Okay, looking at Edmonton (because we got talking about them and they're an interesting Challenge option), I just started a new game with them. They had a lot of players on the roster to start, so I sent guys down to the farm clubs and got them down to 20 players. This makes their payroll $48.5M without making any trades. This is Estimated Average Club Salary. It should lower once we get to the regular season because Total Annual Player Salaries is about $46.7M. Here are the salaries for those 20 players...
PIC.
Looking at the roster, we've got 12 players making $2M or more! Of those 12, 2 of them are in the $3M range, 2 in the $4M range, and one is over $5M. This should make for some interesting choices in the core setup.
The team is weak in goaltending, with Roloson and and Garon as the 2 NHL ready goalies. They've got Drouin-Deslauriers and Dubnyk as goalie prospects, both already signed to contracts. They've got a really nice group of defensemen on the left side but the right is very weak. Several of these defensemen play both sides but to those who like to keep defensemen on their natural side, it can be a factor. The team is super strong down the middle. They've got a nice bunch of centers. Horcoff and Stoll make a nice top two. I had Brodziak and Pouliot as the other two. They've also got Schremp and O'Marra on the farm, as great potential homegrown centers. A few of the wingers on the Edmonton roster can also play center. The wings aren't that strong, IMO. After Hemsky, the quality drops off in a big way. The other wingers would have a hard time making the second line on most of my teams. Most are probably best suited as third liners. They've got a coupe decent wing prospects on the farm but nothing special. Finally, they've got mostly rubbish for unsigned prospects. As for staff, I don't know how much of it is random. In the game I started, McTavish was okay and Bill Moores was good. Beyond those two, everyone else (asst coaches and scouts) were total rubbish.
So, IMO, that makes the Oilers somewhat of an interesting option. Now let's look at the Predators. At the start of the game, the Predators have 24 players on their NHL roster. I sent down Alexander Radulov because he's only 20 years old and not ready for a spot on the roster. I also sent down Ville Koistinen. He's 24 and not really NHL ready but didn't have to pass through waivers to be sent down. Finances are quite different for these guys than they were with the Oilers. Their Estimated Average Club Salary is $34.475M at this point. The team's player budget is $37.7M while the league's salary cap is over $50M. This would allow us to stick to our existing TBL Budget but I don't think it would allow us to be competitive in terms of contract offers (for re-signing our own players or eventually signing UFAs) in the league's current environment. Here are the salaries of the roster I'm seeing...
PIC. There are only 7 players making $2M or more, as opposed to 12 on the Oilers roster. Of those 7, 3 are making $3M or more, with just one of them making more than $4M. This could make the core roster fairly simple to work around, IMO.
The Predators are incredibly weak in goal. Honestly, my AHL teams usually have better goaltending than this. I'm guessing people will end up using at least one of their two UFA signings to go out and get a goaltender, even if it's a mediocre one. The defense could use some improvement but it's really not so bad. Zidlicky is a decent offensive defenseman. Ryan Suter could be a monster by the later stages of the challenge. Weber is a good defensive defenseman. I haven't really paid attention to how Hamhuis turns out in my other games. They've also got Yonkman down on the farm. He's a serviceable defensive defenseman. Niskala is also on the farm and he could be a decent option as well. All in all, they're okay on D. Nothing mind-blowing but not so bad. Looking at their forward lines, I'd say they're a little thin. You've got a great Sullivan-Arnott-Dumont first line but after that things get a little shaky. Legwand is a good 2-way forward, good for both second line and PK duty. Bonk is really looking like a 3rd line center and PKer right now. The only potential 2nd line wings I see are a 36 year old Gelinas and a so-so Martin Erat. The rest are either defensive/physical specialists or marginal NHLers (who in most cases will be off the roster as soon as possible). As for prospects, their farm team has a couple that are okay but the farm team is mostly career AHLers. Their unsigned prospects are mostly Russians and Scandinavians in their mid-20's that might or might not want to come over to the NHL. Other than that there are maybe one or two prospects with the potential to actually be useful for more than trade bait. I'm guessing most everyone will have the same homegrown players for the first couple seasons. Overall, I don't know if this makes for that interesting of a possibility. Remember, we're not trading away half the team in our first season.
I'm going to take a similar look at the Islanders and Thrashers in another post. Maybe the Capitals too (even though I'm not so keen on a challenge with Ovechkin on everyone's team).
That's why i like the Preds. You've got nothing. And you can't bring eveything in fastly. So you're forced to build patiently your team, stone by stone. And you can't count on the draft in the first seasons as they are pretty weak overall. It would be a rebuilding challenge, while the Hawks was more a develloping challenge with a solid youngsters core to start with. Different taste.
