Hey guys! Love this game, but I found myself struggling hard with tactics/practice/players early on - not so much that I couldn’t ice a competitive team, more so that I couldn’t win the whole darn thing. Ever. I must have played through 50 seasons without any luck - but finally I’ve hit on a success formula, which I’d thought I’d share.
Here’s what I did:
1. Players: The most important part is team-wide skill and speed - its the sole focus, d-men and forwards. I aim for lines 1-4 (and the entire defense) to be composed entirely of players with a minimum of 13 (ideally 15 or higher, especially with speed) in speed, acceleration, stick-handling and passing. Every other consideration, including size, is secondary to those 4 traits. Set your lineup however you’d like - I typically try to balance out the scoring among all four lines, but I don’t think it matters greatly.
2. Practice: For all players, I have them practice intensely on conditioning, skating, offensive and defensive skills. Everything else medium. Coaches are evenly spread among each practice type, with an extra priority put on skating.
3. Tactics: Leave the positioning, forecheck, etc set to their defaults - you want to play a simple, position-based game. Share ice time equally - power play and regular strength. Roll those lines! Set team-wide tactics (no unit tactics) to the following:
- Gap Control - tight
- Backchecking - hard
- Passing - creative
- Dumping the Puck - rarely (very rarely if you have good offensive d-men)
As far as personal tactics go, I choose the shoot/pass bias based on what they’re best at, and everyone should be able to carry the puck and join the rush. I'll give the odd tough guy permission to hit hard, and the odd sniper permission to shoot a bit more, but otherwise I don't deviate from the defaults.
What you end up with is a defensively solid team (the backchecking and gap control, combined with overall team speed, seems to disrupt everything the other team tries to do) capable of quick breakouts and nasty counter attacks. They’ll almost always outshoot the opponent, putting less pressure on you to find a dynamite goalie. Seems to cut down on injuries too, I'm guessing the more even distribution of ice time helps with that but I'm not sure. Hope it wins someone some cups!
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