[skunt3m]

I actually think the research in this year's version is very good. With so many players to tune, I don't mind some of them being rated on reputation. Other than the Flames, haha. I'm with you on Lindholm, I ding his defense and slightly improve his skating. Backlund has always been underrated in FHM. Monahan's skating is rated about average and I think that's accurate. I looked at changing Valimaki but, looking around the league, that ~700ish offensive potential is actually high for a defenseman.

One thing to keep in mind is that the ratings in FHM are not always entirely subjective. Attributes like hitting, for example, are derived from players' actual hits per minute played over the past several seasons. Matthew Tkachuk's 15 in hitting will produce accurate totals. Same with aggression - it along with temperament and sportsmanship are used to tune PIM totals. Aggression is actually a weird one because the scale isn't relative to the modern game, it's relative to the entire history of hockey. A 20 is like a Rob Ray with 300 PIMs. There's nobody like that in the modern NHL. A 10 in aggression is very high for a modern top-six player in FHM. Same goes for the fighting attribute.

As far as physical attributes go, 13-14 are about average for NHL quality players in the game. I'm OK with Tkachuk being a few ticks below average. I agree that Lucic is not as slow as advertised.