EHM The Blue Line

I trained Malkin to play LW in the 06-07 season, he was 'accomplished' in the position. He played LW through all of 07-08, had 152 points that season, but now I'm about to begin the 08-09 season and he's changed from C/LW back to just C and has become 'unconvincing' at LW. Is this supposed to happen? If so, why?

Got the same thing with Brenden Morrow, I trained him to play RW, got accomplished and some weeks later, no more!

The changing of positions has never worked well in any of the SI games, going from CM to FM and EHM.

I remember in CM also coaching players to other positions, and when taking them off the new position practice, they would allways lose the new position again - even if I had trained them in the new position for 1-2 years before removing them from the training.

If I remember correctly, when a player is trained to play in a third position, he loses his ability to play in the weaker of his original positions. I'm sure I wrote about that in my EHM 2005 Guide - maybe someone can remind us as to what I said

archibalduk wrote:If I remember correctly, when a player is trained to play in a third position, he loses his ability to play in the weaker of his original positions. I'm sure I wrote about that in my EHM 2005 Guide - maybe someone can remind us as to what I said

But it's happening with a second position, not a third one, in my case..

quite mysterious case

It all depends on what the underlying numbers actually are. If he's of a borderline quality at a position then just a few points slippage and the position is no longer listed, it doesn't mean he's gone back to zero, just not high enough to show for that postion anymore. My guess is that in the case of Malkin he'll bounce back once the season starts, but in preseason you might want to get him practice at LW again.

Yep..Once you stop playing games, they are not getting as much time at the new position...so they drop off..because no matter what you do, summer practices just are not good enough to keep them at the higher level of the new position. Kepp practising and once games start should soon pop back up

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

The thing is though Malkin was fine playing LW in the pre-season games. Then he was injured for a week or something, didn't play in my last few preseason games, got healthy just before the start of the season and I noticed his 'degeneration' just I was setting my lineup for the first game. It's weird that he would drop straight from accomplished to unconvincing all of a sudden. I tried to train him back at LW, but he sucked so bad in the first few games dragging my whole first line into uselesness with him (no points 5.5 rating, while he had 2+7 points in 2 preseason games on the same line with Crosby and Gaborik) that I moved him to 2nd line C.

Has anyone ever gotten a player to remember a new position for good? Even after taking him off practice for the new position after a long time?

I am curious as to whether this actually works as I have never been able to do it in any SI games.

I was able to do it with Dennis Seidenberg in EHM 2005. I needed another RD, so I trained him at that position until it showed up in his position list, then I took him off the new position training and just played him at RD all the time.

The position would completely drop off his listing in the summer, which would freak me out, but it would be back by the time the season started. I had not put him back on training for that position again, I would just play him at it, and he would be fine. The only thing I don't remember is when the position showed back up on his list again, I'm not sure if it was the beginning of pre-season or regular season.