EHM The Blue Line

I have a recurrent problem in which my top defensemen's stats steadily decrease over the course of multiple seasons. Eventually it's no longer worth it to hold on to them and I inevitably face drastically improved versions of the same players once they've moved to another team. What's up with that? I have a hunch it's because my assistant coaches aren't all that hot with defensemen throughout the ranks but there's a couple of them at least that are 16+ so I'm not so sure...

Practice schedule.

Always keep an eye on your players attributes in the practice screen and adjust their schedules to what they need most.

But here's a question. If they are best at coaching defensemen, do you switch them around to the practice schedule where your defensemen are most or do you keep them in coaching defensive skill? For example, if I want to increase my defensemen's shooting ability, do I switch that coach with high Coaching Defensemen to coach Shooting since that is where the defensemen are? Or are his talents better served coaching my 3rd line checkers who are working on their defensive skills?

I watch the attributes closely...but everything drops all the same. For example I signed Paul Mara with a 17 rating in slapshot. His skating attributes (acceleration and speed) dropped into the red so I put him on skating practice. Meanwhile, his slapshot dropped from 16 then to 15. When the skating was back up to snuff, I put him in shooting but inevitably the skating became a problem again so I had to move him back. It's a good idea to switch the coaches, but does that have in impact on the permanence of any improvement?

Thundercleese wrote:I watch the attributes closely...but everything drops all the same. For example I signed Paul Mara with a 17 rating in slapshot. His skating attributes (acceleration and speed) dropped into the red so I put him on skating practice. Meanwhile, his slapshot dropped from 16 then to 15. When the skating was back up to snuff, I put him in shooting but inevitably the skating became a problem again so I had to move him back. It's a good idea to switch the coaches, but does that have in impact on the permanence of any improvement?

You probably shouldn't use the default schedule.

I have it set to heavy skating, medium conditioning and none for everything else; I don't recall if that's the default but I don't think it is. Any suggestions to make it more effective?

Ah, there's your problem. While your players are getting skating practice and moderate conditioning, they are not practicing anything else so that is why their ability is dropping.

I posted a link to this article on the General Chat section but I'll post it here too. It has some good basic info on how practice works and how to set it up.

Practice Guide

Thanks for the insight, but I have a question still....when in the guide you say that each practice section should have two coaches assigned is that the maximum or does it help the situation if, say, three coaches who are 17 or higher with coaching forwards are on off. skill and shooting?

I've heard that assigning more than two coaches to a practice shedule can sometimes be a bad thing. A "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenerio. If one coach is more of an attacking style coach and the other is more of a defensive style coach, it can cause confusion or mixed messages.

I don't know if this is really the case as I would assume that the assistant coaches would coach the system of the head coach.

A coach with high "coaching forwards" can also be used for "skating" and "defensive skill" areas. As I would think some of your forwards might need some defensive skill practice from time to time.