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Infamous "Long Stick"


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I think I might be on to something and wanted a little feedback from the pros. In reading Building Lines with AJ, I noticed his comment about Pat Verbeek having a "long stick" so I started using Hartford and fell in love with his skating and what does appear to be a slightly longer reach. Hartford's team chemistry is great as well making them fun to play with.

I've also used Boston quite a bit and have noticed that Ted Donato has a similar reach and it got me thinking. The only similar attributes they both have are 3/4 skating. That really got me thinking and reminded me of Corey Millen who also seems to have that extra reach. His skating? You guessed it, 3/4. So, after scouring through AJ's AWESOME lines page I found an interesting team.

Edmonton

Blessed with the All World talents of Klima and the high defensive IQ of the blue line with the solid Randford in net, they also have the unique ability to ice two 3/4 skaters in Kevin Todd and Todd Elik. After playing a few games, I notice both of these guys have that little extra reach!

What do you guys think? Some will think I'm nuts, maybe I am, but it's hard to ignore. Maybe the 3/4 skating gives the appearance of this "Long Stick" but it certainly seems real to me.

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I've heard of these theories before, and I love them! There's a lot of these theories that people swear by, but haven't been empirically proven, such as

* What offensive/defensive awareness really does. (i.e. high defensive awareness on defensemen means they stay close to the net)

* Checking rating factors into C/B check efficiency

* AI will emulate your playing style (check more, CPU checks more)

* MOMENTUM (the time during the game, sometimes entire game, where one team is clearly having a hard time scoring, while everything clicks for the other).

* On that note, calling a timeout to change the momentum of the game

So if you believe 3/4 skaters have a longer reach than others, so be it!

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Don't forget about:

- long/short wind-ups (Plab knows who has em and who doesn't)

- heavy sticks (Kamensky), hard to explain other than it feels like he's carrying a steel beam

- short sticks (most of the 6/4/4 lefties aside from Sakic and Sanderson)

Last but not least, what I call, the "choke bug". It occurs with average or accurate shooters, and it's when your goalie is out of the net, and the other guy gets a one-timer that goes into the stands. This rarely happens when the goalie is in the net. The choke bug doesn't seem to correlate with shooters who have crappy accuracy anyway, like Hawerchuk, Svodboda, because they shoot into the stands no matter where the goalie is.

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* What offensive/defensive awareness really does.

What is not so well known on def awareness is that high def awa allows you to steal pucks by shadowing a player close and not even pressing anything.

Edited by Depch
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What do you guys think? Some will think I'm nuts, maybe I am, but it's hard to ignore. Maybe the 3/4 skating gives the appearance of this "Long Stick" but it certainly seems real to me.

I love these "conspiracy theories"....

The long/short stick thing seems easy enough to prove. Let's see some screen caps and compare? If you are seeing something, it should be visible in a screen cap, right?

Until I see it, I don't believe it.

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Last but not least, what I call, the "choke bug". It occurs with average or accurate shooters, and it's when your goalie is out of the net, and the other guy gets a one-timer that goes into the stands. This rarely happens when the goalie is in the net. The choke bug doesn't seem to correlate with shooters who have crappy accuracy anyway, like Hawerchuk, Svodboda, because they shoot into the stands no matter where the goalie is.

It's not a bug. It's intentionally coded into the game. It's in NHL '94 and all of the other NHL games I played religiously. NHL 06,07,08,09,10,11,12 all have the same thing.

There are animations in NHL 06 that trigger an empty net miss. So if you have an open net and the goalie is out of position, the game will make the goalie do a certain desperation animation which triggers the missing of an open net if you decide to shoot it.

The are also invisible walls in the NHL 09-14 for the 360 and PS3. Sometimes the puck hits a force field barrier before going in an open net.

-----------------------------------------

EA Sports has a whole range of random things. In the old NBA Live games, everything was a swish. No bank shots, no off the rim and in, etc. Just swish.

In FIFA 06, there was something that would trigger the AI to take the ball (in your half), sprint all the way back to their half on the sidelines, and when you would finally pressure them with your attackers they would just kick it out of bounds.

And 2K Sports, wasn't much better. One of the games coded Iginla with a Ginger Brown mullet.

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  • 1 year later...

Hate to say it, but the long stick idea seems to be a myth... in these two images, I measured the sticks and they were the exact same length. #99 has the 3/4 skating stat and #8 has a 6/6 skating stat... I also measured the players and they were the same size as well even though they look out of proportion in this screenshot, so everything is to scale. Unless the long stick concept doesn't actually increase the length of the stick as seen in game (just alters the reach with no visual differences), then I don't think the 3/4 concept is right. Not ruling out the existence of long sticks in general though, I'll keep looking!

Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 11.29.35 AM.png

Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 12.43.04 PM.png

Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 12.53.14 PM.png

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Alright so this is just genuinely weird.... Verbeek has a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT poke check animation from his Hartford linemates. Verbeek's stick blade is more elevated than his linemate, Zarley Zalapski, but his stick is graphically shorter! I'm not sure if this is just a difference between forwards and defensemen or what. Will keep up the research.

Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 1.08.04 PM.png

Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 1.10.10 PM.png

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Update: Here's a picture of Geoff Sanderson, a bona fide forward, with the same poke check animation as Zalapski. Not Verbeek.

 

Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 1.20.05 PM.png

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  • 3 months later...

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