Successful experiment

[Tobbish]

As I was editing players after the roster update yesterday, an idea hit me.

Me and I guess most who try to do their best with line chemistry in FM have probably complained more than once about the "hold line"-scheme for d-men.

I was about to write a post and complain and question why on God's green flat earth coaches have schemes that no player seem to like.

But as I was choosing my words, I decided to try an experiment! I bet someone has already done this research (on Reddit no doubt), but that different player types have, in all it's randomness, still a limited amount of options for their preferences. That snipers don't like to dump (at all, perhaps?) while grinders do... and so on.

That made me think! What if "hold line" is a preference for a rarely seen player type? Since TWD, DFD and OFD don't seem to like "hold line" at all (I have never seen it and I know I'm not alone). That leaves us with the d-man enforcer! It would certainly make sense for such a d-man to want to keep things simple, I thought.

But trying to find enforcers before the first draft, d-men especially is like trying to find a virgin in a maternity ward, almost. There are a few, non of which you want to place on your NHL-roster.

So I created 6 enforcer d-men, assigned them to a team and created a new franchise. Would any of those enforcers prefer to hold the line? Well, the topic spoiled that...

YES! One of them actually prefer to hold the line! (for the record, the others were called Holdone, Holdthree...)

Of course, this will not make most of us more prone to pick a coach with such preferences, at least not until a few seasons into a franchise when, with luck, enough d-man enforcers have been drafted to have any kind of selection. I'd suggest that, "hold line" is also a possibility for DFD and maybe even TWD. Not sure how the randomizing works, if it is based on a percentage to get this or that. But a small percentage of TWD and perhaps 50% of the DFD's could probably have it.

Just thought I'd share, even though this might not be new to everyone.