National teams

Every world has national teams, and each season they meet in the World Hockey Championship. You don’t run a national team: the game picks the squads and plays the tournament. What it means for you is your players: who gets called up, and what the tournament does to them.

National teams

When the squads are named, the game picks each nation’s best available players. Any player of that nationality can be picked: from any club, from a league no manager runs, or a free agent. Two kinds of player are left out: an injured player, and a player whose club is still playing in the playoffs on the day the squads are named.

A squad has 27 players across every position. Each nation has its own style of play, and the game picks the players who suit it best: mostly all-round players, with some offensive and some defensive specialists at each position.

When players of yours are picked, a notification lists them by country.

The World Hockey Championship

The World Hockey Championship (WHC) is set up when the regular season ends and played during the later rounds of the league playoffs. Sixteen nations take part, in two groups of eight.

The groups are drawn from the nations’ ranking, so the strongest nations are spread across both. Each nation plays every other nation in its group once. The top four in each group go through to the quarter-finals, and from there every round is a single game: quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final. The winners take gold and the losing finalists silver. There is no game for bronze: it goes to one of the two losing semi-finalists, on their group-stage placing.

The last nation in each group drops out of the championship, and another nation takes its place the next season. After the tournament each nation’s ranking is updated from its finish, with recent championships counting most, and the ranking sets the next season’s groups.

When your player is called up

A called-up player belongs to his country until the playoffs are over, and he can’t play for your club or your affiliate in that time. His player page marks him Int’l Selected in his Overview, and next to his nationality at the top of the page until he has played for his country; after that it shows his international caps there.

The games count like any other game:

• Fitness and injuries. They tire him, and he can get hurt. An injury he picks up at the WHC goes back to his club with him.
• Confidence. It moves with how he plays, as in a league game. See player form and happiness.
• Experience. He gains it from every WHC game he plays, as from any game. See training and development.
• Reputation. WHC games and stars add to it, and count for more than the same in a league. See player reputation.

Being picked can also lift him. It can raise his current form, more likely for some personalities and for a happy player. Some players are proud of it, and Morale shows Proud of national call-up; see player form and happiness. National-team games do not count toward learning a language or toward team confidence.

His WHC games show under Stats on his player page, as their own league, and a medal shows under Honors in his Bio.

Worth knowing

• A player whose club is still in the playoffs when the squads are named is never called up, so a deep playoff run keeps your players with you.
• A free agent or a player in a league no manager runs can be called up too.
• WHC games and stars count for more toward a player’s reputation than the same in a league.
• An injury picked up at the WHC goes back to his club with him.