Blitz 06 - Draft Tips

[smozoma]

Tips...

The first few are about getting notifications when it's your turn to draft, and the rest are about ways to use the Blitz94.com draft website to learn about players.

1a. Free space in your PM inbox!!

Your PM (personal message) box can only hold 100 messages, so you need to make sure it doesn't fill up.

This way when your turn is coming up, I can send you a forum PM to notify you.

How:

• Sign in to the forums.
  
• In the top-right corner of the forum site, click your name, then "Messenger".
  
• On the left, click "My Conversations"
  
• Read your messages, and DELETE THE ONES YOU DON'T NEED ANYMORE.
  

1b. Set up email notifications on the forum

When you get a PM, do you also get an email? If not, then maybe you didn't enter the right email address into the site when you signed up.

• Sign in to the forums.
  
• In the top-right corner of the forum site, click your name, then "My Settings".
  
• On the left, click "Change Email Address"
  
• Enter your email address and your password. You also need to solve the captcha (word identification security thing).
  
• Click Save changes.
  

1c. Enable the PM popup window

If you enable this, then when you are browsing the forums and you get a new PM, you'll get a popup window on the site to let you know you have a new PM. (don't worry, if you don't go read the message right away, then you won't keep getting a popup, it only pops up once per new message).

• Sign in to the forums.
  
• In the top-right corner of the forum site, click your name, then "My Settings".
  
• On the left, click "Notification Options"
  
• Put a checkmark next to "Show popup when I receive a new inline notification"
  
• Click Save changes way down at the bottom..
  

2. View Previous Drafts

When you're on the draft website (http://www.blitz94.c...b/makepick.asp), you can click "View Picks" in order to view the drafts from previous seasons.

Use the "Select a Season" dropdown box to switch between seasons.

3. View Undrafted Players

Go to the draft site and click "View Players".

You can sort on any of the player attributes. Mouse-over the abbreviations in the table to get an explanation of what the attributes are.

Use the weird table with the numbers in it to rate the players. You want a fast forward? Next to "Forward Formula", set the "Spd" value to a higher value, then click Use Custom Formulas. The players in the table will be rated according to the numbers you supplied. (The "Cust" column is the result of the numbers you supplied).

By default, the page displays the ROM's original ratings. If I had to criticize the original ratings, i would say it rates Shot Power (ShP) too low at 1. Also, since the Blitz league doesn't have line changes, you might as well change "End(urance)" to 0.

4. Learn about Checking

This league uses the "weight bug fix." *

This means that checking is based on how heavy a player is AND how high his checking (Chk) rating is.

This combined rating is under the "Chk Effect" column

For a check to be successful 90+% of the time, you want your player's Chk Effect rating to be at least 1 point higher than your target's weight. For example, can Chris Chelios check Brian Bellows? Chelios's Check Effect is 8.625. Brian Bellows' weight is 8. 8.625 is not much higher than 8, so Chelios probably can't consistently check Bellows -- maybe 50% of the time. Recchi only weighs 6, so Chelios can probably check him 90+% of the time.

*(In fact, I created the weight bug fix specifically for this league!).

5. What do the Attributes Do?

Some of these are guesses, not verified by experiment.

If a player has high ____ that makes him ______.

• Weight:
  
  • Better checker.
    
  • Harder to knock over.
    
  • Lower acceleration. Maybe slower stopping.
    

  [*]Agility:

  • Better turning.
    
  • Better side-to-side stickhandling / deking.
    
  • Maybe faster stopping.
    
  • Maybe faster acceleration.
    

  [*]Checking:

  • Higher checking = better checker.
    
    • If a player has a low weight, but high checking rating, he can sometimes check players who are heavier than him. A heavy player with low checking can not check as well as expected.
      

    [*]Higher checking = under AI control, player throws more body checks.

  [*]Stick Handling:

  • Less likely to lose the puck in traffic or to pokechecks.
    
  • Better at receiving passes?
    

  [*]Roughness:

  • This is actually a longstanding mistake. There is no Roughness rating. This is actually a "Shooter/Passer" attribute -- players with a high value in this attribute are more likely to shoot the puck than pass it, when under CPU control. However, since we are the ones controlling the players, this attribute actually has no effect for us, because we choose when to shoot or pass. So you can ignore this attribute.
    

The rest are self-explanatory.

6. View the Players Your Team Had Last Season

Go to the draft page

Go to a Protection round.

To the right of your name, click "Protect"

This page also shows you which of your players have been drafted this season.

7. View Current Rosters

Go to the draft page

Go to a Protection round.

To the left of your name, click "Roster"

You can also use the dropdown list at the top of the page to select different teams.

Also, if you select "All" from the dropdown, it shows all players drafted so far, sorted by team, position, and overall rating.

8. View a Player's Performance History

Click on a player's name, if it's a link. For example, Mike Gartner.

You'll get his history page.

At the top are his attributes (speed, etc). Some players have videos.

Next, you'll get his Regular season and Playoff stats by season and total.

9. Compare All Players' Performance History

Go here:

http://www.blitz94.c...e&orderby=PTSpG

(to get to this page yourself in the future...

http://www.blitz94.com -> Player Stats -> Season: All, A/B, Regular Season -> Submit

You can also switch to view goalies, by changing "Select stats type:" to Goaltending.

10. Use the Forum's "View New Content" link to keep up-to-date.

In the top right of the forum webpage, if you are signed, you should see "View New Content." Click this to get a list of all topics that have been updated since you last clicked "View New Content."

[smozoma]

New feature:

7. View Current Rosters

Go to the draft page

Go to a Protection round.

To the left of your name, click "Roster"

You can also use the dropdown list at the top of the page to select different teams.

Also, if you select "All" from the dropdown, it shows all players drafted so far, sorted by team, position, and overall rating.

[smozoma]

3 things:

Roster Info webpage

I combined the Roster and Protect pages into one page to make things a little easier:Toronto Roster Info - shows current roster, last season's roster, and which players from last season's roster have been picked

And you can select "All" at the top to see all the current rosters in one table.

Aggression/Roughness Update

I had aggression and roughness mixed up. It's the 'roughness' attribute that is actually the "shooter/passer" attribute. Thanks to CamKneely for noticing my mistake.

new item in the list:

10. Use the Forum's "View New Content" link to keep up-to-date.

In the top right of the forum webpage, if you are signed, you should see "View New Content." Click this to get a list of all topics that have been updated since you last clicked "View New Content."

[smozoma]

bump. see my previous post (i combined posts 3 into 1)