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HERE IS A GREAT ARTICLE EXPLAINING SYNERGIES IN HUT

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So those of you who are around may remember me writing a few opuses last year on HUT, specifically around statistical anomalies and ways to potentially exploit them. This year, at least for now, my focus is on the role of Synergies in Team Building, and ways to exploit these in order to create a better team. This is a very, very, very long post – not apologizing for it, just acknowledging it. I do think understanding synergies at a detailed level gives R/HUT members a leg up. Hopefully, I can help.

First off, this post is not for the following types of players:

  • Those who do not believe synergies actually work, usually pointing to the FIFA examples that are out there. I’m not saying I can prove that they DO work, I’m just saying for the purposes of my posts on Synergies, I am going under the assumption that they do, in fact, work
     
  • Those who don’t care about special cards, and will roster a first line of Hagelin – Helm – Kucherov through February. Props to you, but this just isn’t for you.
     
  • Those who don’t care at all about synergies, and will just roster they players they want regardless. Again, in no way am I saying that’s the wrong way to go, but this isn’t for you.
     

 

Now that that’s out of the way, let me just say I’m not going to explain Synergies at a basic level – there’s plenty of places to go for that. So some knowledge of what Synergies are is needed to understand my breakdown. What I will be going into is:

  • Why team synergies are far more critical than individual synergies
     
  • The tradeoffs that one will make in constructing a team
     
  • Two key decisions in team building that will shape your selection of players
     
  • The power of double and even triple stacking synergies and
     
  • The role of special cards, legends, and heroes in team building

 

Team Synergies

There are 7 Team synergies – the important distinction here is activating these synergies affects every player, forwards and defense, while Individual Synergies only affect players who have that Synergy. With a handful of exceptions (i.e. Couturier having a TRAP synergy), defensemen and goalies, along with your coach, are used to activate the team synergy. Three team synergies are activated with 8 of that synergy (Bomber, Team Wheels, and One Timer), while the other four are activated with just 6 synergies.

 

As an example, having your coach, your goalie, your backup goalie (don’t forget about him – the only thing they’re good for), and three of your six defensemen as Bombers activates they Bomber synergy, which gives +3 to Slap Shot Power, Slap Shot Accuracy, and Offensive Awareness not only to those defensemen, but also all of your forwards as well. That’s the upside – the downside is for the most part, you’re rostering some combo of Chara/Seabrook/Boychuck/Carlson/Weber etc., which limits the other defensemen you can use, plus your starting goalie choices are limited.

 

You could trade off your goalie for a fourth defenseman if you like Luongo for example, but now you may have to choose two to use out of, for example, Kronwall/Ghost Bear/Giordano. This becomes easier to do for the 6 point Team Synergies, but it’s important to note that the synergies that will affect shooting are 1T and B. Same concept still applies.

 

To put it real world examples, if you have Bomber activated, Logan Couture would now have 90 SSP and 90 SSA, with 91 OAW. This equates to the 92 MS Datsyuk in 16, again JUST FOR THOSE ATTRIBUTES. Or, Bergeron would now have a 90 SSP, 89 SSA, and 92 OAW, which virtually equates to the SCP Nicklas Backstrom from 16, or Jakub Voracek in 17 with a slightly better OAW. Alternately, if you have Trap activated, you get Couture with a 90 DAW, 90 Stick Checking, and 90 Discipline, which is identical to Kopitar, or Bergeron with 97 DAW, 95 Stick Check, and 95 Discipline. You can’t find one of those in 17 – you have to go back to 16, and it equates to PK Subban or Drew Doughty, with much much better Discipline.

 

One last thing of note on Team Synergies – as of now, Team Wheel, which provides +3 to acceleration, agility, and speed, doesn’t look like a viable team strategy to me, because there just aren’t that many players with a TW synergy – search in the auction house and you’ll see what I mean. And there are a few goalies with that synergy – I think they’re less valuable in the short term, because they won’t influence a team synergy. I think as the year go on, Special Cards with TW will become incredibly valuable.

 

Tradeoffs

One way around this, obviously, would be to use defensemen on your fourth line – like a fourth line of Boychuck-Barkov-Chara. Or, oddly, there are silver and bronze forwards who have, say, a Bomber synergy (I haven’t found a base gold card that is a B) – you could make that tradeoff if you’d like. As I mentioned before, Couturier has a Trap synergy, so you could use him as your fourth line center to help activate the Trap synergy. There are other forwards who have Team Synergies, but it’s mostly a hodgepodge. You’d be trading off a better player to activate the synergy while using one less defenseman/goalie to do so. I don’t see much upside to doing that to unlock one Synergy, unless you got four great untradeable defensemen or starting goalie. Where this becomes much more important when we talk about double stacking Team synergies a little farther down.

 

The Key Decisions

So choosing your defensemen and activating a Team Strategy is critical – to me, you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t do that. The key decision, to me, is deciding whether you want to accentuate your offense’s strengths, or shore up their deficiencies. So, for example, if you’re a player who likes to use speedy fast guys – think Duchene, Mackinnon, Bure, etc on the high end, or Helm, Cogliano, Hagelin on the lower end, you could either a) shore up their defensive abilities by going with a SB or Trap team synergy, or b) beef up their offensive capabilities by going with B, 1T, or CG synergies.

 

On the flip side, if you use a bigger build and play more power forwards and hitters, you could either a) shore up their offensive skills with CG or TT focused on passing and agility, or b) double down on your forechecking abilities with a Trap synergy. So you could get an offensive minded Couture with a better slapshot and positioning, or you could have a defensive badass like Bergeron with better shooting and offensive presence. Or, you can attack your own weaknesses regardless of players, or double down on your own strengths. There’s no right answer – this is a preference.

 

The other key decision should be who you plan on building around. So if you pulled an untradeable Shea Weber, it behooves you to build a bomber synergy, because he’s going to be in your lineup for the foreseeable future. If you like to use guys like Kesler/Bergeron/Backes, you have that tradeoff to make for your team strategy – double down on their defensive abilities, or balance your weaknesses out. Obviously that’s not going to be perfect across 12 forwards, but I’m going to keep my top-6 in mind as I do this.

 

The basic tenet of this is simple – your decisions on who to use defensively can hugely impact your offense. This didn’t happen in prior versions of the game.

 

Double Stacking Synergies

Stacking synergies is having more than one synergy impacting a particular player. You can stack an individual synergy with a team synergy – having a Trap team synergy while rostering 3 OJ gives those OJ players +2 SSP/SSA/OAW/STR and +3 SCH/DAW/DISC. But you can exploit this further.

 

For example, having Bomber activated, and OJ activated gives your OJs +5 SSP/SSA/OAW and +2 Strength. Panarin is a good example to use here – his base card for those four stats is 86 SSP/84 SSA/89 OAW/82 Strength. With the double stack of B and OJ, he now becomes 91/89/94/87. He has Taylor Hall’s slap shot, with Tarasenko, Karlsson, or Seguin’s OAW, and Ryan O’Reilly or Jonathan Toews strength, plus his other elite attributes.

 

Second example – let’s double stack Passing Playmaker with Tape to Tape – an example of doubling down on your strengths. Krejci, who is a PP, goes from 90 passing/89 offensive awareness/87 poise (hard to measure the impact of Poise, but stay with me) to 96/95/93. He now has the passing and offensive awareness of Patrick Kane (!) with the third best Poise in the game, after Kane or Toews. There’s only one 16 analogy – HFC Crosby, but with better poise.

 

Last example – instead of doubling down on Krejci, let’s balance him out – PP with Shot Blocking. Krejci now has 93 Passing/92 OAW/90 Poise (instead of the +6 above), with +4 to agility/balance/shotblocking/durability – yielding him 92/90/91/88 in those categories. Leaving Durability aside (I guess not being injured as much is nice, but probably not why you’re doing this), he now has the agility of a Mackinnon or Zuccarello, the balance of a Wheeler, Crosby, or Doughty, and the shotblocking of Subban or Doughty. A little less on the offensive side, a little more on the skating/defense sides.

 

The Triple Stack

The triple stack is mostly aspirational at this point using only base cards (more possible using special cards, but hold that thought). For a triple stack you need two team strategies, so two 6 point team strategies require a coach, two goalies, and 7 players (probably six defensemen and one forward), a 6 and an 8 require using 3 forwards, and two 8 pointers require using 5 forwards (or defensemen as forwards).

 

For ease, let’s just use two 6 pointers as an example – Trap and Tape-to-Tape. Let’s use Couturier as our 4C, so we have our six defensemen and both our goalies as either T or TT, along with our coach. With these two activated, every player on your team now has +3 stick checking/+3 DAW/+3 Discipline, along with +3 Passing/+3 OAW/+3 Poise, before we even activate an individual synergy. Using Krejci again, with PP activated, he also gets another +3 in passing, poise, and OAW, so he has the passing and OAW of Patrick Kane, the third best Poise in the game, and now the DAW of Crosby or Zetteberg, the stick checking of Duncan Keith or Patrice Bergeron, and much better discipline. Best compare in 16 of a Krejci triple stacked with PP, T, and TT is either the 93 MS Tavares with better Poise, or the 92 POTG Kane with better Defensive Awareness.

 

Again, you’re not turning the whole player into one of these comps – triple stacked Krejci won’t shoot like Kane or Tavares – but you’re certainly improving a base player immensely just from who you decide to roster on defense.

 

Legends, Heroes, and Special Cards

Because of everything I mentioned above, legends heroes and special cards become even more valuable because they have two synergies. I’ll go into detail on some of these in another post at another time, but one thing I would encourage you to do is look closer – most special cards have two Individual Synergies. There are a handful that have a Team Strategy – if you’re double or triple stacking, these become that much more valuable. Additionally, some legends have 4 synergy points, some have 5. In fact, there are at least four Heroes who individually unlock individual synergies – so their cards are automatically updated. Shanahan’s card says 95/95 for WSP/WSA, but since he’s a WW3 synergy, it automatically activates. His actual wrist shot stats are 98/98. Mellanby is a HH4, which activates, so his body checking goes from 95->99 (!!!), his DAW goes from 94 to 98, and his Strength goes from 96 to 99. Nystrom and Graves both individually unlock OJ.

 

Heroes with a Team Synergy component, using u/bobemil great post but with 8 heroes missing, are plentiful. Only two have 3 Team Synergy points (the rest have 2) – Sullivan for 1T and Macinnis for Bomber. Interesting to note is Murphy is a defenseman that doesn’t have a team synergy – like a Ghost Bear (OJ) or Kronwall (HH) for base cards. Every Goalie Hero has two team synergies – ex. Giguere has 3 SB and 1 T, while Vernon has 2 SB and 2 T and Hextall has 2 TT and 2 SB. The legends will be the same, but fewer synergy points – makes sense, since there’s no individual synergies for Goalies. So while you may love your base Lehner, there are reasons to upgrade to a Special Goalie this year – something to think about as you assess the market.

 

To look at the impact, let’s use Macinnis for example – he has a Bomber synergy for 3. So if you roster Macinnis, you don’t need 8 positions to activate bomber, you need 6. You can activate Bomber with Macinnis, your coach, your goalies, and one other defensemen. That leaves 5 other defensemen spots for your second synergy – you can now stack Bomber with Trap using Couturier as your 4C without having to use Defensemen as forwards. To me, that’s more valuable than a Brind’amour, who has two individual synergies (DD3 and S2). Personal preference certainly matters too, but I think it’s important to consider when looking at special cards. Special cards with Team Synergies can be incredibly valuable for your team building as they affect all of your players, not just themselves.

 

It will be interesting to see what they do with special cards and synergies going forward. One thing to look at is the Malhotras – his 88 and 92 both have the same synergy points (his 92 didn’t get a third synergy), but different synergies. I think this is where you may see Team Wheel come out – TOTW cards and such may have more TW synergies associated with them. Maybe by the time we get to TOTY, those guys will have 5 synergies – who knows?

 

Last point on these – you can take my triple stack example above, and turn the special cards with two Individual Synergies into a (gasp!) Quad Stack – that is, two team synergies and two individual strategies. They’re getting four synergies worth of boosts – crazy stuff.

 

Conclusions

I’m not even going to put a TL;DR here – if you read all of this you don’t need it. But I’ll sum up my key points like this:

 

1) It’s critical to activate a team strategy

2) Your selections on defense can impact your offensive players very significantly

3) Building a team now isn’t just grabbing the best players, it’s fusing them together to get the most out of as many cards as you can

4) Special cards are incredibly valuable – moreso than in the past. You can triple or quad stack them very easily, and the best ones can impact all of their teammates

5) This will eventually impact the market for these cards more than just the overall once the general player understands the value of synergies more closely – more on the market impact in another post later

 

I’ll be working on this concept throughout the year. Would love feedback on if this is helpful. I don’t think there’s anything in here that isn’t factual, but if you disagree with me, please let me know.