Quote:
Originally Posted by joefromchicago
I'm not sure how interested I would be in a game that only allowed for simulation of the modern game. A lot has changed in hockey in just the last thirty years, let alone the last ninety. The kind of game that Wayne Gretzky was playing back in the 1980s or even Mario Lemieux was playing in the 1990s doesn't exist any more. Last year, only one player had 50 goals and only one had over 100 points. In 1984-85, nine players had 50 or more goals, and one player had over 200 points. So you don't have to go back to the Toe Blake era to find a different kind of hockey being played. I'd hate to be limited to a modern simulation that ignored those changes.
As for the stats, they've been keeping the same stats since the very beginnings: goals, assists, shots on goal, saves, penalty minutes, plus/minus, etc. There may be some specialized stats, like playing time or blocked shots, that are of relatively recent vintage, but then that's the same story in baseball and OOTP manages somehow to do a pretty good job of simulating games that pre-date Sabermetrics. I would imagine that defensive stats are the sketchiest -- plus/minus is certainly an imperfect way of approximating a player's defensive value -- but again that's also the weakest area of stats for baseball. If the bright folks working on OOTP can work around that limitation, I'm sure the brilliant minds behind the Working Title hockey game can come up with something just as good.
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There's a number of stats that weren't kept until the first big expansion back in 67/68.
Now, depending on if the game will have the ability to generate ratings based on stats like OOTP can, then that may be a hinderance. No doubt though, a work around could be found in those instances.