I recently wrote the beginner guide part 1 – tactic and advance tactic to follow up in this guide we going to talk about team management:

How to know the strength of your player

The Attributes
In the team management page, you can see your players attributes. Even if a players have a high overall you should focus on individual attributes before his overall rating.
Here the list of attributes:

GT… Goaltending
HT… Hitting
PS… Passing
SH… Shooting
PC… Puck Control
SP… Speed
SR… Strength
S.T.. Special Teams (PP, PK)
ST… Stamina

Hitting and Strength are more important than the overall rating for a defenseman and shooting, speed and passing are what you should be looking for your attacking line.

Injuries

This is indicated by a little red cross. Every manager has to deal with injuries. It’s an important part of coaching to be able to set lines when some key guys are injured. Then again, it’s great when your opponent has lots of injuries, so it works both ways…

You can see details on the injury by going to RECENT INCIDENTS or clicking on the player and going to the player information page. Some injuries can last for several weeks. The most important thing to remember is that some guys can play injured as long as their fitness is above 60….

AWOLs

This is indicated by a little beer bottle or red exclamation mark symbol. These players will miss the game for personal reasons (working, watching TV, vacation..). Every manager has to deal with AWOL’s on a regular basis and there’s really not much you can do… Just set your lines and wait for your guys to return….

Bans

This is indicated by a no entry symbol. Players who take too many penalty minutes may receive a BAN for a number of games for excessive minutes. Bans are usually a direct result of how aggressive you play with certain referees. Players with bans cannot play until their ban is served. Once again, a great coach can work around this….sometimes.

Setting up your team

Setting Your Defense
When sorting your Defencemen onto your lines remember to check their season stats and try to abide by the following rules.
Attacking Line A – Use Players with good Shooting and Passing attributes
Defense Line B – Use Players with Best Hitting and Strength Attributes
C/A Line C – Always use One Good shooting Player. Players with good Speed are a must also

Sorting Player Positions
It is key to have the correct amount of cover in each position within your team.

The ideal layout is
GK – 2
D – 7
LW – 3
RW – 3
W- 1 (The more W the better as they can cover both positions)
C – 4
You can interchange the Wingers if you can get W as opposed to RW and LW but they are not always easy to get hold of. And sometimes their initial attributes can be weaker.

Setting Your Special Teams Units
This is important as Power Play and Penalty Killing can win you games. When setting your Special Teams sort your Players Attribute by the S.T Column to see who your best Players in that department are.
Set the Units as follows:
Penalty Killing Unit –
3 x D-men
1 x Fast Winger
Power Play Unit –
1 x D-man
3 x Wingers
1 x Centre
Remember that these units involve extra Ice Time and tire players so try and spread your Lines and S.T Units about the team. You may find players with low fitness vanish for the next game.

Player Rotation
A Player will improve with training obviously but he will also improve with Ice Time. If you have a fairly good team and are playing an extremely weak team then rest some of your big players and give the others a game. They need to play to improve. Playing also improves their morale as does winning.
Try and stagger when you buy Players in certain Positions. You don’t want all you Centers hitting 7 seasons at the same time or any of the other positions. If you have 2 Goalies try and have them so that one is in his 1st season and the other in his 3rd or 4th. That way when its time to waiver the old one because he isn’t performing, you have a ready made replacement who you have played and trained up over the seasons.
Another way to go is to get all your players at the same time and train them up over 3 or 4 seasons. They will then all be at the top of the game going into the 5th, 6th and 7th seasons and will be pretty hard to beat if you originally picked up top players. The problem is you will then have to replace them all at the same time, or begin replacing some as early as their 4th season.
It is better to stagger them and be competitive all the time.

The 170 Rule (from the forum also)
If a Players Morale and Fitness do not add up to 170 then they do not perform to their highest ability. If possible, try to make sure you keep Morale and Fitness even and only play Players who are above 170.

Stamina
If you are going to double or triple shift a Player then make sure he has high Stamina. The same goes for your whole team in general as if it is low then they will tail off toward the end of a game

7th Season Decline
A Player will stop improving in his attributes once he hits his 7th season with the team. His attributes will start to drop. You do not have to visit the waiver market straight away though because even though he is getting worse attribute wise he is still better than a new player who you have to train up. Use the 7th season players for as long as possible until you can get hold of a decent replacement in the waivers. But don’t think you have to drop him as soon as he hits 7 seasons. As a rule, many of the top Managers will nor replace a player until they can get a new one with higher attributes….regardless of seasons played.

Keeping Your Players Happy
When you set your lines try and use every player who is fit. You do this by making sure everyone is either on a Line or on a Special Team Unit. This will keep your players happy and cut down on them going AWOL. If they get Ice time then they generally turn up for the next game. It will not stop all AWOL’s but it should cut down on them. When doing this remember to keep their morale high and this will also help them as well.

Fitness

A Player is fit enough to play if he is 60% or above (regardless if they are listed as having an injury), However I do not advise playing them if they are that low. If you use training you should aim to keep the fitness level as close to 100 as you possibly can. If a player has low fitness then don’t throw him on more than one line as he will not be able to perform. Also be aware of the stamina of players as this dictates if they can perform for long periods of ice time.

Morale

It is absolutely crucial to keep morale as high as possible. A motivated team will play their very best and an unhappy team will play well below their abilities very often. You can help keep morale high in a few ways:
1. Log-in everyday to manage your team.
2. Select morale-building in the training page. Rehabilitation is the best recommendation for division games. Nice rest for Exhibition games. Note that some player react differently to moral building activity and pub crawl tend to give a lot of AWOL the day after…
3. Play all your guys as often as possible. A guy who doesn’t play will lose morale very quickly.
Also, players love to win and a winning team will generally have good morale…

Hope it helped, the 2 other part are coming…