LinesSetting up your lines is the key to your team's success. If you don't create your default line-up it will be randomly generated for you, which means that your team's performance will not be optimal. The line-up saved as default is applied automatically.If you do not set up power play lines or penalty killing lines, players from first and second line will go on the ice automatically. Players for power play, penalty killing, captain and alternates can only be selected from players of the top three lines, since the fourth line can be withdrawn from play during the game! In order to make the power play and penalty killing lines function properly, you have to set up both power play and both penalty killing lines. It is recommended to use 3 forwards and 2 defensemen or 4 forwards and 1 defenseman on power plays. Other line combinations are not that effective. To reach the best results on a penalty kill, you should use 2 forwards and 2 defensemen. Apart from selecting the players with the right attributes for the given positions in the line, you also have to take into consideration whether you have put the players on their preferred side. Players who don't play on their preferred side (this is indicated in the line-up overview by a red letter signifying their preferred side), do not feel comfortable on the rink and their performances will not be optimal. The preferred side is not taken into account in the power play and penalty kill situations. Another important indicator is chemistry. The chemistry between players improves with gameplay until it reaches the maximum value - 100%. Chemistry increases with every game the player plays and it decreases with every game the player misses. Chemistry of the lines is the most important number. This number is displayed above the chart of the respective line. Line chemistry does not decrease if you add a new player, whose chemistry is not lower than the player that he substituted. The chemistry gained by players depends on their time on ice. The backup goalie also gets a small portion of chemistry even if he doesn't appear on the ice. Game importance also has an effect on the growth of chemistry of players. The higher the importance, the faster the players can develop chemistry. Players also gain chemistry in practice, but not as efficiently as in matches and only until they reach a certain threshold. Players, who are over this threshold and don't play matches, lose chemistry every day even if they practice with the team. Players who are injured don't practice with the team and therefore lose chemistry. Setting up your scratches is important if you can't check up on your team on a daily basis. A scratched player takes the place of an injured player. If a player from the line-up gets injured and you don't have a scratched player set as a substitute for this position, you will play the following games with an automatically generated line-up. If a game ends in a tie in regulation and no goals are scored in the overtime, the shootout takes place to break the tie. You can select your trio on the Shootout page. The players will take their shootout attempts in the order of your choice. If after three attempts by both teams the score is still tied, the shooters for the following attempts will be selected by the coach from the same three players. If you haven't selected players for the shootout, the system will randomly choose three players to take the shootout attempts. In the captain setup page you can select a captain and two alternates. Captain of the team increases the morale of the team and the other players then play better. This is applies especially to his linemates. An alternate captain carries out the role of the captain, if the captain cannot start in the game. The overview of your line-up for the upcoming game can be found in the Next game page. Here you can check whether you are satisfied with the lines you have created and you can also check the powerplay and penalty killing units or the shootout players. The lineup and tactics must be set 60 minutes before the game at the latest. The changes made later will not be applied. Load lineup from a previous gameIf you cannot make multiple lineups, you can use the feature to load a lineup from any game that your team had played over the last 7 days. Simply select a game from which you want to load the lineup on the Lines page. Warning! The lineup is loaded without the settings of captain and his alternates and also without the shootout players. You have to set them manually. Also remember that the lineup is loaded exactly as it played in the given game. That means that if scratches played in that game, they will be placed into the loaded lineup on the exact same position on which they had played.Copy lineupIf you have the option to create multiple lineups, you can use the copy lineup feature. If, for example, you want to create lineup A or B, that should be similar to the default lineup, you can copy the default lineup and make only small changes, depending on how much the two lineups should differ. This way you don't have to build every lineup from scratch.Random lineupIf the game is played by a random lineup for any reason, it is possible that day-to-day players will be used even if you have different settings. |