I can assure you that every single attribute dropped 1-2 points, with the exception of some mentals.



Now I have been playing him as a LD and retraining him since the summer and this season in practice. He gained the LD positioning 1-2 months before this current stats dropoff(it was suggested maybe he lost the attributes due to him being retrained but since this stat drop off is happening to multiple other players now i don't think its the case). This player had been playing line 1 time all season on LD and hasn't showed any signs of low condition or bad morale. Last season he was getting a mix of primarily line 2 LW time.

This whole stat decay issue is really quite bewildering to me as no one in the league seems to have encountered this before for players who should be solid NHL players. I understand that propspects who don't pan out or old players decaying with age do face drop in stats, but it seems to be incremental and in specific areas with possible gains in stuff like pokecheck+positioning. But for these players who should be growing or at the height of their skill to have all their attributes technical+physical attributes drop with no gains anywhere is just confusing. I don't seem to be doing any bad tactics or practice settings compared to other teams, my coaching staff is some of the best in the league. So im just confused whats going on. And it especially sucks that players I'm building my team around and signing new expensive contracts with are then getting hit so bad by these seemingly random attribute decays when they should be steady or growing. I think I'm ranting now so I'll just say I'm looking for insight on what may be going on as I feel as if players at their prime shouldn't be getting this type of decay.

Did you change your head scout?

same head scout for the past few seasons, it changed well before this happened.

Mayi wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 3:55 am same head scout for the past few seasons, it changed well before this happened.

The only other thing I've seen that would account for this is working your players too hard in practice during the season.

Canadian Passport wrote: Tue Feb 12, 2019 3:20 am

Mayi wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 3:55 am same head scout for the past few seasons, it changed well before this happened.

The only other thing I've seen that would account for this is working your players too hard in practice during the season.

What would you consider to be a too hard practice regime? I've seen decay in 27 y/o players and I've seen a first pair D-man drop his attributes all round by about 30% in half a year, at just 33 years old. The sudden big drops are the most peculiar, but so are smaller drops in players who are otherwise doing very well and don't show any problems regarding fatigue during season.

I’ve also noticed rarely, randomly a very good player will suddenly take a nosedive in attributes and stats in what should be their prime.

Honestly - I don’t mind it. Not every player in real life follows a nice bell curve. Sometimes a guy just loses it after being outstanding - often it’s a lingering and damaging injury but in some cases it’s not physical at all.

I had a recent test sim where Jack Hughes had an 80 point rookie season and several more top scoring seasons but at age 24 after like 5 seasons I looked and his attributes had plummeted and he was a 30-40 point player the rest of his career. As long as it’s rare - I think it’s an interesting wrinkle, whether the game does it on purpose or not.

Sometimes the state of a player and his mental state and passion to be the best are just out of your control - no matter how good your trainers and coaches and physios are.

TurboJ wrote: Tue Feb 12, 2019 6:51 am What would you consider to be a too hard practice regime?

Intense conditioning or skating in the NHL during the season.

Its weird that people think overly intense practice is the issue, I believe most of the players/teams in my league recommend and run full intensive everything(except on goalies) and don't seem to have issues I've faced. Condition on my players generally are over 90% except right after a game or if I have 2-3 straight game days(its hard to tell as my league does 1 game week sim at a time so I can't compare day to day recovery). My team also had these training issues only when I dropped full intensive everything and changed to a season of 2-3 intensive practices.

Mayi wrote: Thu Feb 14, 2019 9:34 am Its weird that people think overly intense practice is the issue, I believe most of the players/teams in my league recommend and run full intensive everything(except on goalies) and don't seem to have issues I've faced.

Are you running an NHL team or some team in Europe that plays 50 games per year?

I am having decay in nearly every generated player I have on my roster. Must be a training program issue as it hits almost all players. Maybe I'll try a lighter work load while the season is on and do the intense regime in the off season.. That's what they do IRL anyway, and that's kinda what the game itself instructs the player to do...

Canadian Passport wrote: Fri Feb 15, 2019 4:00 am Are you running an NHL team or some team in Europe that plays 50 games per year?

I'm playing a 32 team NHL database with the NHL team Sabres, I've consistently gone into playoffs each season and keep them training over the summer(I've never have issues with their condition or morale in summer).

Well, using a lighter practice schedule for the entire season had absolutely no effect on the decay, it happens just the same as it did with the more intensive regime. More than half of game-generated players are losing attributes in the mental and physical categories each year; the decay starts even before the players should peak (usually between 22 and 24 years of age it starts) so you can imagine it's pretty irritating.

I have really good coaches and they're correctly set up. The problem doesn't affect players originating in the TBL 10.3 database, only generated players. But of those it affects nearly every player I have. In two years a forward that has 14 speed will have 12 and the guy is 24 years old. It's quite baffling.

Playing now with a 2020 edition of the current 'official' database - and this is the first time I've NOT seen strange player decay. I'm using the version with prospect generator enabled.

So, I've been able to play 8 seasons now with no decay on young players SO FAR. This leads me to wonder what makes the difference. I've always played with TBL rosters but only the most recent career is with the new collaborated TBL/Pivot rosters with the embedded prospect generator.

The reason why I'm not having abnormal decay this time around - can it be that all my prospects have been actually pre-made by the prospect generator system and thus aren't really game-generated?

As I stated earlier, I had very noticeable decay before, usually starting at age 22-24 and by the age 28 the players would no longer be NHL level. This only happened to generated players and not pre-made database players. But in some cases 4 out of 5 generated players would have very very short careers. I've more than 1000 hours played on several different careers with this bug being present.

I'm hoping these notions will help to get to the bottom of this issue, as it really is fun to play this time when the players actually reach their prime.