Subject: USA U-18 Team

I am working on going through my scouting information to put together the roster tonight. Starters will be selected and called up by tomorrow.

The roster and lineup is set.

The defense looks above average (as usual), and the starting goaltender could be elite (he might hit 1300 OR by the end of the season). The first line offense is strong, but the offensive depth drops off a bit. The majority of the forwards could use better shooting.

The team pulled an extremely challenging group with the Czech Republic, Russia, and Serbia. The group that the U.S. would combine with in the qualifying round contains 2 more challenging teams: Latvia and Hungary. Groups 2 and 3 look much easier.

I am training at 100 on shooting. Are you looking for more?

Your players have good shooting. Half of the forwards I've called up have shooting around 50% or less (75% would be ideal as the floor; 100% for the ceiling) but are otherwise much better than the alternatives. I've already heard back from a few of the managers, so it looks the team will end up being okay.

Does experience play any role on player performance during the game? Does it worth to put players in the season games early even with lower stats just to gain experience?

I don't have the calculations on me but could someone post a formula showing with experience and with out. Say using a Back or goalie.

For info on this subject:
Read this article in the PPM magazine.

PPM magazine-Information-Chemistry and Experience-the X Factors. (page 4)

From the article:

"For those of you who do not want to read on further, let me summarize my findings now. Chemistry adds a 25% bonus and experience adds a 20% bonus. These bonuses are added to the energy-modified player build."

Yes, experience (as well as chemistry) gives bonuses to attributes as Bobby Jay said.

There is a trade off between playing your best players and playing inferior younger players so that those younger players gain more experience and play better in the future. If you don't have the facilities to develop competitive players or if you have a chance to be sufficiently competitive, it is good to put your best players out. If you are less competitive but have the prospects and facilities to be more competitive in the future, you might want to focus on getting your prospects experience earlier. If you don't mind changing lineups more often, you can play more younger players against weaker or unbeatable teams (don't do this in the playoffs as it could affect your sponsor). A good time to ditch older players for younger players is when the younger players are a season or two away from catching up. If you wait too long, the younger players will be weaker in the future, and the older players will be harder to catch up to.

Based on calculations I've done in the past, I've found experience to be closer to a 10% bonus (for 100 experience) and around 20% for chemistry.

For the national team, players play fewer games and don't gain much experience, especially during exhibitions (maybe 1 every 2 games). Chemistry is much more of a factor at the U18 level. Getting younger players chemistry is valuable, so I sometimes favor 17 year olds that are about good enough to start. I also put players with 100% chemistry on the bench (players on the bench don't gain experience or chemistry but still gain the experience bonus). and replace them with 17 year olds. This creates a handful of 17 year olds that can reach 100% to repeat this process in the following season.

I'll go ahead and post the information for my goaltenders to demonstrate. I suppose I may be giving away competitive information, but it's easily available to anyone who would take a few days to scout my goaltenders.

I ran 3 challenges, 1 with each of my 3 goaltenders (I usually have 4, but I promoted my 3rd string goaltender to backup, sold my backup, and haven't gotten a replacement for the depth chart yet).

1) Matt Dowell
Goa-Pas-Tec: 1161-580-580
Exp: 123
Chem: 100
Energy: 91
Team Strength Number: 397

2) Ron Wolf
Goa-Pas-Tec: 976-488-488
Exp: 48
Chem: 96
Energy: 98
Team Strength Number: 335

3) Josef Gerber
Goa-Pas-Tec: 405-202-202
Exp: 8
Chem: 51
Energy: 100
Team Strength Number: 126

I will use ratios to mostly cancel out some of the variables in each case.

335/397=84.4%
[(976+488+488)*(1+.1*48/100)*(1+.2*96/100)]*.98/[(1161+580+580)*(1+.1*123/100)*(1+.2*100/100)]*.91=
2389.7002/2846.2794=84.0%

With Chem at 25%: 2485.9298/2964.8744=83.8%

With Chem at 15%: 2293.4707/2727.6845=84.1%

With experience at 20%: 2499.1522/3158.0269=79.1%

With experience at 5%: 2334.9743/2690.4057=86.8%


Take into account that Dowell has an excess OR for goaltending. I'm also assuming that energy applies directly as a coefficient. Based on experience, players with energy below 70 play really awful and might marginally decrease in performance to a greater extent at low energies.

The above suggests that 10% is a good estimate for experience. Unfortunately, my chemistry for my backup isn't currently at 100%, but chemistry nearly cancels out. This means that the above isn't especially useful for calculating chemistry. I'll use my 2nd and 3rd goaltenders for that purpose. Energy cancels out better in this case.

126/335=37.6%
[(405+202+202)*(1+.1*8/100)*(1+.2*51/100)]*1.00/[(976+488+488)*(1+.1*48/100)*(1+.2*96/100)]*.98=
898.6501/2389.7002=37.6%

With Chem at 25%: 919.4447/2485.9298=37.0%

With Chem at 15%: 877.8556/2293.4707=38.3%


Of course, it would be better to run a regression using a program that can do that rather than the calculator on my computer, but I'm not going to do that right now. I've provided data that someone else can use.


With all that said, the formula I propose (assuming a 2:1:1 training ratio for relevant attributes and then adding shooting) is:
[Positional_OR]*[1+exp/1,000]*[1+chem/500]*[energy_coefficient]

I guess I'm getting to the Gritty details today....

By the way, I'll share a good suggestion for building up the experience of prospects. If you have propack (or if you don't and are willing to significantly change your lineup every day), you can set up a minor league team of prospects that aren't yet good enough to start. With the roster limit you can set up 3 lines of prospects. You can then play them at very hard for every exhibition game using the planning tab. If your reserves are focused on prospects rather than depth to swap in at mid-season to fill in for slightly better players that are getting tired, this is a good way to jump start the experience of future starters.

The above formula is for showing the effect of experience, chemistry, and energy on team strength, not OR. Again, the percentages from this sort of calculation are only estimates.

Thanks all! I've been playing since almost the beginning but the game became more like a habit now cause of time ): But I'll keep this in mind!
Thanks again, for the detailed posts.

I've suggested this in the past (though I decided not to go through with it; another candidate also mentioned this in the past election), but what would people think about effectively tanking for a season to develop the chemistry of the next season's team? Next season I could play mostly 17 year olds who would end the season with 100 chemistry (chemistry doesn't drop at the end of the season for national teams in hockey). In two season, I could play 17 year olds in most exhibitions (the 18 year olds would have to play the last 2-3 exhibitions to make up for chemistry lost over the season), and they would end the season with ~70 chemistry. Since the 17 year olds would always be playing for chemistry, they could play on very hard and gain more chemistry for game since energy wouldn't be a concern.

Of course, the elite 18 year olds (~1,000+ OR at the start of the season as 18 year olds) with a possible future on the senior national team would need to be at least on the bench to get the training bonus. The team would almost certainly have to demote after the first season. While the team would be a favorite to promote again in the second season, I've often seen top teams have bad luck with the RNG and end up missing the playoffs or even facing relegation, so promotion isn't guaranteed, especially since promotion requires winning 2 consecutive 1 game playoff series. After that, the benefits would only last a few more seasons.

This is very risky, but realistically, the United States lacks the depth to compete with top teams, especially as the veteran player base slowly contracts over time. There have been mediocre teams that have won medals with RNG luck in the top division though.

One problem that arises out of the lack of depth is that the team needs to lean harder on its star players. Energy is key to making an impact in the playoffs, and the lack of depth requires it to be sacrificed too fast.

Some other teams have used other strategies that could be emulated. Some of the deeper teams have been able to rest their top players in the first few games of the tournament. Using the chemistry strategy, the United States could attempt to do the same. Another strategy I've seen has been to use farm teams that buy up all of the best prospects to maximize their experience, ending up with a team of players that have ~50 more experience than everyone else in the tournament. I can't really ask anyone with the facilities and money to do this, but perhaps I might be willing to do this myself in the future. I would have to build up some funds and sell all the players after that turn 21 to maintain income. Other teams would have to be willing to sell these players to me though. I could sell them back after they turn 21, assuming that wouldn't get me in trouble for illegal transfers.

The last possibility is to emphasize shooting. I haven't verified this, but could OR added to shooting improve team strength more than an OR added to improve the player positionally? Of course, the teams with good shooting also tend to have deeper player bases that can provide more players with high OR. The thing I've always been worried about is to have better balanced players that aren't capable of competing with balanced players with much better OR. Favoring flawed players at least allows them to be competitive in some aspects. Perhaps there is a middle ground where team strength can be maximized without sacrificing offense and defense beyond a critical point. I need to collect some information on the marginal impact of different attributes on team strength before doing anything further in this area.

Cap,

I think you have managed the team very well while you have been the manager. I am in agreement on the chemistry and shooting aspect. As far as any other changes....im all for it. The only way we are going to know is to try it.