Media Has LGHL become Stale

EA should be integrating LGHL directly onto the game itself. When ESHL or LGHL games are being played it should show them on the main screen of NHL 20 and give you the option to watch the feed in real time, allowing all NHL 20 players (casual or competitive) to watch the best players and become curious as to how they can sign up for it. There should be an "LG" tab literally built into the game where the brackets, teams, rosters, player stats, etc can all be seen from all NHL 20 players. This would add to the competitiveness of the league and most likely make competitive HUT-only players want to join the league.

Why this won't happen: EA as a company is short sighted and thinks only in terms of net profit margin.

The bottom line is NHL does not have the player-base of FIFA and never will. However, the players who do play NHL are extremely loyal and I'm sure the game has a great player retention ratio. It would seem to me that these loyal players would be willing to pay to play competitively, and if EA put up some sponsorship money and hosted PAID tournaments then they'd make their money back and then some. For example if EA hosted a 10k tournament (sponsorship $ not EA $ ) where the fee to have a team sign up was $100 I'd imagine they'd turn out pretty well.

 

To add to that, the main page showing LG feeds would show Davos' beautiful face casting games by default, this would finally allow this guy to get the viewership he deserves (at least in the thousands if not tens of thousands). Also instead of asking teams to put up $100 it might be more competitive and make more sense to hold a draft for these tournaments with a $20 sign up fee per player and $50-100 fee for owners.

 

Management Selection Pool

Instead of management hopefuls only applying for the league they wish to manage in. Lets just have anyone who is interested in owning a team on LG apply. Each owner must have a GM selected and listed. Then LG staff goes through all applications and places each management team in the league they see fit. This creates the possibility of balance amongst management teams in all leagues. It gets rid of dodging through managing, meaning one less management team space filled by someone who isn't quite ready to take on the NHL as a free contract Owner, and it trickles down and does the same for the AHL.

For NHL Management teams to select their AHL management

Once the NHL management teams are selected, they then have a few days to contact and agree with a management team selected for the AHL to be said NHL teams AHL management. Then the remaining management teams are slated for the CHL.

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I'd also like to see the draft changed, it becomes more and more stale each season. Maybe it's the 4 rounds EVERY single season with a depleting CHL talent group, it's just naturally going to become less populated by NHL quality talent and has become more so an AHL draft at this point, outside MAYBE the top 5-10 picks. I can see either of the next 2 options being viable to bring back excitement to the draft.

1 - I like the idea of being able to draft AHLers from the previous season, so long as they were either coming off their DP contract, or have not been in the NHL in seasons past. (With maybe the exception of position changes, even though this could be hard for LG to track). However, this also allows for those drafted originally for AHL purposes to "Develop" and then be redrafted in the NHL. It also avoids from having someone who spent 2 DP season in the AHL from going for an overpriced amount in NHL bidding, following their DP contract.

2 - Prospect Draft and Amatuer draft. This is based on player status. We do 2 rounds for prospects, same as the current draft, minus 2 rounds. 1st round picks are 1 Mil. 2nd Round is 500 K. Then following the prospect draft, we move on to a 2 round Amatuer draft. 1st round picks are 2 Mil and 2nd round picks are 1 Mil. We can keep draft picks trading the same, however the original 1st and 2nd round picks belong to the Amatuer draft, while the 3rd and 4th rounds are for the prospect draft. With that said, would probably be best to do the Amatuer draft then followed by the Prospect draft. WIth this, I'd also raise the required amount of AHL games to gain Vet status, while also finding a way to depict between ECU games and rostered games in the NHL. Instead of the current system to become vet status via NHL games, if we can depict between rostered games and ECU games, then we can say X amount of rostered games grants vet status, while either ECU games don't count towards this, or a higher numbered of ECU'd games grants Vet status.

TL;DR
Management teams in appropriate leagues by LG staff

Change the draft.

 

As for EA. Someone needs to explain to them that the casual NHLers who play this game for a few months a year, or randomly throughout the year, do not need to be catered to, so they can match the skill of those who play this game year round.

NHL is starting to take major strides in the competitive 6s market and it can't be held back by the needs of those who play this game a fraction of the amount of time, the ESHL players put into this game. People grind this game to get better, and it becomes a spit in the face by NHL when they release a patch, reducing the skill gap, that said player has spent so much time trying to overcome or widen.

If EA can separate the casual focus on patches from the competitive focus, and allow for the competitive market to strive. Then we can finally see 6s grow to what it could be. After this last patch, ESHL and Caps tourney games became stale to watch. Something, that matters way more than a lot may understand, is that as much as eSports is a competitive event, it's also a spectators event. And when something becomes stale to watch (ie CoD) it begins to lose it's eSports value. That's why we see games like League of Legends, Overwatch, and Counterstrike strive in the eSports market. It's geared towards the competitive community, and the watchability of these games is generally much higher than others.

 

LG is in a fine place, it feels stale because the game is stale (however improving) skill gap is not even close to what it use be post merge on old gen. I remember being amazed watching guys like Kody, Bradley and Vaporiz in 6s lobbies just clowning guys with quick twitch thumbs. I remember verbally demolishing nubs for shooting turds now its a legitimate play...

 

I got a drastic change idea.

make a 20 team KHL league. Completely independent of nhl and ahl. But you can only play in one league. 20 team league of 2 lines that sort of follow lg rules which are in place. Just an idea but they can obviously change rules to their liking to get it going.

there would be a place where the top guys can go.

 

This is basically ESHL except, they play for prizes, and the league has a bunch more random teams who don't stand a chance at competing. If you took 240 "top" NHLers out of the league for this KHL (I'm assuming 12 man rosters) the rest of the league would suffer.

Just adding onto your idea here, I don't think it ever would or even should happen (because it wouldn't be very similar to the real life NHL), but I'll throw it out anyway. You could shorten the number of NHL teams to 20 for the "top" players and have a 20 team "KHL" or whatever you'd want to call it for the fringe NHLers. You'd keep the AHL and CHL as they are now and assign those players as TCs to the "KHL" roster. This would be a huge and unrealistic change, but it would make more sense then just adding a completely separate league and draining the talent pool imo.

 

well isn’t that what top guys are asking? To play with guys their level. Should be able to get 20 good owners in their eyes. Then the nhl will just fill up with ahl guy and the ahl with chl guys.

it’s not really eshl. They won’t make their own teams. They would do the whole bidding and same rules as lg. It wouldn’t really change anything but add a new league and move guys up.

that’s why I said drastic change.

 

I think the 2 line thing is a bad idea. It basically ensures that virtually no new guys crack the NHL level. There are already guys in the A and even C that are better than some NHL guys but friends bid on each other. If you think removing the 3rd line fixes it, I would argue you are wrong and with only 2 lines each of those situations is much worse. Which leads to the main issue...

FIX THE MANAGEMENT ISSUE!

We have requirement restrictions in the CHL that limits guys that are too good from owning, but we need something that prevents people who are too bad from owning in the NHL. If they exist, they aren’t strict enough.

i don’t care if it seems a little cold. It’s the top league on the top competitive hockey site. If you are a 3rd liner or more likely an AHLer, then YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO OWN. The community could come up with the criteria but there are 2 owners I can think of that owned for years and never have had winning seasons. And there were at least 2 last season that shouldn’t have been able to own based on what they have or haven’t done at NHL level.

Fix the management issue to ensure the NHL has all quality management who knows what they are doing and you will have more balanced rosters overall and less cancer, is and less ECU lines.

The bottomline is we get a PM every season saying how serious management roles need to be taken but there isn’t enough being done to ensure skilled managers are selected. We got to find a way to make it more approachable for players. It will help balance competition.

 

I think there are plenty of people who would be considered top quality managers based on experience, personality, skill level, and competency. However, some members of the community make it so toxic for a manager that many of them have been driven away. Bottom line is i dont think the players deserve them.

 

I agree with this. The current LG mentality is more so “I don’t want to manage. Player A can manage and if I don’t get on his team or a top team, I’ll try and ego my way there”

not everybody is like that but far too many are sadly.

At the very least, it would be nice to have an algorithm, criteria, etc as a way to populate a list of people who could be a owner. See if you can fill the owners pool solely with those players prior to allowing others (even if they are regular managers) to own

I don’t know the right answer but bottomline is I think more attention needs to be given to finding a way to make management quality more balanced. Inevitably there are at least 2 owners every season where as soon as people end up on the team, they try and get off the team. Being “the nice guy” just ensures you stay on the team cause you actually show up, and so people gravitate towards the cancerous attitude since it works to get them off bad team

 

There's no simple solution. Bottom line is that regardless of how good of a group of managers you believe you have... There will always be good teams, bad teams, and teams who fall flat on their faces. People would've expected a Sitful/Jemima management duo to be a good team, and they fell on their faces.

The main thing that LG should be looking to do is avoiding management duos like we had with Minnesota this season. The current system really has nothing that can avoid that. Management tests like they have in the CHL wouldn't do anything to prevent this, and the 5 minute Xbox/PSN interviews in party chat don't do much to reveal the character of the managers.

Only thing I can really think of would be similar to the "Rate Your Professor" thing that kids do for their classes. In this case it would be rating your managers, you'd rate them on how much you enjoyed playing for them, how well you felt they knew the rules, how their attitude was, did they do their best to put you and everyone else in a position to succeed, etc.

This wouldn't be perfect, and I'm sure staff wouldn't want to read through 400+ of these each offseason, but it could be worthwhile and could help prevent situations like Minnesota from happening.

 

There are always going to be losing (or bad) teams. Even ESHL has that. Even if all of the management duos were good there would still be 1/2/3 of them that would quit if they were losing. And someone always has to lose.

The idea of no free contract helps with the management skill gap a bit but who wants to run a team by themselves if they know they might not even get their guys in bidding. So yes, maybe a set salary would help, either based on skill or historical winning % maybe.

So a team like Carolina for example, their management duo could be worth potentially 15-20 mil as it sits today. Minnesota say 1-5 mil, no offense. Well MIN gets 15 mil more in bidding then Carolina. Would for sure help with the balance of power. All management get an assigned salary based on a committee’s decision. This would still allow “elites” to stay together as managers while giving guys with less thumb skill a chance to build a winner.

Maybe this is a terrible idea

 

League sucks cause the games suck, you should add to that list fire up the Xbox 360 and play a fun nhl game again.

 

All old gen servers are now offline

 

EA does not care about the NHL series

 

Apart from game changers, do we have any sort of eSports/competitive 6s type of contact with EA? A sort of liaison between EA and the comp scene. I feel like EA needs to do a better job of separating the casuals from 6s competitive communities. And a spokesperson whose only goals are to benefit and grow the competitive scene through EA, will over time potentially bring EA to where it can be with eSports. The gamechangers go and test the games, and after that, we just have surveys that they don’t really read. It’s almost New Years and a day 1 bug is still in the game that really can effect the comp scene (Human Gs unable to cover the puck)

@LG McDonald

 

EA has been lacking many things over the series of NHL games.I don’t think it’s getting stale to be honest I think the people have a major impact as well. Certain people don’t think about the league and everyone else to help make the league thrive as a whole. We have people that don’t expend because people don’t play with certain people because they have less of a logo. The league is dead because no one just plays to have fun and to be competitively respectfully anymore it’s about ego and disrespect. It’s not dead, but people make it dead.