CCHL Fatigue - How it works guide!

 I've had some people ask about fatigue and it being an issue so I wanted to take the opportunity to go over it again, and for those new, a first time.  

The fatigue factor is designed such that you have to have depth to compete in the CCHL and we are not overplaying players - that would lead to a crazy and very unrealistic player performance.  

Without fatigue being a factor, Iceland could simply play Mr. McDavid for 45 minutes a game and the chances are he'd probably have a good 200+ points.  While he's good, there isn't anyone in Gary Bettman's NHL netting 200+ points so it's unrealistic.  

How it works is that fatigue is set at 21 minutes for forwards and 26 for defencemen.  This means that they can play 21 or 26 minutes before they lose a fatigue rating point.  These are very generous numbers given that 97% of players do not play this many minutes in the NHL, and our teams are deeper (24 vs. 32 NHL teams) so we should sustain the minutes better in theory.  

If a forward plays 21:02....it's 1 fatigue point from their condition which starts at 100.  If they played 22:02, it's 2 points from their conditioning, etc. 

Players recover at a rate of 1.14 days which means for any off day they receive 1.14 back, or any game where they play under 21 minutes (or 26 for defenders), they also get that 1.14 back.  This means that if a player was at 99 before an off day, they will be back to 100% by the time your team plays again.  If they were at 97, they will be at 98.14 when your team plays again - and so on.  

The 1.14 is due to the fact that our schedule is condensed at 1.14 the rate the NHL plays their schedule, so it keeps injuries at the same duration over the course of the season.  

The best way to manage your minutes is if you have a guy that plays on the first line, first PP unit and first PK unit (see: Marner, Mitch) you probably need to pick and choose how you deploy him.  That likely means that he wouldn't play one of the PK or PP units because fatigue will kick in, It challenges you as a manager of your team on how to deploy players and also spend money across the lineup since you can't be super top heavy and have it work great every game.  

For goaltenders, it's a bit different.  

Once they hit 34 shots, they lose 1 point for fatigue

Once they hit 38 shots, they lose 2 points for fatigue.

Once they hit 42 shots, they lose 3 points for fatigue.  

If you have a team that gives up a lot of shots, you'll probably want to avoid playing your goalies in back-to-back games, again - similar to the NHL where teams rarely do this now.  They also recover at 1.14.