Challenge 21: Quebec Nordiques (Discussion Thread)

[bruins72]

That's similar to my forward lines. I've got Pyatt on the second LW at even strength though. Pouliot is in there on the PP. Simon is my third LW and Stoa is fourth. I tried this for the first handful of games and saw that my second line was doing better than my first, so now I've flipped them. I'm now 1-3-2. I just finally got my first win in OT.

[Ippo]

After 20 games we're 9-8-3 and 9th in the conference. Those away games were hellish, but at least we got a couple of wins from those.

I dropped Hall and Seguin to 2nd line after 5 games and replaced them with Pouliot and Couture. I think it was the right move, as Couture has been playing well and Hall is scoring more often now. Seguin is struggling a bit, not sure what to do with him. Huet and Garon are doing very well, both having an average rating over 8.50 as of now. Oh, and Owen Nolan is still class!

[eric1985]

I took another route... Hall seemed more ready. 3 games in the big surprise is Huet.. 2-1 1.01 GAA, .964 GAA 1SO.. Mind you my PP is 9.1% so far..But I'm gonna make Ripper fight everyone!!!
Lines are.

Hall - Lapierre - Nolan
Pyatt - Couture - Bernier
Cumiskey - Pouliot - Bergfors
Simon - Bolduc - Rypien

Hejda - Visnovsky
Finger - Foote
Picard - Sopel

[thunderbug]

So I thought I'd give this challenge ago. Thought some of the older players might get a kick out of the names for my GM for the big team and for the affiliate. The Nordiques hired Murray Chadwick. The Aces hired Derek Sutton. So far I'm 14 games in and seem to have found some combinations that work for the most part. My forwards are fairly set as this gives me two lines that seem put up points. The 3rd line has been an effective good old sandpaper line. 4th line does what I ask and so no complaints there.

Pyatt Laperierre Bernier
Pouliot Couture Bergfors
Simon Bolduc Nolan
Stoa Bellemare Rypien

The defense I'm still playing around trying to find the best defensive combinations right now its.
Cuminsky Visnovsky
Finger Foote
Hejda Sopel
with Picard as the 7th

I should add that I'm in favor of kids spending as much time in juniors as possible so Hall and Seguin are tearing it up down in the CHL.

[bruins72]

After 11 games I'm seeing that Seguin just isn't ready. I've moved him to Cornwall. Realistically, he should be allowed to be sent there but it gave me the option, so I took it. Hopefully he'll have better results there. I brought Esposito up to play the 4th line. Pouliot is now the 2nd line C and Lapierre is C on the PP with Pouliot riding his LW there. We'll see how this works out.

[thunderbug]

Personally I've never been impressed with Esposito. Maybe it's because I was a thrashers fan, and I could never get him to turn into something useful. Bruins we should compare our Seguins after Season 1 to see how they developed with yours in the AHL and mine being in Junior.

[batdad]

Wow. You know this team is not very good offensively when Lapierre is playing on a PP of any kind. Or as a 1st line C. Wow. I guess I should play this one. Since NO ONE should be able to score, my defensive model should play outstanding here. But I am having so much fun in Almtuna. Got promoted to SEL. Now...have to win that!!

[Laker2415]

As usual, I'm having problems with the rosters, much like batdad did. I was able to download winzip and I thought that I was able to download the rosters easily, however, I have a bunch of individual files and no folder anywhere on my computer labeled Nordiques. Am I supposed to create a folder? I'm so lost on this it's not even funny.

[thunderbug]

Laker I don't know if winzip handles 7zip or not. I used winrar and it extracted folder just fine.

[thunderbug]

Wow. You know this team is not very good offensively when Lapierre is playing on a PP of any kind. Or as a 1st line C. Wow. I guess I should play this one. Since NO ONE should be able to score, my defensive model should play outstanding here. But I am having so much fun in Almtuna. Got promoted to SEL. Now...have to win that!!

It's hard to score, but it certainly can be done. In the first 20 games I scored 74 goals. I need to tighten things up though.

[Leeman14]

For those with space issues in Kalamazoo, I've discovered that putting in a couple of dummy GMs (for both farm teams) in accordance with the challenge rules helps to create space on those rosters. You can release the only signed goalie in Kalamazoo (along with 2-3 other players) and then can assign 2 goalies and a skater or two.

My goalie situation was dire and I'm glad I added the dummy GMs. Racine and Levasseur are now in Kalamazoo, I sent Hackett back to junior even though he had a stellar pre-season for us. Deslauriers and Bishop are in Cornwall and truth be told, Deslauriers could have easily supplanted Garon as the Nordiques' backup.

I'm kinda bummed-out about the unknown arena thing in Cornwall (total season tickets sold: 64) because I'm big on making my seasons as realistic as possible but oh well, it's not like it matters in the grand scheme of things.

My lines going into the season are as follows:

Hall-Seguin-Bergfors
Pouliot-Lapierre-Bernier
Simon-DiDomenico-Rypien
Bolduc-Couture-Nolan

Taylor Pyatt is injured and will likely replace Bolduc in the line-up and move up to the 2nd line. James Livingston made the team out of training camp and will see time on the 3rd/4th line. Julian Talbot is also a spare.

Hejda-Visnovsky
Cumiskey-Foote
Finger-Picard

Brent Sopel will be the 7th D-man and split time with Picard and/or Finger.

Huet
Garon

Looking forward to the regular season which I'll run through later today.

Thanks to Manimal for getting this challenge ready for us.


Cheers,

Leeman14

[outdooral]

Im up and running in this challenge as well.
In the preseason I added Brian Leetch to fill the vacant assistant coaching position.Hall and Sequin had decent stats so I. decided to keep them up for a while to see how they perform.
I lost the first 2 games 6-5 (with Garon in net ) and then 1-0. I blew a late 2 goal lead in the 3rd game to go into a shootout with the Habs. Rypien got me the win as my 6th shooter.we are 2-3 after 5 games now.
Lines
Pyatt-Couture-Berfors
Hall-Lapeirre-Nolan
Simon-Sequin-Bernier
Bellemare-Stoa-Rypien

Stoa just came in to replace a terrible Esposito.
Hall is struggling no points -2, 6.2. Sequin is ok 1G,5a, +5, 7.6.
Defense is good with Hejda-Visnovsky,Syveret-Foote,Benoit-Sopel, with Finger as the 7th.

Hejda is my leading scorer with 3, and Huet is stellar 1.96 Gaa, and a 9.5 rating.

[Leeman14]

9 games in and Rypien has passed 100 PIM.

[outdooral]

Just lost a heartbreaker to the leafs 2-1. Looked like one of our best games. We out shot them 43-20 and beat them on the boards 60-40, kept our penalties and give aways down, just couldnt score. Also lost Huet for 10 days.
So 9 games in and we are 3-6 and its decision time for whether to keep Sequin with the club or send him back to junior. He's got 2g 6a +5 and 7.11 rating centering my 3rd line and 2nd pp unit.
I sent Hall down after 7 games and no points when Pouliot came back from injury giving me another offensive player.

[timmy_t]

Well, I finished training camp and my best players were Pyatt, Bernier, and Benoit Pouliot. It got me thinking: since most of the heavier players get better ratings because of hitting, I'm thinking of keeping everyone that's at/around 200 lbs or over on the team and sending the rest to Cornwall. I had a horrible time in the Dallas challenge with Ott, Goligoski, Robidas, and even Ribeiro. Their size (all in the 180 lb range) killed them and their morale, and that eventually brought the whole team's morale down.

I'll try to play a totally defensive style of play with high aggression and heavy hitting. I'll let you know how my preseason games go.

Other than that, I'll probably send everyone with CHL rights back to their teams and then try to see where they stand next year. One thing I noticed is that over half of the team is going to be either a UFA or RFA in June, so I'll see which players I like and go from there.

[MacPhal]

Just finished up my pre-season. Seguin has been sent back to the minors. Paquette is looking to be a really good power forward, he made my team on a very weak Left side. Aulie also did very well on the Defense side of things. Foote..... not so well, lets hope the team Captain can turn things around. I had a hard time picking what defense men to sent back. And in net Deslauriers sold Garon's job and his pants, he replaced them with pants that had really big holes in them. Man did Garon suck in pre-season games.

Hall-Puliot-Bergfors
Paquette-Couture-Bernier
Pyatt-Lapierre-Nolan
Simon-Lemieux-Rypien
Bolduc-Bellemare

Foote-Visnovsky
Aulie-Hejda
Finger-Picard
Sople

Huet-Deslauriers

[Astmakameli]

This can be deleted, figured out my problem

[thunderbug]

Well in the 4th quarter of the first season the wheels came off of what wasn't a great team but a good team. In reality the team has just enough depth to play decent hockey. The team is screwed as soon as injuries hit though because after that there's not really enough depth that can play at that level. Anyways, we managed to barely win the division and not get swept in the first round (winning 1 game) against none other than the Ottawa Senators.

Edit: Instead of posting again for the draft I thought I'd just go ahead and edit this one to include my draft. Not a lot of real steals here. Though the Blackhawks did steal someone I was looking at but figured I could wait a bit on.

#25 Jesse Forsberg
#55 Colin Jacobs
#73 Jonas Emmerdahl
#85 Alex Belzile
#89 J.T. Barnet
#115 Dennis Saikkonnen
#130 Jamie Oleksiak
#145 James Henry
#205 Michael Paliotta

Entering into Free Agency there's one name out there that we are targetting. If he signs elsewhere it's not a big deal I'll try and fill from within.

[Leeman14]

From start to finish, the season was terrible. I elected to add a very physical dimension to my line-up which consisted of Chris Simon and Rick Rypien "encouraged" to drop 'em. Rypien finished the season with 600+ PIM and Simon was not far behind.

Easily the top players from Season 1 were Logan Couture, Taylor Hall and Steve Bernier. One of the biggest issues for the Nordiques in year one is not having anyone above mediocre in the face-off circle. This didn't give us much of a chance on the PK which is why we were 29th (if I recall correctly) in PK. Bergfors could have had 90+ points if he hadn't missed almost half the season with several injuries. The guy is made of glass.

So we won the draft lottery and selected the following players:

#1 Jonathan Huberdeau (Saint John, QMJHL)
#31 Alexander Khokhlachev (Windsor, OHL)
#61 Max Friberg (Skovde, Swe-3)
#68 Joel Armia (Assat, Fin)
#88 Mike McKee (Windsor, OHL)
#91 Henrik Tommernes (Frolunda, Swe)
#121 JT Barnett (Kamloops, WHL)
#134 Kale Kessy (Medicine Hat, WHL)
#181 Mikkel Hojbjerg (Frederikshavn, Den)

During free agency, we signed Mike Comrie to a reasonable contract (sub-$2 million) and he's actually providing some nice anchoring on the 2nd/3rd line.

I'm 11 games into Season 2 and we're playing above-500 hockey for the first time. I'm keeping an eye open for a possible 1-for-1 trade.


Cheers!

[Leeman14]

Season 2 Lines:

Pyatt-Couture-Bergfors
Hall-Lapierre-Bernier
Pouliot-Comrie-Rypien
Stoa-Seguin-Kabanov

Spares: Ashton, DiDomenico, Paquette

Cumiskey-Visnovsky
Finger-Picard
Clitsome-Hejda

Spare: Syvret

Huet-Garon

[thunderbug]

Alright so far I'm 2 games into the second season. The UFA we were targeting decided to sign elsewhere, and so we are standing pat for now. It'll give the kids a chance to develop. Here's the lines I'm working with right now.

Hall Couture Bergfors
Pouliot Seguin Bernier
Pyatt Lapierre Rypien
Bellemare Bolduc DiDomenico

Hejda Visnovsky
Finger Picard
Cuminsky Sopel

Huet Garon

The HCB line is clicking big time. They've accounted for 7 of the 9 goals scored in 2 games. That may sound like an all out offensive system to you, but I run a somewhat defensive system with this team. The first two games were just against Toronto.

[Loosie]

So I've lost Bergfors for 3 months, and am currently last in the East. Games have been tight for the most part, but just can't get that extra goal to win it.

On a positive note, Cornwall is doign great, they 8-2 currenlty, and Kalamzoo is doing so so, they are 3-3. Hall and Seguin are still with Quebec. Seguin is on a PPG pace right now, Hall is getting banged up and not doing as well. I'm still not sure if I'm going to drop him to Cornwall or Junior, or stick it out for a bit longer.

[bruins72]

Bleh! I haven't played in about a week now. Been busy at home and work. Hopefully I'll get some playing time in next week and finish season 1 in a week or two.

[thunderbug]

Well the roster looks a bit different now. As I didn't have a signing in the offseason I put in my one waiver claim. I claimed Ted Purcell to help out on the 3rd/4th line. I also managed to put together a trade sending Picard(defense) to Buffalo for Sekera. Hoping Sekera is a slight improvement over Picard.

[Leeman14]

Well, season 2 began and we were on fire. Now we're dead last in the league. My UFA signing is inconsistent but that's what I get for signing Mike Comrie. He has improved the team's face-off percentage and instead of 30th in PK, we're 27th now.

With the glut of goaltending, I traded Mathieu Garon to Vancouver for Mason Raymond. I don't know what it was but Garon hated playing for Quebec--he demanded to be traded twice during season one. What's evening stranger is that he lives here in Rimouski during the off-season and has a house just down the street from my father-in-law... and he was a Nordiques fan growing up! In the DB, it says his favourite team is Montreal. Oh well.

Stoa was having a stellar season but is out for 5 months with a bad concussion.