TBL Retro Rosters 1998/99 (Discussion & correction thread)

[Filip Croatia]

In case this DB is still being worked on, I found little bug. Two same players on the roster of Hershey Bears (AVS affiliate back then)

[archibalduk]

Thanks! I am slowly working on a new version with accurate league structures, so I'll fix this as well.

[archibalduk]

All of the below has been done for the upcoming version 1.2.0:

Mathieu Schneider should be on the Leafs at the beginning of the season. He gets traded to the Rangers for Karpotsev later on in the season. Thanks for the database though

[***]

Also, Kevin Weekes was ony on the Vancouver Canucks after he was traded to them in the Pavel Bure trade

New player here, I don't know if this roster set is still maintained, but for the consideration of anyone who curates this amazing roster set in the future, a few miscellaneous things to point out:

-G Manny Fernandez (in DAL's farm system at this point in his career) is in the game twice; his "main" copy is with the Michigan K-Wings, DAL's AHL/IHL affiliate at the time. But there's a second, more generic copy of him ("Emmanuel Fernandez") playing for the Houston Aeros, also in the same league. I suspect this confusion came because the original creators saw his name on the Houston roster that year, when in fact it was the same Manny Fernandez who would eventually back up Belfour in 2000 and play some great hockey with the Wild. He was under loan to Houston to play there in '98-'99, so that Marty Turco could get starts with the K-Wings. The Stars often used Houston as an unofficial tertiary affiliate by loaning players to them individually (Blake Sloan played two seasons of development with them before joining Dallas, and never played a single game for the K-Wings).

-On a related note, Dallas's in-game ECHL affiliate is the Dayton Bombers; HockeyDB lists them as their ECHL affiliate for most of the 90s, but I can't actually find ANYTHING to corroborate this. The Bombers' wikipedia page doesn't mention an affiliation with the Stars at any point, and none of the players in their "NHL alumni" section played for the Stars. (The only connection of any kind between Dallas and the Bombers is that Daryl Reaugh, DAL's color commentator, suffered his career-ending hamstring injury while tending net for the Bombers in '94, ha)

-Jamie Langenbrunner is listed as a natural LW, when in fact he should be listed as a natural RW. He played almost exclusively RW with Nieuwendyk on DAL's second line. The third member of their line was a rotation between LW/RW Verbeek, C/LW Hogue (once he was acquired) and LW Reid.

-D Craig Ludwig is listed as a right-handed, natural RD. He was in fact a lefty and played on the left side, with fellow lefty Shawn Chambers playing RD on his off-side.

Minor issues, to say the least, and easy for users to fix with the editor should they want to play with Dallas (or players who are just super OCD). The creators did amazing work with this DB, I'm having a blast with it.

In case this DB is still being worked on, I found little bug. Two same players on the roster of Hershey Bears (AVS affiliate back then)

[archibalduk]

It has a been a long time since the last release of the excellent 1998/99 Retro Rosters by CJ and Nino33 but today a new version is available on the Steam Workshop! See below for the changelist. CLICK HERE to download from the Steam Workshop.

The previous version of the 1998/99 Rosters (version 1.1) was released by CJ and nino33 back on 18 February 2016. CJ carried on working on a new version of the Rosters and posted fairly regular progress reports on the TBL Forums up until around the end of 2018 and then nothing was heard further. I was able to make contact with CJ in December 2020 and he very kindly forwarded to me his unreleased work-in-progress version of the Rosters so that I could continue work on it and release it to the public.

We do not have a precise changelist of everything CJ has added and improved on following version 1.1 but he did tell me it was a massive update and he recalls having added a very large number of new prospects. I have been able to piece together a rough changelist by going through his old posts in the 1998/99 Rosters Discussion Thread which hopefully provides a rough idea of what has been done.

There's absolutely no way I can attempt to match the attention to detail and volume of work CJ and Nino33 put into this, but I do wish to try to keep the project alive. Prior versions of the Rosters were created using the EHM 2007 database format which brought with it various limitations such as hardcoded playable league structures and only a limited number of playable leagues when importing into EHM 1. My initial task is to edit the playable league structures and schedules to match the real life 1998/99 structures and schedules and to then expand the range of playable leagues in order to take advantage of the many rosters and players CJ and Nino33 carefully hand-crafted. Version 1.2 includes my initial work in this regard, with all but the Allsvenskan and Mestis now mirroring the 1998/99 structures and schedules as well as introducing the British (Sekonda) Ice Hockey Superleague and British National League (marksbros6 and I spent a great deal of time a number of years ago creating players for the various British leagues, adding career histories, average attendance data, etc).

I'm acutely aware that there's still a lot of work to be done in order to get the leagues up to scratch for Eastside Hockey Manager 1; such as match rules, finance rules, trade/transfer rules and various competition histories. Please do post any feedback in particular on match/finance/trade rules.

Changelist:

• [CJ] Added hundreds of NHL prospects drafted between 1999 and 2019 (at least 300, probably much more);
• [CJ] Added Favourite Jersey Numbers for all prospects;
• [CJ] Re-evaluated existing prospects' Player Roles and positions;
• [CJ & Archibalduk] Removed duplicate players and corrected various incorrect data (e.g. incorrect names and dates of birth);
• [Archibalduk] Added accurate league structures and schedules for the following leagues: (i) NHL, (ii) AHL, (iii) ECHL, (iv) Canadian Major Juniors (OHL, QMJHL, WHL and Memorial Cup) (the QMJHL has a fictional schedule as I could not source details of the 1998/99 real life schedule), (v) Finnish SM-League and (vi) Swedish Elitserien; and
• [Archibalduk] Added the following new playable leagues: (i) British (Sekonda) Ice Hockey Superleague and (ii) British National League.

The current status of the playable leagues is as follows:

League	Structure	Schedule	Finances	Notes
NHL	1998/99	1998/99	2006/07	Certain playoff dates have been brought forward a few days to ensure the playoffs complete before the hardcoded entry draft date.
AHL	1998/99	1998/99	2006/07
ECHL	1998/99	1998/99	2006/07
Canadian Major Juniors (OHL, QMJHL, WHL & Memorial Cup)	1998/99	1998/99	2006/07	(i) The QMJHL schedule is an approximation as I cannot find the IRL schedule anywhere. (ii) The WHL Western Conference format does not yet incorporate the semi-final bye.
British Superleague	1998/99	1998/99 (approx)	2006/07	Temporary schedule pending creation of cup schedules
British National League	1998/99	1998/99 (approx)	2006/07	Temporary schedule pending creation of cup schedules
Finnish SM-League	1998/99	1998/99	2006/07
Finnish Mestis	2006/07	2006/07	2006/07	Structure and schedule to be updated for 1998/99
Swedish Elitserien	1998/99	1998/99	2006/07
Swedish Allsvenskan	2006/07	2006/07	2006/07	Structure and schedule to be updated for 1998/99

[Spartacus70]

Is it 1.5 compatible?

[archibalduk]

Is it 1.5 compatible?

Yes. In fact it requires v1.5. It isn't compatible with v1.4.

[leasftoaster2]

Fantastic, tysm.

[archibalduk]

Feedback from Reddit:

Hey. I just add retro rosters to my ehm and wanted to start retro roster save with my favourite team Oulun Kärpät. (Finland) ... but i noticed that Kärpät is not in this database at all. Kärpät was 1998, the second highest series level in Finland.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EHM/comments/1 ... g_team_in/

[flyfree]

Currently working on adding missing player histories. I added histories for around 30 players directly in the editor before I discovered it was much faster to do in a spreadsheet.

Changes made in the DB itself:

- Some contract adjustments so that teams are within the salary cap and don't waive a unrealistic amount of high-end players (although I couldn't get Nashville over the floor without it being unrealistic)

- Future retirments of current free agents who retired at the end of 98/99 season anyway

I could send the DB and spreadsheet to a developer.

Edit: Winnipeg Jets were incorrectly listed as Surrey Eagles in the player histories. Corrected these as well.