"For player development, my general rule of thumb is this:
Start them in the AHL when they are 65+
Give them NHL time when they are 70+
Full time NHLers at 75+. If you have a player with offensive potential, make sure to give them plenty of powerplay time."
Have you found that these tactics work on players that never show any growth though? Like say for example a player like Marcus Johansson who seems to never get better through the first few years. From my experiences a player like Josh Morrissey always shoots up by a ton after the first season regardless of CHL/NHL playing time. These types of player will continue to grow by leaps and bounds no matter what type of year they have. On the other hand you have other prospects that barely jump up at all regardless of where they are played unless they have ridiculous seasons.
The only way to make some players jump up is to literally play every game and force them to score 70-80 points. For example if I have an 81 OVR twenty year old sniper and I sim for a season in which he gets 50 points, then potentially he might go up to 82. Now if I play the game myself and get him up to the 70-80 point range then all of a sudden he jumps up to 84-86 in the off season. The problem with this type of player is that as soon as you sim another 50-60 point season then the player drops right back down to 81-83 OVR. Eventually some of these players start making huge leaps at the age of 24 to 25, but again that does not seem to relate to how you actually "use" the player.
My general impression of this is that players will typically have a breakout where they experience a massive jump, and it is only after that breakout that you can determine what type of player a prospect will be. For the majority of players, that breakout occurs around around 23-25 yo, and for a rare few (like Morrisey, Huberdeau, Gaunce etc.) it occurs at earlier age around 18-19 yo. Away from that one season where players breakout, they will typically go up 1-3 overall points until I would say they reach their potential range.
I think once they reach their potential range in Overall and play at the NHL level, improvement is more dependent upon player performance. This is why young players like Kyle Turris, Marcus Johanssen etc. seem to grow slowly unless they put up really good numbers. It's probably why in my case, players that jumped really quickly progressed slowly afterwards. Morrisey went from 70->84->85->87. Huberdeau in my GM connected league went 66(?)->85->87 and has stayed there since. They have already reached their potential range. Like veterans who have already reached their potential, they improve based on the numbers they put up, possibly with less of a chance to decline than veterans.
You also have to take into account that attribute growth is not exactly linear (ie. going from 60-80 OA could increase your OVR by 5, but going from 80-85 could increase it by 5, going from 85-88 could increase it by 5 etc.). Players like Turris, Johanssen probably need to put up really good offensive seasons to experience significant growth, however if I recall correctly, their initial attributes does not lend itself to successful point production at the NHL level. I managed to get Turris to an 83 OVR before I quit that particular BeAGM game, and his highest point total was around 60 points. If he put up a PPG or near-PPG season, then I could see him experiencing more growth, but his starting attributes prevent him from doing so in situations where someone like Spezza goes down long term.
My basic strategy has just become: look at the players in the draft with the highest stats in shooting, puck skills, senses, physical, and defense. Those five categories tend to contain the stats that sky rocket for players who develop quickly regardless of use, and it is an easy way to see which 60-70 OVR players are likely to make a huge jump during the growth period. Frankly player development in this game seems to be a joke. I would go back to playing NHL 12 if it wasn't for the fact that you can actually keep players into their late 30's at an elite level with this game's system.
That's essentially my strategy as well. I always assume the player will not have a massive early breakout, but instead will progress regularly and slowly. That way it's easier to project what type of player he becomes. If they do happen to have a massive jump like you would see with Huberdeau or Morrisey, then it's a pleasant surprise. That being said, I do have some crazy theories/ideas as to why player development behaves this way.
My first idea is that like NHL 12, players have different potential ratings for the attribute categories (Senses, Shooting, Defense, Physical, Puck Skills, Skating). What gave me that impression was once when I was scouting, I noticed a player was listed as having 4.5 green stars for his Senses. Generally, I was under the impression that it reflected the actual average rating of that player's attributes in that category. However, the ratings themselves were also shown as green, and they were considerably low, probably closer to a 2.5-3.0 star rating. This leads me to believe that when scouting, the stars give you the growth potential of each category, and the potential rating a player has is in fact the average of the six attribute potential, much like it was in NHL 12. After you've drafted them, the stars change meaning and provide the average skill level in that attribute category. The only problem with this theory is, it implies the devs would have gone in and given each prospect and player with yellow, green and red potential individual potential ratings for the six categories. And what about created players? You only give them the overall potential rating. Would it assign that same potential rating to all the categories, or would it randomly assign potential ratings such that the average is equal to the overall potential rating?
My second theory is that the potential shown in game is not working properly, and certain players who are shown as having yellow potential, should in fact have green or red potential. I get this idea from the Iphone app with GM connected. Many players shown as having yellow potential, had in fact green or red potential, at least according to the app. At the time I didn't explore it in too much detail, but I do recall clearly that Huberdeau was 4.5 green star for me, although he was listed as 4.5 yellow star in-game. Not sure if it's a bug with the game, or the app, but if it was in fact a bug with the game, then it could explain why only certain players have these massive jumps early on, and the rest just develop at a regular pace.
My final theory (which sort of invalidates my first one), is that a certain attribute or combination of attributes determine whether a player will experience a massive breakout at a young age. For example, it could be that when a player reaches or has 75 poise, all his attributes experience a big jump if he's 18-19. If it doesn't occur when the player is young, then he follows a more steady development path dependent on his potential until he's around 23-25 where he'll experience a slightly smaller jump that will bring that player to his ceiling.
