EHM The Blue Line

Folks,

How do you extract revenge on an opposing player for "running" either your goalie or star player.

Now I don't really want this to be a discussion on whether this is right or wrong to tell your enforcer to "take care of business". I'm kinda old school in my thinking on this.

I know that "technically" coaches never tell a player to take on another player, but we all know why we have enforcers on our roster....

Example - my star player gets injured after a rough hit from the opposing player. I want my enforcer to (shall we say) let the other team know that this is not acceptable behavior. How do I set it up for him to send the message.

I've tried setting the fighting to "encouraged", and set the player to check to be the offending player on the other team, but that doesn't seem to work.

Also, on a side note - One of my star players got "run" by the other team's tough guy late in the third period. The next game I played against that team, the opposing player was a "healthy scratch"... Humm....


Thanks

Don't worry about sounding politically incorrect... I have the same mentality. If you take out one of my players, then you and my Billy Bob here are gonna have to have to sit down and talk it over.

In fact, days before the EHM 2004 demo was released, and I was still playing the freeware, I asked this very question about the approaching new game. Because it couldn't be done in the freeware, and I was desperate to be able to tell players to target others for injuring my guys.

Anyway... the way to do it is to tell one of you players to 'target' another player. If that's not getting the job done, then I'm not sure there's anything else you can do. Maybe you could use line matching to maximize the chances of the two players being on the ice at the same time, but I can't say for sure. I'm just a GM-only player, so I don't have any experience with tactics.

I don't know if you can force it to happen but I think there might be a way to get something to happen... or at least be more likely. What it you set your goon or whoever to shadow that player (player to check), then set his aggressiveness to the maximum, fighting enable, and hitting to max as well. I would think that this would increase the likelihood of something happening.

In the past, I have put my tough guy on all 4 lines and left the bugger out there targeting who I want him to, until he either:

1. Dies
2. Gets the job done
3. Gets someone else.

It usually takes about 3 minutes at the most for the goon to go at it with someone. Just put him out there and leave him out there. Often, he jumps over the boards immediately and goes after someone.

batdad wrote:In the past, I have put my tough guy on all 4 lines and left the bugger out there targeting who I want him to, until he either:

1. Dies
2. Gets the job done
3. Gets someone else.

It usually takes about 3 minutes at the most for the goon to go at it with someone. Just put him out there and leave him out there. Often, he jumps over the boards immediately and goes after someone.

Haha...i think i should try that sometimes...just 4 fun...

Putting the enforcer on all the lines sounds like a workable solution. I've tried targeting, but often the target he chooses is another player, probably because of availability and line-matching. But that's okay, since he always pounds them into interesting new bone structures anyway, the message is sent one way or the other...

batdad wrote:In the past, I have put my tough guy on all 4 lines and left the bugger out there targeting who I want him to, until he either:

1. Dies
2. Gets the job done
3. Gets someone else.

It usually takes about 3 minutes at the most for the goon to go at it with someone. Just put him out there and leave him out there. Often, he jumps over the boards immediately and goes after someone.

HAHAHA!! That just made me laugh out loud. Here's the conversation which ensued:

Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The Mrs: What you laughing at?
Me: Just something on the internet - it wouldnt interest you
Mrs: Let me see
Me: No, you wouldn't find it remotely funny or interesting.
Mrs: Let me see (she comes over and reads it)
Mrs: That's not funny
Me: Told ya!
Mrs: Stop being so sad. Get a life!!

Charming! lol

I usually encourage all players with even some aggression to fight, whether they're d-men or attackers. I also instruct these players to very hard checking, tight marking and most notably berserk aggressiveness. Whether or not they're instructed to check the player that caused the injury is IMO pointless. As long as someone (or preferably the entire opposing team) knows what is to be expected if a star player on your team is taken out. Usually, it won't take too long before things start to go down. I do this by sacrificing the game at hand, since it tends to lead to a certain loss. Putting your goon(s) on whatever line is playing the opposing line that caused the initial injury is also a good way of making sure they'll be on the ice when that fool opponent is on.

In a game yesterday my star player Benoit Larue (I created him myself...) was injured by a hit from Bobby Holik from the Sabres. We were up 4-0 at that point. For the third period I set all my lines to beserk aggressiveness and very hard hitting and instructed all of my players to be allowed to fight. Right of the face-off Brendan Morrow jumps Francois Beauchemin and got ejected from the game. At the 50-minute mark a line brawl breaks out with all twelve guys on the ice picking up fighting majors. Talk about sending a message!! GREAT STUFF!!!

I absolutely LOVE line brawls!! I'm not a big fan of the prototypical enforcer, since I've found that most only fight when set to "encouraged", and turn into penalty machines racking uo the instigator penalties, getting my team onthe PK.

The "natural" fights, however, I enjoy. Skilled but tough players that can drop them eventually, but don't have to make a living out of it. Scott Hannan is my favourite at it.

I remenber a time when I was playing the Canucks, Matt Cooke got around Hannan and skated near the corner in my zone. Hannan took a few strides from the faceoff circle and completely NAILED Cooke in the corner. As they made contact, they instantly were wired up. I swear, Hannan threw around 20 punches and Cooke didn't make a move, alltough both got fighting majors. In the play-by-play, it was said "Cooke was injured by that big hit from Hannan" (broken jaw), he can't have fought! I Assume Hannan simply started punching his head to the ice while Cooke was laying motionless with his jaw broken. LOL!

Come to think of it, Cooke probably deserves it!

Hmm...my goons fight whether agressive, berserk, allowed or encouraged. Boogaard and Petrecki just love to go. And recently Ryan Wilson too. And Gaustad and Andrew Ladd...and man even Cam Barker has 4 fights and he is listed as not allowed, passive.


Cooke deserves it? Come on, no way. he is such a nice guy. Hopefully sarcasm detectors are turned on.

Interesting, I've had Gaustad before, he was a great fighter and defensive forward, but would absolutely NEVER fight unless he was set to encouraged, then he'd drop them like there's no tomorrow. His aggression attribute was around 13. And I used an aggresive and hard hitting tactic all-around very often (mainly for the hitting more then fighting).

I've never used the so-called full-time enforcers like Boogard or Laraque for extended periods of time, I'll try some more naturaly aggresive guys like them.