Project NHL 36 - a 2018-19 DB with 36 Team NHL/AHL/ECHL!

[BKarchitect]

Bk love the 36 team league. I was able to swap out Milwaukee and Saskatchewan for Hartford and Halifax and can't put the game down. Thanks for all the hard work.

Great to hear, I hope I'm giving a framework for people to "do their own things" with the league like you've done and like what nashmc is working on. Everybody has their own idea about what a perfect expansion and alignment would look like!

thegreaterikku - here is the link to the "cheat sheet" I used to manually conduct the expansion draft - obviously it's all filled out based on my results but you can just delete the filled in spots and use it to conduct your own draft. Note - I've changed various ratings since this spreadsheet so the CA/PA on everybody is not going to be 100% accurate. But you can always export another player list or change ratings manually so that it suits you.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/drdhs7f4zvk79 ... .xlsx?dl=0

Also, it's been a while, so here is NHL36 v2.6!

- No huge updates really since much has been quiet but the usual transactions and contract updates in major leagues. Jagr is now loaned to Kladno. Some tinkering with the surging rookies - for example, Leafs fans will be pleasantly surprised to see Dermott (and to a lesser extent, Holl) bumped into far more prominent positions on the depth chart.

- More tinkering on future drafts. Really think the 2018 draft is to a point where it is playing out really, really well in comparison to current projects for the first few rounds at least. 2019, 2020 and 2021 draft prospects have been updated and even a few real life 2022 draft prospects have been added - keep an eye out for Matthew Savoie in Alberta and Shane Wright in Ontario - they look like the next crop of phenoms on the horizon and are treated as such in this database. Since they are 2004 born, you might not even see them right away since they are so young!

- Some ratings updates for NCAA guys and some MHL guys...the NCAA guys in particular will be of interest if you are playing an expansion team. Besides the usual suspects like Schuldt and Brickley - bumps for Colorado College's dynamite duo of Nick Halloran and Mason Bergh, blueliners like Grant Hutton of Miami and Alex Rauhauser of Bowling Green and forwards like Nick Jones at UND and Colt Conrad of WMU should continue to help provide an ever-expanding pool of older, signable NCAA standouts that are easily AHL calibur talents and could, with some development and luck, be legit NHL players. I can't stress enough how useful the NCAA is to fill in your system depth for the first few years of the game in NHL36. And of course, Russia is always a treasure trove of essentially "free" talent if you can get guys to sign with you.

Version 2.6 - Original NHL36 Expansion (February 2, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hzdgidk3ydioj ... 6.zip?dl=0
Version 2.6 - NHL36 "Great North" (February 2, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqqd2jw3br0ft ... 6.zip?dl=0
Version 2.6 - NHL36 "City Lights" (February 2, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/01vysiv2zvbqf ... 6.zip?dl=0
Version 2.6 - NHL36 "Wild West" (February 2, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3l8jcs5h92zj ... 6.zip?dl=0

As usual let me know if there are any issues. Martin St. Louis' awards history was not showing up in v2.5 - I *think* that is fixed now but I have yet to look in game. All-Star game I'm still working on.

Quick February 3 ninja edit: Fixed an error with Shattuck St. Mary's that was preventing their NCAA committed kids from going to the correct college. Also, tweaked and added a few more future draft prospects (Alex Turcotte switched to center, a few more WHL 2018 Bantam Draft prospects added). And - because Ottawa is stinking this year, their 1st round pick in the Duchene trade that goes to Colorado will likely be their 2019 one, not their 2018 one so I switched that up. All the same links work, still v2.6.

[Otso]

Hi, thanks for the database, really enjoying it!

Can't have helped but notice that I can't see players preferred people or teams on their page. No personality traits, like 'Determined, Fickle etc.", on their scouting reports either.
They seem to work with other databases just fine.
Is anyone else having this problem or just me?

[nashmc]

Hey BKarchitect, I was wondering if it's possible you could make Scratched Ice Logo Backgrounds for my project? I've never done such thing and working in GIMP is very pathetic sometimes...Besides there are only 4 of them for Sasquatch, Stingers, new Nordiques and new Aeros.
Sorry for spamming your post again, but I don't know how to send PM here .

[BKarchitect]

Hi, thanks for the database, really enjoying it!

Can't have helped but notice that I can't see players preferred people or teams on their page. No personality traits, like 'Determined, Fickle etc.", on their scouting reports either.
They seem to work with other databases just fine.
Is anyone else having this problem or just me?

Hmmm...that's odd. I'll look into it. Another thing I noticed is that when you go in player info and it tells you how the player was acquired by their current team, the text gets cut-off...

[BKarchitect]

Hey BKarchitect, I was wondering if it's possible you could make Scratched Ice Logo Backgrounds for my project? I've never done such thing and working in GIMP is very pathetic sometimes...Besides there are only 4 of them for Sasquatch, Stingers, new Nordiques and new Aeros.
Sorry for spamming your post again, but I don't know how to send PM here .

Yes link them in your 40-team thread if you want and when I can get to them, I will.

[BKarchitect]

Time to add another wrinkle to NHL36...

I'm going to have Quebec field their own national hockey team! This is not intended to make any kind of political statement FYI - I've just always wondered what a Quebec national team would look like and how they would perform, if, similarly to Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland in football, they got to field their own hockey teams.

- So Quebec has been added as a national team and national U20 team competing in all IIHF events.
- All Quebec cities are now under Quebec nationality not Canada.
- All native Quebec-born players and staff have been switched to Québécois
- All Quebec-based clubs are now under the Quebec flag

Furthermore, to make things even more interesting - I've made it so that the Nordiques in the expanded NHL can only field native Quebec players. So similar to Athletic Bilbao and some of the other Basque-based clubs in Spanish football. I did not apply the same to the Canadiens (or Maroons) as Montreal is too big and cosmopolitan and the Habs' history is too great and filled with non-Quebec players to convert them. So just the Nordiques for this unique challenge...not that they haven't had greats like Stastny and Sakic but it is easier to reboot them than change the Habs.

I have some things to do before releasing...
- Converting Quebec-based leagues to Quebec not Canada. The QMJHL will still fly under the Canadian flag as it contains non-Quebec clubs as well but the Quebec clubs in the QMJHL are...well...of Quebec nationality now.
- Converting all logos of Quebec based clubs into Quebec folders under logos. Have already done for the NHL/AHL/QMJHL clubs but lots more minor clubs to go. Will release a Quebec-based logo pack (and the national flags) when I am done converting everything.
- BIG THING: Converting/adding Canadian names that are familiar to Quebec into Quebec First and Last names. I don't believe First and Last names have an export/import feature so that's going to take a while as there are thousands of names to sort through (unless Archi can add this as an import/export feature!). Without doing this, CPU-generated Québécois players will have ridiculous random names.
- Redo NHL36 Expansion Draft so the Nordiques start with a reasonable all-Québécois roster.

Some early screens from testing:

[BKarchitect]

Testing update...

2018 Olympics (still with NHL players in EHM 1.4)
- Quebec makes it past the group stage, beats Germany 4-1 in the playoff qualifying round before losing 4-2 to Finland in the Quarterfinals. A very respectable showing. Roster was:
G: Crawford, Fleury, Luongo
D: Vlasic, Letang, Savard, Scandella, Matheson, Demers, S. Girard, Chabot, Beauchemin
F: Bergeron, Huberdeau, Perron, Marchessault, Brassard, Perreault, Drouin, Dubois, Mantha, Pominville, Beauvillier, Duclair, Desharnais, Chiasson

As for how it affected Team Canada? Well...Canada still won the entire tournament...so not much!

2018 WJC U20
- Quebec finishes second in Group B, behind only Sweden. They beat the Czechs and plastered the Russians 7-2 in group play. They lost however in the Quarterfinal round in an absolute nail-biter to the USA, 5-4 in OT. But they did all of this without superstar center Alexis Lafreniere (Rimouski) who was hurt and did not play in the tournament...where he might have been the best player on any team.
- They were lead by high-scoring Q trio Jakob Pelletier (8 points), Xavier Parent (8 points) and Xavier Simoneau (7 points). Those guys are only 17 and Lafreniere is only 16 so plenty of young talent coming through the ranks.

[Ukko]

At last France is good at hockey ?

Calisse !

[Manimal]

Interesting with Quebec!
How did it go in the QMJHL? Do the Quebecois players count as imports? Or does the maritime-players count as imports on Quebecois teams?

[BKarchitect]

Interesting with Quebec!
How did it go in the QMJHL? Do the Quebecois players count as imports? Or does the maritime-players count as imports on Quebecois teams?

Good question, had only the NHL on in my zeal to test the national teams.

The Q may be a tough situation with the dual nationalities and also will need to see how the Q draft plays out. Will test after work today.

EDIT:

So for the Quebec-based clubs, it makes Canadian players count against the foreign limit and vice-versa, with the Maritime clubs, the Quebec players count as foreigners. For some clubs like Victoriaville who is basically all Quebec-based, its no issue but for the more cosmopolitan teams like Quebec or Halifax, this causes a large amount of foreign players.

I may bump the foreign player limit in the Q to get around this issue.

[BKarchitect]

Was able to get the QMJHL to treat both Canadian and Quebec players as domestic with some toggles in the Transfer Rules section, so good news there.

Bad news is I can't get the same toggles to do anything to let it treat the Q entry draft as such. So Q players are now pooled in the CHL Import draft. Ugh. I even tried to keep Quebec the province as part of Canada in an attempt to trick the game into having Quebec-based players in the Q draft but no luck. Seems like there is a toggle that is not accessible that tells the game which draft to funnel junior players into (west Canada and US into the WHL, central into the OHL and east into the QMJHL). But with Quebec as it's own country - the game doesn't recognize it in the same manner as Canada and the US.

[nashmc]

Hi BKarchitect, can you post an excel file with all players available for draft expansion? In the one you have posted earlier, there are only chosen players, not thos who were not chosen through the expansion draft

[MantoRune]

How did you accomplish this? As i'd like to make a save which has a european super league which is structured the same as the NHL.

[raipeh]

Good work with the database, waiting patiently for the post-trade deadline update!

I've one question though - has anyone else noticed that in the AHL/ECHL the AI tends to play only one goalie througout the season, with backups getting like 5 games total, 3rd stringers usually at 0 or so. I've noticed this is more of a rule than an exception, because it happens so often. What could be causing this? The goalies I usually send down are not _that_ far in attribute ratings/reputation to justify this kind of coaching.

[habsession]

Hi BKarchitect,

How do you edit player names? I searched for almost 2 hours on the forum, but couldn't find anything.

Currently playing EHM with a standard NHL but I would like to edit a few names for Quebec-born players that have like mid-60s first names (Lucien, Léo-Guy, Aurélien, Paul) and even players from other provinces who have French first names (Jean-François, Antonin, etc.).

Thanks!

[BKarchitect]

NHL36 version 2.7 Update - ***POST-DEADLINE*** March 9, 2018 (FLASH UPDATE)

I know it's been a while so this is a pretty significant update!

Note that I have taken the Quebec concept as a national team out of this project for now even though I was testing it. Too many bugs in the QMJHL and in player development. I may look into it again at some point - the national team works great - but I need some more editing tools to be unlocked, so for now, just one united Canada as usual!

Ok, so here's the deal - the usual stuff is updated:

- All NHL transactions including traded future picks as of today (March 9). So latest transactions include Zach Whitecloud to Vegas in the summer of 2018.

- Also, the usual major European league transactions and updated contracts

- Tons of new NCAA recruits as with every update; leagues like the NAHL and the CJHL leagues should see more and more depth as I add more college recruits every update

- Did quite a bit of massaging of AHL depth charts and of new NHL rookies who are starting to get call-ups here later in the season. So, guys like Darren Archibald, Ross Johnston and Nick Seeler (to name a few) - who aren't exactly amazing prospects - still see a nice bump to where they can be fringe-NHL players. Plus good prospects who are showing well at the NHL level like Pionk and Cirelli also get substantial bumps.

***The big news here is that with all-new NHL depth charts, the Expansion Draft results have been over-hauled.***

- New expansion draft rules have resulted in the five expansion teams getting a better running start with more competative rosters.

- Existing teams were given the option to protect 9 forwards, 4 defenders and 1 goalie (for a total of 14 protection slots) or 12 players at any position. This let teams with a couple of great goalie assets or an overload of good defenders protect those assets but it came at the cost of a couple of additional spots. Results in some hard decision making!

- As usual, players born 1997 or younger and players on LTIR were exempt.

- Teams were allowed to select from Vegas this time as well (since their roster looks pretty darn good at this point) - which resulted in final expansion rosters of 31 players (18 forwards, 10 defenders, 3 goalies).

- Of course, feel free to tinker with results, will post the Expansion Draft Toolkit file below, updated with all NHL-contracted players and ratings as of this v2.7 database. See the NHL32 thread at TBL for step-by-step instructions.

Here are the latest v2.7 databases in all flavors (also updated on the front page):
Version 2.7 - Original NHL36 Expansion (March 9, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ea0a1gj1h696 ... 7.zip?dl=0
Version 2.7 - NHL36 "Great North" (March 9, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ug4qcm1dutnl ... 7.zip?dl=0
Version 2.7 - NHL36 "City Lights" (March 9, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/28evfripj6r1x ... 7.zip?dl=0
Version 2.7 - NHL36 "Wild West" (March 9, 2018)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1c9j99qycbpw9 ... 7.zip?dl=0

Here is the latest v2.7 Expansion Draft Tookit for NHL36:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/biw8pmwqaf7bv ... .xlsx?dl=0

[BKarchitect]

As a special feature for NHL36 to try and make things a bit more life-like, I've created some graphical depth charts for the NHL36 Original database (version 2.7) with the Expansion Draft run.

Enjoy! And give me your thoughts on which team you would take control of and which rosters are most appealing

[BKarchitect]

Hi BKarchitect,

How do you edit player names? I searched for almost 2 hours on the forum, but couldn't find anything.

Currently playing EHM with a standard NHL but I would like to edit a few names for Quebec-born players that have like mid-60s first names (Lucien, Léo-Guy, Aurélien, Paul) and even players from other provinces who have French first names (Jean-François, Antonin, etc.).

Thanks!

Names are found here in the Editor, it's straightforward to add or change names - although I am not for certain how the game determines the frequency of use or from which "region" in a country the name is more likely to occur in! If you do some editing with names - let us all know how it goes and if you learn anything!

[outomieli]

Version 2.7 - Original NHL36 Expansion (March 4, 2018) will crash on start up when making save file. Trying to play Finnish Liiga. Any suggestions?

awesome work!! <3

[raipeh]

Version 2.7 - Original NHL36 Expansion (March 4, 2018) will crash on start up when making save file. Trying to play Finnish Liiga. Any suggestions?

Some lower tier leagues can cause the crash on start up - at least Finnish Suomi-sarja crashes. I've had some problems with British leagues and Swiss 2nd league as well, try disabling some/all of these.

[DougMellon]

How do I load this? It won't let me import a database.

[jonhiseler]

BK, would you consider expanding the QMJHL/OHL/WHL at some point? Maybe not to 36 teams in each of those leagues, but I think it would be interesting to see those leagues be at least slightly bigger.

[archibalduk]

How do I load this? It won't let me import a database.

You don't need to import it. That is only for importing an EHM 2007 database. Just click on the New Career Game button.

[Realpity]

BK, would you consider expanding the QMJHL/OHL/WHL at some point? Maybe not to 36 teams in each of those leagues, but I think it would be interesting to see those leagues be at least slightly bigger.

I think, honestly, I'd rather see the existing teams fleshed out more before worrying about expansion. As is the teams only have 2-3-4 unsigned prospects each, most of which appear to be overagers and/or players already NHL/AHL signed.

I pretty much only know my own home team's prospects, but it'd be at least 10+ more ...

[Realpity]

Wonder if someone can help me out, I've previously been running OHL games with this, but now want to do NHL and utilize the draft spreadsheet, no matter what I try when importing it I get this error every time (I do indeed have .xlsx checked):

ERR_UNKNOWN_IMPORTER_FILE

The selected file does not have a valid identifier at Cell A1. Please correct the identifier text and try again. The identifier found is "FIRST NAME".

The location of the error is void _thiscall ImporterUI::onOpen(void).

I have absolutely ZERO experience on excel, searched these forums and google and still drawing a blank ... any fix would be appreciated.