I know most of you are vet gm's and you know this stuff already but I figured this would be a helpful refresher. 

Chemistry, as it is in life, is extremely important in sim hockey. 

A team with good chemistry, can and often does, beat teams with sometimes far inferior players. Alternatively a team with every good player ever, won't push past 10th overall in their conference. Why? Certain player types work best with other player types. 

Here are the player types for forwards: (again i'm writing this, knowing you probably know, but whatever)

Playmaker (ply) A playmaker is a guy who's chief goal is to pass the puck to his wingers to score. If he scores, great! But that's not his primary mission in life. Crosby is a guy like this in our game, so is malkin and Datsyuk. Sometimes Playmakers will score more than they set up, but as a general rule this kind of production is only for elite players (88+)

Sniper (snp) A sniper, snipes......tough right? Your goal scorers are going to be snipers mostly, your AO's Patrick Kane's etc. These guys normally have the opposite production of a PLY heavy on goals, light on assists. Interestingly enough they're almost symbiotic of each other when they're not elite players. Second line snipers need a ply and second line plys need a sniper. 

Power Forward (pwf) These guys are somewhat rare. Back in the day they were uber powerful but EA has nerfed them slightly. A powerforward's job in game is to create space, they do that either in front of the net, or by bowling over the D. They are going to be guys with high hitting stats combined with high shooting stats. They're a grinder than can score basically. Most of the time, your PWF are going to be wingers, but there are those rare guys who are PWF centers. 

Two way Forward (TWF) back in the day ea didn't have this player type. They only had the three listed above and grinders. Well that left some skilled guys with the dreaded grinder tag, when they couldn't hit a bean bag. Thus the TWF was born. These guys are primarily D first players, however they can, and often do find the back of the net. The majority of second line players have this skill set, but there are some elite guys who are TWF such as Mike Richards. 

Grinder (GRN) your muckers and shit stirrers, these guys do one thing well, run bitches over. The best of them run around the ice looking for someone to hit, and crashing the crease. There are elite Grinders,...such as Ryan Callahan. 

Enforcers (ENF) there are very few of these guys. Mostly because literally the only thing they can do is fight. Sometimes when i'm playing "be a gm" i'll see a 47 overall (!) rated player be put in the 4th line catagory because he's an enforcer. You'll never see a guy like this above the 3rd line. 

D is a whole other post, and we'll do that later.

So how does all this go together?

Well as i've said, they all represent parts to a puzzle. I feel like at this time i should say, that this is not an exact science. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. As i've said a million times, the game does what the game wants. But in a perfect world, this is how it should work. 

As a general rule, multiple player types on a given line are ideal. The game isn't fond of a line of all PLY or all TWFs. 

Another tip, the game mostly hates when you play guys out of position. It doesn't care that tlusty of carolina hasn't played C since he played Junior. You put him at LW without letting Evil change it in game, you're likley going to pay for it. 

So what's the "ideal" set of forwards?

Well there's a few thoughts on the subject, but most of the time the really successful lines are some combo of three different player type. An example would be Sniper-Playmaker-PWF, or SNP-PLY-TWF.   If you want proof of this, look at last years leaders and this years leaders? Malkin is doing well, Burrows did well last season. Both are part of a sniper-ply-pwf or snp-ply-twf combo.  

But, it's not always this way, Pittsburg is doing quite well with a snp-ply-snp combo. Basically stay away from the same player type on the same line and you'll be okay. Also try to have a playmaker on your top two lines. 

A special consideration goes to teams that have a top C who's not a playmaker. A lot of teams are struggling and can't figure out why. It's probably the fact your C is not a playmaker and you have no play making wingers to set people up. When I aquired Richards the very first thing I did was bug tommy about getting Parteau from him. Why? Cause Richards is a TWF and I knew I'd need a PLY like P.A. to help Richards and Franzen score. 

Bergeron is lighting it up this year from my second line. Why? cause he has a playmaking winger to set him up. Even if you don't see it in assists from the PLY trust me, if your top centers are not PLY you need a PLY winger.

If you wanna know what your guys are, and you don't have the game; check out this video. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaJYe2i1F-Y

Anyway, take this all with a grain of salt. I do the same thing game in and game out and I've only ever won a single cup about 5 years ago (lol) so do what you feel is best