EHM The Blue Line

jbsnadb wrote:Seems like those who buck the spirit of the challenges tend to not do so well, since they sacrifice depth for stats. Meanwhile, all I did was claim Martinek off of waivers and we've started 5-1.

^ What he said.

Those that are trading away Duchene, Wolski, Stastny, O'Reilly, etc are *in general* sacrificing the future to win in the present. Whereas those that keep their prospects and make minor upgrades via free agency and THE DRAFT are more likely to benefit in Seasons 3, 4, 5 and onward. Winning the later seasons of a Challenge gets more props from me than seasons 1 & 2.

ie99jro wrote:
I can't agree with you on the Salei part as I have found him a good d-man with a great slapshot, his season with me was 10+26 and +19 in 82 games and 7.60 Avr. Better than Liles who I have found much disappointing, the rock at the blue line for this team is Hannan. He may not produce points in overflow but a +30 and 8.46 Avr is pretty nice.

I could never get Salei to perform like that for me and he took too many penalties for my liking so he had to go. He never could sustain a 7 Avr for me.

jbsnadb wrote:
Seems like those who buck the spirit of the challenges tend to not do so well, since they sacrifice depth for stats. Meanwhile, all I did was claim Martinek off of waivers and we've started 5-1.

Catchup Wrote:

^ What he said.

Those that are trading away Duchene, Wolski, Stastny, O'Reilly, etc are *in general* sacrificing the future to win in the present. Whereas those that keep their prospects and make minor upgrades via free agency and THE DRAFT are more likely to benefit in Seasons 3, 4, 5 and onward. Winning the later seasons of a Challenge gets more props from me than seasons 1 & 2.

I would tend to agree with this too but the way Duchene has developed i didnt think O'Reilly would ever fit and get the ice time he deserved. With the centre surplus and a defensive need i decided it would be better to make the trade. It may backfire it may not but i thought it would be good for my team. Otherwise yeah its more rewarding to train those youngsters yourself

CatchUp wrote:

jbsnadb wrote:Seems like those who buck the spirit of the challenges tend to not do so well, since they sacrifice depth for stats. Meanwhile, all I did was claim Martinek off of waivers and we've started 5-1.

^ What he said.

Those that are trading away Duchene, Wolski, Stastny, O'Reilly, etc are *in general* sacrificing the future to win in the present. Whereas those that keep their prospects and make minor upgrades via free agency and THE DRAFT are more likely to benefit in Seasons 3, 4, 5 and onward. Winning the later seasons of a Challenge gets more props from me than seasons 1 & 2.

I traded for Ovechkin, but I didn't trade any of my prospects to do it. I did sacrifice some second line scoring depth to get Ovi, but I feel it was worth it, because in the later season I have had signings and prospects provide that lower scoring depth. That combined with Ovi is working well for me. I think the trades I have made have been for the future rather than to win now, even though I am going to very good players. (I have also traded for Drew Doughty, and Jack Johnson so far in my four seasons).

It depends on what your plan is in my mind.

I had four centers, Duchesne, Statsny, MacFarland and O'Rielly.

How do I get them all the ice that they need? How do I move forward with O'Rielly as a 4th line center, how is that using his value to help my team?

I made the trade for Kovalchuk because of how weak the Left side is, and because hes young enough that I can count on him moving forward for the next 5 years.

Will it back fire? Perhaps, but It makes more sense to me to use my assets to help my team.

tksolway wrote:

CatchUp wrote:

jbsnadb wrote:Seems like those who buck the spirit of the challenges tend to not do so well, since they sacrifice depth for stats. Meanwhile, all I did was claim Martinek off of waivers and we've started 5-1.

^ What he said.

Those that are trading away Duchene, Wolski, Stastny, O'Reilly, etc are *in general* sacrificing the future to win in the present. Whereas those that keep their prospects and make minor upgrades via free agency and THE DRAFT are more likely to benefit in Seasons 3, 4, 5 and onward. Winning the later seasons of a Challenge gets more props from me than seasons 1 & 2.

I traded for Ovechkin, but I didn't trade any of my prospects to do it. I did sacrifice some second line scoring depth to get Ovi, but I feel it was worth it, because in the later season I have had signings and prospects provide that lower scoring depth. That combined with Ovi is working well for me. I think the trades I have made have been for the future rather than to win now, even though I am going to very good players. (I have also traded for Drew Doughty, and Jack Johnson so far in my four seasons).

The problem with trading for Ovechkin is that it would NEVER happen in real life.

It's just a stupid AI bug.

There is nothing in the NHL worth a player like Ovechkin, and what would be the point in trading him lol.

I wish I had traded O'Reily, he didn't develop in my game. He must have rolled a low potential, because his attributes haven't moved at all in 4 seasons. Now he isn't worth anything

My O'Reilly was develpoing into a more offensive minded centre. I didnt need anymore of them so i traded him for the no 1 defender we didnt have and badly needed

only problem now is i still have darcy tucker and his rubbish play still on the team

Duchene just won 4 awards in OHL in my first season, with O'Reilly second on 3 of them, future looks good.

I'm about 60 games into season 1 and I'm realizing that I have no depth at all up front. Wolski, Statsny and Hejduk all have over 60 points, but after those three, there is a significant drop until the 4th leading scorer, which is Brian Willsie with a grand total of 30 points!

I've been plagued by injuries all season long, starting with Liles big injury, but I've also lost Foote, Clark, Anderson and Statsny for periods of time as well.

That being said, I'm at least in competition for a lottery pick.....dead last 6 points behind the Minnesota Wild. As a side note, the worst three teams in the NHL are the Oilers, Wild and the Avalanche, something I've never seen before.

I actually thought about attempting a trade for Ovechkin for a future season, but I don't want to give away my top scorers since I have no depth behind them. If my second line could actually do something, it would be a different story and seeing that the defense needs some work, I may pull off my trade to help there.

I'm enjoying watching the trades that the AI is pulling off, such as:

The Islanders send a 2nd rounder in 2007 and a 5th rounder in 2008 to Philadelphia for Daniel Briere.

The Sharks send Rob Blake and a 6th rounder in 2007 to the Islanders for Blake Comeau, Dwayne Roloson and a 3rd rounder in 2007.

The Predators send a 2nd rounder in 2007 and a 3rd rounder in 2008 to Anaheim for Scott Niedermayer.

The Stars send Jamie Benn to the Maple Leafs for Jason Blake.

And to think, we haven't hit the trade deadline yet.

I was offered James Van Reimsdyk for Tom Preissing.

I wish I could have done that.

This is my first challenge and so far i've played 20 games and is ranked 9th in the Conference.

Stastny has easily been my best player, scoring for fun and setting up his linemates with wicked passes.
He almost never leaves the ice without a point

However the goalkeeping has been awful from times to times. Budaj is really inconsistent and Anderson has been playing bad aswell. Both have a save percentage below .900. Hopefully they will perform better in the future

CatchUp wrote:

jbsnadb wrote:Seems like those who buck the spirit of the challenges tend to not do so well, since they sacrifice depth for stats. Meanwhile, all I did was claim Martinek off of waivers and we've started 5-1.

^ What he said.

Those that are trading away Duchene, Wolski, Stastny, O'Reilly, etc are *in general* sacrificing the future to win in the present. Whereas those that keep their prospects and make minor upgrades via free agency and THE DRAFT are more likely to benefit in Seasons 3, 4, 5 and onward. Winning the later seasons of a Challenge gets more props from me than seasons 1 & 2.

In challenges 12 and 13 the winners for season 1 and 2 took a long term perspective as well. I didn't mention 14 because winners haven't been announced. There is a trend though, and that trend is the players who look towards building a consistent winner tend to be the at the top.

Well, after a brutal first season, I am hoping to pick up either 2 defensive wingers or a defensive winger and a decent dman to put in place of Foote/Salei, who can't seem to stay good and who are getting elderly.
I have signed some prospects and hope to gives some a chance to play in the AHL this season, hopefully leading to some moving up to the NHL next year. Picked up Kitsyn in the first round, and had 5 offers for him within the week, all including 2 players, unsigned prospect, and 2-3 picks, so hopefully that means he'll turn out alright.

O'Reilly cleaned up in the OHL, so i'm going to try him out in a few situations in the big leagues and see how he does.

The challenge now will be to get the first line clicking in a way that some people have been seeming to do (getting these guys into the 100+ point territory), while getting the second line to pop a few and the third line to shut down. As long as I can get my defensive winger and maybe pick up a decent LW in a trade this season, I am hoping things will improve. Gonna take it a bit slower (even though that was the slowest season i've ever played, coaching all the games and switching tactics frequently), and try to make things work.

Well, I was hoping to build on a solid season 1, but season 2 proved to be riddled with injuries and lack of progress with some of the young players.

I must have led the league in man games lost.

The draft was also very disappointing.

I did manage to snag a couple of + forwards, but overall a very weak draft class.

I am going to have to make a trade for a better LW, McLeod and Galiardi just don't improve.

I guess the Blue Jackets are really investing to the goalie section or maybe their plan is just to get all the goalies so that other teams can't get them. I'm in the the offseason between season 1 and 2 and they have Mason, Luongo, Turco, Nabokov and Garon.

I think I should have used the Tier 3 with the waiver option...

Well you have perhaps seen that ive played pretty fast so far, right now three seasons in 24 hours, its because i got my awsome new computer yesterday and i am att Dreamhack in Sweden, world largest Lan-Party, So its has been a little to much playing, i think i will play at least five seasons untill next morning when im going home.

Well my team is doing very well this season, expecually on the offense, ive brought in Kitsyn this season(n1 pick 2007) and he is doing very well with hes linemates Duchene and Hejduk. He is so far 24 in 25 matches with a avarage at 8.10.

This season my lines looks like this at this moment

Wolski - Stastny - Svatos
Kitsyn - Duchene - Hejduk
Hensick - O'Reilly - Willsie
Koci - Brown - McLeod

Hannan - Shattenkirk
Liles - Commodore
Väänänen - Preissing

Andersson(Millan)

The defense is not so good, Anderson has 3.08 GAA(Improvement from last season), but he is winning matches wich is the mainjob. I think i can make the postseason this year, and there anything could happen. Over and out.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english, have been awake for 36 hours and is not very concentrated.

And speeking of the devil, Kitsyn made his first career hatrick against the Red Wings and is now 29 for 26 matches with 15 goals.

I don't see this team going anywhere in terms of serious playoff success without adding at least 2 players. They're just soo inconsistent I can't imagine them winning a playoff series. 30% of the Lake Erie roster being on the IR doesn't help, can't even send down guys who disappoint because there's no one to call up. Didn't run into major injury problems with the big team yet, but I keep losing key players for 2-3 games all the time. Rather surprisingly Stastny is only 5th in scoring and Duchene is well over a point per game, putting McLeod on his left wing instead of Willsie really got his game going.
I don't expect to have any problems getting into the playoffs, but as I said, they'll probably be on the golf course by mid April.

I just wrapped up the first season. We managed 7 playoff wins, beating the Flames in six and losing to the Wings in seven.

The final set of games started well, I think we were 7-1-2 in our last ten games at one point but then Svatos and Hejduk both went down at the same time and our scoring dried up completely. As a result Stastny did not break the 100 point mark, he ended up at 27G 72A good for #1 in assists and #7 in points. None of my scorers came close to 50 either but Hejduk and Svatos managed 43 and 42 in spite of their injuries, Wolski ended up at 38.

Liles decreased his +/- to +30 in the final set after leading the league for a long time but was great in the playoffs, picking up 10 points in 13 games. Clark returned just in time for the playoffs but was replaced by Salei after being -4 in four games, let's hope he can get back to form for next season.

All of the NHL roster has been re-signed for atleast a year, I don't see anyone other than O'Reilly and possibly McLeod ready to step in.

Looking at the upcoming UFAs I'm not sure what I'll go for but landing Cooke would be great if the Pens don't re-sign him, he should be a nice fit with Duchene/Hensick and Svatos.

Hah that's funny, the Canes won the cup!

Even funnier...for those of you who were part of the Nashville challenge:

Pekka Rinne just won Defensive POW twice in a row, followed by POM honors.

Liles is -30 after 60 games. His partner on D, Preissing, -4. This is a bit odd.

Sometimes you just can't do anything but to wonder what the AI is thinking in this game. In late November Bruins GM Chiarelli gets fired after the Bruins are leading the East and were just beaten by the Rangers after a 7 game win streak. I guess that wasn't just enough...

Getting back to the Blue Jackets and their goalie situation, they decided to trade Mason to Sharks for a 2nd round pick. They still have Luongo, Nabokov and Turco. Luongo is their No. 1, of course, and Nabokov is their backup. Turco hasn't played a single game and I don't think anyone even offered anything of him when he was put on the block earlier in the season.

Looking ahead to the playoffs, I sure hope my team is well conditioned since it seems every second game goes into the shootout. So I'm in for some long OT battles.

I made it to the playoffs eventually, though rather unexpectedly. Got smashed 0-4 by the Red Wings in the first round, however. The team sure needs some boosting for the upcoming season.

Contract-wise, I managed to re-sign almost everybody from last year's roster, the sole exception being Salei. He didn't want to sign a new contract, no matter what I offered him. Can't blaim him though, he didn't play much last year.

Drafted Ryan Johansen in the 1st round, hope he'll turn out OK.