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Summarizing my experiences on Blitz


Depch

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Now that I'm staying out from Blitz in the future, I will summarize my experiences.

Blitz 8: My very first North american style league, taking over Vancouver with Bure, Gilmour, Corson and a defence of Weinrich, Langway and such with a sugar on a top with Hrudey. This was also my first full league after years of absence from playing the game, minus a Finnish xmas cup in 2013. I expected to make a bang with such an offence, but was seriously frustrated when I noticed that guys like Bure & Gilmour fall like a warm knife to butter vs heavy D, weight bug fix alone was something I knew of already, but the changes to checking resistance was not. I also had problems with the different goalie control time in Blitz compared to default, that made me do a lot more mistakes in Blitz than in other leagues. I had huge problems vs guys like Hull with Hrudey on G and my D and almost felt like I don't want to even experience this type of leagues. However I did decided to play the league through and try to give it a chance, mostly motivated by trying to get used to the NA style and higher latency.

Result: Round 1 vs Ice 0-4 sweep for Ice

Blitz 9: After my bad initial experience in Blitz 8 I almost gave up, but wanted to give my team a whole new rebuild and get more experience out of the NA style. I had always been intriqued to try out how much can a top goalie have an effect, so I went on and drafted Belfour ahead of Roy when I could have taken Hull instead (even to draft day I was still 50/50 will it be Belfour or Hull). Belfour as another test vs Roy because of his 6 & 6 sticks compared to 5 & 5 in Roy. This experiment was confirming what others had said previously, but some of us are just so thick headed that it needs to be confirmed by yourself, a goalie is not worth a first round pick. It also confirmed that sticks have very little effect and gloves >>>> sticks when evaluating goalies. Team was rather slow but built well for a defensive game with Francis, MacLean, Volek, Verbeek, Fetisov, G.Murphy, first 3 picks for me being G-D-D and having a reach with all of them. It was a relatively fun and challenging season, but still not quite the game I had been used to play. After my goalie experiment I almost gave up on Blitz, but decided that maybe I will give it a one more go going for a better offensive team.

Result: Round 1 vs Plabax 2-4 for Plabax

Blitz 10: I was able to get Recchi & Roy with my picks at start when I decided to not protect Belfour. So an improvement on offence and goalie even to previous season. I decided to make a trade however to Hull who would be very good in the onetimer game I had experienced in classic for example with St Louis, it also felt natural as I would have taken Hull in Blitz 9 if it wasn't for the need to try a goalie first pick out, however I could not revive the threat Freydey had with Hull in Blitz 8 against me for example. Eventually this trade would hurt my team a lot as I ended up with a relatively slow team again and never got the team play as I had planned beforehand. I am to blame myself and it's a good learning experience in building a team. Result was one more season to struggle with. Team consisting of Hull, Zhamnov, Semak, Broten, Rouse, Fetisov, Beezer is quite ok on paper, just that _I_ had problems getting that puck deep after opening passes and create the room for Hull with the team. Broten was not able to help me enough with the speed problem I put myself on to and the defence/goalie was worse to make this team play as well as in Blitz 9.

Result: Round 1 vs Zalex 1-4 for Zalex

Conclusion: My time with Blitz was very average at best. That's how I felt it and that's what the results speak of as well.

DTT: This was in between Blitz 9 and Blitz 10. I have to include Dream team tournament in summarizing this as well as it was a weight bug fixed as well. Idea was nicely put by Donny and I got my team and players mostly from our Finnish fantasy league from 2005 or 2006 I think. The game also felt faster than in Blitz as we could modify our own players to our liking. Each and everyone had the same attributes to distribute so everyone was at an even playing field. I was shocked to see someone like Frey lose early to huge underdogs, these kinds of cup even the playing field for players who are not so good at drafting or building teams. This tournament would be the only one I would have little success in weight bug fixed leagues/tournaments. Plenty of tight even games and eventually coming on top vs Kingraph in the finals. This and Blitz 9 was the most fun I had with weight bug fixed leagues. Maybe I'll join a tournament or few should one ever come up again. One should never say never again though, not even to Blitz. :)

Anyways happy blitzing for everyone who is sticking up to this great traditional league in the future. I'll be joining the group who is mainly focusing Classic & GDL, so not going anywhere.

Edited by Depch
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  • 3 weeks later...

I was shocked to see someone like Frey lose early to huge underdogs, these kinds of cup even the playing field for players who are not so good at drafting or building teams. This tournament would be the only one I would have little success in weight bug fixed leagues/tournaments. Plenty of tight even games and eventually coming on top vs Kingraph in the finals.

I believe I was the "underdog" who put Frey on the ropes in that tournament, I wasn't shocked taking a short series from Frey and I'm sure he wasn't surprised either. The style of play and experience of a coach is indicative of how they will match up against their opponents.

For example, I've played Freydey on and off now for 6-7 years and matchup well against most of the time. I may not be nearly as skilled, but I have 6 years of experience playing this coach and know his tricks (watch out for the net crashers). On the other hand, I've always never matched up well against Kingraph or Tomkabs who play different styles and have much less experience playing against.

There are many skilled coaches in these leagues, each having a unique style to the way they play the game. It's definitely not an easy task to build a team, and out play 10-20 opponents. While you may have lost the series, you have 5 more games against Zalex to learn from the next time you play him.

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I believe I was the "underdog" who put Frey on the ropes in that tournament, I wasn't shocked taking a short series from Frey and I'm sure he wasn't surprised either. The style of play and experience of a coach is indicative of how they will match up against their opponents.

For example, I've played Freydey on and off now for 6-7 years and matchup well against most of the time. I may not be nearly as skilled, but I have 6 years of experience playing this coach and know his tricks (watch out for the net crashers). On the other hand, I've always never matched up well against Kingraph or Tomkabs who play different styles and have much less experience playing against.

There are many skilled coaches in these leagues, each having a unique style to the way they play the game. It's definitely not an easy task to build a team, and out play 10-20 opponents. While you may have lost the series, you have 5 more games against Zalex to learn from the next time you play him.

I did not mean only the upper bracket, but lower bracket as well, as a whole. But thank you very much for the clarification, experience playing against certain opponents and knowing their traits can help the underdog against a technically better opponent indeed.

http://s8.postimg.org/5oj6ni9bp/Dream_Team_Bracket13.png

Edited by Depch
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