EHM The Blue Line

Wow, first Halverson went down for four months and now Sparks is out for two. Thanks EHM Gods for stunting my goalie prospects.

Hmm, second stint is done and I've slipped to last place, mostly because of the poor performances of Miller and Zatkoff having games with 5 and 6, Zatkoff even with 4. And we lost a lot of 1-goal-games but we are still really good at giving up big leads, losing in OT after leading 3-0 until deep in the last period.

Also we seem to have a problem with competing physical, we mostly have less than 40% won boardplays and very few hits, so I focus on improving this in the next 20 games.

Maybe I should try another backup since Zatkoff is performing really poor and things can't go much worse

Q2 Update: 7-9-4, 18-15-7 OV (10th in conf)

Injures: Stepan missed 7 games, and Atkinson has already missed 8, will be out a couple more.

Leddy and McDonagh are both -11 while Zakoff has come back to Earth a bit (6-4-2 2.07 .919%)

Need to be creative and mix up strategies if I want to make playoffs.

bruins72 wrote:

jesterx7769 wrote:Ha! this is a funny challenge, nice twist Bruins. Wasn't going to play but will do this one because USA! USA!

Time to show the good old red white and blue!

PS doing other countries in other challenges would be fun too.

I was thinking we could try an "All Euro" team at some point. Or maybe "All Scandanavian"? We'll have to find the appropriate team to take over. Keep it in mind and we can brainstorm before the next challenge.

Just off the top of my head

Detroit: Euro/Sweedes (depends on much to break down)
Vancouver: Sweedes
Washington: Russia
Toronto/Montreal- Canadiens with Don Cherry as coach

instead of starting with a premade roster, it might be fun to have to trade away all non-whatever country for whatever country. This certainly made it easier for the first time however

No Vancouver! Bleh! Plus, we did them not long ago.

Detroit was the first team that came to mind for me. I also thought of the Wild. They're a very American team but they also seem to have a lot of Scandinavian players there. I think a Candanian only challenge might be a little too easy. That's most of the league. If we did something like that, we'd have to limit it to players born in a specific province or something.

So back to the current challenge... I'm really struggling! I've played 37 games so far and only have 9 wins. My special teams are terrible and my faceoffs are killing me! I desperately need to look at Center and Right Wing in the off season. I could use some help on RD too.

You could try an all-EURO team..

Hmm ... a challenge with Montréal only allowing players from Quebec would be something interesting I think. That's what first came up to my mind when I read bruins' reply with the restriction to specific provinces.

Brickley was not working out as my 3C at all, had to give him a chance since he scored 99 points for Rochester last season though, but 0 points in 10 games and barely 6 Av R with decent enough ice time just didnt cut it. Found a trade to fix the issue, a bit funny but oh well, sent Brickley to Flames for Arcobello (welcome back), he did great for me last season but was used to get Callahan, now he was in Flames and i could get him back Hopefully Arcobello can fix my 3rd line.

I've been plagued with lots of small injuries which drive me nuts since i have to remake the lines so much, which is annoying. Still have a solid record of 6-3-1, mostly thanks to Craig Anderson.

Rochester is doing awesome this season, 8-0-0 thanks to great goaltending and some solid prospects through the lineup, most notable is Jordan Schmaltz who has 4+4 in 8 games.

Lol, now McCollum went down for four months!

Look at my goalie injury list at the start of the season:
Halverson 3 months (4 months)
Sparks 1 months (2 months)
McCollum 4 months

Lets see when Miller goes down.

Ugh, things are starting to turn ugly real quick for my team. Slipped out of the playoff spots when Stepan got injured for a while. Desperatly need another C or two on this team. Zatkoff got a run in the team for a while and we had a 4 game winning streak but with Stepan's injury the entire team seem to play much worse. So Miller back in as no.1 for a while.

@visualdarkness: Ooof, that is rough! Talk about unlucky to the max.

Visual, 1 tip, Jimmy Howard... Due to cap trouble for Det I got him after 1st season for McCollum and a 3rd round pick.

21 games in: 18 GP, 11-2-3 GAA 1.77 SV 932 SO 3.

He did get injured, and I had to play Sparks and Hellebuyck for 4 games, wasnt pretty...

Season 3 on the way.

Drafted Farrance, after he dropped to 15, the rest were rubbish - no hopes there.

Off season: I brought Big Buff for the Poffs in season 2 and to be fair he did pretty good, howeve, I traded for Dubinsky and Backes after the draft and I had shed some salary. The two victims were R.Miller and Buff. Miller had pretty poor playoffs, in fact, if it wasn;t for him we could've reached the final, at least the conference one. One the down side, now I'm left with Sparks and T.Demko as my starters in goal, hopefully the upgrade at center evens that out

Anyone have their eye on any prospects coming up on your team?

Sonny Milano looks like a 2nd line winger with 17 on deking.

I traded for Jack Dohartey and he was 17 Passing and 17 Positioning at 20 years old in the AHL...

Season 2 could be a full on tank at the end here with Halverson coming into play starting goalie...

Nest 20 are done and ... nothing changed. I start to believe my game is buggy. Every time we lead with 2 or more goals we will lose in 3rd period or OT. 75% of my games head to OT, where I lose, mostly with 2-3, we had 6(!) games in a row with 2-3 losses ... that can't be coincidence, something has to be wrong. No team can be this stupid to always give up leads. Of course we are dead last, everything is bad. Hayes stopped scoring and assisting completely with 0-1-1 in the last 20 games. Only Hellebuyck was a positive surprise with a GAA below 2.00 and a SVS% of .929 ... maybe he will be my starting goalie next year.

Currently 26 games into the 2nd season and we are 3-20-3 and most of the players are unhappy because it's my fault. It's not their fault. It's my fault. Bunch of prima donnas.

Sooooo...after 40 in Season 2, I am 5-30-5. I really believe that I can still make the playoffs.

Yay! We made the playoffs. Went on a great run right at the end of the season winning 10 of the last 12 games. Seems Toronto snuck in the back door on the last matchday, think they went on just as impressive run at the end there. Have had Miller/Zatkoff more or less share the duty and it seems to have payed off for me at least. Zatkoff did not work out as the no.1, his stats started to fall when playing too much. Came back down when he played a little less but still more than a backup role. Miller's stats also started to come down to respectable levels. Our PP clicked for most of the season and one of the main reasons I think we had such a good finish was cause the PK started to get better at the end as well.

Facing the Penguins now...ugh, has been such tight games during the regular season. We're 1-0-3 against them this season. Should be interesting.

40 games into the first season we are in the 8th spot with respectable numbers.
My PP% sucks as always at 12.8%, that is actually high for me and we only let in two SH!

Miller is very meh and Zatkoff is atrocious, with better goaltending we would be higher up.
JT Miller is great and is leading the league in goals at 21 and 6th in points at 38. Hayes and Atkinsons are almost as good.
Kreider has been laughable since he got back and dropped to the third line with Nelson taking the 1LW again. Stepan is underwhelming. Arcobello started out well but is minus every game now.
The defense is fine with Leddy being one of the best Dmen in the league.

Zucker just went down.

My first season is done, too and I'm a little disappointed. If we played the whole season like we did in the last 22 games playoffs would have been possible I think. Goals for the next season are to get 1-2 Centers, at least 1 good RD and 2-3 good wingers besides a good goalie as a backup for Hellebuyck who really performed outstanding.

I know that Riz is looking at it, but still shaking my head.

Fans rage after trade:

Ben Lovejoy (8th according to my AGM on defense) and a 2nd rounder for Ryan Kessler. Seriously?

Just realized I screwed up, traded for Tyler Myers (born in Houston, but Canadian). It was in the offseason, I haven't gotten to camp yet- is it okay if I trade him away, or cut him?

Playing a bit slow but weekend is coming and i should finish the 1st season by monday...i do read you all and kinda think R. Miller will stay in my team also next season (many of you traded him..) despite his 6M...Stepan at the moment leading NHL in points (35 games in the season) and i extend contracts already with Miller and Kreider. Vitale will im sure stay as he is doing good job. Defense doing good so i wont change much or will look for solutions inside the team. Team would get in big trubles if Stepan gets injured or Kreider so will for sure look for good C, LW and RW (Nelson doing poor and already ended in 4th line...) annnnndddd some cheap goon (cant get out of my skin..could draft one )

Asher413 wrote:Ben Lovejoy (8th according to my AGM on defense) and a 2nd rounder for Ryan Kessler. Seriously?

I know I am terrible at this game, cause a trade like that I can never get in my life it seems. That is honestly the perfect heist!

Finding great trades in this game is all about timing, when the team is undervaluing the player you want for whatever reason (cap problems, he's underperforming or anything really) then pouncing

saberhagen83 wrote:

Asher413 wrote:Ben Lovejoy (8th according to my AGM on defense) and a 2nd rounder for Ryan Kessler. Seriously?

I know I am terrible at this game, cause a trade like that I can never get in my life it seems. That is honestly the perfect heist!

Peter_Doherty wrote:Finding great trades in this game is all about timing, when the team is undervaluing the player you want for whatever reason (cap problems, he's underperforming or anything really) then pouncing

I'm usually not a great trader, but I'm starting to figure out the differences between the TBL database and the historic one I usually play- for whatever reason, the EXACT moment I see lots of trade proposals to a team for a player, I try to jump right in. Seems like sometimes (See Kessler) it's just the right fit. Another help is when teams really want a position (like have Top two defeseman and top four defensemen listed on their team needs). In those cases they seem to take players at those positions who are simply NHL quality and overvalue them.