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Written by Sam Hansen
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Wednesday, 10 February 2010 14:38 |
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Over the last 2 and a half seasons i've seen a lot of people ask about how they should train their players and/or find the best place for them on their team. While there are a number of theories about how to best setup your team, there are none that are 100% full-proof and accurate. I've had a lot of players come and go through my team over the last year and have tried and tested a few different methods to try and come up with a proven system. What I discovered is that there is 1 system that not only is highly accurate, but is also blatently obvious and right in front of us. I've named this the "4-Step Player Skill Method".
The Process
The method is really quite simple. It looks at 4 key plarts of your players skills and narrows them down to find the best position / place to play them, and how to train them. You will find if you use a spreadsheet such as google spreadsheets or excel this system is much easier to follow.
Disclaimer: I want to point out that my preferred training method is the 4-3-2 (or 100%-75%-50%) method where your secondary attributes are 75% and 50% of your primary attribute. If you train a different style, please take this into account when reading below.
The 3 steps to this method focus on the following:
- Player Attribute Balance
- Attribute Quality
- Preferred Side
- Experience & Chemistry
I will explain each a little in detail below.
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Last Updated on Sunday, 28 February 2010 22:59 |
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Written by Sam Hansen
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Saturday, 30 January 2010 13:51 |
Did you know you can setup tactics in advance? If you were to ask most veteran PPM players they would tell you that having tactics pre-set is one of the best ways to manage your team. The question then isn't should we use tactics, but which ones do we set? In your PPM members area under the "Game" menu you will find a sub-section called "Tactics" (link: http://hockey.powerplaymanager.com/en/tactics.html). This page is where you will setup and/or edit your pre-defined tactics. It should be said that i'm assuming you are a pro member here, and have full tactic features. If not, please read on anyway as this is truly a wonderful feature. What you want to do is setup a few different tactics, so that you can quickly set your team up before each game. There is no right or wrong way to do this, however there are commonly suggested tactics that are considered "must-haves". The top 3 that I strongly suggest you have are:
- Defense with Low Importance. This tactic is one of the best you can use against a team that is stronger than you, and is especially good Vs a team who plays the offensive tactic. Low importance is optional, however to conserve energy loss, i always suggest playing low importance unless the game is a "must-win".
- Normal with Low Importance. This tactic is pretty much the same as above, however the normal tactic system is very good against the "Defensive" style of play. It's also a great tactic to use as a fall-back, so if you're unsure, normal is a pretty good all-round one to go with.
- Breaking Up with Low Importance. This is my favorite tactic as it's the very best one to use against teams that use the "normal" tactic option. As many new players and/or those who don't change tactics use normal by default, this one can be a very popular one to go with.
Offensive, Counterattacks and Active Forecheck are also good options, however if in doubt, start with these top 3 first and then go from there. Reading the forums will reveal a LOT of information about which tactics to use the most. Setting Up your Tactics
This is one of the hardest parts of the game. Choosing the tactic to use is not enough, as you also need to play around with a few other options.
3 or 4 lines?
If you are up against a tough opponent, think of playing just 3 lines by choosing "yes" underr the rotate 3 lines section. 3 lines will use more energy, but will allow you to play only your top 3 lines of players so have more chance to score and therefore win.
Changing the goalie and/or dropping the 4th line?
These 2 options are both good if your team is being lit up on he scoreboard. I always choose the option to change and reduce lines after both the 1st and 2nd periods, and generally have trailing by 2 (to 99) after 1st and trailing by 1 (to 99) after the 2nd period for both options. the leading by option an i have set to 99 to 99. The 99 means the option is not used.
Mimic your opposition?
If your opposition drops their 4th line, you can set your team to mimic them and do the same. Some believe saying "yes" to this ensures your team will play at their best, but it is purely optional.
Pulling the goalie?
This is always a difficult decision to make as it means your team is trailing with 2 minutes to go in the game, however if you find yourself in this position you can have your team pull the goalie in exchange for a 6th skater. It's not always a good move, but worth a shot if you're ballsy enough to take the risk.
As always, tactics are a personal preference thing and what one person believes to be a great idea may be a really stupid one to the next person. My suggestion is give different tactics a shot and see how your team works.
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Written by Sam Hansen
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Saturday, 06 February 2010 15:00 |
For a while now there have been discussions on the PPM forums regarding ice time distribution over a teams lines. There have been 2 main lines of thought on this issue; all lines play the same time on ice and that the line time on ice shortens with each line. Tonight however we discovered that a veteran player stated that as of this time, all the lines play the same length shifts and that in the future, PPM developers will be adding a function where managers can prioritise their ice time distribution. This news brings 2 vital things to our attention:
- PPM are aware that manager controlled ice time is important for the game and plan to offer it. Kudos to PPM.
- Your 4th line could be dramatically weakening your team an effective immediately, I suggest leaning towards playing just 3 lines every game.
Why Only 3 Lines?Simply put.. your 4th line (assuming it is a weaker line) is taking ice time that is better spent on your top players. Or, to put it another way, your top line players are on the ice a lot less than they should be. This potentially costs you scoring chances, goals and alternatively, better defensive skills available on the ice. Counting It DownIf you play 4 lines and all play equal time, it means each line is playing 15 minutes on the ice. While having 15 minutes for your top lines is great, your 4th line, often the weakest offensive & defensive line is also playing that same 15 minutes - not good. If you drop the 4th line from the match it greatly increases the ice time to 20 minutes for each line, meaning you top scorers and defensemen are on the ice when you need them. While it may seem that a 5 minute increase is not too much of a difference, it's the removal of that weaker 4th line that truly gives you benefit. The Top/4th Cross-Over BenefitI know what you're thinking... what the heck is a Top/4th Cross-Over benefit? What it refers to a situation that would happen when your 3 line team plays a 4 line team; your top line being on the ice at the same time as your oppositions 4th line. This is the ideal situation as you have your most offensive guys out there against what you would assume to be your opponents weakest defense. That advantage swing in your favour can make a huge difference to your chance of winning. This also goes the other way where your 3rd line may face the other teams top line, but as i'm sure you'll agree, this is a far smaller issue than your 4th line being out there. Drop Or Not?It needs to be pointed out that choosing to drop the 4th line is entirely a managers personal preference. My suggestion is this: if you have a 4th line that is dramatically weaker than your other 3, drop it for league and tournament matches and only play it for the friendly games. You should also take the time to analyse your opponent before every single game! If you have an opponent who plays 3 lines, make sure you drop your 4th. If they always play 4 lines, drop to 3 and see how you go. A bit of research into your opponents can make all the difference when the game engine kicks in and the daily update is run. |
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Written by Sam Hansen
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Friday, 29 January 2010 13:06 |
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There are countless debates on the PPM forums regarding the best attribute balance to use. While many are talking about 100-80-60, 2-1-1 and 4-3-2, nobody seems to be talking about a seemingly "less important" issue; the best order to train your players.
Less important?
In all honesty, that depends on how you look at it. Personally I am of the belief that the attributes essentially tell us the order of priority they should be trained in; primary, followed by each of the secondary attributes. I want to take a little time however to explain 1 or 2 theories regarding attributes that would or could affect the order we train them.
Star Ratings
It is theorised that the players star rating is most strongly affected by the primary attribute, so if you were wanting to build a team that looked good on a ratings pov, then building the primary before the others is the way you want to go.
PIMs
We know that PIMs are for the most part caused by a players aggression attribute being higher than the players technique attributes. The way to fix this common PIM problem is to simply focus training on the technique attribute until it surpasses the aggression. Saying that, Wingers and Centers both use the technique attribute as part of their core attribute group, so you're going to want this to be high anyway. If you're training your centers or wings and had to choose between training offense or technique, and your player had a PIM issue, then naturally opting to train the technique could be the wiser option.
Training Camps
If you've run training camps for your players you would know how good the extra training can be. The question then, is how to best train your players in the lead-up to a training camp... which means PLANNING weeks in advance to your camps starting. Not planned this far ahead for a camp before? You'd be amazed how good the idea can be.
Here's how my strategy works. At the training camp you want to train your players core attributes (generally), but as you would know, some attributes have a higher quality than others, so will train at a higher rate. What I do is look at which attributes i'm going to need to train and in the weeks building up to the training camp, will train the HIGHER quality attributes. At the training camp, i then focus on the lower quality attribute. I know, this makes no sense right? Afterall, surely i'd want to get BIG training bonuses for my players at camp? See, while this does make sense, what my theory does is helps your lower quality attributes train (at the training camp) at around the same speed / level your higher quality attributes do on a normal day. It may not appear to be a good idea, but over the length of the season, your players will train better overall. This only applies of course if you are very strict about how balanced your players attributes are.
Personal Preference
At the end of the day, the order you train your attributes is personal preference. In this article i've outlined just 3 different things that could affect the way you train. Do you have any others? Please leave a comment with your preferred training methods.
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