SHL sign players late

[Sekeras77]

What I also recognized and find very strange. In the SHL (Sweden) some teams start around November to sign players that normally should be in NHL. And it is
no single player, it is a bunch of them. I always play a good season, but from then I am lost. Of course non of this players is available for me.

Al Montoya - Frölunda for 113.000 € / year
Gabriel Gagne - Frölunda for 342.000 € / year
Carl Gunnarson - Färjestadt for 241.000 € / year
Antoine Roussel - Färjestadt for 437.000 € / year
Linden Vey - Färjestadt for 184.000 € / year
Patrik Berglund - Färjestadt for 573.000 € / year
Stuart Percy - Växjö for 182.000 € / year
Dwight King - Linköpings for 184.000 € / year
Paul Byron - Djugarden for 240.000 € / year

and the list could be continued .....

I finally was able to sign one of them
Martin Marincin - Mora for 1.200.000 € / year

[Named]

Which db u use? Could You post some screens?

[Sekeras77]

Should be database TBL Rosters v9.1

Sorry, but i do not get it how to put screen shots in here

[Named]

You can upload on photobucket or imgur site and post link to screen here.

[Alessandro]

I don't see anything to strange regarding Sweden. Why the SHL or KHL teams shouldn't sign them, if available? To me it seems more an issue with NHL finances and inability to deal with the cap.
I don't see any of these players in Europe being terribly unrealistic, except Roussel perhaps.
We can try to fine tune a bit salaries for SHL for the 17-18 release, but it won't impact the NHL of course.

[Shindigs]

Lowering team rep and salaries in the SHL fixes this, I've done it in my personal version of the db that I play on. The issue will eventually return as the teams gain rep/budget from year to year, but lowering it helps for a long time. The highest rep SHL teams almost overlap the lowest Rep NHL teams (Arizona 7500, Florida 7500 vs. Frölunda 7000, Färjestad 7000), so players are a lot more likely to want to play there than they should be. You can even sign fringe/aging NHLers in HockeyAllsvenskan if you feel like it (in last year's db Joe Thornton ended his career in HockeyAllsvenskan for me once). Since Mora is a newly promoted team they only have 4500 rep (which is on par with the higher HockeyAllsvenskan teams) but way below the teams that start in the SHL (Skellefteå 6750, Frölunda 7000, Färjestad 7000). When your team is promoted from Allsvenskan to SHL you don't actually gain any real rep or budget increase comparable to the new TV money you get, so it will take you approximately 120 seasons to catch up on budget with the top starting SHL teams as a promoted team. Assuming the salary growth is linear, which it probably isn't. Generally speaking the rep difference when trying to sign an NHLer to the SHL as a promoted team from HockeyAllsvenskan is about 8:1, in the more extreme cases. Benoit Pouliot asked my promoted Mora team for 8M SEK a year to play there, but settled for 1.1M a year with a team that started in the SHL. Also keep in mind that stuff like winning the SHL and participating in the CHL will give the SHL top teams a fair chunk of rep, whereas Florida and Arizona won't likely get much rep as bottom NHL teams, leading to them eventually being leapfrogged by Europe.

Most SHL teams are either running at a loss or are close to running at a loss in real life, purely being propped up by the ~30-35M SEK they get from Canal Digital for TV rights every year. So their budgets for players should essentially across the board never exceed around 30-35M SEK at most, in the 9.6 db the top teams have around 5,000,000 dollars as their budget, when they should be around 3,750,000. When the top teams' Rep is lowered from 7k to around 6k together with their budgets the issue is lessened, and you will still have a lot of actual Swedes in the SHL, rather than having it become NHL-light. The issue with doing this is that it has a knock on effect that essentially leads to you needing to change the rep of every single team in Europe in every playable league and some non-playable ones to get a more realistic experience as far as player movement is concerned (which I did for the 9.4 db, it was so mind-numbing to do). I've yet to try the new "don't make budget adjustments" tick box, but it might fix the Germany issue. Because German teams get in the vague area of 10x as much money as they should based on their database entries as long as their rep is 1000 or higher last I checked, below that rep you can set their budgets yourself (kinda). That did have a slightly negative impact on what player movement looked like in Europe, to say the least.

In my Jets save in 2041 using the changed rep I mentioned above, Frölunda has only managed to creep up to 7150 Rep, and both Florida and Arizona are still chilling at 7500. If this were the 9.6db Frölunda would have 8150 rep to Arizona's and Florida's 7500, which would be an issue. Their player budget has crept up to roughly 4.2M Dollars, which means they still have less buying power for NHL players than they do at startup in 9.6. So unless you plan on playing a really, really long save those proposed changes essentially fix the issue. The team that started in HockeyAllsvenskan who spent the most seasons in the SHL in that save was Leksand, who spent 17 seasons in the SHL (this was on the 15/16 db btw) and with a budget of 6M SEK, after 17 years in the SHL being paid 30M SEK a year for TV rights their budget has risen to 12.1M SEK, and their rep has climbed from 4000 to 4570, so less than the lowest starting team in the SHL, which was Karlskoga/Malmö/Rögle at 4750 and that budget is essentially that of a 1st year promoted team in the SHL IRL. So although you can be promoted from one league to another in this game, there are no mechanics to actually make it function in any remotely realistic way.

Most SHL teams in 2041 are primarily made up of Swedish players with anywhere between 5 and no American/Canadian guys who legitimately didn't make it in the NHL. No big names that shouldn't be there, they even have one of my old 3rd rounders that just missed making my 4th line and ended up going to Frölunda instead, so the exact kind of guy you'd expect to find in the SHL.

Meanwhile in another save that I did pre-editing (again this is last year's db. But the rep and budget values from last year to this year haven't changed much if at all) when we look into the Rögle camp in 2025 we can play a game of "name that top 6 NHLer":

Sure they are all in their mid 30's or older, but do you think a mid 30's Lucic will play in Rögle?

So there is an issue, and it is really easy although slightly time-consuming to fix. The lower a league you play in the more obvious it gets, like having ballpark 3k rep in Suomi-Sarja being able to sign ex-SHL players to amateur deals. Or being able to sign 50k $ players for free in the lowest playable tier of British hockey on amateur deals. Both things are quite possible with the rep and salary values as they currently are, which somewhat defeats the purpose of making sure the European rosters are correct, as the AI will instantly go out and spend all their money on replacing their entire core. Making your hard work on roster research somewhat pointless, so fixing this should probably be a priority since it's a super quick and easy fix. I've already had to do it three times myself in the last year (8.2, 9.1, 9.4), and I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to mass edit so I do it one team at the time in the editor and still had it done in less than 3 hours. Oh, and while we're on the subject; Who gave Borås 4000 rep and 750,000$? That's just silly!

[Alessandro]

Mass editing of team reps should be an easy thing and will try once I get to fix a couple of things in what I'm working for the 17-18 TBL DB.
Not sure about Boras, it surely it is something from the past, will try and fix it.

[Manimal]

I wonder if I am to blame for the Borås thing.
I was studying there six or seven years ago and might have drunkenly toyed around with the db one day to have them in a higher league. I probably forgot to change it back and since they've been in a lower league nobody has noticed.

[Named]

Thats good advice to make rosters move more real. Thanks Shindigs!

[Tasku]

I wonder if I am to blame for the Borås thing.
I was studying there six or seven years ago and might have drunkenly toyed around with the db one day to have them in a higher league. I probably forgot to change it back and since they've been in a lower league nobody has noticed.

That's the spirit!

[Shindigs]

I wonder if I am to blame for the Borås thing.
I was studying there six or seven years ago and might have drunkenly toyed around with the db one day to have them in a higher league. I probably forgot to change it back and since they've been in a lower league nobody has noticed.

That's the spirit!

I assumed it was something like that. I've done the exact same thing when I swapped my hometown team into Swe-2 and then swapped it back down for a later save. Forgetting to downsize the arena/rep/budget after doing so.

The issue with high rep on low league teams is that it actually plays part in signing players. For example if I was playing as Pantern in Swe-2 and I decided to sign a free agent like for example August Gunnarsson after season 1 in last year's db. If I offered him 140k SEK a year and a core role. But Borås offered him a part time 39k SEK a year deal as a Key player. He would pick Borås because their rep is higher than mine by a lot.

That same thing happens when you play in the minor-junior leagues. Some of the Junior-B teams have too high rep, so when you go out and try to sign your newly drafted player you get every single Junior-B team and their moms also trying to sign that player in response to you showing interest. Because some of them have too high rep they can actually "steal" your drafted player after you already offered him a contract. This doesn't happen if you offer a Key player role. Or if you offer a core player role with a HUGE signing bonus. But if you try and sign a prospect as a normal core player you get him sniped by Junior-B teams. So it's very important to make sure those lower tier unplayable teams actually have less rep than the lower rep playable teams. That's why I've edited the rep of all Swe-3 and Fin-4 teams. Because if you don't after lowering the rep of the playable leagues it gets really frustrating and unrealistic to try and play in Swe-2 or Fin-3.

[Smirnov2Chistov]

What I also recognized and find very strange. In the SHL (Sweden) some teams start around November to sign players that normally should be in NHL. And it is
no single player, it is a bunch of them. I always play a good season, but from then I am lost. Of course non of this players is available for me.

Al Montoya - Frölunda for 113.000 € / year
Gabriel Gagne - Frölunda for 342.000 € / year
Carl Gunnarson - Färjestadt for 241.000 € / year
Antoine Roussel - Färjestadt for 437.000 € / year
Linden Vey - Färjestadt for 184.000 € / year
Patrik Berglund - Färjestadt for 573.000 € / year
Stuart Percy - Växjö for 182.000 € / year
Dwight King - Linköpings for 184.000 € / year
Paul Byron - Djugarden for 240.000 € / year

and the list could be continued .....

I finally was able to sign one of them
Martin Marincin - Mora for 1.200.000 € / year

I've noticed this year after year and it doesn't bother me. Usually it's more fringe NHL'ers or good AHL'ers not having contracts. If they're close to retiring, they just stay in Europe and not accept any North American offer.

Even the ones you mention there don't pan out well for me anyway (Percy, Byron). I think I had Johan Larsson from Buffalo bounce from Sweden/Finland and Russia because he wasn't that great

[Alessandro]

What I also recognized and find very strange. In the SHL (Sweden) some teams start around November to sign players that normally should be in NHL. And it is
no single player, it is a bunch of them. I always play a good season, but from then I am lost. Of course non of this players is available for me.

Al Montoya - Frölunda for 113.000 € / year
Gabriel Gagne - Frölunda for 342.000 € / year
Carl Gunnarson - Färjestadt for 241.000 € / year
Antoine Roussel - Färjestadt for 437.000 € / year
Linden Vey - Färjestadt for 184.000 € / year
Patrik Berglund - Färjestadt for 573.000 € / year
Stuart Percy - Växjö for 182.000 € / year
Dwight King - Linköpings for 184.000 € / year
Paul Byron - Djugarden for 240.000 € / year

and the list could be continued .....

I finally was able to sign one of them
Martin Marincin - Mora for 1.200.000 € / year

I've noticed this year after year and it doesn't bother me. Usually it's more fringe NHL'ers or good AHL'ers not having contracts. If they're close to retiring, they just stay in Europe and not accept any North American offer.

Even the ones you mention there don't pan out well for me anyway (Percy, Byron). I think I had Johan Larsson from Buffalo bounce from Sweden/Finland and Russia because he wasn't that great

Well, I can't see any swedish team paying players more than 500.000 euro a year.

[Smirnov2Chistov]

What I also recognized and find very strange. In the SHL (Sweden) some teams start around November to sign players that normally should be in NHL. And it is
no single player, it is a bunch of them. I always play a good season, but from then I am lost. Of course non of this players is available for me.

Al Montoya - Frölunda for 113.000 € / year
Gabriel Gagne - Frölunda for 342.000 € / year
Carl Gunnarson - Färjestadt for 241.000 € / year
Antoine Roussel - Färjestadt for 437.000 € / year
Linden Vey - Färjestadt for 184.000 € / year
Patrik Berglund - Färjestadt for 573.000 € / year
Stuart Percy - Växjö for 182.000 € / year
Dwight King - Linköpings for 184.000 € / year
Paul Byron - Djugarden for 240.000 € / year

and the list could be continued .....

I finally was able to sign one of them
Martin Marincin - Mora for 1.200.000 € / year

I've noticed this year after year and it doesn't bother me. Usually it's more fringe NHL'ers or good AHL'ers not having contracts. If they're close to retiring, they just stay in Europe and not accept any North American offer.

Even the ones you mention there don't pan out well for me anyway (Percy, Byron). I think I had Johan Larsson from Buffalo bounce from Sweden/Finland and Russia because he wasn't that great

Well, I can't see any swedish team paying players more than 500.000 euro a year.

I understand what your saying, to me generally it doesn't bother me. At least they're getting some playing time somewhere! Lol

I have seen some players who go on a steep decline (ex:Sedin twins) that don't get picked up by an NHL team and then they go to Europe to play for peanuts.

I'm not sure how European Hockey works, but is it similar to an ownership here where they can pump money into a team?

[andda715]

I have also noticed the same as Shindigs and solved it in a similar way. Instead of mass editing pre game I have used the save game editor to reduce top teams in SHL and HA to more sane levels (trying to avoid AIK with 30MSek wages... in HA).

The real issue here though is as noted by Shindigs, is that it is *almost* impossible to play a lower league challenge equivalent in EHM Today without resorting to save game editing. For me, LLC are the best thing about both EHM and FM.

Note sure what, if anything, has changed in game play mechanics but I remember having Huddinge with their awful arena win the SHL championship three years in a row in EHM 2005/2007 (IIRC). Now that is entirely impossible, as the difference in reputation between promoted teams and already present ones are huge.

One thing that I believe should be changed - if possible - is that the reputation increase of winning titles and especially non-playoff titles should be dramatically decreased. Today it doesn't look like you get any increase by just being promoted, so ending up as runner up in both HA and the SHL relegation league is a nightmare. . So the amount of decrease in title reputation should instead be bestowed on the teams that are promoted.
Similarly demoted teams should have their rep decrease as well.

While on the subject another nice feature would be to be able to specify minimum and maximum team reputation per league as this would decrease the issues seen even more. (If team rep > max league rep set team rep to max league rep and if team rep < min league rep equivalently set it to min leauge rep).

Perhaps also introduce, if not already present a +-5-15% in rep for a random bunch of teams per league each year.
Quite realistic as teams bounce around year-to-year, one year's "hype team" is the next year's "slump team".
At least in HA and lower leagues.

[andda715]

I'm not sure how European Hockey works, but is it similar to an ownership here where they can pump money into a team?

No, this is quite exceptional.

Usually what happens, at least in Sweden, instead (or should happen...) is that the team in question is demoted automatically - one or two leagues - due to having poor finances. Recently there has been a lot of loopholes here though where teams have created huge sand castles (does that translate?) by over valuing various owned buildings and so on. Just to make it look on paper that they fulfil the league minimum financial requirements. Of course this doesn't help in the long run anyway as players will still be left without paychecks and the teams will go into bankruptcy eventually...

Another loophole is the thing where the debt is automatically cleared by X percent (usually 75 or 50) depending on whether a large amount of debt holders agree to this. To invoke this process it requires some legal delicate proceedings. In several cases during the past three year: the people running, or being involved in the clubs, usually also specialize in providing these legal services and just so happens seems to have made nice profits on the other debt holders of the same club, go figure...

Ironically enough, this latter process is not by some awesomely strange and perverse logic, not seen as "having poor finances".

Without having too much foil on my head I am seriously wondering if the people coming up with the financial rules are also part time legal services providers...