Attributes and how they work

[Juliet-Pens]

IT – Intensity. Often discussed in two separate skills. Goalies use intensity in a different form than skaters. For Skaters, the attribute applies to hits & checking. One could use toughness as an application as well. Players like Darcy Tucker & Scott Stevens are intense NHL players that usually have high IT ratings in the sim. The Sim gives high marks for intensity and often, skilled, less intense players can get penalized in overall rating due to less intensity. All teams need some players with intensity, but too many is just as bad as too few…..Goalies are measured differently. Intensity for a goalie is how in tune he is to a game. Often, how alert he is to the slightest nuances of what is happening around him and his ability to anticipate ahead of time. Think of goalies that have a knack for finding the puck through screens as an indicator of how IT can help a goalie. Curtis Joseph is often a player who gets a very high IT rating in the simulator. IT would be on the top 5 attributes for determining a quality goaltending and when the goalie skill stats are equal, this can be the difference maker. Lastly, for skaters, IT is usually determined by the HITs statistic, whereas for goalies, it is a subjective stat.



SP – Speed is the first skill stat for goalies and skaters. It is often called a subjective stat. There is no NHL statistic in which it can be measured. Although the simulator seems to favor the super highly rated Speed players who are 80 & above. Anything above 60 is considered the NHL average or better skater. Speed is one of the Big Three for goalie skill stats. It pertains to how fast they can react for saves in both movement and glove/stick saves.



ST – Strength could be a misnomer because it is really measured by the overall size of a player. And while size & strength are really two different things, it’s the best measurement of statistics available. Since its nearly impossible to quantify strength without finding access to benchpress records of NHL players, it would have to be subjective and subject to all sort of misinterpretations of reality. By using size, you have a good example of a solid stat. Reading scouting reports you see the word "size" mentioned often, they are less concerned with strength and rightfully so. A larger sized individual will wear down even a player of small stature and strength. Size does matter in the NHL and it is reflected by the ST stat in the simulator. The sim gives high marks for ST and it is a stats that will effect skater ratings extensively. If you get a highly rated player without small size, you know he is a skill monster. For goalies, ST can be a difference maker when the skill stats and IT are all equal.



EN – Endurance is and interesting stat. It seems to be less influential to the OV rating than you might imagine. Endurance is based on the average Ice Time per game a player receives in the NHL. It is far more important for Defencemen than forwards. Your #1 Defenceman must have high Endurance and it is suggested that at least two of your defencemen have endurance rating of 85 or above. The 99 rating for endurance equals 30 minutes of ice time for defencemen and 25 minutes per game for forwards. Every 15 seconds less than that lowers the rating one point. It’s pretty easy to protect players with low endurance and is really only a factor to your key defenceman and top special teams players.



DU – Durability is a stat that hardly effects overall in any form. Durability is more of an odds of injury than any other description I can think of. Low DU is possible to go though an entire season uninjured as well as 99DU player getting injured. With DU there is no sure thing, only that your odds of injury increase as DU decreases. The one fact about DU is that a player is likely heal quicker the higher his durability & endurance. DU is usually acquired by prorating the player’s number of games played divided by 82 and applying a similar decrease to the DU number from 99. Leagues & ratings that use a player’s historical durability rather than based on just last year are far more accurate ratings.



DI – Discipline is a player’s likelihood to end up in the box plain & simple. DI effects the OV rating in a minimal amount. The one thing that has always plagued me about DI – does it effect a player’s penchant for being out of position. Oddly enough players who historically make mistakes – defencemen who pinch at bad times, etc seemed to be saddled with lower DI than ones who possess uncanny hockey sense. If you were to try and quantify hockey sense in the simulator, it seems logical that DI would be part of the equation. Most rating use the PIM as a guide for arriving at a players DI giving credence for using it this more as a guideline for penalties, than mistakes.



SK – Skating works hand & hand with Speed in that it is a subjective skill statistic. Skating refers to a player’s agility. The ability to turn quickly, deke and make other moves in tight places. It takes quite a few points in SK to effect the overall statistic in a skater, but for a goalie, its paramount. Moving side to side and the agility to go down, get up, etc while making saves. Skating is one of the top 3 skill stats for goalies.



PA – Passing Accuracy is most important in evaluation to the centers. It stands to reason that players with high PA are gonna rack up assists. Defencemen tend to be very effective when high PA is in concert with high DEF. All your power play defencemen should possess good to high PA numbers. PA is devised from the amount of assists produced by the player in the NHL with a different scale for defencemen & forwards.



PC – Puck Control affects OV rating across the board as much as single attribute in my estimation. PC is huge in wingers, who need the ability to effectively move in traffic. For defencmen you can drop all other skill stats to your hearts content, but if there is a high PC rating, the OV will only drop so far. For goalies, this is a huge statistic. PC refers to the ability to control rebounds, right there is all you need to know about how important it is to goalies – the last of the big 3 skill stats for goalies. PC is a subjective attribute.



DEF – Defense awareness is most prevalent for defencemen. It effects their ratings tremendously. DEF is useful for forwards you use on the PK & Checking lines. Centers with high DEF are especially effective, since their responsibility & positioning on the ice are of greater importance than a winger is. DEF is basically a subjective stat, some leagues have tried to use +/- as a resource, but since that is more reflective of a team atmosphere, and I advise great caution when applying DEF to Plus/Minus. The attribute has an average effect for forwards.

SC – Scoring… Surprise! This has to do with ability to put the puck in the net! But you knew that already. The stat is devised from the goals scored stat produced by the player in the NHL. The scale for defencemen and forwards are different in regarding SC. This is a huge stat for forwards as you can imagine and it takes good defencemen and turns them into great ones.



EX – Experience is based on the number of games a player has played with giving some extra weight to the playoff experience. It has a limited effect on the OV rating.



LD – Leadership is basically subjective and player ratings seem to be in line with common knowledge about a player’s ability to provide leadership. Most of the captains of NHL teams have very high leadership ratings. The effect on the OV rating is limited. But when the sim option of Experience & Leadership is turned on, these players provide a higher level of play, especially in key games and playoffs.

"Ever wonder about the Overall rating of player in FHLsim? Ever wonder how it’s calculated? How it works in determining games? Ever wonder why some other team has a 75ov player who ended up with 38 goals and your 75ov winger did virtually nothing? Well, it’s our job to unveil some of those mysteries, both known and unknown in this article.

First and foremost, many simulators like Sierra FrontPage Sports series never used an overall rating for players. Those types of ratings just told the key attributes for each position and left it at that for the player to figure out which player was the best for his needs. The advantage of those ratings is that you learn in detail, which attributes are key and you develop a good sense of player value very quickly.

Sean Bates had every intention of doing such a rating system, but at the very end threw in an OV attribute for a quick synopsis of player evaluation and he actually devised a use for the OV in the simulator. What he didn’t intend was to confuse the player evaluation process and unfortunately, that is exactly what he did. The actual use in the sim for OV is for dividing class of player. Anything over 80 is called a superstar and the sim is programmed to calculate the number of 80+ov players on your squad and effect attendance proportionally. Although, ticket prices & winning are more effective attendance attraction tools, you can have an extremely high ticket price and/or a very poor winning record and still have more than adequate attendance by having a number of over 80ov players on your squad. For use in deciding games and as a predictor of how your team will perform Overall is an absolutely useless and meaningless statistic.

But the drawback is in player evaluation. There are so many styles of players in the NHL and to hockey in general that most of them cannot accurately be evaluated with one single number. Basically, you have your skill players, snipers, power forwards, checking types, defensive & offensive defencemen and of course, role players. The best ways to evaluate these players is within the individual attributes and ignore Overall. Granted, this is difficult. Hard to trade a 76ov player straight up for a 72ov player and feel you got the better player, although it is possible. But if you have this evaluation process in your confidence, you can make that deal and get another player/prospect or pick and make out like a bandit.

In order to make sense of this evaluation its best that we discuss how the sim evaluates overall with each position and which attributes it deems important.

Forwards – OV takes several factors into evaluation. Two factors that effect OV very much are ST & IT. Strength & Intensity are attributes that can soar up OV quickly. Hence that obsession both sim and NHL teams have for the prototypical power forward. While both strength & intensity are effective in the sim, they are not necessary components for all your players on the team. All you really need are three forwards with high strength & intensity. If you package a few low ST skill players around these guys, it will increase the effectiveness of the low ST players. The really big factors for forwards are SC/PA/PC, it stands to reason that Scoring & passing are the keys to getting points on the board. As a result, a few points in any of these categories will impact overall significantly. Speed & Skating will effect forwards more than defenceman but less than goalies. The sim has a bias for fast players, but it seems to be less than the bias for strength. It is always a good idea to try and find a few forwards with high DEF ratings for your checking line and penalty killing units, but the key here as with anything in the sim is to achieve a balance. You cannot win with just defensive forwards as much as you can’t consistently win with a group of skill only players. DEF will not effect forwards significantly as the PC/PA/SC statistic. Here are the major attributes that effect forwards:

High – SC, PC, PA
Medium High – ST, IT
Medium – SK/SP/DEF
Medium Low –EN/DU/DI
Low – LD/EX



Defencemen – Some research uncovered some very interesting data about overall with the defencemen. The simulator basically categorizes defencemen in two different ways. Offensive & Defensive types. It takes the data inputted and decides if the defenceman is a skilled Dman and evaluates overall on the principle of skill. Oleg Tverdovsky is just such a defenceman; his skill stats in SP/SK/PA are so high, no matter how dreadful his DEF rating is inputted it will not effect overall much, if at all. So, you find him at 77ov in many leagues, that would be a legitimate #1 Dman rating, but he basically a power play specialist and should valued as such in trade. Meanwhile, if the sim sees a particularly high DEF rating on a player coupled with low skill numbers it will rate the defenceman based on defensive type. The defensive types will always be a notch or two lower than the skill guys in overall, but in most cases will be just as or more effective. The top defencemen are the players that combine some skill and high defence ratings a’la Rob Blake. Defenceman should also be thought of as a group, it’s only as good as its weakest link. When you cant get skill guys or high DEF ratings, stick to trying fill the remaining slots with Dmen with high IT & ST, usually these players are effective in keeping shot on goal down as their size and intensity neutralizes more skilled players and they block many shot attempts.

High: DEF/IT/PC
Medium High: PA/ST/SC
Medium: SK/SP
Medium Low: EN/DU/DI
Low: LD/EX



Goalies – Goalies are the easiest position in the simulator to evaluate. If nothing else, than there isn’t a difference in the types and styles of goalies. They all have the same job, stop the puck. Basically, if you just evaluated on a goalie on four attributes, you will do fine. Those attributes are SP/SK/PC/IT. You could take these four stats and add them up to evaluate one goalie versus another and get a very good indicator on which goalie is the best puck stopper. There are some wildcards in goaltenders that must be used to decipher the difference in quality of goalkeeper. Experience & Leadership should be very important to goalies. They can keep a high level of play or raise their play in key games and crunch time of games. Passing Accuracy would help the defencemen out in their own zone and likely decrease the opportunity for the opponent to create a forechecking turnover. Strength is often a tiebreaker in evaluating goaltenders. High Endurance & Durability is really a must in a No.1 goalie regardless of how it effects overall.

High: SP/SK/PC
Medium High: IT/ST
Medium: PA
Medium Low: DI/EN/DU
Low: EX/LD



This article is meant to help you assess overall versus individual attributes in trading and drafting. If you don’t need a high PC forward, don’t worry about the overall about the player you are trying to acquire, because without it the overall can only get so high anyway. If you are looking for a Defensive defenceman, then use that high skill type with poor defense rating as trade bait and get yourself a package of players & picks. Defenceman are only so effective in putting up points anyway, mostly they score on the power play. On the flip side of this, you have been probably evaluating players in trade without overall in mind if you do any evaluations including the player’s age & salary. Now, if you can separate the individual attributes just as you have in age & salary, you have a head start on all your competitors."