This article deals with a strategy you can use to guard against several problems within a game that is out of the GMs control. It is also something to try when your team is struggling and needing to be "shaken up". This strategy can be invoked to help an injury-riddled team or a "one-line" team.

Doubleshifting is one of the oldest FHL sim strategies around. I noticed this probably the first month of playing sim hockey. Check any leagues lines page and you will see the veteran players quickly by the amount of team’s doubleshifting players. Any top player will have the EN necessary to double shift effectively. The advantages are obvious. The best players play more, increases chances to score. The hidden advantage is you have a definite matchup advantage to any team not doubleshifting. The drawback is possible tiring and ineffectiveness as the game goes along. There are several ways to combat this. In order to draw conclusions we must look at how the Ice Time is dividend amongst the lines. Some sim studies come to the following percentages of a game played at even strength.

1^st line – 40%
2^nd line – 30%
3^rd line – 20%
4^th line – 10%

Based on this data we can see that if we doubleshift the first line they will play 50% of the game played at even strength. Couple this with Power Play and Penalty Killing duties, this will seriously tax even the highest endurance forwards. Besides fatigue the injury risk for these forwards increases immensely. Teams who doubleshift the top line and have them on the top PP/PK units will suffer an inordinate amount of injuries with their top forwards. One way to combat this is to eliminate PK duty for these forwards. This will allow them some extra rest time. But there is a better way to doubleshift and allow full PK/PP duty especially for the team with two good lines. The secret is in the data above. If we take the 2^nd line and double shift them on the 4^th line we have effectively made the ice time equivalent to the top line. Besides the fact this group can be better rested with the "rest" between shifts and get the "matchup advantage" you have created a more effective top line by combining them into the 2^nd & 4^th lines. So some GMs will take their best line and use them in the 2nd & 4th slot rather than the 1st line slot and put their 2nd best line in the top line slot. If you have two very good lines you have just found a way to play the top lines for 80% of the game at even strength. With this knowledge you can see the 3^rd line only has to be a serviceable group of players who wont allow a bunch of goals to be an effective line. With this knowledge, we can see the need for top 6 forwards and a group of decent bangers to solidify any team into a contender.

Dressing Seven defencemen is not as nearly as common as the doubleshifting strategy. In fact, I am not sure it is even documented strategy at all. I stumbled upon it by accident. With a recent set of games where my team suffered Defence injuries early in the game, I found the results to be quite inconsistent. Since you cannot manually substitute for the injured defenceman, the sim finds a player not assigned and inserts him in the lineup for the injured player. In the case of an idle forward and no extra dman, the sim will put a forward in the defencemans spot – the results are hardly ever good. BUT, the sim does look for a defenceman available. So if you dress seven, it will take the extra dman and put him in the even strength spot as necessary. Dressing seven defencemen will give you peace of mind that a reasonable substitute will be made for you. This may be more prevalent when you doubleshift forwards, because there are idle forwards. In the case of "rolling four lines" the results may be different.

As a result, we are coupling dressing seven defencemen strategy with the doubleshift strategy as a combination strategy. There is a hidden advantage in this strategy. Besides the very top defencemen; The Lidstroms, The Blakes & The Prongers, very few defencemen are adept in all styles of play while carrying the endurance necessary to play even-strength, power play & penalty killing. What you get in the sim is a lot of "specialist" who play effectively PP while ineffective PK and vice-versa. These players are cheap in trade because most GMs recognize their deficiencies. What we can do with seven defencemen is take these "specialist" and put them in roles in which they can thrive. We can easily find one solid top dman who can play all three roles, both with the necessary skills and endurance to be effective in ES, PP & PK. From there, we can try and find three "offensive" type dmen and three "defensive" type dmen. Take the three offensive types and split them up and use them on the power play units. Take the three defensive types and pair them with the offensive guys and spot them on the penalty killing units. A lot of these "defensive" types are considered 5^th or 6^th dmen by GMs and usually available cheap in trade.

Lastly, the advantage of this strategy is the defencemen are well rested and hardly ever tired so they are naturally more effective than usual. If you take any sim hockey player (called player A) and decrease his current energy level by 15%, then all player A’s attributes are decreased by 15%. So if we take a well rested who is 10% worse (called player B) to begin with than player A we have a player who is 5% BETTER currently than player A…..So, we have increased the teams overall effectiveness while not increasing the talent level. This can also carry over to the spare forwards of the doubleshift strategy. If we take a player with 68DEF and well rested and compare him to a player who is 75DEF and 15% decreased in energy (75 x 15% = 63.75) we theoretically have a player who is playing at 4.25 points better defence. This is the advantage to high endurance and the ways to work around the lack of high endurance by spot playing your roster…….

By keeping two spare unassigned forwards & one defenceman in even strength you will cover yourself for injuries and ejections. You can also gain effectiveness by playing these players on special duties like penalty kill – increasing their effectiveness and not taxing your top players. Leaving you to play your top forwards for 80% of the game at even strength and adding Power Play time to that number.