IF YOU WANT ALL +5 PLEASE READ THIS. PLY-SNP-PWF is the best I've seen for forwards. If you want them to have +5, make sure they have those playstyles and pay attention to their line fit. They need to be almost all green check marks. I look at it like a calculus. A green is a 0, a yellow is a -1, and a red cross is a -2. So if you have a line of PWF-PLY-SNP, and combined they have 6 yellows and the rest are green, the line chem will be +3. But if they have 2 reds and 1 yellow between them, and the rest being green, they will be +5. *Hint hint: you can change player playstyle in the Edit Player screen on the right most panel* For defenders you can have 1 yellow between them, but no reds, and the rest have to be greens. They also need to be OFD-DFD, I haven't found anything else that will give them a +5. I haven't completely done the complete calculation on the penalty kill lines tho. But what I do know is that they need to be TWF, DFD, or TWD. So I usually have my 4th fwd line being all TWF that fit into my PK scheme and I'll double shift them on both lines. For defenders, same thing. My 3rd line will be TWD who fit into the pk strategy. Then I'll double shift them if my other 2 DFD don't fit the scheme. If you turn off fog of war when you start your GM Mode, you will already know how other players fit on which of your coach's current lines. Prospect scouting is another beast to deal with. To start off, if you manually send your Scout out, tell them to scout the player's Potential and Comparison, because this will also reveal their line fit. What you will discover is that every single prospect defender will only have Pinch/Cycle or Shoot/Cycle as their line fit. So if your coach has Balanced/Balanced line fit, you can't draft a prospect that will ever have fit that. The forwards are a bit more random luckily but you will never find one that has a Dont Block line fit. In all my sims, I have yet to find a single prospect after year 1 to have these traits. As for your coach, in the first 2 or 3 years, I would recommend a coach that is a Generalists they will typically fit in more forwards but they suffer for defender prospects. So I usually have an offensive coach as the Associate coach who has Pinch/Cycle for line 1 and 2, Pinch/Balanced for line 3. No coach will ever have Pinch/Cycle for all 3. I have that as the Associate because as my prospects will start to develop, they will most likely fit better with him than the Generalist coach. Hope this was helpful
R. Saran its so crap that you have to figure out this system to win in gm mode. they at least need to make player preferences and coach strategies editable
John Doe you don’t need to. This poorly implemented system does help and can be gamed to make your life easier. For the most part I ignore it and do just fine. The big take away here is setting players up for success instead of just taking the highest overalls
This reminds me of what penguins do. They get people to maximize Crosby and malkin then after a year or two they want big money so they trade them or they go to free agency only to restock that position again and make another guy rich. Then they can stay competitive while staying under the cap
Yeah I was thinking Penguins do this and so did the Blackhawks. They were ruthless, trade some up and comer constantly to avoid the big contract traps.
This part of the stream was surprisingly fun to watch, I learned a lot and I’m excited to try and play the game more analytically like you rather than just trying to make the highest overall team.
I mean I think that is more realistic than everyone thinks. Players in real life don’t have overalls you got guys that can perform on their own sure but to have real success you need those line mates that excel you even higher than your own capabilities. You see it all the time in the nhl some nothing players become superstars next to guys or some get traded and can’t ever reach the same level of success. I don’t think this is cheese at all I think we have just been doing it wrong this whole time. Great video my man keep up the great work!
I might know how to fix the goalies. I haven’t really experimented this yet but if you want to you can. Try putting each goalies consistency at 0/2 so that the goalie plays like their overall all the time. If the consistency is at a 1/2 or 2/2 then goalies can have bad games and not play like their overalls a lot of the time. So that’s why a 90 overall goalie might have bad stats and be doing worse than an 82 overall goalie sometimes. Try this out Johnny and see if it does fix goalie stats.
@@redbullsauberpetronas Actually I think that might've been my case as well. Going down to 1 dropped the save percentage by .004 and then going to 0 another .004.
The only thing about this is you should definitely be able to change your scheme around your players and not the other way around. So many times I just get bad luck and my star players don’t fit my scheme and then I’m fucked the entire time. I can always swap them for other stars but it destroys an immersion layer for me if I’m trading someone like an Eichel away from their team
Zachary O’Malley yeah you can but theres no way to know if your players will fit in and it is so unrealistic to cycle through multiple coaches to find the one who works
Just a heads up. In almost every franchise mode I start, I'd say 8/10 times, Kevin Fiala is a 100% +5 match on the first line. Puts up 70-80 in years one and two. Love the videos!
*Since year 5 i've gone 6 straight presidents trophies and 4 cups, just needed a better overall coach and 4th line just use 3 grinders on the same line that relatively fit the scheme and it's easy +5 chemistry* Tried this with the Leafs and it doesn't always work out. I did it based around Auston Matthews, but the team FINSIHED LAST PLACE in the NHL the First 2 Seasons! I traded Tavares, because he didn't fit well on the second line, for Eberle and draft picks to get the +5. Morgan Rielly was only compatible with the 3rd pairing, so i traded him for brannstrom and switched Muzzins play style to Defensive Defensmen to get the +5. The first line scored a ton of goals with Matthews getting 51 and 47 goals with +90 points the first 2 seasons. I made sure the top 2 lines at least had +5 rating and 3rd with +3 to start the first season. The team got scored on a ton, much like in real life. But I have no idea why this team could not get more than 30 wins in back to back season when the first line is playing around 95 overalls and the 2nd line is playing like 85-89 overalls. Even the defense was decent in overalls. The 3rd season I traded for Rakell and switched out Haula....... same story a bottom 5 team in the NHL. I'm not sure if i just had horrible simming or if a team strictly built around Auston Matthews cannot win. Here are the lines after finishing year 2 with a record of 28-46-6 W.Nylander 87 A.Matthews 92 M.Marner 91 Line 1 +5 D.Kubalik 80 E.Haula 82 J.Eberle 84 Line 2 +5 W.Simmonds 81 Z.Girgensons 80 J.Williams 82 Line 3 +3 A.Johnsson 81 F.Gauthier 77 P.Aberg 79 Line 4 +0 Defensive Pairings E.Brannstrom 88 J.Muzzin 85 Line 1 +5 B.Dillion 82 R.Sandn 80 Line 2 +5 T.Dermott 82 J.Shmaltz 79 Line 3 +3 Goalies F.Andersen 87 M.Hutchinson 80 It was very tough to find players that fit this scheme for Auston Matthews. A lot of highly skilled players matched the first line, but not much after that.
I played as the jets, drafted lafreniere than waited a few years until he turned an 89, than built around him and hit 6 cups in a row. He had a 110 points and his highest overall was 93 with +2. Also turned a 70 overall age 23to 80 at age 33
I had the best success with MTL. I had Lafreniere with Kotkaniemi and Caufield on the first line scoring a ridiculous amount of points! They only had +3 chemistry but when they’re playing up too a 96, 92, and 94 ovr players because of the boost on 1 line and they all compliment each other well! Great success!
This is great info, Johnny! I'm about 8 years into a franchise mode, and I have two superstars in my top 6 but can't find the best supporting players. Also, I think I have 5 TWDs which I will be trading immediately! LOL (Sorry about the Duclair thing on the Twitter stream, I was looking at the wrong part of the screen!)
I did the same thing, maximizing MacK and Rantanen on the first, Landeskog on the second, and went 69-3-10 one year, won 7 straight Stanley cups (yeah, straight) and in 10 years only lost 17 playoff games. Chemistry is BDE. Remember it depends on your coach though.
I loved this... that was a lot of fun... thank you for your studies and dedication to your channel. I love your videos and I love your ability to make the right choices and own up when you make the wrong one. You could have been a great war General or some kind of tactical genius because you dont get stuck to one mindset unless you feel that deviating from the path you have chosen is a detriment to your overall goal. You play PUBG? I play PUBG Mobile and I wish more people were responsible thinkers like you. Self awareness is a very rare quality. Keep posting to YT... ggs
I often turn High Top 6 Player into Elite potential player by playing them on 1st Line. If they have a good year there is a good chance for them to jump. Same goes for High Elite Player. Somehow I never saw a High Top 9 make the jump..
Your next GM Mode should be a universe where Melnyk gets arrested for kicking puppies, and you come in with cash and fix the Sens. Pls give me something to cheer for
Yep. I do my lines so weird just to get the chem. I have 3 forwards on my pk lines because it gives them a plus 5. It’s worked awesome for me since the game came out. I haven’t been as consistent winning cups. I’ve had 3 in going on 7 seasons now with the blues. I built around senko who is 93 ovr now and i grew Thomas to a 89. They are nasty together. 100 point season after season. You really gotta take your time this year. I like the new system even tho it’s flawed. Morale is really wacky. I have it on so maybe that’s why my results aren’t as consistent.
Line chemistry i believe affects so much. A good balance of types seems to make a big impact - sniper, pmkr, 2way, for ex. Keeping guys on their pref lines and with their pref linemates as much as possible. Having 2 Dmen with "all pairings" i think is crucial. Guys like Dekeyser, McCabe i think may be but he sims fantastoc regardless.
Must be nice consistently being on the right side of a team scoring 3+ goals in a period. Also I feel like with this strategy, it's important to take note of what strategies your coach likes on each line and draft players that fit those strategies.
Sometimes a line combo just works too in my LA franchise mode I drafted Byfield and put him on a line with Arthur Kaliyev after a few years then traded for Alex Tuch who’s best season was around 50 points then boom they all were scoring 90 plus they did have a plus 3 for chemistry but Byfield was the only one in the 90s. Something just clicked with those three for me.
Johnny, put up a video doing this from the beginning with a new team. You hinted doing the Oilers and I'd like to see the process of getting a coach and complimentary players for guys like Mcdavid and Draisaitl
If you really want to cheese. You can also change peoples player type. I had a great year with ottawa first year using this method. You just need people who fit on a line, then change them to the best player type for the line combination... you can literally just make every line playmaker powerforward sniper. even without good chemistry they get at least a plus 1
I did this with Pittsburg. I turned Fast into a 40 goal scorer and turned Malkin and Crosby in to 50 Goal/100 Point seasons. Crosby was a 79 Overall but had a +5 and he put up 102 Points with 44 Goals
Tbh Cozens sims really good under the right circumstances, i just started a buffalo GM mode yesterday and Cozens had 93pts on the 3rd line and 1st pp line.
@@roopetoivanen wow ok, he were in junior first year and got like 112 pts there and grew to an 82 then i signed him in the off season and had him on 3rd line and 1st pp, he went to 1st line when Reinhart got injured like 5 games but ive never seen anyone on the 3rd line get 93 pts. We won the cup and he had like 23 pts in 22 games aswell, a stud!
Johnny I think you should try to implement this into your next GM mode BUT to a lot less degree. That way your team wouldn't win the stanley cup every year and you could force yourself to try to do this while staying realistic
HOLY CRAP !! Who could have seen it coming ? Instead of bitching about the chemistry system you did the most basic of research into it and it turns out that you can use it too your advantage !! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW !!!!!
Had this happen with Larkin and he was consistently getting 115-120 point seasons, very unrealistic and wish there was a way to turn the line chemistry off
Red Bull Sauber Petronas exactly, they really need to make it optional because i find myself having an average team that can get 60 wins and go deep in the playoffs because of it
I think franchise mode is really dumb now. It essentially made very good 2-way players like aho and pettersson useless. Sure your penalty kill would be unreal but you want those +5 top lines and 2-ways cant do that. 2-way defenders are also useless because the only way you can get +5 defense is offensive and defensive defenseman, even though 75% of the league is 2-way d. Also, the way the game generates players is the most ridiculous thing in the world because every elite/franchise player runs dump/cycle/energy/block and every defender runs pinch/cycle. It's cool that they made it easier to create dynasties but there's a ton of flaws in this new system. I can name 20 more things broken about it but those are the major ones
If you don’t have owner mode on you can absolutely stack your coaching staff. It would be cool if you did this with the insane chem too cuz then u might have an 82-0 Szn
Great video Johnny, but I still have some questions. How can we know if players we don't have on our team fit the coaches strategies? Like the Aaltonen guy, how did oyu know before picking him up that he would give a +5 with Drouin and Eichel?
mb9607 If you turn off fog of war you can see a "coach's recommendation" type thing where it says where they think this player will fit based on your team's strategies and the player's play style. In one of mine it said Connor mcdavid would be best suited to play on my 4th line though so I'm still not super sure how to maximize it's use 😂
This is realistic because namestikov was on a line with kucherov and stamkos and they dominated the league for the first few months of the season and then namestikov got traded and sucked