Subject: I.1

I agree with tesco

Eh... i guess it's a matter of perspective.

Crispin Beeman started out as 5/6. He's the 2nd highest U.S.born 17 year old.

Benjamin Lewis started at 5/6 CL too. He has the 5th highest OR among U.S. born 20 year olds, and is the best defensive back for the U21 team... despite me literally NEVER sending him to a training camp.

In my experience, CL really only starts mattering at 3/6. Sure, there's a noticeable drop in training at 4/6, but 3/6 is the start of the swan song.

If a player starts out with high enough OR and has decent enough qualities, he can easily become a very good player if he's on a team with decent facilities.

Managing the U18 hockey team, I've tended to value good players regardless of their CL because it doesn't really affect them much from that perspective, but now that I finally have national quality players that I've developed approaching their mid 20's, I can see the value a little more. Starting around 23 or so, I can see the where the starting CL starts to matter. Since CL supposedly tends to drop by fractional values rather than a random probability to drop to a lower discrete value (at least according to an old article and my own experience comparing a 5 CL 21 year olds growth to that of 17 year old), it isn't really a matter of being lucky enough that a 5/6 CL 15 year old will have 4/6 CL at 24. Maybe it has happened before, but I am skeptical about the possibility.

Here's a good example: hockey.powerplaymanager.c... . Sheldon Dupuis was the star of the U18 team, maybe a world class player. He was a top 4 U18 center already at 17. He seems to have only played for teams with great facilities. Despite that, at 27, he has 2360 CL and probably won't get past 2400 CL. His CL fell to 4 at 18. That's not enough to be a depth player on the United States senior team, let alone on a national team in a country with a lot more depth. If he were still playing for a U.S. team, he would be a depth player on the top teams and perhaps a third line center on a #5 to #8 team (granted that a lot of the better teams have folded recently). With that said, he was still a very valuable player to sell up to a certain point. Even now, 2nd tier teams might pay a lot for Dupuis despite his lack of further growth potential.

You made a good point but i still think that they will statistically be a burden for your team, in the long term.

I mean I try to produce young guns for the US teams as i do for other sports but the fees are killing me (and yours) in handball. So i had no choice to produce only a few, to be the future backbone of my team.

But there is no way that 5/6 at 15 will be useful after 28-30 so you will have a weak spot.

Of course there are a lot of unknown parameters (like folding teams, random quality from your sport academy, etc) but if you plan to be here for a long time, this type of guy do not worth it.

yeah i mean, from my perspective, eQ/AvQ is as important as (if not more important than) CL. Especially in the earlier seasons (which is when most of the training for a player happens anyways).

Consider the following example...

Who's better?

427 OR, 6/6 CL, 15 year old with 70 AvQ?

or

498 OR, 5/6 CL, 15 year old with 80 AvQ?

I'd personally rather have the second player. It'll be calendar YEARS (probably a 7-8 seasons) before the first guy even has a chance of catching up to the second guy. That's a long time to be behind.

I use that specific example because that's Long Munoz and Lamont Russell respectively. Long Munoz belongs to [handball_team=15892], and it's interesting to me because tescosamoa was saying that he wouldn't be at all interested in Lamont Russell , yet he's carrying Long Munoz (who I actually consider to be a lower quality player).

The way CL works, I'd take the higher OR, higher AvQ player every day of the week, because you could have a guy who stays 5/6 CL from age 15 all the way until age 19 (like my old player and your current LW Rod Taylor did). But you could also have a 6/6 CL guy who drops to 5/6 at age 16.

CL is an absolute crap shoot. But AvQ never changes. AvQ is something a player can bank on even after his CL starts declining in later seasons. And trust me... it makes a BIG difference.

Another example:

Ted Keenan and Michael Horne from my team. The former has a SHO quality of 82, while the latter's is 70.

The last time Ted Keenan trained SHO, he gained 1.27, whereas Michael Horne gained 1.24 the last time he trained it. So even though Michael Horne is 5/6 CL versus Ted Keenan 's 4/6 CL, and even though the latter is SEVERAL years older, the higher AvQ still over-powers the CL difference.

To me that's noteworthy.

That 70 AvQ guy on [handball_team=15892] will be utterly average if he drops CL before age 18, whereas the 80 AvQ guy will likely at least have some value going forward if trained well.

Yeah... i think i agree with you. I've definitely taken on a much different perspective since I began managing the U19 team in handball.

I used to go blindly after 6/6 CL players all the time. And for sure, I still prefer them when considering who will be my franchise players (who i'll award bonuses to). But I have definitely begun to see the short/mid term value of 5/6 CL guys.

As you say, the real difference happens after age 23-24. That's 8-9 seasons from when they're 15. In order to have maxed training facilities, pull a 15 year old and then train him for 8-9 seasons... you're talking about roughly a 20 season commitment to this game, minimum. That's over 6 YEARS!!

How many managers stick around that long?

In fact there is no simple case. In your example i'd likely take both players and kick them out if their CL takes a worthless path. I usually don't grow players to sell them at some point except for the 5/6. I do it a lot in soccer.

But the balance of handball game is quite different and you can't afford a lot of players. So i am using a simple rule, I don't take 5/6 guys.

Of course, like you said, they could be quite usefull in short/mid way but my point was that in soccer and hockey best teams only got players with long CL and plenty of experience. It still not true in the hand game because the market is not full yet with players trained with max training facilities. But i can garantee you that the 6/6 70Q guy will be better than the 5/6 80Q after they reach their 30th birthday, when it will really matter.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. I guess will see in a few real years.

It was nice to see it go down to the wire.

Holy crap I won something that matters...1st time in any of the 4 sports.

Good job!

Well done , you're doing better than I am - I should rename my hockey and soccer teams to the "Bridesmaids", since they're always second, but never the winner!

Congratulations! For some reason, Cactus HC has given my team more difficulty than most other teams.

I fell to second on the last day of the season and lost by 2 points in the final game to take second in both. I guess I'll at least conserve energy while 2 key rivals compete in international games.

In any case, I should be happy with my sponsor for next season after taking two 2nds and a 3rd in the National Cup. I never thought my team would be as competitive as it has this season.

It will be some good parity the next few seasons.

Finally decided to advance this season, for many reasons. But it'll be good to renew some old rivalries with all of you guys who came through II.1

Congrats to Cactus HC on the championship!

Sponsorships in the coming season will be interesting... the top 7 teams have OTRs within ~40 points (572 - 614)

Btw... if anyone is interested, Cody Andrews is getting cut unfortunately, so he'll be on the market if you all are interested. He's a 15 year old defensive / balanced wing with almost 80 AvQ (over 90 FiP Q, and over 85 Spe Q), 6/6 CL and nearly 500 OR.

He was my last pull of the season (my most recent pull), and had he been pulled a bit earlier, I might've been able to justify keeping him. But my wing positions are enough of a clusterf*ck as it is (especially on the development side of things), so he'll likely never get playing time on my squad.