NHL 19 Realistic league-wide scoring possible while simming?

[RememberTheRoar]

Have I finally cracked the code to achieving near realistic league-wide scoring while simming my franchise? I'm actually not able to take any credit for it, but I ran some controlled simulations based off some second-hand suggestions a few Redditors said they heard from a YouTuber named Tougie24.

Key sliders that seem to really impact scoring: Icing [WTF?], Offsides [WTF? again], and penalties

Real NHL scoring in the 2018-2019 regular season:

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 14
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 19
Lowest team goals per game: 2.39
Players with 100+ points: 6
Connor McDavid points [singled him out due to his consistent posting of 100+ points over last three years]: 116

**The following is collected off of multiple re-loads of the same franchise save file, the only variables that were changed are those that are listed. Injuries were turned off for all of these simulations, I did not turn off CPU trades:​

2018-2019

Icing: hybrid icing [default]
Offsides: delayed [default]
Penalties: 4/4

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 3
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 4
Lowest team goals per game: 2.12
Players with 100+ points: 0
Connor McDavid points: 76


As you can see, the penalty slider maxed out alone does not provide anywhere close to the scoring we actually saw in the regular season. I will say, however, maxing out the penalty slider did give me pretty realistic powerplay point production.

Moving onto the following season, I ran the following sims off a file I saved right before the start of the 2019-2020 season.​

2019-2020

Icing: hybrid icing [default]
Offsides: delayed [default]
Penalties: 4/4

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 1
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 5
Lowest team goals per game: 2.30
Players with 100+ points: 0
Connor McDavid points: 82

As you can see, I still had results similar to my 18-19 season rather than actual league scoring.

Okay, here's the good stuff:​

2019-2020

Icing: off
Offsides: delayed [default]
Penalties: 4/4

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 9
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 15
Lowest team goals per game: 2.51
Players with 100+ points: 3
Connor McDavid points: 101

2019-2020

Icing: hybrid icing [default]
Offsides: off
Penalties: 4/4

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 12
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 18
Lowest team goals per game: 2.52
Players with 100+ points: 4
Connor McDavid points: 100

2019-2020

Icing: off
Offsides: off
Penalties: 4/4

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 18
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 24
Lowest team goals per game: 2.56
Players with 100+ points: 4
Connor McDavid points: 105

2019-2020

Icing: off
Offsides: off
Penalties: 3/4

Teams with 3.00+ goals per game: 18
Teams with 2.88+ goals per game: 22
Lowest team goals per game: 2.61
Players with 100+ points: 2
Connor McDavid points: 75

 

[Igor Shestyorkin]

This is a prime example of just how f***ing bad the EA Sports NHL Franchise is right now.

 

[DXStriker]

I always found it funny that McDavid never did well in my GM Modes . He would always top out at 70-80 pts

They need to rework their rating system because while McDavid and other top players are high 90's , they are boosted by Defensive Stats that should not be as high lol

 

[RememberTheRoar]

I always found it funny that McDavid never did well in my GM Modes . He would always top out at 70-80 pts

They need to rework their rating system because while McDavid and other top players are high 90's , they are boosted by Defensive Stats that should not be as high lol

But nobody does well in normal franchises. It’s not just yours and it’s not just McDavid.

As my OP shows, league-wide scoring is totally jacked compared to real life, unless you adjust all those sliders/settings.

 

[Dicdonya]

Thanks for doing all that, it really is sad how bad the sim is. The thing that really sucks is that if we use those settings, actually playing some of the games becomes ridiculous as we won’t be playing hockey but a bastardized form of it.

Add on terrible growth, ratings, contract demands, and way too many draft gems, and GM mode is darn near unplayable.

It really bums me out that the only sport that I actively follow has such a shitty game as the only one available to play.

 

[RememberTheRoar]

Thanks for doing all that, it really is sad how bad the sim is. The thing that really sucks is that if we use those settings, actually playing some of the games becomes ridiculous as we won’t be playing hockey but a bastardized form of it.

Add on terrible growth, ratings, contract demands, and way too many draft gems, and GM mode is darn near unplayable.

It really bums me out that the only sport that I actively follow has such a ****ty game as the only one available to play.

Ya, I wish we didn’t have to jump through all these hoops either.

I will say, definitely don’t play actual games with these settings, if you want realism (like I do). Just have settings that you sim with, and a separate set of settings you play games with.

 

[DXStriker]

But nobody does well in normal franchises. It’s not just yours and it’s not just McDavid.

As my OP shows, league-wide scoring is totally jacked compared to real life, unless you adjust all those sliders/settings.

Oh yea , I totally agree . I was just using the McDavid example but you are 100 % right

 

[NYR94]

I don't understand how the sim engine got worse this generation compared to last. What did they change? On the PS3 games I got excellent simmed stats from about NHL 12 and on (I think that was the first game to have the revamped sim engine). Teams stats as well as individual player stats were all pretty close to real life.

One thing that really bugs me about NHL 19 is that most of the defensemen don't score enough compared to their real life production. 30 games into a season and Giordano has like 7 points and I have the lines edited based on what Calgary did in real life so he's getting a lot of ice time. Again never had this problem on NHL 12-15 on PS3. It's like whatever the code is doing is totally ignoring the defensemen and their offensive abilities in its calculations.

 

[MillanDynasty]

Very interesting experiment.

I also noticed that individual production seems to dip the more you add better players to your team. I've had a maxed out 99 overall playmaking center on a team filled with high 60's - low 70's players go up to 170 points (over 100 goals) without me playing a single minute. Take the same player and put him on a line with 2 other 90-95 OVR wingers and he barely cracks 80-90 points a year.

Like, what's the point? Why even spend 35 million on three 95+ players when I get pretty much the exact same production by sticking the stud center with complete duds? It's like the game can't even fathom elite players playing together and reaching lofty numbers. Their talents cancel each other out.

 

[Tak7]

Ya, I wish we didn’t have to jump through all these hoops either.

I will say, definitely don’t play actual games with these settings, if you want realism (like I do). Just have settings that you sim with, and a separate set of settings you play games with.

Yep - this is the easiest solution.

I do find that the deeper you go into GM mode, the more realistic scoring becomes though - McDavid and other franchise players hit 90-100 points, you get a handful of 40+ goal scorers every year, etc.

 

[RememberTheRoar]

Very interesting experiment.

I also noticed that individual production seems to dip the more you add better players to your team. I've had a maxed out 99 overall playmaking center on a team filled with high 60's - low 70's players go up to 170 points (over 100 goals) without me playing a single minute. Take the same player and put him on a line with 2 other 90-95 OVR wingers and he barely cracks 80-90 points a year.

Like, what's the point? Why even spend 35 million on three 95+ players when I get pretty much the exact same production by sticking the stud center with complete duds? It's like the game can't even fathom elite players playing together and reaching lofty numbers. Their talents cancel each other out.

This is totally frustrating. For the most part, I notice the same thing with guys like Kane and Toews.

 

[Deku]

I just simmed the 19-20 season with offsides, icing off, and penalties 4/4. Ended up with nine 100 point players, the worst GFPG being 2.79, and 2/3 of the league was above 3.00

It was a bit overkill, so I will adjust, but I am very glad you found this out!!

 

[Panthaz89]

I always found it funny that McDavid never did well in my GM Modes . He would always top out at 70-80 pts

They need to rework their rating system because while McDavid and other top players are high 90's , they are boosted by Defensive Stats that should not be as high lol

The main problem is that they are relying only on ratings(similar to Madden but Madden has a lot more stats to use) while players should also be given traits based on how great they are and their accomplishments that impact the game and the sims a ton. Wristshot/backhand/slapshot specialist should get a major boost when doing so similar to defenseman and defensive forwards who are great at disrupting play.

Bergeron, ROR, Couterier should all be poking the puck free from a player that comes within their reach regularly, McDavid should have something to boost his speed beyond just the rating and give him insane puck control so he can zoom by defenders that shouldn't be on the ice at the same time he is. Be a pro had a neat skill that when you scored a goal all of your team's fatigue would recover because of a morale boost of being a team leader.

There are these weird traits that they use in the 3v3 and be a pro specialty skills are actually something that should be on regular players so you would be more likely to play a guy whose not that great during 5v5 but stick him on the powerplay because he's specialized for it.

 

[SlapshotTheMovie]

I have fun simming GM mode but it is the furthest thing from realistic. EA is trash but sadly its all we have right now. At least its not as bad as their UFC games. In their 1st attempt at a UFC game if you lost your first fight you could never get a title shot even if you went on a 25 fight win streak which is more then double the longest win streak in the ufc. So at least EA NHL isn't that bad.

 

[Readytostart]

I've been toying with this system while simming, during the second half of a season. It works! Amazing. I was so sick of seeing McDavid get 70 pts, McKinnon get 60. Even Kucherov, who normally sims pretty well and is near the top of the scoring leaders most seasons, was down to 70 pts. McDavid finished with over 90, McKinnon was over ppg and Kucherov came on late to finish ppg as well in just half a season of using these settings.
This workaround is fantastic. Don't play like this, though. It's jarring.

Thanks for your post, @RememberTheRoar . This is great.

 

[RememberTheRoar]

I've been toying with this system while simming, during the second half of a season. It works! Amazing. I was so sick of seeing McDavid get 70 pts, McKinnon get 60. Even Kucherov, who normally sims pretty well and is near the top of the scoring leaders most seasons, was down to 70 pts. McDavid finished with over 90, McKinnon was over ppg and Kucherov came on late to finish ppg as well in just half a season of using these settings.
This workaround is fantastic. Don't play like this, though. It's jarring.

Thanks for your post, @RememberTheRoar . This is great.

Thank you.

And haha, definitely don't play the games like this. It's pretty messed up and the cpu will definitely take full advantage of no offsides or icing.