EHM The Blue Line

I am in a freeware league and my team is the Montreal Canadiens. My team is good, I have depth, but I can't seem to get them going, my goal against is more than my goal for and can't seem to fix it. Here is my line up:


Thomas Novak (79-77) - Jonathan Drouin (83-72) -* Niko Huuhtanen (82-73): 60 sec - Passing Play
* Zack Stringer (75-77) - Pierre-Luc Dubois (80-73) - Ryan McLeod (79-73): 60 sec - Passing Play
*Stephen Halliday (75-76) - Nick Bjugstad (79-78) - Anton Slepychev (76-78) : 50 sec - Neutral Zone Trap
Frederik Gauthier (74-75) - Philip Danault (75-73) - Casey Cizikas (72-75): 40 sec - Neutral Zone Trap
Extra: *Charles Beaudoin (76-70)

Evan Bouchard (76-78) - *Case McCarthy (82-82)
* Brent Cheveldea (69-82) - Michael Del Zotto (74-76)
Tyler Myers (70-77) - Darnell Nurse (62-78)
Extra: *Samuel Knazko (75-70)

*Anthony Filiatreault (73-73)
Frederik Andersen (79-79)

P.S: We are in Season 8 (2024) so you guys might see names that you don't know. And the league has removed the Hit & Grind tactic.

*= Players 23 years old and under.

I don't know what else to do.

Any suggestions/opinions??

I don't know enough about player sizes and Skating attributes of the guys you listed. However, I can and will say that even when leagues ban Hit & Grind, I found that Dump & Chase is a highly underrated tactic. It requires bigger wingers that can also Skate decently, but can have a similar effect to an opponent. I'd never run D&C on a 1st line (though people have in online leagues, with success), but for a 2nd and/or 3rd line, or maybe a 4th line also? Certainly. You have to have the right winger bodies to do it though. If you're wingers are mostly small, it can greatly reduce your chances of it working. D&C seems to work because most people in online leagues don't use it themselves, and so their lineup isn't prepared to meet it.

One other thing is that while you posted the DF of your d-men, POS is the most-key attribute there, followed by CHK. If d-man has a HIT really high, but his POS and CHK are low, it'll skew his DF calculations upwards to look better than he actually is. Make sure you're not playing someone on your top 2 pairs that has a DF that looks decent but has lower POS and CHK. That can help immensely with a team's GA and it's amazing to me how many online GM's only look at DF and not the 3 individual ratings that make up the DF calculation. Also, make sure none of those d-man have lead feet -- they have to be able to skate some on those top 2 pairs for sure. Otherwise, they're just pylons.

That's a good place to start from IMHO.