So for this week's' topic of discussion, I wanna talk about something related to player builds. It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. As someone who chose to go slightly different from the meta, my player build currently prioritizes the passing stat over scoring. As you can see from my current build here, I have 90 passing and 77 scoring.
Now because my passing is pretty high, you may think that I must be getting a lot of assists right? Well if you look at my stats, it kinda shows the opposite. What's even more damning is that assist leaders tend to have the scoring stat over passing stat as well. So what the deal with that? Is passing really not worth it? Lemme discuss a few factors that may or may not play a factor in whether or not passing first builds work or not.
The first factor I would consider is how much ice time you're getting. You get more opportunities to make plays and get assists the more ice-time you get. And to be honest, this doesn't play much into how well a passing build does at all. Considering I play roughly 29 minutes a game during sims, my current 0.5 point per game pace isn't much and I should be putting up more points if that's the case. So that leaves with the only other factor I can think of.
The second and other factor I can think of is whether or not your teammates, or to an extent your team can score. The passing stat basically makes your player pass more, and if you've got teammates that can put up the points, you are bound to contribute on assists more often than not. With that in mind and how LA has been for the past few seasons, you can tell that the team doesn't score too often. At that may be the factor for my case as to why my passing build may not be working. There have been successful pass first defenseman before, but it's a rarity. I don't want to think that your player can't produce offensively without a scoring build, but at this point, the only way these types of builds can work is if they're on a good, high scoring team. Passing really is dependent on the rest of your team as a whole, and I'm starting to lose hope on my 90 passing as well. So next season, I may be changing things up in terms of player build, but for now, we shall see if this will still work out or not.
Players should have the choice to put their TPE to any stat they want, and I don't like telling them what to do. Of course I would tell them to avoid penalty shot or leadership, but how people make their builds is entirely up to them. This is just a sort of discussion just to see if passing is really worth it or not, and for me right now, it sorta is. The only thing is that it's highly dependent on how well your team is doing as well. If you have any thoughts, feel free to talk about it down below!