[Travis]

Yeah, for D you want your top pairing to both be 85+, your second pairing to both be 80+ and your third pairing to be 75+. Ideally you'd bump each of those around 5 points and be 90/85/80 but that takes more luck than anything to achieve.

Other points, have you hired staff? Setting your team strategy to reflect your head coaches rating seems to make a difference. Also, how do you have your forwards arranged style wise? If you have a majority of offensive style players (Snipers/Playmakers/Power Forwards) you're prone to giving up more goals.

Also, I've got 3 teams on the go and I've never played out a full game (aside from the first playoffs I went through). There is supposed to be an advantage to playing home games out (I think mostly being able to select your best lines for PP/PK).

As for checking relative strengths in those all levels leagues, better to check your power rankings and compare that way than levels. The levels would even themselves out if people were forced to play the level leagues, but with the all levels, because some people didn't have full lineups set when the initial rankings were done, the normalizing adjustment of the regulation system never gets a chance to even out the playing field.

Not saying that's a bad thing, just why you'll see some level 3 teams that are stronger than level 5's and the reverse when you check the power rankings.

Not a perfect system, but I think still better than leaving everything generic.