Asunto: US Senior National Team

I think I will rotate between teams with max rinks and painted surfaces each year.

Update on the Senior Team.

With 3 games to go we are sitting in second place between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland. We have 5 points on Spain who have a tough schedule to finish.
We are in a great spot to rest the starters for 3 games and play the back up team and move on to the next round. Our new additions to the team have fared well and get stronger each game as they build on their chemistry. I am looking forward to the next round and hopefully we can advance to the final 16 and maybe make it to the final 8.

All in all a good season.

We ended up doing 10 adds and drops for the upcoming season

Added were as follows
LB Caleb Pressley filler
CB Stu Jones 2-way backup
LW Clint Wicker Clint Starts
LW Morris Donaldson backup
RW Stan Sikes 2 way backup
P Leon Ware backup
LB Rod Vu filler
CB Jeffrey Cambridge backup
RW Doug Grubbs backup
G Nathaniel Cunningham backup

LB Joseph Delaney MP 2
CB Marty Kemp MP 40
LW Little North MP 86 Was a difficult Choice
RW Charlie Dukarski MP 61
P Jeff Rice MP 71
CB Stanley Hudgins MP 44
CB Bryan Weber MP 6
RW Joseph McFarland MP 42
G Dominic Fugate MP 35
G Vince Burns MP 2

Going to keep an eye on
G Tony Rice

This was the group I have been waiting for, we now have our goalies for the upcoming years. One of the key additions was at LW which we will be building this season. We ran into some issues with players being traded to teams with bad facilities.

Last season we made it to the final 16 again and lost to Serbia. That is the 3rd year in a row we have lost in the final 16, but another fantastic season for us. We moved up to 16th in the world rankings. We are going to try to crack the top 15, but no matter what it is important for us to maintain a top 20 ranking.
This year we are in an interesting group. We have Iran (33) Slovakia (4) France (18) and Spain (29). It will be a good battle for 2nd between France, Spain and USA.

Sorry about the match against France. I had an operation and did not recover in time to change the line up...

I was wondering about that. I figured you just had some stuff going on IRL. Hope you're doing alright and recovering well.

Don't feel so bad though... I totally blew our matchup against canada a few weeks ago because I was fighting salmonella.

Statistically it'll likely be the reason the U19 team doesn't advance this season (even though I stole a game against the Czech Republic, that goal differential from the canada game will likely come back to haunt me).

It is insane, we have 10 points and we have a chance of finishing 3rd. The other crazy thing is that 8 points gets you 4th place. Russia could be out with 9 points, if they lose. Crazy

That's definitely crazy... but that's the sort of thing that can happen when you have essentially a "race of 4 teams" in a 5 team division.

Wow, ya know I kinda regret deleting my handball team, not because I was super interested in it, but because I was doing so well for the national team. I just didn't have the extra money for 3 sports and the time investment to keep track of more than one. I ended up missing a lot of drafts because I didnt have pro for a couple seasons and it was nigh impossible to keep track of my 4 individual line ups I rotated and player training and staff, and I knew the NT players were starting to suffer, so I thought it was better to just sell and quit.

Looking back though, now I would have just sell any national team worthy player to a good team and keep the scraps and some veterans from the market for my team.

I've always wanted Handball NT to succeed, mainly because I did a lot for a couple seasons to push it in the right direction early on, but also because I wanted to see USA do well internationally.

I know my team is way too far gone to get back but, Id pay that fee to get the history and infrastructure back for sure.

I mean like I've always said before, it's always best to be at the top of whatever division you're in. At this point, it shouldn't be THAT tough to compete in division II if that's what you focus on. I deliberately stayed there for several seasons because the benefits of doing so are so great.

If you have 3-4 seasons where you place in the top 2-3 of division II, and focus on leveling up your facilities and arena, I think you'd be back into the fray in no time.

Just don't go stretching your money too too thin. Only spend enough on the market to ensure that you can consistently win games. You don't need great young players, or star veterans to consistenly win at that level. Conserving money in this way will allow you to upgrade your ish faster and make sure you don't "level out" of division II too soon.

Absolutely absolutely don't try to advance if you can avoid it though. Throw games if you have to. I don't think anyone really realizes just how much weight OTR carries in the end of the season sponsor / financial calculations. When I was leading the standings in division II.1 for those several seasons, I was getting money comparable to the top 3 in I.1. But I had lower costs (lower divisions pay less for salaries), and I saved SOOO much money not having to pay for an "elite" team.

If you look at the teams that struggle over the longterm, often they're teams that are 7-8th place teams year after year, or teams that demote / promote every other year. You just give up so much OTR growth (and therefore cash) in both of those situations. It's actually the position my basketball team is in right now. I'm not bad enough to demote to division III. But I'm boarderline playoff team in division II. The result is, I haven't been able to really upgrade much of anything for the past 3 seasons or so.

Sure you could say it's kind of manipulative of the game engine, but I view it as more of "working inside the construct of the game to ensure the most optimal results"

In many ways, I'm sort of jealous... because you have a completely different strategy game on your hands now that you've come back. with completely different priorites and goals in your first few seasons.

Just make sure you acknowledge that, and plan accordingly/ appropriately.

Yeah that was gonna be my plan. I figured out jow much OTR matters back in season 3 of handball, when I won the national cup but lost the promotion round to D2.

Well said!
Personally, I'm reluctant to spend ANYTHING on players that would put me in I.I prematuturely !! I want to be structurally ready for I.I first. Being promoted to I.I too early is a definite setback. Having been there prematurely already because of the weak competition at level II, I found that you can't maintain the salaries required to be competitive enough to protect your OR AND have funds left to build arena and facilities. I dumped as much salary and talent as it required when I returned to level II to focus on arena/facilities. As in all the other sports, your results after promotion are determined by how prepared you are in EVERY aspect when you do promote. Presently in my division II, and I suspect in the others, the battle is for a third place finish NOT first. Second and a loss in relegation is also acceptable.

It's funny, because when I quit my 3 teams in hockey soccer and handball, I had reached almost simultaneously maxxed out arena(all the bells and whistles too) and facilities in all 3 sports right before I quit.

Yep! I can't tell you how many seasons I'd push to win the regular season and then lose in the playoffs. You just play on high enough energy during the regular season that they're tired come playoff time.

In some of those seasons, my guys would normally be so burned out by the time I made it to the 2nd round of the playoffs, I'm not sure I could've even won / advanced if i'd tried lol. I almost had a scare once with the relegation round, so after that, I generally aimed for 3rd place lmao.

That's the other thing though... there's really no reason to pay for all the bells and whistles on the arena.

It was only when I moved to divison I.1 that I added the press center upgrades and paid for some snack shops. For countless seasons, the only upgrades I had were the "money generating" ones (vip lounges and fan shops). The other ones just drain / suck money and don't really give you anything in return. The press center can actually work against you if your goal is to stay in division II for a little while.

The most important thing for money generation from the arena isn't actually having all the arena upgrades maxed... it's by having a high OTR and being highly ranked in the standings and having "enough" infrastructure that you're consistentely "CLOSE" to max attendance.

Consider division I.1 this season. My team finished with the 3rd highest average attendance with an average of 19,617 per game. Do the math and you see that I "missed out" on ~383 attendance per game by not having my arena maxed out. That's the equivalent of $153,200 per home game that I MIGHT'VE been able to get if my arena were maxed out.

With 29 home games (26 in the regular season, 3 guaranteed in the playoffs), that's just about $4.5 million bucks I missed earning.

The two teams that had better attendance than I did have their arenas all "maxed out" and then some. But here's the catch... they may have had ~$5 million more than me in ticket sales this season, but they had to spend roughly $50 million to build those extra addons to start with, and each season, they have to pay roughly $10 million in upkeep expenses for them. So they're basically spending $50 million with a rolling $10 million cost for a $5 million gain. I see that as a pretty bad deal.

Sure, you probably lose A LITTLE bit of money from your media sponsor, but experience has told me that it's not much in the grande scheme (as media sponsors tend to put a lot of weight on high OTR and win / loss records anyways)

Basically, as long as you're winning games and are "CLOSE" to max attendance, there's almost ZERO reason to invest in these addons before you need to.

The only reason you should "max out" your arena is if you're not finishing in the top of your division, and you need the better arena to "draw the fans" since your team's production isn't doing it. But as we've already discussed, you should always aim to be in the top 3 of whatever division you're in, so that shouldn't ever be a situation you find yourself in.