Quote:Originally posted by JayWhy@Sep 6 2016, 03:06 PM

That's up to the GM to address that, understand the way these players work and move them around. But usually people see being on the third line as a major step down, when it could be a huge boost for them. Most of the past few seasons, Mark Longford was our third line scorer in Edmonton and dominating because he played weaker competition. People get annoyed with their place though.

It sometimes can, but it isn't often easy to. Usually I do just ignore it, sometimes I say sorry I can't help how the sim works and can sometimes be inconsistent. If you look at it, I run tests for consistency of over 500 games per team so I know what is consistent. But in a 50 game season, literally anything can happen. People expect it to always be consistently similar, but it's never that way even in real life and that's where most people's primary frustration stems from.

Mark Longford was our third line scorer in Edmonton and dominating because he played weaker competition.

This here is the key: Depth. More than anything, what wins Stanley Cups is depth and that's it. I mean, at one point the Blackhawks (incoming bandwagon comments) had these lines (or extremely similar) in the playoffs:

Saad - Toews - Hossa
Versteeg - Richards - Kane
Sharp - Vermette - Teräväinen
Desjardins - Kruger - Shaw

Keith - Hjalmarsson
Oduya - Seabrook
Timonen - Van Riemsdyk

Crawford
Darling

-------------------------------------
Sharp - Toews - Hossa
Saad - Handzus - Kane
Bickell - Shaw - Stalberg
Frolik - Bolland - Kruger

Keith - Seabrook
Oduya - Hjalmarsson
Leddy - Rozsival

Crawford
Emery
-------------------------------------
I mean its different builds but the first build there is basically an unstoppable Top 6 that will score all the goals you need except that even the third line has plenty of scoring power and the third line did score important goals and then the grinders of the fourth that could still play good defense and not make dumb plays to give up dumb goals.

Then the second build there, its pretty much the same thing with the Top 6(apart from Handzus, the guy dragged Kane and Saad down because he just couldn't skate) and then we had the bottom 6 be a punch of players who could grind plenty and who just refused to give up because they didn't know any better, that's all they did, they kept poking at it until it went across the line.

And both builds there basically have 4.5 defensemen. The top 4 D plays most of the game and then the top 6 plays the rest in between their shifts, which probably amounts to around 5-12 minutes of ice time (especially with Timonen and TVR, it was less than 10) but they got the job done.

I think people need to forget their egos and understand that if you have a third line that could be a first or a second line in another team, you do it because then you'll be playing against lines that would be 3rd or 4th liners in your team or other teams. All of that is of course just what I've seen in real life but it makes sense, its always the depth guys that score that important goal because they either have the skill or they just have the endurance/strength to never, ever give up.