Players becoming better when they lose their legs

[Shindigs]

So as the title says, have you too been noticing that since 1.4 hit players actaully get better when they lose their legs? At first all their attributes go down, just like it used to. But it seems like Riz implemented a CA floor that a player cannot go under, based on their PA. So at some point the player's total attribute points due to the continuous loss of physicals means they end up with "spare" attribute points to reach that CA floor. Which means a player around the age of 36 will start to GAIN technicals, this means that aging top tier players end up with 17+ in all their technicals, higher values than they had at their peak. But with horrible physicals. Since apparently a player with 4 Stamina can still play top line minutes and score 80 points, this leads to an issue where all good players stay in the league until they are 40, at which point the AI seems to just stop signing them regardless of how good they still are.

This didn't use to be the case, I recall having Joe Thornton in HockeyAllsvenskan, aka. Swe-2 because all his attributes had dropped so low that he was fine to play there.

I'm going to use a 40 year old Tavares from my current 1.4 save, and Bobby Ryan from an older save to illustrate the difference:

Apparently getting old makes your hands smoother, your shot harder and your ability to get open better.

Meanwhile in old patch territory:

Getting older just sucked!

So what does the point production look like in the new patch?:

That looks pretty fishy, what about in the old patch?:

Considering how huge this change is I'm surprised it's not being discussed more. Especially since it's complete and utter nonsense that losing your legs makes you a better player; I'll agree the old patch behavior was far from perfect, with players going from a god to useless in about a year. But every single top 6 player playing until they are 40 without any drop off in ability is hardly an improvement.

And this isn't just happening to top tier players like Tavares, Val Nichushkin is still playing top line minutes at 36 despite being at 6-7 physicals across the board. These old players who refuse to decline and retire clog up the AIs top lines so their younger players never get a chance ever. They will play old no-legs over their high 1st round drafted scorer until no-legs force retires at 40/41 depending on how you want to count it.

[Primis]

I looked through my current game that I started with the newest patch (I'm in 2020).... and I don't see anything weird like that.

There's a 40 year-old Henrik Zetterberg playing in ECHL Toledo because of his contract (after 2 seasons in AHL Grand Rapids even). His attributes look like an ECHLer's though, they've fallen so far.

But that's about the limit of weird things I see. Guys who "lose their legs" aren't gaining Technicals at all, from what I can see. Guys with high technicals also have high physicals. Once they lose their Physicals, their Technicals start to slip as well.

Do you have more examples to give besides Tavares?

[Beukeboom]

Yes, old Players are definately too good , in my current save i had a 41 year old Ovechkin having a 90 Points season, while i see old Superstars all over having so high technical atts, they weight up their physicals which in he new versoin seem to staay at around 9 too which is really enough to Play them in a top line role with all their techs and hidden atts. So i was quite succesful with a 41 year old Ovi and a goaie around 40 on a 1 year contract every year, the dominate with thir experience and easily shine out the newgens which always seem to lack in the Speed and acc. department.

[Shindigs]

Do you have more examples to give besides Tavares?

A few, as I said this is a universal thing in my only 1.4 save. Not an isolated case by any means. I only picked a few for the image, but the image is still too large to be uploaded to imgur. So here's a direct download link: Dropbox

The only real cases of player's point production tailing off coincide with them either being traded, losing their offensive partner or being demoted to the 2nd line. And the attributes just look ridiculous.

[Edgars]

There's a 40 year-old Henrik Zetterberg playing in ECHL Toledo because of his contract (after 2 seasons in AHL Grand Rapids even). His attributes look like an ECHLer's though, they've fallen so far.

It's not a fair to compare players who are playing in NHL with players who are playing in ECHL, because in ECHL the training facilities and level of coaches is a lot lower, than in NHL, so players simply can't maintain that high level of CA there, but they could if they are in NHL!

[Shindigs]

There's a 40 year-old Henrik Zetterberg playing in ECHL Toledo because of his contract (after 2 seasons in AHL Grand Rapids even). His attributes look like an ECHLer's though, they've fallen so far.

It's not a fair to compare players who are playing in NHL with players who are playing in ECHL, because in ECHL the training facilities and level of coaches is a lot lower, than in NHL, so players simply can't maintain that high level of CA there, but they could if they are in NHL!

It's not just the training. The rep of the league also has some impact on how high a player's CA can be there. You see it a lot if you play in swe-2 and manage to get a very high PA (for that level) player. He won't be able to go much higher than 125-130 CA there, then when you get promoted to the SHL he will instantly start growing, despite your coaches and facilities being the same. But the end result is the same; However Primis point is still valid since in my save Zetterberg played in the NHL until he was 40/41 then retired, just like all other top 6 forwards have. So there is a massive inconsistency in what he's seeing in his save and what I'm seeing in mine. And I can't really think of a good reason why, I am playing on a modified version of last year's db; But that shouldn't have any impact on how old players decline as far as I can tell.

[Primis]

There's a 40 year-old Henrik Zetterberg playing in ECHL Toledo because of his contract (after 2 seasons in AHL Grand Rapids even). His attributes look like an ECHLer's though, they've fallen so far.

It's not a fair to compare players who are playing in NHL with players who are playing in ECHL, because in ECHL the training facilities and level of coaches is a lot lower, than in NHL, so players simply can't maintain that high level of CA there, but they could if they are in NHL!

When Zetterberg's Physicals started to go, he played one more mostly-unproductive NHL season and then 2 AHL seasons. He's in the ECHL because his skills eroded to that point, not the other way around.

To me, that's notable though because I have never seen Zetterberg not just flat-out retire from the NHL.

[Shindigs]

The other issue that's worth noting about the stars losing their legs but not their ability is that their wage demands go with their legs; After a while their rep starts going down far enough that you'll end up with stuff like Taylor Hall with all Tech at 17+ (more or less) sitting on a 1.2M a year deal scoring 70ish points per season, it's so broken.

[bede420]

On my Detroit save, Zetterberg 38 years have lost around 5points (0-100 scale) in most of his offensive attributes.. Tbh he dosent looks that great at all, his best attribute of all i passing 84. Daniel Sedin is also getting worse, but Henrik Sedin still has 95 passing, 89 creativty and 86 anticipation. But Henrik has the worst speed/accelaraion of those three..

[nino33]

On my Detroit save, Zetterberg 38 years have lost around 5points (0-100 scale) in most of his offensive attributes.. Tbh he dosent looks that great at all, his best attribute of all i passing 84. Daniel Sedin is also getting worse, but Henrik Sedin still has 95 passing, 89 creativty and 86 anticipation. But Henrik has the worst speed/accelaraion of those three..

That's not really much at all (1 point on the 1-20 scale)

[bede420]

That's not really much at all (1 point on the 1-20 scale)

If i compare these two players, Zetterberg have lost much in his mentals, and thats strange imo.. I think a player should lose much more attributes in the fysicals before the mentals and technical.

[nino33]

That's not really much at all (1 point on the 1-20 scale)

If i compare these two players, Zetterberg have lost much in his mentals, and thats strange imo.. I think a player should lose much more attributes in the fysicals before the mentals and technical.

I'm responding to clarify because you quoted me - my comment that you quoted had nothing to do with comparing the two players, or commenting on the effects of players aging on mental/physical Attributes; I only commented to note that 5 on the 1-100 scale = 1 on the 1-20 scale and that's not much of a change (it\s the least possible reduction in the 1-20 scale)

[Shindigs]

Having finished up the save where I first noticed this behaviour I've noticed that there are still a few very rare cases where player will decline like they used to and not stop at the CA floor. Absolutely no idea why that happens, but it's only happened to Juuso Välimäki and one other guy I can't recall the name of by 2041. But the players who are already very old at the start of the game seem like they might be an exception. Note that for the first few seasons of decline they will indeed lose some (but not a lot) of mentals, mainly teamwork and some workrate. Their Physicals will go down by about 2 every year depending on their Natural Fitness. The Technicals will start declining too in this period, but then after that they will start gaining technicals back.
This is what it looked like for Blake Wheeler:

As you can see he has 3 seasons where apart from 1 Def (positioning due to age gain) and 1 sho (deflection due to lord knows what) he was just losing everything without gaining anything. Then in the final 3 years with us he essentially broke even in how much he lost physically and how much he gained in his technicals. The thing is that below a certain point getting less in the way of physicals doesn't seem to matter; A player with 10 Acc/Spd is a pylon and a player with 4 Acc/Spd is also a pylon, however the latter has gained 12 attribute points in technicals. Due to how good these players remain it's quite clear that speed is a lot less important than a lot of people (me included) though it was in EHM. I'm honestly not quite sure what Stamina even does in EHM, since the aging players with 4 stamina can still play 15+ minutes as a forward without any problems at all.

Add in the drop in wage for these old players and this abomination happens:

Which in turn leads to about half the teams in the league being below the salary floor since they have their top 6 stacked with aging stars on no wage. It's pretty bad.