The Official TBL Practice Thread

[timmy_t]

I like your thought process on this, but I have some suggestions and general training advice:

First of all, you need to have Goaltending Training on medium (no matter what). It's mainly for improving the "Positioning" attribute, and most of us old-time EHM players swear by it. Also, I never have guys on any type of Low intensity training unless they are hurt.

The one thing that I've really learned is that each player has a finite number of ability points to distribute throughout his attributes. Some of those points go toward the hidden mental attributes, but most of them you see on their sheet. How you train the player should be directly influenced by their role on your team. It will be better to train a Stay-At-Home Defenseman in Conditioning, Skating, Tactics, Defense, and Goaltending, than Offense and Shooting. This way you will maximize his utility on your team. If you were to intensely train him on Offense and Shooting then the points that improve those offensive-based skills can not be used for defensive based skills.

Now of course if that same Stay-At-Home Defenseman maxes out his defensive attributes or is extremely high in them, then by all means use the extra ability points for offensive skills.

I would use your rotating training regimen for two-way players that have a lot of room for development, but not pure offense or defense players. (And in case you're wondering you would get these on the players Scout Report)

[capschmap]

Thanks for the feedback, especially for the goaltending skills! I was always curious how to increase positiong skills.

[cazzman]

Hi

I wonder if anyone here knows how to get players anticipation, creativity and flair higher? what they should practice or if that gets better when playing cause a couple of my best top forwards have dropped on this?

[philou21]

Anticipation will probably be a defence or tactic training IMO. But I'm not sure creativity and flair can be improve.

[cazzman]

Aha, that explains why they drop in Anticipation cause my offensive players havent practice that much defensive last season. thanx for the aswer

[philou21]

No problem hope it helps you!

[Janik11]

The Game guide says about staffs' attributes like Coaching Forwards just: 'How talented he is at coaching forwards.'
What does this exactly mean? This coach will do great job with all attributes when coaching forwards or increase just attacking attributes but to all players doesn't matter defs or forwards?
I ask just to know, how to set coaches. One way is to set 2 or more specialized coaches to train one training drill, another way is set one offensive coach and one defensive coach to that drill.

Example:
COACH 1: CD-18, CF-8
COACH 2: CD-7, CF-19
COACH 3: CD-12, CF-12
COACH 4: CD-13, CF-11
Other attributes are the same.

Which 2 coaches from above would you set for example for skating, shooting, def. skills?

[batdad]

I would choose one of the coaches who is set as best forward guy, so Coach 2. Then I would choose who is best at coaching dmen, so coach 1.

However...it also depends on their style. For skating, shooting.....technical type coaches are the best. So if coach 3 is a technical type coach...(as opposed to general or conditioning) he may be better at teaching skating and shooting thank coach 2 and 1.

It also depends on determination and a ton of the mental attributes of coaches. I would never select more than 2 to work on one attribute.

Yes...if the coaches your choose are poor for the positioning, and do not work well with others (forget what it is called, but I believe it is ice management or something) the poor defense coaching rating for coach 1 could affect how much coach 2 develops the dmen in shooting and skating.

Defensive skills--General is usually good. Technical is better.

Conditioning style coaches are really only good in conditioning and in skating to some extent. But not great for teaching technical.

High tactic ratings are also important for coaches to have in defensive offensive skills I believe. (my own belief...not sure if really in game)

So...it is a mixed bag, you have to take the best of what you have for each type of coach.

If I have 5 coaches on my team--head and 4 assistants....

I always have
1. Styles that match
2. A guy who is great with goalies (I do not care technical or general and prefer those to conditioning....unless i Have a fatty in net)
3. 2 technical guys, 1 of whom has high tactics ratings.--1 good defense, 1 good forward coach (minimize poor score in the one they are not so strong in.
4. Head coach with decent or good judging players and potential (Important if you let head coach run the games)
5. 2 general guys (usually 1 here is good with goalies)--1 good forward, 1 good defense (again minimize the one they are weak in)
6. A real strong tactics coach.
7. Try to find one good conditioning coach, but if not I make sure i Have a general coach who is decent with both F and D, and decent with G....who has high discipline, and motivation. Quite often this guy will be head coach (even if tactics low--then I get assistants with good tactics)

My head coaches are usually fairly balanced in ratings with d and f.

That being said..it is hard to find all 5 coaches with exactly what I want. Quite often I go with 4. ANd when I find that I have guys only being used in one area or in none...they are useless to me and canned, or not renewed.

SO..there you go, there is way more to it than what you asked. each area i mentioned subtly affects how a coach does with the players. Also if you have a young team, clearly coaching young players needs to be a decent score...I never hire anyone with less than a 12/20 in this area.

[MKoivuFan]

Was wondering what coaching stat is good for skating as well as for centers... is centers offensive minded coach or defense minded coach

[batdad]

Wow...still asking questions like this...just wow.

[MKoivuFan]

in the bottom right corner anyone know what the good comb is when it comes to the practice area for General, PP and PK... like 40-30-30 or 50-25-25 etc curious to see what other ppl use?

[CeeBee]

I usually go 50-25-25 in the summer and when the season starts i make adjustments depending on how my PP and PK are doing. One time I was 20-60-20.... pp sucked but it did get a bit better with more practice.

[batdad]

WOw. So totally opposite from me Cee Bee. I rely on making sure my guys attributes go way up. Not sure really how this affects things now, as i know you do well in the game too.

[CJ]

I usually try to play a game where I don't take many penalties. So I play rarely on PK, so I don't need to have the PK higher than 15%. Gives room for all the others.

[CeeBee]

Oh, I try to get the attributes up too. I have a summer practice regime that starts one week after my season ends and runs till training camp opens. Everybody is on intensive everything and only tweak if absolutely necessary. During the season I usually run through various practice cycles which have 2 intensive and the rest medium. If a player can't handle it he probably won't be around long I rarely have players dislike me tho so I don't feel bad about being a slave driver. The in season cycles are based on whether the players attributes are going up, down or staying static in a given area and the numbers matter too. I mean if a player is mostly maxed out or high in offense but low in skating he gets the fitness and skating practice for a couple of weeks. In season I try to keep the cycles short(2 weeks) and usually let them go on general practice here and there to mot only keep them happy but so as not to wear them out. Gotta keep an eye on recovery time(tiredness) thats for sure.

[batdad]

Yeah I do that summer thing too. Nothing is medium.

In the season I usually have 3 on intensive for all the guys at least, and lately have made it four by adding tactics on intensive in all my different regimes.

Similar style to you for the during season regimes.

Which is what leads me even further to a conclusion that the percentage splits on practice between skills, pp, pk mean about diddly squat.

[timmy_t]

I just saw today that Batdad had recently posted here so I read all the way back to the top of this page and through Batdad's big post.

Now I've been playing forever, and I have a couple of questions based on what I read, because I may have interpreted things wrong with my practice settings all these years:

1st - Skating is best done by a technical coach, and then second best is a general coach?? (I've used conditioning coaches for a long time)
2nd - Coaching styles (Attacking/Straitforward/Patient/Defensive) should be similar throughout your coaching staff?? (I always thought that you needed a "Patient" or "Defensive" coach to coach defensive tactics, and an "Attacking" coach for offensive tactics)
3rd - The percentage observation - Should I just leave it at 60-20-20 during the year?
4th - (From Philou's post) Does training tactics on intensive help with anything other than Teamwork? (He suggested it might help increase Anticipation)

I just wish the game's manual was more exact as to what works best instead of just leaving us to experiment.

Thanks in advance to whomever answers!

[bruins72]

1. I didn't know that. I've always had my conditioning coach do both Conditioning and Skating. It's hard to find conditioning coaches that have good attributes for anything beyond Motivating and Discipline. So I put them on both Conditioning and Skating. Maybe I need to rethink that.

2. It's best to have coaches with the same styles (or no preferred style) as each other so they'll be on the same page for your tactics. Also, I believe it's good to have coaches who like to play the style of tactics that you are trying to run.

3. I move the percentages around all season long. In the preseason I like to go with a Fitness program and set my percentages to 80-10-10. For October, I go with a Tactics program and 40-30-30. Then November I go with an Offensive Skill program and 50-40-10. December is Defense and 50-10-40. Then January switches to Shooting and 60-20-20. February is Skating and 80-10-10. After that I usually go with either Fitness or back to one of the others. Once my team is out of the playoffs, I rest them for a week and then switch to my Offseason program of all Intensive and my percentages set to 100-0-0. I seem to do okay with this.

4. I think Anticipation only increases (a little bit) for younger players. I'm not sure if that's a result of practice or playing. Sorry. I've got no help there.

[batdad]

1. Not really sure what is better. I have been using technical or general for skating for a long long time. And it seems to work fine for me. But...lately my coaches in skating have not been getting the job done well enough for me. Maybe I should try a conditioning coach again and see.
2. Yeah I try to keep my coaches to as close the same style as possible. But to me it is secondary to their abilities to teach the individual skills and things. Tactics take a back seat for me, and I always have PP issues (minor...I usually end in the middle of the pack), and pk is always very strong. 89-91 most of the time, and some times higher than that. Personnel matters most to me.
3 Hmm...maybe I should try a little more time with work on the PP. PK never needs any, always solid. I dunno. I have tried it before and it made no difference. ALways rest my guys for a period of time after playoffs...the further we go the longer it is ...to the maximum week. Then the intensive summer program kicks in. I also make sure the guys I plan on having for next season are on my game roster and in their game spots, with all 8 d positions filled. I think that this may (although not at all sure) make a bit of a difference come the start of season. Really it started just to be ready and plan out my roster for the next year.
4. Anticipation...does get better, and I Think it is from game time and doing the right things, but may also come from tactic training. I dunno. Just a guess really.

And no...I prefer the experimentation. It is way more fun than knowing how to beat the game. The game AI makes it too easy as it is. I was winning cups from my 2nd season in, with some of the MOST HORRIBLE rosters you could have.

Lots of guys say you need good goalies to win. But i have won (as challenges can attest to) with career backups and sieves like Pascale Leclaire.

[philou21]

I never matched my coach and I've never seen a problem with that honestly.

I'm also using the conditionning coach for skating since I started playing....so I can't tell.

I don't know how old my post was Timmy but I know after doing some editing with the DB that anticipation may change a little bit over a career but rarely. So I don't think training helps that.

[philou21]

Hey I was wondering how much time it takes to train someone to a new position? I'm trying to train Johnson to be a left D since July and I'm in earlier october and nothing happens so far.

[batdad]

Have to play him there in games too. Also, some players can learn it, some cannot.

[philou21]

REally? darn. I put him there on the PP exactly because I thought it might help. Guess after 4 months he can't after all. Going to try to train Ekblad then.

[timmy_t]

Hey I was wondering how much time it takes to train someone to a new position? I'm trying to train Johnson to be a left D since July and I'm in earlier october and nothing happens so far.

I believe that as long as you train them AND play them at the new position they should be able to learn it. The one thing that I know is that if they complain about their practice in your news section then they won't be able to learn a new position.


Also, thanks to Bruins72 and Batdad for posting about my questions. It's funny that even though we've all played the game forever there are still things to learn about it.

[philou21]

I'll try to put him more often to the left then but at least none of them complained about it.