Shift Towards Defense

[Grape 676]

I've been somewhat vocal in my disliking of the build meta. It's boring, it's overused (obviously), and, in all honesty, it probably doesn't help retention all that well (no data to back that up but just a hunch). I mean, why would someone sit through their whole career just to repeat the build they had because that's what works. There's too much of a focus on the offensive production for a player that if you want success, you need to do the meta build so you can squeeze that offensive production out of the player. What needs to be done is to shift towards defense. It's hard to really build a pure defensive player. Sure max out checking and defense, but you're not that effective as a shutdown player. Discipline doesn't really do anything, and once you hit 99 on both checking and defense, and probably skating because you need to be able to move for those things to actually be effective, what else is there? Leadership and Discipline, and probably Penalty Shot too, should be removed and replaced with defense oriented stats, or break down defense into those stats instead of it being just a general thing. Creating the pieces to build a good defensive archetype could give a fresh shake-up to the current meta, as well as shift the focus of some awards towards defensively responsible players. Sometimes I don't want to be a point generator, I want to be a brick wall.

[Shindigs 1,771]

I think we all probably agree with this. But the reality is that the sim is pretty limited in what it can/can't do. I don't think it's even really possible to change the attributes without changing sim engine entirely, and that is not going to happen, realistically. Though as someone who is currently trying to build a pure defensive defenseman, I do agree with the sentiment. Though I'd also like to point out that at least in my (very limited) data. The rate at which giveaways from hits occur is so low that counting Checking as a possession stat isn't necessarily fair when the highest ever giveaways from hits recorded in this season for a Miami player is 4, and that was a very rare outlier. Meanwhile 40+ giveaways from flubbed passes is pretty standard. So I'd argue even Checking is barely a defensive stat. Giving even less ability to make a "creative" defensive player type.

 

Add in that even the most offensive of forwards get 99 DEF and you don't even have the choice to make a "defensive player". Because everyone is a defensive player, due to how insane possession numbers in the sim are.