Line enforcement for dressed players

[Owen]

Simon, I would like to have an option to enforce that dressed players be placed into the main lineup. Obviously this varies depending on league options for the number of skaters dressed.

If a league is set to have 12 forwards and 6 defensemen dressed, this option would require GMs to use all 12 forwards on all four primary lines, all 6 defensemen within the four primary defense pairs.

If a league is set to only permit 10 forwards dressed, then it would require all 10 forwards to be placed within the primary lines.

If a league is set to permit 13 or more forwards dressed, then it would require 12 of the forwards to be placed within the four primary lines.


Running auto lines does not mean that everyone gets used because it only sorts the players by position. It defeats the purpose of setting limits in the simulator if GMs can still leave players out of their lineups anyway. Including an option like this would counter-balance this.


I also am awaiting the option to turn off referees for Farm.

[philfo21]

j'appuie

[opeth771]

Totally agree!

[SimonT]

Hi.

Your suggestion doesn’t make sense to me. First, the STHS doesn’t enforce maximum players, only minimum. Second, this feature would break Auto lines. Third, what I do in the case of players who can play forward and defense, how do I count him against suggestion?

[Owen]

Your suggestion doesn’t make sense to me.

The simulator only requires that the lines be filled and that there are 10 different skaters on the top two lines. If your league is set that you must dress 18 skaters, shouldn't the simulator require you to use all 18? It doesn't. You only have to use 10 and you can keep 8 of your dressed players from being placed on any lines. It defeats the purpose of requiring a minimum number of players to be dressed if you don't have to include them.

[Owen]

In theory, the Capitals could dress the following:

L1: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson
L2: Johansson-Kuznetsov-Chimera-Alzner-Niskanen
L3: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson
L4: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson

What about the other 8 skaters? If the simulator has an option to require 18 (or any number) skaters to be dressed, there should be an option to require that all 18 be used.

[frank86]

That's also an issue in playoff where rest days are more often. Thats also unfair to play with only 2 lines. The only solution I see actually is raising the Fatigue setting for minutes they play

[Owen]

That's also an issue in playoff where rest days are more often. Thats also unfair to play with only 2 lines. The only solution I see actually is raising the Fatigue setting for minutes they play

..or including my suggested option.

[Kramden23]

In theory, the Capitals could dress the following:

L1: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson
L2: Johansson-Kuznetsov-Chimera-Alzner-Niskanen
L3: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson
L4: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson

Obviously no NHL team would do that as their players would be exhausted. If your fatigue and recovery settings are adjusted correctly and teams play more than once every 3-4 days then the same thing would happen in the sim. GMs would learn pretty quickly if their main players were all falling under 95CON. If your fatigue settings allow players to eat up huge minutes, you have a daily recovery speed of more than 1 and your schedule is spread out then you're just asking for trouble.

[SimonT]

In theory, the Capitals could dress the following:

L1: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson
L2: Johansson-Kuznetsov-Chimera-Alzner-Niskanen
L3: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson
L4: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Ward-Orpik-Carlsson

Obviously no NHL team would do that as their players would be exhausted. If your fatigue and recovery settings are adjusted correctly and teams play more than once every 3-4 days then the same thing would happen in the sim. GMs would learn pretty quickly if their main players were all falling under 95CON. If your fatigue settings allow players to eat up huge minutes, you have a daily recovery speed of more than 1 and your schedule is spread out then you're just asking for trouble.

If you win a series with this kind of lines up, I would be very surprise. The in-games fatigue will kick in and the “extra players” will be used.

Your change your suggestion from what you suggest early or explain it differently. You want the 18 players to play. This is more simple and logic. But what count against the 18? 4vs4 and extra only?

[Owen]

I explained it differently because you said you didn't understand it the first time. Clearly Kramden missed the point as well because the success of dressing a lineup "that way" is completely irrelevant.

This is about ensuring that the minimum number of required skaters to be dressed are also required to be put in the primary lines and defensive pairs. The fact is that it makes no sense why the simulator would require a GM to dress a certain number of players and then NOT require those players to be included in the lineup! There needs to be an option to enforce that all players are used because Auto Lines DOES NOT mean that all players get used!

[SimonT]

Auto-Lines will use most of the players on the roster. If a player doesn't make it on 5vs5, it's normally end-up as first on the extra line.

Actually, I found a small issue where the Auto Lines Function will doesn't put players in the extra forward or defense if he play on none of the others lines. I'll fix it 2.3.1.

[Owen]

Auto-Lines will use most of the players on the roster. If a player doesn't make it on 5vs5, it's normally end-up as first on the extra line.

Yeah but if you use auto lines, the extra skater slots only get filled with the three best players that aren't included on the first or second lines. Using the previous example (as extreme as it is), that still leaves three forwards not on lines at all. Even then, the "extra" skaters almost never get used. That's a lot of players that are required to be dressed that are stuck with 0:00 TOI in the box score because they aren't also required to be in the lineup.

I'm not saying that you should change how auto lines works. It would be really nice, but I'm sure it would be very hard to re-code.

However, I feel like if there is an option that doesn't allow players to be duplicated on the top two lines (Block Players From Playing in Lines 1 and 2), then there also can be an option that requires all players to be included on the primary lines if there are 12 or fewer forwards and 8 or fewer defensemen dressed.

[SimonT]

Yeah but if you use auto lines, the extra skater slots only get filled with the three best players that aren't included on the first or second lines.

This is not true.

Using the previous example (as extreme as it is), that still leaves three forwards not on lines at all. Even then, the "extra" skaters almost never get used. That's a lot of players that are required to be dressed that are stuck with 0:00 TOI in the box score because they aren't also required to be in the lineup.

This is not true also. The in-game fatigue will kick in and the coach will start using others players on the linesup. Can you show me games where playes are stuck with 0:00 TOI?

[36Henry]

I've run into the same type of problem in the past as Owen is expressing here. I think I may have even proposed in the past that the feature Owen mentions which bans players from featuring twice on the top two lines, should be extended to include all four lines at even strength. I have since realized that this would be a step too far as it would make it impossible to employ a strategy of using 11 forwards and 7 defensemen, something that is quite common today. We also do see NHL coaches dressing an enforcer and giving him only 1 or 2 shifts per game so it's a tricky thing trying to regulate these things in a way that suits all leagues as they are so different.

As for auto-lines from what I've seen in the past it's not uncommon for highly rated forwards (let's call this player a Center) to occupy a 3rd or 4th line spot on one of the wings ahead of natural wingers who are then benched at even strength and if they're lucky can get in a few shifts per game here and there on spot duty. I imagine this happens because the highly rated Center, despite what I assume is a slight penalty for playing out of position, is still rated higher than the benched winger and therefore goes ahead of him when the Sim auto-fills the vacant wing positions. I've often seen defensemen jump into forward spots through auto-lines for what I assume is the same reason as their Overall rating is often a bit higher than what forwards generally have. Ultimately in the league I was in we recommended managers not to use auto lines as the league would issue penalties to teams who "double-shifted" too many players, which was a regular occurrence with auto lines being employed.

That would be my advice to Owen at this time. Try to deal with the auto lines problem internally in your league until a possible Sim feature is devised to address this issue.

Another factor in this is the quality of the ratings your league uses. If the difference in Overall ratings between top and bottom players is too large, auto lines will become less reliable and generate more problems of the kind you're experiencing. At least that's my experience with this matter.

As for increasing fatigue values in response to this matter I really don't see it as a constructive option to have managers lose players to injury (fatigue) because the Sim put them on multiple lines. Two wrongs don't make a right.