Goaltending starts

[Saul Goodman]

Hi guys, been playing FHM6 and love the game but I'm running into some pretty serious issues with teams where top goaltenders end up being benched for a much lesser quality of goaltender and not even being used in the playoffs on some occasion. It's kind of a killer for me when I see goaltenders such as Gibson and Vas in their prime and yet riding the pine for most of the season.

In a test game I was running, I was following Anaheim pretty closely and in one season John Gibson (5 stars) played 26 games in a season while Dostal (2.5 stars) playing 60 games with no injuries to Gibson. Then suddenly next season Gibson plays 60+ games while Dostal is in the mid 20's with the same ratings.Then in the most recent season Gibson got Anaheim to the WCF with a .924sv%, yet when the WCF starts he's benched for Dostal which makes zero sense to me. Then for the current season, a goaltender signed from the ECHL (3 stars) has started 10 of the first 12 games over Gibson (5 stars) despite Gibson being the 1st goaltender on the lines screen.

Other examples off the top of my head is Vas (5 stars) only playing 40 games for Tampa while his back up (3 stars IIRC) ends up appearing in 49 games, and for the current season Vas is now the back up while still being rated at 5 stars which doesn't make much sense to me. Also Bob ended up playing 20 something games in a season for Florida while the back up ended with 60 games. I also remember a case from the 19/20 season where Lundqvist only played 20 something games in the regular season yet played the entire playoffs for the Rangers over Georgiyev (who was rated better and the regular season starter) despite Lundqvist having only played 1 in the last 15 games of the regular season. Also Georgiyev only ended up playing 20 something games a couple of seasons later despite being around 4.5 stars and his back up being around 2ish stars. Carter Hart (4.5 stars) has ended up the back up in Philly to a 2.5 star goaltender, Hart did have one bad year (58 GR iirc) but surely he shouldn't lose the net permanently because of one dodgy season while he is still in his prime.

This is with default stats settings (25% stats contribute, with a 40/40/20 split on current, last year, last year +1) and the latest FHM6 patch. I did try altering the stats setting a bit (20% contribution with a 40/40/20 split) but that didn't do anything noticable over a couple of seasons.

[Saul Goodman]

Hi, I'm just wondering since there has been no reply that this is a problem that is not cropping up for others? Saw a new patch was released today but didn't appear to be anything referencing this in the notes.

I'm happy to upload a game if that is required.

[Argonaut]

I also don't like how the AI handles goalie starts. Even if I set priorities on the goalie starts section, it just sort of ignores them.

[Saul Goodman]

Just wondering if there is anything to this? Am I doing something wrong in terms of the settings or something along those lines? Like I said previously, happy to upload a save game if required.

Just would appreciate a response either way.

[JeffR]

I can take a look at the save to see if everything is working correctly, but goalie starts are extremely situational - there are many factors that, if things line up right (minor injury to the starter that takes him out briefly, he goes cold, backup plays and gets and stays hot, team's scouting assessment is a little off, team is building for the future and the backup has high potentials, etc.), make it entirely possible that the goaltender with the best ratings won't get the majority of the starts in a season.

[Saul Goodman]

Originally Posted by JeffR

I can take a look at the save to see if everything is working correctly, but goalie starts are extremely situational - there are many factors that, if things line up right (minor injury to the starter that takes him out briefly, he goes cold, backup plays and gets and stays hot, team's scouting assessment is a little off, team is building for the future and the backup has high potentials, etc.), make it entirely possible that the goaltender with the best ratings won't get the majority of the starts in a season.

Yeah I can understand they can be situational, but to me it just seems like it's not working as intended as times, at least through some of the examples I've seen in running tests. Especially as in all these situations, it was never some young backup who had sky high potential (a couple of them had 3 star potential but nothing more) which to me makes no sense why you would suddenly bench your #1.


For Gibson v Dostal
Dostal played 61 games and had a .905 sv%/2.93 GAA and 69 GR
Gibson played 25 games and had a .905sv%/2.98 GAA and 67 GR

I'm not sure why Gibson who was rated at 5 stars would be given up on by the team and demoted to backup. While Dostal had a slightly better GR, it's not like he was lights out - I just don't see a reason why Gibson wouldn't be the starter for the season. You could at least make an argument that the team was looking to move on from Gibson and to the future by making Dostal the starter for future seasons too, however Gibson became the starter for the next 2 seasons.

And tbh, even if they were looking to future - it's not like Dostal was ever rated highly (2.5 star CA / 3 star PA has been his max). Plus Gibson was only 28 and a couple of years removed from a Vezina.

In terms of the playoff example I gave when Gibson was benched for the WCF. They had these regular season stats:
Dostal had a .896sv% / 3.47 GAA and 68 GR
Gibson had a .918sv% / 2.74 GAA and 74 GR

Going into the WCF Gibson in the playoffs had a .924 sv% / 2.83 GAA and then he was benched for Dostal for the WCF despite Dostal having played poorly in regular season and hadn't played at all for over a month. I can't recall any situation in real life where such a switch would occur either, especially when it's one of the league's top goaltenders.

In terms of Gibson v Hrenak, Hrenak is a 3 star goaltender who played in the ECHL the last two seasons and is now the starter for the current season over Gibson who is 5 stars and has had back to back NHL seasons of recording above average sv% and 74 GR. I can't understand why Gibson wouldn't be the starter there.


Lundqvist in the 20/21 regular season had a .898sv% / 3.39 GAA with a 64 GR while Georgiyev had a .920 sv% / 2.80 GAA with a 77 GR. Yet come the playoffs, Lundqvist was made the starter and had only played 1 in the last 15 regular season games, so it's not like Lundqvist got hot at the end of the regular season if anything he was ice cold as he hadn't played basically at all. I couldn't see New York suddenly turning to Lundqvist for the playoffs after a subpar regular seaosn compared to Gerogiyev, no matter Georgiyev's inexperience at that point.


2020/21 Bobrovsky played only 48 games with a .910 sv% / 2.80 GAA and 70 GR while the back up was Driedger (26 y.o 2.5 star) played 38 games with a .918 sv% / 2.55 GAA and 70 GR. 2021/22 Bob played 27 games with a .907 sv% / 3.19 GAA and 68 GR. The back up was suppose to be Mrazek (29 y.o 2.5 star) who ended up playing 60 games with a .914 sv% / 2.77 GA and 72 GR. I can understand 21/22 a bit, but 20/21 doesn't make much sense to me given they were pretty much identical and it appeared Driedger got more of the net because his heat rating stayed higher. But in 22/23 Bob suddenly becomes the starter again and plays 60+ games despite Spencer Knight being the back up and vastly outperforming him. It would seem to me that is a time for the back up to get the net when it's a young highly touted goaltender, rather then a late 20's career back up when there is very little difference in stats between them.

Carter Hart (4.5 CA/PA) has also been relegated to a back up role due to a bad start of the season and never got a chance to regain the net. Hart in 22/23 played 26 games with a 0.887 sv% / 3.03 GAA and 58 GR while the back up Ustimenko (23 y.o 2.5 CA/3.0 PA) ended up playing 50 games with a .913 sv% / 2.30 GAA and 68 GR. I understand Hart had been playing poorly, but I don't see the logic behind a team not giving a top level goaltender in their mid 20's who is a multi-time AS, Vezina winner and Stanley Cup winner a chance to regain the net and instead just runs with a young backup the whole season. Then in 23/24 Hart played 38 games with a .917 sv% / 2.34 GAA with a 70 GR while Ustimenko played 48 games with a .898 sv% / 2.86 GAA with a 67 GR and Hart was the back up for the whole playoffs as well. If Philly were going all in on Ustimenko that would at least somewhat make sense (even if he is the inferior goaltender), but now in 24/25 Ustimenko is in the AHL and Hart is the starter again.

While I can see the argument for some of these maybe, it's still a headscratcher over for me. I'm just confused how highly rated starters who have solid stats appear to be getting relegated to backup duties because of a rough run of games while the backups who are significantly worse attribute wise seem to get the net for the whole season no matter how they perform. Yet when the season finishes and resets, the higher rated goaltender in terms of attributes suddenly regains the net.

If I use an example from Anaheim this season in real life - Gibson wasn't stellar for chunks of this past season, but he stayed as the starter even though Miller outperformed him a little. Even using Bob's season in Florida - he was pretty terrible for a large chunk of the season yet he still retained the net for most of the season, he didn't lose the net to the back up (Driedger) for the whole season even though Driedger had a solid run of games at the tailend of 2019. Yet it seems like in FHM6 if these situations happen, the backup just becomes the new starter for the entire season - especially if the original starter has a poor start to the season. Just my opinion as I obivously don't know any of the under the hood stuff, but it just seems the AI gives up on the starting goaltender (even if they have much better attributes) after a bad stretch that makes it tough to win the crease back until it resets for the next season as they stay cold and can't really get hot.

But yeah, sorry for the long post. There's some more examples but those were just some of the main ones. As I said in my OP, I really love how FHM6 plays but I'm struggling to understand the goaltending start logic and it just doesn't make sense to me.