EHM The Blue Line

I've noticed several players somehow lose their NHL team rights when I start a game even though through the editor, they appear to be NHL-owned.

This happens mostly with older European players who have their rights owned by an NHL club and by a seemingly random selection of college players.

I am using the start date patch and starting in 2012 so I am not sure if this has something to do with it. I've gone and re-checked though and for instance, the NCAA players it happens to, they clearly have valid NCAA contract start and end dates so it's not that they are getting released or anything. Other NHL clubs (other than the ones who really own their rights per the editor) just have free reign to sign them.

I can't detect a pattern in this either. There will be a 28 year-old playing in Russia with NHL rights owned by a team and the rights don't show up in the game but yet a similar player in a similar situation won't be affected by this 'bug'.

Any thoughts or anybody run into this? Thanks in advance!

Is it possible that the NHL teams don't believe that the player will ever make the team and they release their rights on purpose?

It also has to do with in what year they were drafted and what leagues you have selected
There shouldn't be any problems with NCAA-players, though

Figured out one NCAA problem. Take for instance Erik Haula of the Minnesota Golden Gophers (and Minnesota Wild organization)...the problem was his nationality. The editor said the Wild had his rights but he never was Wild property in the game. I switched his nationality to United States and "viola", the rights worked in the game. His "first" nationality had to be set to US or Canada for the game to read his rights correctly. My workaround was to set his first nationality to US and then his 2nd to Finland (and declared for Finland). Still works then too.

Not sure if this is an isolated incident in my own rosters or an actual bug, just an FYI. It appears in my rosters anyways the same thing is happening with Anaheim's Radoslav Illo, another foreign NCAA player.

The game counts them as drafted from Europe, I guess. You only have those rights two years after the draft