Asunto: US National Team

Please post the links to any teams with players that might be of interest to one of the national teams in this thread:

ppm.powerplaymanager.com/...

Thank you for giving me a chance at the helm and good luck to the other NT managers this season. I've made the changes to the roster that I indicated on the previous page and Bulls has put together a lineup to give our younger players some experience.

Overall, we're going to be returning essentially our same WCH lineup as last season, though there may be 1-2 surprises that crack the lineup. After our 9th place finish last season, the goal is to make the playoffs. It would be unrealistic to think that returning essentially the same roster will push us to the brink of promotion, so we're setting realistic goals. Hopefully including youth players and giving them experience will benefit the roster in the coming seasons so we can push to promote.

I think some youngsters could be added. At 5/6 in high facilities, those players train at close to 2 a day. that would be about 200 OR points to be added (including national bonus and training camp) while the veterans are training close to zero.

This is how i added Clinton to the line even when he was not exactly the same OR as the veterans but very close. It also helped that his manager was committed to run camps before the world championships

Not placing players in the right place, the 20th highest Or is at 1948. That means a youngster with 1750 has great potential to make the championship.

None of those players (young 1750+) are 5/6. they are all 4/6 but also more than 1750 OR.

Youngsters to watch are
Rodger Baker , Will Rupp , Kraig Dean , Neo Mathews , Darnell Jones , Clint Connelly , Dre Thibodeau


Id be surprised if 5 or 6 out of those 6 are not in the starting line next season... So.. Lets get them ready!!!

I'll train shooting for my centers guys.

that is what i like about you always willing to do anything for USA team

It's the only thing that keeps me coming back. Honestly. I also want to see how far will Waldo go. He's 30 yrs old, with 2/6 career. I can't believe it.

I agree with bulls for sure. Your willingness to adapt is greatly appreciated.

Speaking of adapting, the more I look at Steve Dexter the more I think his sale at the end of last season marked the end of his NT run. He's 28, 1 CL, and is on a team with facilities worse than mine currently are. Considering mine would ruin a perfectly good NT player, that's not good. I'd estimate he's gaining about .1 per day in training on average at best. Perhaps Drew Gallant should get his shot.

Yesterday marked one of the few friendlies against a top tier national team this season. We're running 4 full lines of prospects including our goalie. Experience-wise it was good for our team. Surprisingly we were almost even on faceoffs when they ran much stronger lines.

We play Portugal next week, who we'll be facing in the qualifier rounds at the end of the season. I wouldn't say this game is going to be a predictor in any way considering we'll still be playing 4 lines of prospects for awhile and they appear to be running something at least close to their WCH lines. It should still prove to be a good match.

That was a disappointing regulation loss against Estonia yesterday. If not for the goal the refs allowed after the net was dislodged, we would have at least taken it to overtime. Oh well. So far the kids are doing fairly well against other teams' A squads.

Curious what other managers are noticing in regards to the effects of game importance vs. chemistry/experience. So far we are the only team who has been playing our friendlies on normal since the update, and we can afford to since most of these players will be on the bench in the qualifying round. However, Estonia had not won until yesterday and suffered no drop in attendance for playing VL all the time and losing. I would love some feedback from you guys as I may experiment with intensity over the next couple friendlies.

Today's loss to Canada was disappointing, but still enlightening. We tried playing VL today like we always had in NT friendlies and confirmed that national teams seem to be completely unaffected by the recent changes to game importance. This would have been good to know sooner, but better late than never. The extra energy we've lost for playing the previous games on Normal will have almost no effect on us since we're still playing the kids to build chemistry and experience. I wish I had more to talk about, but we aren't focusing on the W in these games and are benefitting more from player development.

In other news, Cap mentioned on the U18 thread about bids for the WCH tournaments. We will bring you more information soon if you're interested in contributing. In the past, the 4 contributors for the winning bid received 100 credits each. We will also be holding a contest to redesign the national team jerseys soon. Keep your eyes out for a national announcement with details.

I am not sure yet if it is completely unaffected. I noticed our players gaining much faster chemistry this season.

the goalie got 29 chemistry in 4 matches. that is 7.25 per match. that would put him to 14 friendlies to gain 100%. that means he would be at 100% before the championships

I dont recall it going that fast before when i added Clinton

Perhaps playing at higher game importance has affected that?

I've been watching Brewer specifically as a benchmark for chemistry. Before the game today he had 22% chemistry.

Yesterday's game against Ukraine was quite entertaining. We scored 4 goals on 20 shots playing the kids, and they scored 5 goals on 40 shots playing what may not be their top roster, but was certainly more experienced than ours. If we had beat them on tactics we probably would have won. Take a moment to look at those numbers again, though. There's a reason we've been targeting good shooters when looking at offensive additions to the roster. Don't neglect shooting in your training. I can't stress this enough.

In other news, by popular request from the players themselves, we have relocated the Senior National Team arena from The Vectordome to Norman Bates Arena. The Vectordome has been vacant for so long cobwebs were starting to develop on the players' equipment between home games.

Lastly, I've started a cursory review of rosters in all I.1 leagues. For the most part, we've done an excellent job developing a national database of quality players. However, I have already located one potential US NT candidate that was missed in scouting, and I've only looked at 3 leagues so far. I'll try to take a look at division II leagues in the countries with the most leagues just to be safe, too.

if we missed a good player it has to be my mistake cause two seasons ago i went through all leagues and divisions