EHM The Blue Line

Ouch!

I thought I had everything under control, but now I noticed that we have a 2.8M cap penalty.
I had all salaries calculated in a spreadsheet just to make sure it was all OK. Now I'm 904K over and need to do some player moves before I hit 20 games.

Nosedived to end the season, securing my spot at the bottom of the overall table. Hopefully, I'll get first overall, but I have bad luck with draft lotteries.

I've noticed that now that DiPietro is off the IR, I need to shed a tiny bit of salary before the next recording segment (only a few days away). My averaged club salary is 500k over the Team Budget now that DiPietro's salary is being counted. I've thought about dealing Guerin and Weight since they're both old and making a lot. They're also both UFAs after the season. The only problem is, Weight is leading the league in points (74 in 37 games so far) and Guerin is in 3rd (57 points in 37 games). That's a lot of offense to shed. They're also each making over $4M. Only a few teams can afford to take on that kind of money. I've also thought about dealing Sutton. He's 33 and making $3M per season. That's more than I think he's worth.

Further proof that I have no business coaching a hockey team:

Bridgeport was holding a slight 1pt. lead over the Phantoms for the final playoff spot in their division with four to play. My head coach (Anatoly Bodanov) was controlling all the in-game stuff all season. Anyhow, I took over the final four games and promptly lost them all (including one to Philly) costing my team the playoffs by - you guessed it - one point.

I had the exact opposite happen with my AHL team. They were losing all the time until I took over the coaching. Now they're up to 7th in the AHL.

Speaking of coaches... I wish Scott Gordon was as good in the game as he is in real life. He's actually a great coach for young players. He was a big part of the success all of the younger Bruins (like David Krejci and others) have been having in the pros now. He was running a great program down in Providence before the Islanders poached him. Oh yeah, as a funny aside... his dad taught masonry at my high school. I remember Scott being the US Olympic team's backup goalie when I was going there. IIRC, Garth Snow was the starter.

I'm looking at keeping my aging stars for the time being and maybe dealing Jon Sim. He's not a bad player in my game but he's been riding the 4th line (with some PK duty) and his morale is pretty low. He's making $1M and if I shed half of that, I'll be within budget. I've got one tasty deal working but I hate to make it because I'll be acquiring a player some other people have traded for. I'd rather not do that but I may have to.

I am so beatable in this challenge. Not going to have even a 30 goal scorer (Stewart's 23 leads the team) nor a 100 pt getter. But I will get those weenie improvement points for season 2.

I think I'll do okay for the first season if I don't tank due to over-tinkering with my roster (i.e. too many trades). I haven't really made any moves with my future in mind though. That's going to hurt me moving forward. I'm still up in the air in regards to Weight and Guerin.

So in game #68 I lost two players for at least 2 weeks each.

My #1 RW---Scott Hartnell
My #2 RW--Trent Hunter

Thankfully, I could call up Comeau, because he cannot reach the 25 games( Guess who my homegrown is gonna be?)

That has been killer. Stewart is getting top line minutes (from 3rd line, and 2nd pp) and freaking Tambesuklini is my 2nd line RW. Although he has not stayed there for more than 2 periods as Comeau keeps stepping up a bit./

Okay, I heard back on my Jon Sim offers. Actually, they're Sim, Tim Jackman, and Nate Thompson offers really. I had waived Jackman and Thompson because I couldn't get anything for them before. They were 1 star each for a bit. I waived them and sent them to Bridgeport. Now they're worth 3 stars. So here are my offers that the other teams have accepted. I've just got to decide which one I want to put through...

Sim, Thompson, and Jackman to the Devils for Nicklas Bergfors (who was just suspended for 2 games)

Sim, Thompson, and Jackman to the Penguins for Adam Henrich and Dustin Jeffrey (Jeffrey is on loan to his junior team)

Sim and Jackman to the Senators for Kaspar Daugavins

Sim, Thompson, and Jackman to the Panthers for Anthony Stewart, Mike Duco, and Keaton Ellerby (Ellerby is loaned to his junior team).

Now obviously, I'm leaning against the Panthers deal because others have gotten Stewart (Duco too, I think). That's a pretty sweet deal though. I'm also wondering how the salaries are going to work out. I don't think that's actually going to help my current issue with the budget. Financially the Senators deal makes the most sense. I'm dropping the salary I need to drop. The Devils deal is really tempting though. I just hope that by dealing Thompson and Jackman's salaries away, I'll have offset the difference between Sim and Bergfors (Sim's $1M and Bergfors' $818k... I need to drop $500k. Thompson makes $500k and Jackman makes $600k).

Thoughts? Advice?

Kaspar Daugavins

he always play better then hes attributes showi like hes age,wage and hes not greedy at all. i have had him do 80+p a year. i would go for him.

sim is about same lvl but like 10 years older.

Does he get faster? He's a little on the slow side for the type of team I like to run. Also, he's naturally a LW and I'm looking to fill my 4th line RW spot. Somebody is going to get shuffled and put into a spot where they're not their strongest. I usually only like putting players at positions where they are either Natural or Accomplished.

i am end of seson 2 at draft day sitting and thinking out draft strategy

in my game kaspar is acc 15 and speed 17. he played in providence and got 110p for 78g. rights are owned by boston in my game. dunno whut speed he get at start.

trade for who u want. we got differnt strategies. i finished last first seson and barely made playoff seson 2 and i have traded away all stars and replaced with younger generation.

i always trade to get most value in team to be able to better trades later on. so young players are top priority for me ,even more if they can rack up points and get good ratings couse then they are easiser to trade away and attract more attention from ai GM´s.

Interesting! Right now (just under 40 games in) he's only 11 acc and 13 speed. I guess he's got room to grow. I might have to give him a shot.

my 2 ufas for seson 3 are crazy

Luongo and Kovalchuck. i got crazy lineup now.

i got
1. kova-spezza ruuto/parise
2. esposito/tavares/brule

gotta run for work now. i update the stats and screenshots tomorow.

GL all islanders managers!

I ended up going with the Senators deal. Why no give it a shot?

Salming... did you trade DiPietro? I can't imagine keeping him and then signing Luongo.

Are we allowed to fire coaches and scouts after the first season?

Lidas seems to have done that, so I'll go head and revamp my personnel. Saved just in case.

I kinda stayed in the shadows for the past few days, no updates from my game. I didn't really make any big moves, just signed McKee and Marcus Nilson in off-season 2, both were performing well, Nilson is great two-way talent, seeing a lot of minutes, in both PP and PK + 2nd line regularly. At the trade deadline I picked up Van Ryn for a center prospect playing in AHL (I am deep stacked with C prospects) + Gervais + young D. Overally, team played decently whole season, putting up record good enough to secure them 8th playoff spot. I survived 1st round, beating Sabres 4-2, but Rangers beat me 4-1 in the second round. :-/ What a pity... Huselius led my teams with 48 goals and 100 points, it could be better but he somehow struggled in the last few games of the regular season.

I'm glad I made it to the playoffs because I gave myself an ultimatum - either playoff or I am out of this challenge . I have to do some work during offseason, especially find some grit to my team. I think I will go for a detailed study of tactics on the sigames forum, tactics thread on this forum didn't help me as much as I wanted. My teams always allowed a lot of goals, although it did got better, it's still not quite what I would like to see. This is how my defense looked like in the end of season 3:

Witt - Gleason
McKee - Streit
Campoli - Van Ryn
Grossman

Van Ryn was featured on both PP and PK so thats why he's in third pairing. I am sure most of you guys would do great with this defense, I have yet to figure out how


and here are my forwards, how they played most of the season:

Huselius - Ribeiro - Tambellini
Nilson - Weiss - Okposo
Petrov (HG) - Deveraux - Hunter
Battaglia - Nielsen/Bailey (HG) - Comeau

Goalies: DiPietro - Budaj

I think I am done for today.

Crayn wrote:Are we allowed to fire coaches and scouts after the first season?

Lidas seems to have done that, so I'll go head and revamp my personnel. Saved just in case.

Yup. Come July 1st 2007 you can fire anybody you like. The staff firing limitations were only for the first season.

bruins72 wrote:I ended up going with the Senators deal. Why no give it a shot?

Salming... did you trade DiPietro? I can't imagine keeping him and then signing Luongo.

yes. die pietro didnt play much better then caron seson 2. and my team performed about same lvl with both in goal.i wasnt happy with pietro when he play same lvl as a 750k/y gk who is backup. luongo on free and pietro traded away for prospect with extremly underrated grabovsky who made 60p last year.

lets hope kaspar devolps in your game as he did in mine. he played AHL 2 years in mine before NHL

82 games are done. I won presidents trophy, as usual.

However...My top goal scorer had only 28 goals, and my top point getter 87. That is not boding for me to defend my season 1 titles of the past few challenges.

Anyone else get any use out of Jack Hillen?

With Witt and Martinek out long term, he's playing on my second pairing, getting PP and PK time. I've only played one game thus far, but he turned in a 9 rating with both goals in an ugly 6-2 loss.

Hillen has been a regular on my farm team. He's done okay there but not spectacular.

I finally got to the first season 40 game mark. Stats up soon.

Yep. Hillen is my 7th dman, pushing to move into top 6. He got in 52 games for me. 2-10-12 and 6.85 rating.

Game one of playoffs: 9 rating!!! He did not have one of those all season.

Okay, so um. Hillen?

Game 2 of playoffs, scores tying goal with 53 seconds left in the game against Pittsburgh...SHORTHANDED!!!


Then, on first shift of OT, hits Michalek with a breakaway pass for the winning goal.

Um...talk about stepping things up for the playoffs.

Start of Season 2 - Captain Highliner (GM - New York Islanders)

Homegrown Player (I will include this in my Records Posting) - Anton Lander
Player Budget - $51,000,000
Average Club Salary - $45,995,000

Starting Lineup
G - Rick Dipietro
G - Gerald Coleman

1st Line
LW - Andrew Ladd
C - Paul Stastny
RW - Eric Cole
LD - Scott Hannan
RD - Tim Gleason

2nd Line
LW - David Booth
C - Jeff Carter
RW - Trent Hunter
LD - Paul Mara
RD - Martin Skoula

3rd Line
LW - Garth Murray
C - Dave Scatchard
RW - Anthony Stewart
LD - Fedor Tyutin
RD - Alexei Semenov

4th Line
LW - Anton Lander (will likely move him up)
C - Samuel Pahlsson
RW - Jamal Mayers

Healthy Scratches - David Hale (D), Blair Betts (F)

Team Captain - Jeff Carter
Assistants - Scott Hannan, Paul Stastny

New Coaching Staff:
Assistant GM - Greg Poss
Head Coach - Marc Crawford
Assistant Coaches - Mike Dunham (kept), Bob Hartley, Anders Holmgren, Peter Laviolette, Ted Nolan

Head Scout - Vadim Lazarev
(most scouts were changed)

Hockey News NHL Preview picked me to finish 10th.

AHL Roster starts with:
2 G's (with a 3rd assigned to the ECHL)
6 D's (with an additional 1 sent back to junior)
15 F's (with a 16th sent back to junior)

I have Reserve List room to add one more, so to be safe I'm thinking of signing one of my D prospects so I have 7 assigned.

After October 16th, I will likely be looking to make at least a couple more roster moves, although overall I am quite satisfaied with the remake of this team in the first 12 months.

Players I may look to upgrade on:
Trent Hunter, Garth Murray, one of my defensemen, backup goalie

I've got a bit of salary room, so if I can find someone looking to shed some salary, I might be able to make it work.

My personal goal is to win the Stanley Cup this season. Injuries may be the biggest thing that could prevent that (and my lack of coaching skills!)