The Toronto Maple Leafs

[Be26]

Alternate Title: Is It Just Me Or Does Tyler Bozak Seem Wildly Overrated?

This will be the world's shortest explanatory post, but this is going to be a story in the loosest sense of the word. I'm a huge Maple Leafs fan and an equally huge fan of the EHM franchise, so it disappointed me that I let this new release slip under my radar like it did but excited me that I'd get the chance to bring Toronto to desperately long awaited-glory. Stupidly, I started my game before installing one of the roster updates, meaning that rather than read about the misadventures of Phil Kessel, Nazem Kadri and the rest, you get to enjoy the exploits of...Garen Meyers, Lukas Nelson and all kinds of other names that will mean nothing to you.

I'm partly doing this to track my attempt at learning to play just as a GM. I'm now just starting my third season in charge and in the first two years - i.e. the 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 seasons - Toronto made it to the Finals once, losing to Calgary, then won the Stanley Cup by sweeping St. Louis. This wasn't accomplished by selling all of the prospects in the pipeline to acquire superstars, nor by (intentionally) exploiting any super-tactics that may or may not exist, all I did was dress the best line-up, tinker with the lines and ensured the tactics were as offensive and creative as seemed sensible given the opponents. I only found out that actively coaching the games yourself seems to reduce the difficulty exponentially after the fact, which meant that my pride in myself as the world's greatest hockey manager was rather dampened.

So, from this third season onwards, I will be playing as the General Manager and the General Manager alone. I may look at the Tactics screen, but the only actions I am allowed to take are clearing all of the lines and then asking my head coach for his recommendation, no matter how angry it might make me. I will be leaving the Tactics on the settings I had them originally, which you can imagine is the result of me as the General Manager character leaning on the coach because hey, this style won us a Cup after 49 years and saw Garen 'Kessel' Meyers score 237 points in 151 games, just in the regular season, why would you change that you buffoon, but that's it. The only time I will make any changes is if the team does not have a coach. If Eric Trabichet (the team's coach, who I don't think has a direct parallel) retires or gets fired, I'll take over as interim coach until a new one is brought in or promoted. I'll also make changes when that new coach comes in because it'd be a new guy putting his stamp on the squad and again, would make sense.

...anyway, this turned out rather longer than I was anticipating. If anybody reads this and has any suggestions for further things I should and should not be allowed to do, please say. This is an experiment for me and one I may well fail miserably. Let's find out!