Managing the NCAA Ranks

[Primis]

So we all know that you can't manage the NCAA conferences in-game.

Well.... that's not entirely true. I set out to make this happen using the pre-game editor.

The UHL is a good league to use because of its ruleset and size. You could pretty much transplant an entire collegiate hockey conference's teams into the UHL. In my case I plopped some CCHA and WCHA teams into the West, and Hockey East, Notre Dame, and Penn State into the East. But the UHL's 10 teams is about the size of most conferences. As a bonus, you don't even need to "swap" out team one-for-one like you often need to.... the game doesn't care how many teams are in the NCAA conferences, so you can move the UHL teams all to A Minor League (goodbye SPHL and Trenton) and then move the teams you want in. Now... they obviously play more games but... minor detail IMHO.

One thing I wasn't sure of was whether the game would even LET me put Amateur teams into a pro league. It does, it's fine. I thought that was pretty cool. I also set a UHL Upper Age Limit to 22 years to keep it roughly about the age range you see in NCAA. It does still allow a few Overagers though (and marks them as such). With that age range though and the team reps they do a pretty good job of "signing" guys that seem right in line with those that should be in college.

With an age limit of 22, you can sign guys 18 years and up. Sometimes. You can nab a few 18 year olds, more likely 19 year olds though. I honestly have not yet figured out what makes them signable or not. Sometimes you can even sign guys away from the OHL or WHL (oh delicious irony), but those are few and far between. And of course you get young guys like Jerry D'Amigo or Max Nicastro that are owned by NHL teams but always get released at the start of every game and need a home to play.

The contracts are almost all $9,700, though occasionally a guy will want a little more than $10,000. With the UHL's roster max of 19 guys (and max dressed of 18) and those tiny contracts money and finances really aren't an issue for any team (even a blank one like Penn State that has nothing to start out with). Getting guys rarely comes down to money, it's more about reputation it feels like.

It's not perfect obviously, but it's actually not a bad way to make NCAA teams playable with just a little work in the pregame editor. I might try to find a bigger (number of teams) league than the UHL to use instead is all. Presumably you could do a similar thing to make the USHL playable with similar results so long as you bumped the max age down to one more appropriate for US juniors, though I don't know how young the game would allow you to sign guys then.

Anyhow... if you're bored of managing in Major Junior, and bored of the N. American pros, this is a good way to change things up a bit and play with those younger guys you often ignore.

[archibalduk]

If we could get the NCAA full up to date in the TBL Rosters, some league-swapping would be pretty neat. Even better, it would be very easy to write a script that swaps teams around. So with the click of a mouse-button (or, more likely, the press of a key), we could swap the UHL with the CCHA, etc and back again. If we could get further details from Hobbit13 about his league expansion modding, I wonder if it would be possible to get a proper NCAA structure playable...

[Primis]

If we could get the NCAA full up to date in the TBL Rosters, some league-swapping would be pretty neat. Even better, it would be very easy to write a script that swaps teams around. So with the click of a mouse-button (or, more likely, the press of a key), we could swap the UHL with the CCHA, etc and back again. If we could get further details from Hobbit13 about his league expansion modding, I wonder if it would be possible to get a proper NCAA structure playable...

I actually think the NCAA, USHL, and CIS would all be quite playable once you got the right settings. NAHL I'm not so sure, due to the league size and it being second tier junior...

I have yet to see the effect of 2 or 3 seasons down the road playing this way, but I can't imagine it being much of a problem. Ages aren't perfect, and neither is eligibility but... at this point half of these leagues in the game don't have the same rules anyways (or don't even exist period, like the UHL). So finding ways to make some of these other leagues playable seems like a good plan.

Archi, did you say you were getting a form together to be able to submit transaction updates and players to add or something?

[archibalduk]

Archi, did you say you were getting a form together to be able to submit transaction updates and players to add or something?

Yes, that's right. Once I've finished my exams at the end of this week.

[Primis]

So I figured I'd update this.

I'm in my 2nd season now managing an NCAA team. It's really frustrating/fun at times. I lost 3 key players and 3 or 4 others to NHL contracts late in the season (this seems more common with this setup, probably because of the young age of the players), including my starting goalie. To complicate things then my backup began to have problems with his condition/stamina... and I literally could not get anyone to sign with me as a backup at that late stage. To top it all off, Calgary signed my starter so he could be a healthy scratch for Abbotsford for 30 games and he never saw a minute between the pipes (sadly, this is actually realistic).

My backup was in bad enough shape/condition that often in the playoffs he couldn't even actually play, and a greyed-out fake goalie stepped in instead. Because nobody would sign with me.

Also in a weird bit of reality, Yasin Cisse left Boston U. midseason after being released (though in this case he was a point-per-game player, not the wreck he actually was IRL) and so I nabbed him and he helped my team go literally from last to first in the conference.

It's brutal though. I've never managed anywhere in the lower ranks (keep in mind I manage a lot in the AHL and ECHL at least) where I live in such fear of NHL teams signing away my players. Never do affiliate call-ups plague you this way, and you don't these problems in major junior either. They're old enough to be signed freely, but not old enough that teams get discouraged at trying to develop them apparently. It's a challenge to keep a good team together without the NHL completely picking your roster clean. You almost have to sandbag your team a bit so they don't make players TOO attractive. 2 guys I lost to NHL contracts really never should have been signed, but were lighting up things for my team midseason so... NHL teams took chances on them. Oops.


EDIT: Mid-July CGY released my goalie from Abbotsford so I made a run at him again, only to watch Toronto swoop in (where he'll undoubtedly once again sit and not every play). Harumph.

[wildguy108]

how's recruiting

[Primis]

I wanted to point out here that I also successfully moved the USHL to the "Q" or the OHL (I forget which) with tweaked age limits and played a couple of seasons, though it was a little tougher and not as much fun as NCAA.

If you want to spend the time, there's really not any reason you can't move a league into an existing playable league and tweak some of the rules in the editor to make it playable (without 100% accuracy of course, but close enough).

[Tyees]

I couldn't get the UHL to work, I've pretty good with the editor and yet my game still CTD on loading.