Welcome to the brave world of manual training, you have seperated yourself from the proverbial tit of the AI and have stepped into the light, and this will benefit you more than you know.
Your first instinct is to put all your Forwards on attack, all your Defense on defense and Goalies on goalie, don't do this to yourself, there is a better way. Here is a step by step on how to do it right.
1. Open the training menu in the game, all of your pro players first, sort them by position for fun.
2. Double click the top player, his player window opens, look at his offense and defense, if he is offensive, train him on attack, if he is more defensive, train him on defense. Training a defensive forward on attack will not actually help him, some may think they are 'balancing' him out, but this is not always true, mostly, it will make his strong stats in his main ability (defense) go down and you will end up with a well balanced piece of crap.
3. Do this for each player going down the list, if a Defensman has a higher offense than defense, train him on attack, that is what kind of player he is. Defensmen aren't like forwards in this, if you do train one on defense that has higher offense, his offense won't suffer like a defensive forward on attack does, I don't know why.
4. Goalies should be on goalie, this also ties into the reason you need to invite all prospects to training camp, for whatever reason, goalies who train in the pros skyrocket faster than sitting on your prospects list. Even if they don't play during training camp, they can improve, but if you do play them a game or two, watch them turn green very quickly! (the stat #'s in case you are wondering, they turn green when they are going up)
5. Your farm, do the same thing on your farm.
6. Assign the right coaches to each of your tarining sets, for more info, see the 'tips on succedding in your online league' #9 and #10.
7. Set the percentages for your training, this is really important. My suggestion for this is simple: Por players do not need as much individual attention, so personal training isn't as important, but special teams are. In the AHL, personal training is more important. My personal favprite settings:
NHL
General On-Ice Training-20%
Special Teams-60%
Personal trainging-20%
AHL
General On-Ice Training-40%
Special Teams-20%
Personal trainging-40%
to address some questions:
when is it time to use physic?
There is 2 times when you will know to use this. The first is your enforcers, these guys should split their training time equally between Physic and their strong attribute (most of the time it is defense, so they will split between Physic and defense training)
The most important time to use physic is usually on your farm but sometimes on your pro team.....when? When a player is turning red (meaning his #'s are turning red, and therefor going down). Especially on your farm team, when a player is going red, he may just need some physic training to kickstart his training, this is also somtimes the case on your pro team. I won't lie though, if someone is going red on your pro team, it can also mean that he isn't ready for the NHLor he is simply getting old or he just sucks, plain and simple, but I have found that physic is the answer to many players going down. One thing I learned is to never ever put a goalie on physic, it simple doesn't help him, if you really need your goalie to get in shape, play him some. You can argue all you want and put him on physic if you wish, but I have found it is a step backwards in their development.
I am in an online league, and when the game is saved and closed, the green and red all disappears, how do I know who is going up or down?
Well, you can either memorize your players, or write them down, or sim some games yourself and watch the #'s.
Some training numbers as done by Nils Wanke ~Added March.29/04~
These are the default (NON-CHANGEABLE!!!) training settings you are able to use for your guys:
ATTACK:
Puckhandling => Intensive
Weight, Cycling, Skating, Videos => Regular
Defense, goaltending => None
DEFENSE:
Weight, Defense => Intensive
Cycling, Videos => Regular
Puckhandling, skating, goaltending => None
PHYSIC:
Weights, cycling, skating => Intensive
Defense, puckhandling, videos, goaltending => None
GOALIE:
goaltending => Intensive
weights, cycling, skating, videos => Regular
puckhandling, defense => None
REST:
=> no training at all
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ATTACK:
Intensive training to gain stickhandling
Regular training to gain strength, endurance, skating, positioning
DEFENSE:
Intensive training to gain strength, checking
Regular training to gain endurance, positioning
PHYSIC:
Intensive training to gain skating, endurance, strength!
GOALIE:
Intensive training to gain in all goaltending skills
Regular training to gain strength, endurance, skating, positioning
REST:
=> no training at all
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Q: How Do I gain shooting?
A: Play him on a shooting line (especially power play ice time seems to help)!
Q: Hitting?
A: Play him on a H&G line (more ice time, the better)!
Q: Face-Offs?
A: Play him on a center position. (Hint: on SH the RW takes the face offs)
Q: Leadership?
A: This only goes up with ice time in the play offs.
Q: Penalty?
A: Can only get worse (minors/age) - never seen it improve...
