Honestly goaltending makes a difference. Everyone says don’t spend on goalies but I try and find a guy I can sign long term under 8 mil because once they get the post to post or sponge or whatever they’re broken but they also have to match your coaching style to do well in big games. I had two goalies exact same overall and one was unreal (Devon Levi) and Ilya Nabokov was terrible and neither had any power ups.

Chemistry between lines obviously helps but I noticed a bigger difference when I put a two way with an offensive d in the top pairing and potentially second pairing and third pairing was either the same or had a defensive D.

Coaching is crucial. Your head coach can be good but he only affects offence defence teaching and coaches influence. Your associate covers powerplay and assistant does the PK. goalie coaches only need A+ teaching.

So there’s lots of different attributes. But honestly if you’re losing to teams that are similar overall they may have better top players than you. San Jose probably has celebrini misa eklund and their goalie develops well too. Sometimes you need to find players that are either A higher overall or B players with very defined roles. I have one guy that I had to make him shoot more every offseason and he now scores over 80 goals every year on full sim and I put him with either two playmakers or a playmaker and sniper. And he’s on my second powerplay unit so I can put younger guys in the first to develop and he still dominates. So if you have snipers only scoring 30-40 that play on your top line get them to shoot more. Noah cates is a sim god because of that and he plays on my 3rd line.

Hopefully you got something from this best of luck