EHM The Blue Line

Maybe sometimes this game is a little too accurate. My Bruins defense totally blows. I'm losing games 5-4, 4-1, etc. and have lost 5 in a row and 10 of my last 13. I'm also 13th in the East at the moment.

I have Raycroft and Toivonen in net (who stats-wise seem like goaltenders I should keep).

My blue-liners are

Leetch and B. Coburn
Willie Mitchell and Boynton
Jurcina and Girard
with Doug Janik filling in for any injured or tired players.

I have them all set to defensive/don't join rush/backchecking hard/hitting normal/pressing hard.

I know I don't have a lot of firepower back there, but my plan was to develop a strong defensive core and let my forwards do most of the scoring. During games I see my defensemen just standing there as the opponents just skate right through them and often times the opponents seem to have no trouble getting behind them for a 3 on 0 on my goaltender.

Is it my tactics or do my defensemen just stink?

Girard and Jurcina might be a little on the weak side. What about splitting them up? Overall, I'd say it's your tactics. What are your forwards doing? What are their tactics? That's probably where the problem is. Maybe they're giving up too many odd man rushes?

My tactics as of right now: (I've been trying to tweek things to see if they work)

First Line:
M. Nilson J. Thornton G. Murray
Attacking
Skating
Crash the Net
Def: Zone
Passive Forecheck
Backcheck Normal
Pressing Hard
Checking Normal
Finesse

Second Line:
N. Hagman P. Bergeron M. Parrish
Attacking
Skating
Positional
Def: Zone
Passive Forecheck
Backcheck Hard
Pressing Hard
Checking Normal
Finesse

Third Line:
PJ Axelsson D. Scatchard C. Adams
Defensive
Mixed
Positional
Def: Man-to-man
Left-Wing Lock
Backcheck Hard
Pressing Hard
Checking Normal
Mixed

Fourth Line:
D. LaCouture B. Boyes T. Green
Normal
Mixed
Positional
Def: Zone
Passive Forecheck
Backcheck Normal
Pressing Normal
Checking Normal
Power

Jurcina has been developing pretty well for me, and I've been trying to trade Girard for someone. I want to keep B. Coburn with Leetch because he's been developing fantastically as a young defensemen playing with Leetch. I could try switching Boynton and Girard.

Maybe changing my Pressing to Normal or less would help. Maybe my guys are getting caught out of position trying to press to hard. My Third line has actually done a great job of shutting down the other teams First lines for the most part, but they also aren't scoring goals, nor do I expect them to.

noctambulist wrote:
First Line:
M. Nilson J. Thornton G. Murray
Attacking
Skating
Crash the Net
Def: Zone
Passive Forecheck
Backcheck Normal
Pressing Hard
Checking Normal
Finesse

I'll bold the thing you should probably try and tweak...You don't tell Joe Thorton to play finesse

I'm not familiar enough with the rest of the team, but when all else fails, let your coach take over and see what he does.

Well, the Finesse part was a tweak I was trying. I thought maybe I was losing too many board battles and my forwards were getting caught up-ice. But yes, I agree that Thornton is not a finesse player. I usually have that line set to Power.

I'll take your advice and let the head coach take over for a game and see what he does. I forget sometimes that I have one

My last 10 games: 1-8-1 Rank 30 in the NHL

I have to admit that I looked at your list but didn't look into with much depth as I wasn't sure if/why you were using 'checking' and 'hitting' interchangeably As far as EHM goes they are two distinct and very different concepts.

I know I had issue with that early on too due to the usual use of the two by announcers for example using "that's a big check by Player B" and "that's a bit hit by Player B" to mean the same thing...

But in EHM terms: Hitting = your players hitting opponents while Checking = defensive coverage of an opposing player by one of your players (not to be confused with bodychecking which is a term for hitting). So, a player with great Checking skills may not be a big hitter, and a big hitter may not be a great Checker.

Sorry for the confusion. The last two category lines of the tactics list should read:

Hitting
Boardbattles

I didn't have the game up when I wrote those and was just going from memory.

I wrote checking but was thinking hitting.

Thanks for pointing that out.

OK, so I let my coach take over a few games and he ended up winning them all while allowing only a couple of goals. It looks like the fly in my ointment was:

Backchecking: Easy

It's the one tweek I didn't try.

I'm happy to see that it's working for me now, but in the interest of learning, why do you think this made such a difference?

To quote Archi from the guide "Easy: The forwards don’t often go and help out the defensive."

I would think that Backchecking: Hard would result in a better defensive system.

My only thought would be that maybe by Backchecking Hard with a Zone defense that the forwards would get out of position too often and not really play a proper zone.

Any thoughts?

From my own tactics compendium (that is still not finished)

Backchecking: How fast will a player come back to help his team while the other team is rushing up? If backchecking is set to easy, the player won't try very hard to come back, but if his team manages a turn-over, he'll be in a great position for a possible breakaway.

So why do you think Easy Backchecking resulted in a better defense and fewer goals against than Hard Backchecking?

Maybe the best defense for me was a good offense?

This fix was like looking up the answer in the back of the book for me. I know what the answer is now but I don't understand why it was the right answer.

My only guess is it probably resulted in the other team playing more cautious, which made it easier for your defense to clear the puck.

Just an update, after going 1-8-1 and ranked 30th in the NHL for my last 10 games, I am now 7-1-2 and 1st

I'm hoping to get the "Most Improved Award" in the NHL. I'm still in 11th place in the East but I'm only 4 points out of 8th. Whoohoo.

Amazing what changing one little setting can do, even though I don't fully understand the complete turn-around.