Tactics and Player Evaluation in NHL:EHM

"How do I evaluate my players to see if they are ready yet?" and "How do I set my tactics?".

Tactics

For those who have trouble with setting your teams tactics, this will explain the easiest way to set tactics. Most of the time what you use for tactics is completely relative to the players you have. They are almost always subject to trial and error, but for those who do NOT coach the game in game, this will give you a basic way to set your team to success.

The first thing you will need is a good coach. When you do not coach the games yourself the importance of your coach is even greater. To learn how to find a good coach, please review the Training in NHL:EHM section at the bottom where finding coaches is touched upon.

Start by doing the following:

-Go to your GM name in the upper left corner.
-Select General Manager Options.
-Set the coach games yourself to 'No'.
-Set the Use Current Tactics to 'No'.
-Set both Use Current Team Selection When Possible and Use Current Lines When Possible to 'Yes".

What these setting do is make it so that all you have to do is worry about lines and the coach will tell them how to play. Tactics will be done by your coach. This doesn't take you out of the game entirely! It is still important to set the right lines and set the Team Orders.

Team Orders: When on your team roster screen you have many options, It is time to set Tactics. This where you do your lines and set your team orders. Select the tactics option and then on the left menu, select Team orders.

Your Team instructions screen will appear. Your icetime distribution and General Instructions are set by your coach, so do not worry about them, select the Next tab.

Under your extra orders, select if you want your goalie to play the puck. If you have Brodeur, then it is obvious you will want him to. If you have Irbe, you want him to stay in his net. Your shooting and Shot Targeting are up to you, but the most success has been had with barrage and shoot low. With line matching, it is relative to the players you have, but since it is almost essential to have a checking line, select the matchup you want and try to match your checkers against the line you wish them to check. Set your captains and extra attackers.

Now that you have done this, you are almost set to play some games. It is imperative that you have a checking line! You can have 4 offensive lines if you really want to, but don't complain when you cannot win with a stacked team.

Player Evaluation

The next part of setting your lines is evaluating what players should play, and in some cases, when a player is ready to be playing. Let's show you the right way to evaluate players. You have many resources available to you for this, and the more you use, the less chance you will have of making a mistake.

When preparing to draft players, set your scout to scout the draft, maybe more than 1 to do the same. As time passes, the scouts will recommend to you players they think are appropriate for your team. Do not simply leave it at that! Each time they recommend a player, go into that players page and go to Action and Scout Player. This will get you an even further detailed evaluation of your draftees. You can also do this with your prospects and unsigned players. In your team roster screen go to Filter and select Unsigned Prospects, scout them all and they scouts will tell you who they think can contribute. This is merely step 1 in evaluation.

When September comes and it is time to invite prospects for trials and evaluations, invite the players you think will have an impact someday. Try to sign any players 20 or over to your AHL team if you think they will have a shot at your pro team someday, this makes them more easily accessible for callups than if you leave them in Europe or in another league. Invite all your prospects if you wish, it can't hurt them to be in training camp and you may get a positive progression from someone you didn't expect.

Here is the #1 most important thing you can do now.. set your players status. This determines where in the organization they stand and how the management will use them and view them. When you have you prospects in camp, set their player status, here is why it is important:

Who to play in your lineups, how do I know if a prospect is ready to play? Once you have set all of your players status to your desired level, clear the players dressed and go to 'Roster - Ask Head Coach - Roster', this is the Roster tab beside the Filter tab on the top menu of your rosters screen. The coach will dress your player that he thinks are ready to play, he will also use their status in the organization to determine who is dressed. The coach will always put priority on players with higher status. So this should answer one big question, if the coach dresses one of your top level prospects, then he is at least close to ready, and this answers your question on how to tell. It is good to try and play all of your prospects during the trial period, to get a gauge on how they are doing. Try to play as many games as you can during training camp, to learn how to set more games during the offseason, view the Schedule Promotions and Mini Tournaments section.

You can also use this same idea for setting your lines, asking the coach who should play where in the lineup. You can always adjust them to your liking as the coach won't take into account that you want 2 scoring lines and 2 checking lines etc, he just puts the top priority players higher. Lines are a complicated art, and it is always trial and error and up to you, but some basic strategies to help are these:

Team with lots of depth - load your team up with talent and have your checking line on line 3 or 4.
Team with not much depth - Set your top line to score and your checking line will be 2 or 3, use line 4 as your development line, rotating younger players and prospects.
Rebuilding team with few top players - Set your checking line to line 1 and check the crap out of the other team. Since wins are not essential, you may want to simply rotate lines 2-4 based on performance of the players. line matching isn't as important with this type of team.
Stacked team fighting for icetime - First, stop cheating ;) It is hard to get a stacked team, and if you didn't cheat, then you probably fit into the lots of depth category, you are just being biased by thinking your team is stacked. If you somehow managed to be the GM lord of the universe and built a stacked team legit, then you tell me how to set lines for a team like this!

Additions, Comments, Requests: tieio@(nospam)fhockey.com