EHM The Blue Line

I'm having an issue where my top defenseman is playing way too many minutes each game and I can't seem to reduce it. He's regularly at 30+ mins and by the end of the game his conditioning is in the 70's (after starting at 100). I really don't think it's good to have him so tired in the 3rd period.

I have him on the 2nd pairing, 1st PP and 2nd PK. However he'll still be over 30mins in games where we only get 1 or 2 PP's. I've switched my Defense and forward usage to equal, but it doesn't seem to impact it at all.

My suspicion is that he's consistently being played with the 4th line, but I don't know if there's anything I can do to keep that from happening. When he was injured for a couple of weeks the same thing was happening to the best defenseman on the team with him out of the line up.

Any suggestions to help reduce his ice time?



P.S. Apologies if this is answered elsewhere, I searched for it and didn't find anything

The coach will heavily utilize your top defenseman if he's clearly the best D on the lineup. If you have two top guys who are nearly as good overall, the minutes should come down some. Typically if one of your Ds is far above the overall skill level compared to the rest, the coach will reduce ice time of the "worst" guy and play the best guy instead (also applies to how tired each player is). This happens even when your 'star' D is only rated for Left Defense for example (meaning he's not LD/RD). The coach will still play him as an RD at times while keeping your 'worst' RD's minutes low.

Two fixes: 1. Take the player off of your PK unit or your PP unit. 2.Have another D who is nearly as good so they split the minutes more. Naturally the problem with that is the AI often has a different idea than the player on who's a good player and who is not...

Usually the very heavy minute loads happen when there's a lot of special team play going on. It can help in the long run to limit the player to just some special teams, but even then they can have 30-minutes if they are still playing some special team time.

The AI coach has a logic to how he utilizes your players and if there is significant gap in ability between players, the coach will take that into account and use the better player more than is necessarily good for the player. Although not very efficient at it, the AI coach is still trying to win games. And the logic is that your very best D will still play better than your very worst one even if he is quite tired.

Following the subject, it would be interesting to hear if you manage to change the situation. And if you don't mind sharing the actual average TOI this player has been playing for the season. In the NHL with a high natural fitness D who also has 17+ stamina my findings show there usually isn't performance degradation when the avg TOI stays at 24 min or below. But for a junior player with limited stamina, things may be quite different.

His totals at the end of the year were 29:35/gm with 4:27/pp and 1:58/pk. I'm surprised his average wasn't over 30 mins, but I still don't like him playing 29 mins a game.

I went back and took a random 3 games in 3 days stretch, which happen occasionally in the OHL, and where it's the post painful having him finish games at less than 80% conditioning.
Game 1: 32:43 TOI, 6:51PP, 0:00PK (wow, took no penalties that game!) Condition = 79% Also this game went to OT
Game 2: 30:10 TOI, 1:39PP, 1:10PK Condition = 77%
Game 3: 35:34 TOI, 9:46PP, 1:13PK Condition = 64%

You might be right that I need to look at putting him on PP2, but that would be too bad because he's my best offensive D-man. Would really prefer that he just play a bit less at 5v5!

Looking at those numbers I get the feeling the problem might not really go away unless you find another D who has the same level of capability to the AI understands to give some of those minutes to someone else too.

Since he's an offensive D (usually the player who gets most time is an offensive D) I would Personally try taking him off the PK units completely and see what happens. One thing worth a try also, is to see if you can find another D who may not be as good a player but is decent as has good stamina. Maybe the AI would give such a guy decent minutes because of the high stamina. That could possibly help too.

One thing is a little 'gamey' but for the purpose of testing, you might also see what happens if you take one of your lesser forwards off your 4th line and put him into a 4th pairing D spot. If your star D is an LD put him onto the left side on the 4th D pairing and vice versa. Give it a few games and see if playing with seven "defensemen" helps any. Doing a few games with 11 forwards should not affect your game success much if at all.

I tried putting a player in the 4th pairing defenseman spot, but that seemed to create some new problems. Early on in my new season I had a game where there was essentially no PP or PK time and he had 30:37 TOI on only 18 shifts.

I realized that having the defense usage to equal, which I did to try and reduce his ice time, meant he was playing two shifts back to back. Playing with the 4th line and then staying out with the 1st line so I switched it back to normal. I also changed my GM settings to having my coach actually coach the games (using my roster/lines/tactics) and it seems to have solved the problem. I thought if I let the coach take over the actual game he would be smart enough not to play the same d-man in back to back shifts. Apparently when I was coaching the games he was just rolling the pairings one after another!

Now he's at a more reasonable 24-25 ATOI for the season and hasn't hit 30 minutes in a game.

sappyporpoise77 wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:48 pm I also changed my GM settings to having my coach actually coach the games (using my roster/lines/tactics) and it seems to have solved the problem.

Thanks for reporting on your results. I never thought of the GM options. I didn't even remember the default settings ignore the lines and tactics you set as a player I've never played EHM without my own lines and tactics. I'll try to remember about the settings next time!

Hi guys, a little late to the party

I used to have my top 2 dmen skillwise around 30+ min ATOI regardless of what my line combinations were so clearly it was the coach messing things up.

Way i fixed it was in unit tactics i have 1st, 2nd and 3rd lines on 40s shifts and the 4th on 30s, sometimes 20sec.

In the D pairings i always fill the 4th pair aswell. So you can basically select which Dmen you want to work that extra 8-10min a game that 4th line cumulates. If i copy paste my 3rd D pair to the 4th aswell, all of the dmen will have around 16-20min per game of ice time.

I have Seider (1st RD) and Edvinson (2nd LD) who are workhorses with 20 strength and no PP responsibilities so i have them working the 4th pairing and i use the flashier offensive dmen on PP. So Seider and Edvinson rack up around 27-30min while the used to be problematic Hronek for example is limited to around 20min a game and isnt exhausted ever.