First of all, we know at least one of the hidden player attributes which is directly related to the Team Status component: Ambition. This will affect what role the player feels he should have on your team and therefore what status(s) he will accept as part of a contract negotiation. While still on the contract theme, I assume everyone has figured out the obvious relationship between the status set for a contract offer and the amount of money the board will allow for said contract (but still tied to overall budgetary constraints).
We also know most (all?) players respond negatively to a downgrade of their team status, most notably if done within a short time of a previous setting. I'm not sure if there is an actual threshhold in terms of this timing, but certainly if done within a couple weeks the player will become unhappy or may even demand a trade.
There also appears to be a direct impact to both a player's happyness and performance if this setting is conceptually out-of-line with their ice-time. For example, if you take one of your Key players and put them on the 4th line getting 10 minutes or less of ice time and you will see their performance (game ratings) drop immediately and again they may become unhappy or even demand a trade. Unfortunately I don't know the exact machanism to quantify what (if any) impact this would have in a more subtle scenario. I could speculate it may simply be another tie-back to Ambition (i.e. an ambition/ice-time relationship) but I would love for someone who actually knows to confirm this.
What I am most interested in however is whether or not this setting has any relationship to player development. For example, we know there is an age limit (25 maybe, I forget) where "hot prospect" and "decent young player" are no longer allowable options, but is keeping players in these status settings too long or taking them out too early going to have an effect on their development? Should a young and still developing star be given a higher status or left in "hot prospect", and is there a particular age at which these transitions from status to status are most beneficial to development?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can jump in to shed some light on these issues or even provide other player status related information to this thread.
