Developing a National Team?

[miked1991]

I'm interested in how possible this is. I'm English and would love to be able to improve the GB national team and get it to be a strong top division national team in the world championships. My question is how possible is this and what should I do to get there? If the game is automatically going to produce better prospects for nations like Canada, USA, and Sweden thats going to make this almost impossible. However, if the prospects produced are say affected by world ranking, that gives me a chance to coach GB, get their rank up, and then in turn produce some better prospects for the national team. And then theres the question of what do I do for my club team? Should I play in the GB leagues with all brits, or should I maybe go to a big league (NHL even) with the no sack option on, and play an all brits team over there where the player should hopefully develop well and improve.

[grazza]

An all brits teams in NHL really ain't gonna improve your best players. If you wanna try this I read a guy ages ago on the SI forums saying he took an nhl team and put in a couple of brits and still won the stanley cup. If you are careful how you put them in your team they can improve. Just get a few and make sure they are playing alongside some great NHL quality players and that should help them. But a team full of brits getting thrashed all the time will not help their development. Perhaps get more brits on your AHL team.

Maybe also you could get perhaps a candian jr team and get a couple of the best brits in that too.

[ElQuapo]

The game regenerates the same british players over and over again as the ones in the game retire, so you are pretty much stuck with the same talent level for ever.

You can make a difference though.

All players have a current ability and a potential ability. I do not know exactly how much, but I would guess that the top british players in the game have a potential ability of around 100 - with 200 being the max (guys like Crosby etc.). The best nations will probably be made up of players all with a current ability above 130-140.

It is not certain that a player will actually reach his potential ability, so while the british national team may be made up of players with an average ability of lets say 60, then if you manage a bigger club in a good league, and bring in all the best british talent, then you might be able to actually make sure that most of these players reach their potential of around 100, and by doing that, you could raise the national teams level quite a bit, and probably become an A-nation if succesful, but you will never be able to make Great Britain beat teams like Canada, Sweden, Russia, Finland etc.

[miked1991]

The game regenerates the same british players over and over again as the ones in the game retire, so you are pretty much stuck with the same talent level for ever.

You can make a difference though.

All players have a current ability and a potential ability. I do not know exactly how much, but I would guess that the top british players in the game have a potential ability of around 100 - with 200 being the max (guys like Crosby etc.). The best nations will probably be made up of players all with a current ability above 130-140.

It is not certain that a player will actually reach his potential ability, so while the british national team may be made up of players with an average ability of lets say 60, then if you manage a bigger club in a good league, and bring in all the best british talent, then you might be able to actually make sure that most of these players reach their potential of around 100, and by doing that, you could raise the national teams level quite a bit, and probably become an A-nation if succesful, but you will never be able to make Great Britain beat teams like Canada, Sweden, Russia, Finland etc.

So the potential will always stay the same? Poo that sucks. I should be able to make a small nation good

[ElQuapo]

So the potential will always stay the same? Poo that sucks. I should be able to make a small nation good

Yes, the potential will always stay the same, you can only affect the current ability and hopefully make sure it reaches the potential ability, which it probably won't for players with a potential around 100, who spend their entire carreer in the british leagues for example. So getting british players to play in better leagues is the main way to go.

There might be an alternative way to make them better though.

If you manage to sign alot of good players to a british team, and have them play there for enough years to get a second nationality (I think this is 5 years, but I'm not 100% sure), then they could play for the british national team. You would have to constantly keep this up though, as they would probably regenerate as their original nationality again when retiring. Also, you would have to make sure that they where better than the british players, but not so good that they get picked to play for the national team of their first nation, as you would then be unable to use them on the british team thereafter.

But even with this methode you would never reach the top nations.

[B. Stinson]

This is one reason I hope they soon move to the "newgen" system and trash this "regen" system...... surprise, surprise: like FM did.

'Cause this regen stuff really makes a bore out of aspects such as national team management.

[B. Stinson]

EDIT: By national team management, I mean long term stuff like mike is looking to do.

[ElQuapo]

While I agree that it would be cool to see a little developement, I could also see it going totally wrong. Imagine all the "this is so unrealistic" posts at the SI forums if people start seeing Iceland or Japan as the worlds best team in many games. I think the current system allows the game to stay true to the hockey world.

In FM I think there is actually a very small posibility that a player can be regererated as a different nationality. Like maybe a 1% chance that the next Ronaldinho is from Norway etc. I don't know if this is also the fact in EHM, but I don't think so judging by the stuff I have read on the SI forums.

[Kekkonen]

A player can be regenerated with a different nationality in EHM. However, I do suspect that if there's a nationality change, it's weighted in favor of the traditional hockey nations -- i.e. if Mats Sundin v2.0 isn't Swedish, it's more likely that he's Finnish, Czech, or Russian than German, British, Slovenian, or Danish.

[miked1991]

While I agree that it would be cool to see a little developement, I could also see it going totally wrong. Imagine all the "this is so unrealistic" posts at the SI forums if people start seeing Iceland or Japan as the worlds best team in many games. I think the current system allows the game to stay true to the hockey world.

In FM I think there is actually a very small posibility that a player can be regererated as a different nationality. Like maybe a 1% chance that the next Ronaldinho is from Norway etc. I don't know if this is also the fact in EHM, but I don't think so judging by the stuff I have read on the SI forums.

Problem is it doesn't allow for change. 10 years down the line, GB might be a top division world championship team. But this is very difficult with the way this game works. I think the nationality of strong players should be dependant on the world rankings. The top ranked teams should get the best, however if I got GB to a rank of lets say 20, then they should produce better players than they do at the start.

[Kris]

When Bondra retired I clicked on his name on the "NHL Trade Center" and it took me to a 16 year old brit instead. He, however, was totally rubbish and my scouts said he had limited potential. It has to be Bondra's regen but unfortanly I deleted that save-game before he could be drafted so I don't know if he ever became a 500 goal-scorer.

[batdad]

Problem is it doesn't allow for change. 10 years down the line, GB might be a top division world championship team. But this is very difficult with the way this game works. I think the nationality of strong players should be dependant on the world rankings. The top ranked teams should get the best, however if I got GB to a rank of lets say 20, then they should produce better players than they do at the start.

Tell me, as I am unsure of this. How many kids between the ages of 1-10 are playing ice hockey in Britain, or any of the other lower tier countries. What kind of ice time are they getting? What is the British National Ice hockey coaching association doing to help these kids? Where are the coaches who teach little kids how to play hockey learning to teach it? Who from?
Without an organized, popular program for children, there is no possible way for a British hockey player, never mind a national team to turn into a star. Kopitar was trained half in Slovenia, half out of Slovenia. He is not even an exception.

I know things at the pro level in England are getting better because of guys from Canada playing and coaching there...Chris McSorley at one time, etc. However, are these guys staying and helping to set up a program for GB. If not, unfortunately it is already longer than 10 years away where Britain will have any kind of hope of icing a competitive national squad. There will not be change in leading hockey nations for well over a decade at this point. No non-traditional hockey nation is getting a hard on for the game. It is unfortunate but true.
I would love to see GB or some non hockey nation become a force in hockey. However, not going to happen magically.
What Miked says is true for the game. If you do build a program in a country that works, and convince big time coaches to help that nation...then well yes, they should get better. It should be about the program. However, with the regen program in place this is not likely to happen as B Stinson and others have said. The game rocks, and there are things to be added in the future to make it better.

[Kekkonen]

Remember, this is NHL EHM. The national team aspect is somewhat 'glued on' to the game as an extra (not entirely unlike the CM/FM series). You can take on an extra responsibility, but it's not like you can really go anywhere with it.

BTW, is anyone else here old enough to have played soccer management sims called Goal! and One-Nil? They must be about 15 years old by now... one of them was a 'standard' soccer management game where you could take an English 2nd-division or semi-professional team and turn them into an European powerhouse (if you had the time and inclination). The other was a national team manager game. There countries were ranked roughly like they were in the current FIFA rankings, but the catch was that if you could get consistently good results in qualifiers and even friendlies, your nation would slowly become more and more soccer-crazy, and you'd have more and more quality youngsters showing up in your nation. I remember winning the World Cup with both Ireland and Poland...

[ElQuapo]

A player can be regenerated with a different nationality in EHM. However, I do suspect that if there's a nationality change, it's weighted in favor of the traditional hockey nations -- i.e. if Mats Sundin v2.0 isn't Swedish, it's more likely that he's Finnish, Czech, or Russian than German, British, Slovenian, or Danish.

Yeah, I think you are right.

So players will almost allways be regenerated to the same nationality, and even in the rare times they don't, they still end up at one of the top nations.

[ElQuapo]

The top ranked teams should get the best, however if I got GB to a rank of lets say 20, then they should produce better players than they do at the start.

That is actually a great idea. It would allow a small change over time, but not simple at random but rather deserved.

Have you posted it at the SI forums?

[miked1991]

The top ranked teams should get the best, however if I got GB to a rank of lets say 20, then they should produce better players than they do at the start.

That is actually a great idea. It would allow a small change over time, but not simple at random but rather deserved.

Have you posted it at the SI forums?

no, would someone like to?


It would take a lot of time for GB to improve. It could take 10 years to get a good organiseation together, and then another 15 years or so until the new players reach their peak age. However this is a game, not reality, and I think this process should be sped up a bit, to something in the range on 10 years, for a team to improve. That way it won't get unrealistic, but the process will happen a bit faster and you will actually have something to aim at as a national team manager!!!

[DJP19]

Actually with the new roster update I think this will be possible soon. I am in my third year with an OHL team and noticed Britian moved up in U20. The second year they actually stayed up, finsihing 7th. Also they have 2 players in the top 20 for the CHL import draft and a total of 5 ranked. Those prospects look mighty good and i bet in a 5 years national team GB could compete for a bronze.

[php]

Hi to everybody.I have one question.Can CAN/USA or other players gain 2nd nationality after playing several years in one europian country?

[archibalduk]

Actually with the new roster update I think this will be possible soon. I am in my third year with an OHL team and noticed Britian moved up in U20. The second year they actually stayed up, finsihing 7th. Also they have 2 players in the top 20 for the CHL import draft and a total of 5 ranked. Those prospects look mighty good and i bet in a 5 years national team GB could compete for a bronze.

I'm curious. Which players were in the top 20 CHL Import Draft?

Hi to everybody.I have one question.Can CAN/USA or other players gain 2nd nationality after playing several years in one europian country?

Yes, I believe they can.