Players
Attributes
The most important characteristics of a player are his attributes. Each player has seven basic attributes: Goaltending, Defense, Offense, Shooting, Technique, Passing, Aggressiveness. Each of these attributes has its quality, which is inborn and does not change throughout the career. You can only see exact values of the quality of attributes for players who have been scouted by the scouts from your human resources and economic department. The quality of the attribute determines the ability of a player to improve the given skill.
A - The value of the attribute used to determine the current abilities of the player.
B - The quality of the attribute used to determine the ability of a player to improve in the given attribute.
Players in different positions use different combination of skills. For a goalie the most important attributes are goaltending, technique and passing. For a defenseman they are defense, passing and aggressiveness. For a center they are offense, passing and technique. For a winger they are offense, technique and aggressiveness. The shooting attribute is necessary for scoring goals and it is important for all skaters.
You can see the precise value of the attribute to two decimal spots by moving your mouse over the attribute in the player's profile. The quality of each attribute is displayed in grey color next to the value of the attribute. If a player is scouted, the qualities displayed are precise and green-colored.
| Position | Primary attribute | Secondary attribute | Secondary attribute |
| Goalie | Goaltending | Technique | Passing |
| Defenseman | Defense | Passing | Aggressiveness |
| Center | Offense | Passing | Technique |
| Winger | Offense | Technique | Aggressiveness |
The player will reach optimum performance for his position, if he is trained in the above mentioned combinations of attributes. The performance of a player is mostly influenced by his primary attribute. For example goaltending for a goalie. The other attributes also influence the performance, but to a much smaller extent.
Player with attributes 180 - 25 - 25 or 70 - 90 - 90 /where the first one is the primary main attribute and the last two are secondary main attributes/ is not as good for the given position as a player with attributes 120 - 30 - 50. Similarly a player with attributes 130 - 80 - 30 or 80 - 80 - 80 is not as good as a player with attributes 100 - 80 - 50.
Attribute descriptions:
Goaltending: This attribute is only used by the goalies. It represents the ability of a goalie to stop the pucks from going into the net. High value of this attribute helps the goalie keep a good save percentage.Defense: This attribute is used by all the players to stop the opponents from scoring by not letting them create scoring chances. It is used mainly by defensemen but it is also useful for forwards who need it in order to contribute to the defensive play of the team.
Offense: The offense attribute determines the ability to play effectively in the offensive zone. It represents the ability of players to create a scoring chance and it also represents the ratio of how often the player will shoot in a good scoring chance. Players with lower offense attribute often choose to pass even if they should rather take a shot. For defensemen it determines their ability to contribute to the offensive play of the team.
Technique: This attribute is very universal. Goalies use it to increase their save percentage thanks to better reactions and good positioning. In defense it is required mainly for one-on-one battles. It helps the defensemen win these battles thanks to good stickhandling and speed and decrease the number of penalties. A forward with a good technique can be effective in one-on-one battles thanks to very good stickhandling and good speed. Technique also helps you to win faceoffs.
Passing: This attribute is important for all the players just like technique. For goalie, this attribute represents his ability to use his stick, not only to make passes, but also to eliminate scoring chances of the opponent. For the skaters it represents the ability to make proper passes and to create chances with good puck movement and playmaking. Passing, among other things, also helps the players on the powerplay to create scoring chances thanks to quick and sharp puck movement. This attribute is also used for faceoffs.
Aggressiveness: Aggressiveness is mainly used by defensemen and wingers. Defensmen utilize it to strip the attacking players of the puck with their physical play. Without a sufficient aggressiveness rating your defense would be easy to break through. Wingers, on the other hand, use this attribute to get into scoring chances through physical force. This attribute also represents the forechecking ability of players. However, it also has a down side. Players with high aggressiveness rating and poor technique are often penalized. Players like these can only be effective with their physical play, which logically results in more frequent penalties.
Shooting: The shooting attribute is important for all the players, except the goalie, to score goals. The higher the shooting attribute, the higher the possibility that the player will capitalize on his scoring chance. Defensemen with good shooting tend to score more goals from the point.
Preferred side
Some players have a preferred side, depending on which side of the ice they like to play. Others - universals, play equally well on both sides. Therefore, no matter which side the player prefers he can play a center, but a left wing and a left denfenseman should be someone who prefers to play on the left. The right wing and the right side of the defense should be occupied by players who prefer to play on the right. If a player plays on the wrong side, he cannot fully use his abilities.Career longevity
Another important characteristic of a player is his career longevity. Career longevity indicates for how long the player will be able to improve. Career longevity has seven levels. If a player reaches the lowest level (0/6), he stops improving and his attributes start decreasing. The speed of deterioration of attributes increases with age.Career longevity is updated once in a season in the main seasonal calculation. The value can never get higher, but it can stay at the same level repeatedly. At higher age it tends to drop faster.
Popularity
Each player has a certain level of popularity, which indicates how popular he is amongst the fans. Popularity rises with his performance and with his position in the league statistics. Popularity rises faster in the higher divisions. The levels of popularity from the lowest to the highest are: Unknown, Known, Popular, Admired, Famous, Celebrity, Worldwide Star and Superstar. There are two main advantages to having popular players on the team. They increase attendance and also souvenir sales.Warning! Popularity of a player may also decrease. The more popular the player is, the more popularity points he loses after a bad performance. This does not apply to friendly and tournament games which have no influence on the popularity of the players.
Energy
The energy of a player is indicated by two numbers - current energy and seasonal energy. This is displayed in the following format: e.g. 80/100. The first number indicates the current energy of a player, i.e. the energy that a player has at the given moment. The second number is the seasonal energy and it is the maximum energy that a player can reach during that season. The seasonal energy decreases as the number of games played by the player increases. It decreases faster, if the games are played with high importance. Therefore the seasonal energy cannot be increased. It is recharged to the maximum at the beginning of a new season, after the main seasonal calculation. The energy of a player is very important as low energy levels harm the performance of the player in the games. Each player, whose current energy has dropped after a game, regains it back to the maximum seasonal energy automatically by a regeneration process.The current and seasonal energy of players decreases based on their time on ice. Players who have played more minutes will practice less than those who played fewer minutes on that day. A goalie who has played the whole game will lose as much energy as a skater who played 15 minutes.
The table below shows the decrease of seasonal energy of a player who had an ice time of 15 minutes or a goalie who played the whole game based on the game importance (provided the importance has not changed during the game):
| Game type | Very low | Low | Normal | High | Very high |
| Friendly and tournament games | 0.02 | 0.05 | 0.10 | 0.20 | 0.30 |
| Competitive games | 0.10 | 0.25 | 0.50 | 1.00 | 1.50 |
Note: Games played in the league, National Cup, international cups and national team games (except friendlies) are all competitive games.
Experience
Experience is gained by playing games. The more difficult the games are, the more experience the player gains. Experience has a direct influence on the player's performance in the games. Game importance also has an effect on experience gains. The higher the importance, the more experience player can gain from the game.The experience gained by players depends on their time on ice. The backup goalie also gets a small portion of experience even if he doesn't appear on the ice.
Injuries
Hockey is a tough sport, so injuries are quite common. In PowerPlay Manager the maximum length of injury recovery is 28 days. However, injuries that last up to two weeks are more common. The frequency of injuries in your team is influenced by a number of factors. A team with a higher number of players will logically have more injuries. You will have less injuries and the recovery time will be shorter, if you have a high level of medical center and if you employ good physicians.Players who have less than 6 days to full recovery have day-to-day status. These players can be dressed, but the further away from full recovery they are, the poorer their performance in the game. You can set whether your day-to-day players should be automatically dressed for games. Warning! This setting only applies to players who get injured in the future. The setting of the currently injured players has to be changed individually for each player.