EHM The Blue Line

Yeah..that is it. Guys on expiring cannot be traded. Just let them walk away and release rights if are RFA. Awesome and evil.

6 players to move is fine, and perfect. And yeah, needing the bodies means absolutely cannot trade for too many picks.

This sounds good, although I still wish it was Van lol. YOu hate them

I really like the look of doing Wild in this, should be a nice challenge

How do we look salary wise? Far up to the floor? I assume we can sign UFAs in the summer? Any restrictions on that?

Edit: 1½ months is enough for a challenge, set the end date for the current challenge on May 15? I'm just really interested in this Wild challenge, looks to be super fun.

They've got $63.5M in contracts at the moment ($69M cap) but they'll be freeing up some major salaries when we unload the 30 plus guys. We'll probably be at the cap floor (or under and still paying for it).

Wild Contracts

Maybe I'll do a poll and see who is still doing the Flyers challenge? Maybe we can end it a bit early. I'd still need to write something up explaining the rules for this one challenge too.

I want to finish up season 4, but other than that...i bet hardly anyone is still going. It was a tough team to get into completely.

I think though that I may save the flyer team and go back to it. Because now that I have Trouba...and the younger guys..Klimchuk, Leier, Jensen are involved and doing things for me they are more interesting. Morin as well. My first pick from 2017 draft also looks like he may be really good. He played 3 ex games for me and had 5 points.

As a hint...Morgan Klimchuk is awesome. At 21 he is ridiculous already attribute wise.

Okay. I've got the poll up. If we do move on to the next challenge, it won't be for a week.

Don't have to stress it, i just don't want to wait for another month if noone is still playing the challenge. Last time i checked noone except me and batdad was past season 2?

I get it. I kind of want to start the new one too. I just couldn't get into that Flyers challenge.

It was hard, i had to kind of force my way through that first season + off season, after that i enjoyed it. Sure would have been nice with those 1st rounders though

Yeah 3 and 4 have actually been more fun in terms of the players on my roster, and I am slowly apparently figuring out PP. However, I cannot lose for trying. Game 41 my 4th line is going to be my first line. Just to see what happens.

I will finish 2nd season this weekend....then till 15th of May i should end 3rd one too and thats about it from my Challenge 36. So you can plan new challege by that date..

So I ran another test on that next challenge. Started from April 15th again. The Coyotes didn't end up with picks #1 & #2 overall this time. They got #2, with the Jets picking McDavid at #1. With my deals I was able to acquire one more 1st round pick, #24 overall from the Blue Jackets (for Koivu). I couldn't get into that top 4 of picks. Being only able to deal players 30 and older, and not being able to pad the deals with throw in players, prospects, or picks, it made it too difficult. I might have been able to do it if I had sent something like Suter and Parise to the same team. That would have severely handcuffed me though. In the deals I made, I was able to pick up a few additional picks outside the first round. Nothing game changing though.

A couple things to keep in mind and that I will give people a heads up about... they're going to want to start upsetting Backstrom early so that he'll accept a trade when the time comes. I ended up packaging him with Matt Cooke and getting a decent young player for them. The rest of my trades consisted of one over 30 player from my team in exchange for packages of young players and picks. It can take some doing. I think one of the fun things about this type of challenge will be that we're going to see so many different combinations. We're dealing some pretty big names away from this team, so we all should be able to manage to get our hands on some interesting young players. The other thing I'll want to warn people about is expiring contracts for their under-30 players. You're going to need bodies for this team. We're going to have 8 players leaving as UFAs because they're 30 or older. Add that to the 5 or 6 that you can trade. We can't afford to just lose guys. Oh and we might want to have everyone disable human sackings because we're very likely to enrage the board and fans with some of these trades.

So after re-signing players, making trades, and then drafting... I advanced to July 1st. My team was well below the salary floor at this point. I don't know if that's going to cause us problems once the season starts or if the team is just on the hook for the difference. We'll see. Also, once we hit July 1st, we're open to hire and fire staff. As we discussed, with this type of challenge being so heavily reliant on developing young players, we're going to allow folks to hire and fire freely when it comes to their staff. We want people to have coaches that can develop their youngsters and scouts that can find them good players to draft.

So... it's looking like fun. I'm going to play out my test some more. As discussed, we'll allow older players to be traded in the future seasons (based on a sliding age scale) and we'll also allow 1 younger player to be traded each season (after our first).

Thoughts?

Tests sure sounds good, what will be the rules for the first off-season? I think it could be real helpful to be able to add a few old guys on 1 year contracts that we have to deal at deadline the first season, that sure would help with getting over the floor. Might be something to think about atleast?

And if we cant get a top-3 pick with just 1 of Suter and Parise then i see no problems letting us trade how we want to start. Packaging both Suter and Parise to get McDavid sounds like a recipe for problems. I definitely want atleast 1 young NHL-ready player in any package for either Suter or Parise.

SOUNDS SUPER COOL.

No need to sign any older guys in the first season if done right. Plus, what would be the sense of trading away our old guys only to bring new ones in? People should have to think about the deals they make with these older players and who they acquire. If you traded them all for picks, you're going to have to rush those guys into your lineup or use some under-30 guys you've already got that maybe you don't want to.

Suter, Parise, Pominville, Vanek, and Koivu were the more valuable guys. Backstrom and Cooke, not as much. If you trade two of those first five guys together for a pick, you're going to be a serious disadvantage, IMO. Also, I don't want to allow anything to be added to pad these deals like picks and under-30 players. You'll be pretty wide open on how you make your deals when you first take over. You'll be able to trade any of those 30-plus guys for players and/or picks. If Suter gets you 3 young players and a 4th round pick, that's cool. If Parise gets you one young NHLer (or NHL ready), great! If Koivu gets you a low 1st round pick? Take it! No unsigned prospects coming back in return though. Oh and all of this trading has to be done before you enter the draft. After that, no trading until July 1st of the next year (and then you'll have restrictions). I'm also thinking there should be no UFA signings or waiver claims in this challenge.

Honestly, I haven't seen them in action yet but on paper I'm loving the team I've assembled.

Aight, fair enough Just to be clear, we can ONLY trade our guys over 30, right? And the only restriction to players in is no rights to unsigned prospects? And age on the players in ofc, what age did we set, 25?

Did we set an age for incoming players? 25 makes sense. The oldest guys that I brought it were 23. Still, we should have some wiggle room. With those 7 tradeable guys I managed to bring in 8 young players (aged 20-23) and 5 draft picks (1 being a 1st).

I would say MUST BE YOUNGER than 25. 25 is the age no longer considered prospect and have to set status on the player in the game. So that to me says, 24 and younger should be allowed.

24 and younger sounds good to me.

Yeah 24 or younger could be a good choice. Even i would consider here a 23....

24 works for me!

So the free-trade age for season 2 is 29, season 3 is 28, season 4 is 27, season 5 is 26. You are NOT required to trade away players that reach this age. You MAY trade them freely. Each season, starting with season 2, you may trade one player under that season's free trade age. What do you guys think about how to handle that guy in trades? Should we be allowed to package them with a free trade player to hopefully get a better young player? Of course, any player we acquire (even in a package) must be 24 or younger.

I am good with packaging with a player or a pick. Not an unsigned prospect. you have to be forced to live with your drafts. ANd I would say cannot package the guy with a player who is under 24 either to get the player who is 24 or under.

Example...cannot package Andy MacDndald with Sean Couturier in the Flyer challenge for someone like Jacob Trouba at the start of the fourth season, where Couturier is 24, MacDonald is 30 and Trouba is 23. LOL. Perfect example. The more I think about that trade I made, the more I wish I had not done it, only because it is really something that a GM would not do if MacDonald was as bad as he is in this game. Me feel shame...well sort of considering what Trouba did for my team.

So the one younger player we're allowed to trade (season 2 on) should have to be traded on his own? The older guys can be packaged together but I don't think we should allow picks being traded out.

I agree.

How about no trades after season 1? Just use what you got after the first seasons trades and build your team?

Guys will lose interest fast if we do that.