EHM The Blue Line

Tactics and training. I've been doing these challenges for a long time now.

And we lost to the Devils in 5 games. Brodeur was just too tough to get anything past. Still, that's 5 more playoff victories than I expected to get in this first season.

Flying_Buffalo26 wrote:I already posted that I decided to sign Pahlsson from FA. That was a more than lucky aquisition. He is putting up huge numbers together with Eager and Thorburn, even though he is playing against the top line night in and out. He also seems to be a PK-beast. When he is on the ice we seldomly get a PP goal against.

And now I'm wondering why I signed Ortmeyer and Marchant instead of Påhlsson.
I followed him during first season and he was my nr. 1 priority for a long time.
Oh well.. after my UFA signings my PK isn't that horrible anymore.

bruins72 wrote:Okay, so I finally finished the regular season on my first season. Antropov tied for 3rd in the league in points with 117 points. Bergfors almost hit 50 goals but kind of got snake-bit at the end of the season. He finished with 48 goals. Boulton had an insane 1053 PIM. Speaking of Boulton, I love my third line of Boulton - Stewart - Thorburn. These guys know their role and do it well!

So we snuck into the playoffs. We didn't clinch our spot until the season ended. We had played our last game and we had to wait until the Flyers played the next day. If the Flyers won their game, we would have been out. If they got an OT loss (1 point) we would have tied but we would've locked up the 8th playoff spot because of our Goals For being higher (I think). We got matched up with the Presidents Trophy-winning Capitals in the first round. Ovechkin and Semin were 1 & 2 in scoring in the league. They beat us in the first game and we've won the next three. That's where I'm at now. I'm interested to see what this team can do! I'm also worried that I may have hurt myself by finishing as well as we did. No top draft pick for us!

I've been battleing with the Caps for 1st in the east all game, but I have always been able to beat them one on one, faced them in the playoffs 2-3 times so far, and won each series. Don't worry about your draft position, there's nothing to draft until year 3.

No time whatsoever to touch the game in the last week, and it looks like it still has to wait a while. Eh.

bruins72 wrote:I'm targeting Landeskog if he's still available when it comes my turn to draft.

Good choice, but I doubt he will make it that far. He usually gets picked quite early, from what I've noticed.

tksolway wrote:

bruins72 wrote:Okay, so I finally finished the regular season on my first season. Antropov tied for 3rd in the league in points with 117 points. Bergfors almost hit 50 goals but kind of got snake-bit at the end of the season. He finished with 48 goals. Boulton had an insane 1053 PIM. Speaking of Boulton, I love my third line of Boulton - Stewart - Thorburn. These guys know their role and do it well!

So we snuck into the playoffs. We didn't clinch our spot until the season ended. We had played our last game and we had to wait until the Flyers played the next day. If the Flyers won their game, we would have been out. If they got an OT loss (1 point) we would have tied but we would've locked up the 8th playoff spot because of our Goals For being higher (I think). We got matched up with the Presidents Trophy-winning Capitals in the first round. Ovechkin and Semin were 1 & 2 in scoring in the league. They beat us in the first game and we've won the next three. That's where I'm at now. I'm interested to see what this team can do! I'm also worried that I may have hurt myself by finishing as well as we did. No top draft pick for us!

I've been battleing with the Caps for 1st in the east all game, but I have always been able to beat them one on one, faced them in the playoffs 2-3 times so far, and won each series. Don't worry about your draft position, there's nothing to draft until year 3.

That might be about right, prospect pool in the first draft does seem to be a bit shallow. I was also hoping for one of Couturier-Landeskog, but ended up with Saad. at least he's a potential power forward, but I guess we'll have to wait and see how he develops.

I love this team's bottom six. Mine in the first season was usually Modin-Slater-Thorburn, Boulton/Rissmiller-Stewart-Eager. I seriously hope this guys can be even better next season. What that means, however, is that free agency is a bit tricky in this Challenge: it usually addresses the bottom six problems, and here there are none.

Just uploaded my 1st quarter stats...not so hot, but I'm making some adjustments. The Board suggested I get rid of Oduya...so I sent him down - I may waive and see if anyone bites. This team has a lot of over paid, mediocre talented players IMO!

I finished last in the Eastern Conference, but the good thing is that I got the first pick overall.

It would seem that the further you get the more you wish you could make more trades... Kinda depressing losing soooo much potential to free agency.

In the offseason after the first season I've decided to try Tier 1 in the free agents, but I don't know if I should try to sign a new defenseman and try to trade Enström later in the season or try to sign a goalie and try to trade Mason later on.

I might add that Tomas Kaberle wants to sign for under $2 million and so does Pascal Leclaire.

With my first pick I drafted Sean Couturier.

joehelmer wrote:In the offseason after the first season I've decided to try Tier 1 in the free agents, but I don't know if I should try to sign a new defenseman and try to trade Enström later in the season or try to sign a goalie and try to trade Mason later on.

I might add that Tomas Kaberle wants to sign for under $2 million and so does Pascal Leclaire.

It's seems pretty hard to sign a good goalie - Leclaire definetly isn't, not more than a solid backup. Mason did very well for me, getting better every season. 1st season: about 0.89 Sv%, in the 2nd around 0.90 and he was a major key to success to win the Stanley Cup. In the 3rd season he was well above 0.90, but messed it up during playoffs when I had to pull him in the first 2 games. He is now 36 or 37 and I really need to trade for a new #1. Overall I am happy with his performance over the last years.

Just finished the 3rd season: In the 2nd season I won the Cup heading into the playoffs from the 8th spot in the Eastern Conference. This year we won the President's Trophy with 115 points but got almost swept in the first round angainst the Flyers.
6 and 7 goals against in the first 2 games where simply too much. We lost 4-1 overall. So just 1 playoff win this season. A pretty big deception. I already saw the mouse flying into the corner but luckily I could stay calm

Now we got the 29th pick and as tksolway said there is a lot of talent in this draft. I tried to identify a few "star-regens" but there are at least 2 or 3 possible Bondras, Numminens, Sundins and so on. I hope I will be lucky to choose the right ones.

Burmistrov and Aliu had their rookie season. Especially Aliu was performing great winning the Calder trophy. He played on the 4th line at even strength and on PP2 along with Antropov for most part of the season. At the end I played him on the 2nd line along with Ladd and Slater. Very physical player and a great goal scorer. He had 29 goals (17 S%) along with 37 assists and a +20.

Parise, trade aquisition of season 2, did very well again: 54 goals, 123 points, +27 - his 8.00 AVG isn't that good however.
This season I traded Enström for Brent Burns in February. My major objevtive was to get a goalie, but none was available, unless I would have given up Antropov, Parise or Bogosian - I definetly don't want to do that yet.
I felt that this was another so-so trade. Kane is doing much better than Parise, especially having in mind that I wanted an elite Center, Parise is just a speedy and skilled winger but not the Center I was looking for, Kane indeed is. Maybe I should have waited a bit more to let him develop.
Burns is a good Dman but not really outstanding. At least much better than Enström, Ihad the option to trade Hainsey for Burns as well, but he was performing so well lately that I couldn't do that. On the pairing Hainsey plays you can be sure that they amount loads of + ratings. Bogosian had a +48 along with 47 points for example. Byfuglien had a +44 - with those 2 Hainsey was playing almost for the whole season.

Now it's time to trade for a new #1 goalie. Mason won't last much longer. Prospect wise I don't have much on that position. Probably I am able to draft the Kölzig regen (I think it's him) or any other decent goalie around and directly give him the chance to get hold of the starting job. Although I am almost sure that it won't work. Never expiernced anything positive doing that.

Anyone managed to sign Nikulin, the russian defensive prospect? I tried all these years - offered him 3 years at 1.2M + 3M (6.6M overall). He only wanted 5.2M for that span, but he still refused....

Can someone please help me as I'm a bit confused between the following rules:

5.2 .....You may, however, renew contracts with your own players and staff at any time.

5.3 If a player contracted to your Challenge team becomes an RFA, you may re-sign him at any point after starting the game until 1 October (inclusive). This does not count towards your UFA quota.

I went ahead and re-signed some of the players that would have been restricted had I not re-signed them during the season. Is that okay? They technically wouldn't "become" an RFA until their current contract expired right?

Sorry...I'm an auditor, so I nit pick every word!!

In other news...I'm still in my first season - Things are rather inconsistent at this point. For the most part, my team has been injury free - a few guys have been out for short periods of time, but other than that things have been good. Lately; however, guys are getting hurt in practice, so I've been throwing in some resting days here and there.

I sure wish we could trade in the first season - I've had offers for just about everyone on this roster...

The Penguins fired Bylsma and are about to fire Shero after their firesale (they traded Cooke, Orpik, Martin, Michalek, Dupuis, Kunitz, and some others that I don't recall off the top of my head). They had some serious injuries problems with Crosby missing most of the season (he's not even top 50 in scoring), so I guess the computer thought best to make room for payroll!!

Mason is hovering around a 3 GAA (my team GAA is slightly above that, with my GFA around 3.20) and a .910 save %. Sometimes he goes on hot streaks where he'll give up 3 goals in 3 or 4 games, then he'll give up 13 goals the next 2.

I'm still a few points out of the playoff hunt - I believe I'm 6 points out at the moment and I'm 10th or 11th in the standings. It's a pretty tight race. Hopefully I can put a few good wins together. Unfortunately for me, I've been losing a lot of one goal games, especially in OT/SO.

jesusrocks150 wrote:Can someone please help me as I'm a bit confused between the following rules:

5.2 .....You may, however, renew contracts with your own players and staff at any time.

5.3 If a player contracted to your Challenge team becomes an RFA, you may re-sign him at any point after starting the game until 1 October (inclusive). This does not count towards your UFA quota.

I went ahead and re-signed some of the players that would have been restricted had I not re-signed them during the season. Is that okay? They technically wouldn't "become" an RFA until their current contract expired right?

Sorry...I'm an auditor, so I nit pick every word!!

Yes, this is okay. I guess if you wanted to get technical, we should have used "impending RFAs" but I think that might have confused things more.

Please remember, questions about the challenge rules really don't belong in this thread. They belong in the Challenge Questions and Feedback thread.

My apologies for putting it in the wrong spot...I was in a hurry since I was at work (and should have been working )

Regarding some other posts about a goalie - I've had my scouts scouring all sorts of leagues, nations, etc. - There is one goalie in his early 20s that I assigned a note to - maybe I'll sign in the offseason. He looks decent - The name escapes me at the moment...I'll try and look it up later and let you know who it is (I think he is Czech or Russian). I'd really like to address the defense first and then maybe look for a goalie. Mason isn't horrible, although his GAA would show otherwise.

So the Sabres eventually won the Stanley Cup, beating the Canucks in the Finals for their first ever Stanley Cup. I thought my farm team in Chicago had a good shot at the Calder Cup but we were knocked out in the second round by Oklahoma City (the Oilers farm team). They had a bunch of older players with really nice attributes. They even had a Hjalmarsson on their team. I'm guessing he was sent down due to Cap issues. Oklahoma City eventually won the Calder Cup.

Antropov came in 2nd place for the Masterson trophy. That's the only trophy any of our players were really in the running for.

Now it's off to the draft!

And my first draft is done! I missed out on Landeskog. I knew I wouldn't get him but I was still hoping. I drafted 15th and I think he went 9 or 10. Here's who I got...

RD1 15th Shane McColgan RW/C 5'11" 174 lbs 18yo USA
RD2 45th Biggs Tyler LW 6'4" 209 lbs 19yo USA
RD3 75th Seth Ambroz LW/RW 6'4" 202 lbs 18yo USA
RD4 105th Kacper Guzik RW/LW 6'0" 205 lbs 18yo POL
RD5 135th Andrew O'Leary LW 6'0" 202 lbs 20yo USA
RD6 165th Garrett Clarke LD 6'0" 202 lbs 19yo CAN
RD7 195th Sebastian Svendsen C/LW/RW 5'9" 178 lbs 19yo DEN

I seem to have drafted heavily from the United States but this was not by design! I was looking for size and whatever talent I could find. This is the best of what was left each time it came to my pick. I probably should have picked up a goalie but I didn't think about it until too late. I wasn't concerned about only picking one defenseman. I think Atlanta has got a nice prospect pool of defenseman already on their farm team.

So now I've just got to get to July 1st so I can get my trades screenshot and log my final stats for the first season. Then things get interesting!

Garrett Clarke in the sixth round! In most of my test-games, he was rated a first-rounder. Either, you got a bad version(he is -14) or you got the steal of the draft.

I'm guessing I got a bad version. My luck isn't so good.

I uploaded my stats but my screenshots are going to have to wait until tomorrow. Time to go home!

Clarke is ranked at #150 in my game (yes I'm playing but incredibly slowly, can't play at work right now). He is projected as a 5-6 enforcer but needs to improve his decision-making which is always a warning sign for me when drafting. If he does fall to 150+ I'll certainly give him a look though, can't have too many physical D-men.

After going on somewhat of a decent run for this teams standards (12-7-1), I've now gone on a 2-6-2 run and my hopes for the playoffs are all but gone. I've got 12 games left on the season and I'm 9 points out of the 8 spot...Hopefully I'll be able to land someone in free agency or the waiver wire and/or land someone in a trade in the 2nd season so I can be a little more consistent in winning.

So I'm finally at the point where I can make a trade. I didn't want to part with Kane but I was making offers with guys like Enstrom, Byfuglien, Dawes, Burmistrov, and Peverly. I was targeting a skilled center with a 15 or better in strength. I want to use the "overload slot" tactic and it works best with a strong center. I've had lots of offers either flat-out refused or they come back looking for multiple pieces (more than just a 1 for 1 deal), which I can't do. It's July 5th and finally I get 2 offers accepted at the same time. Now I've got to decide which one I accept. Or do I accept neither and wait until it's closer to the trade deadline? Thoughts?

Deal #1

Thrashers send Burmistrov to the Wild for Mikko Koivu

Deal #2

Thrashers send Burmistrov to the Devils for Travis Zajac


Now I'm totally okay with dealing Burmistrov. He started on my Thrashers roster in season one but was sent down to Chicago after 27 games because he just wasn't cutting it. He did pretty well down there but he's still going to need at least one more season down in the AHL before he's really ready for the NHL. He'll probably need a couple. Also, he's not really my type of player. He doesn't fit my game plan. So he's good to ship out in my mind and he should have some good trade value.

So do I want Zajac or Koivu? Their salaries are pretty close ($3.88M vs $3.76M). They're very similar in size. Koivu is 28 years old while Zajac is 26. They're quite different players though. Zajac is more of a shooter while Koivu is more of a passer. Zajac is stronger. Koivu is a better leader. Koivu is also better on faceoffs and defensively.

So who do I go for? Or do I just turn down both deals and wait it out?

bruins72 wrote:So I'm finally at the point where I can make a trade. I didn't want to part with Kane but I was making offers with guys like Enstrom, Byfuglien, Dawes, Burmistrov, and Peverly. I was targeting a skilled center with a 15 or better in strength. I want to use the "overload slot" tactic and it works best with a strong center. I've had lots of offers either flat-out refused or they come back looking for multiple pieces (more than just a 1 for 1 deal), which I can't do. It's July 5th and finally I get 2 offers accepted at the same time. Now I've got to decide which one I accept. Or do I accept neither and wait until it's closer to the trade deadline? Thoughts?

Deal #1

Thrashers send Burmistrov to the Wild for Mikko Koivu

Deal #2

Thrashers send Burmistrov to the Devils for Travis Zajac


Now I'm totally okay with dealing Burmistrov. He started on my Thrashers roster in season one but was sent down to Chicago after 27 games because he just wasn't cutting it. He did pretty well down there but he's still going to need at least one more season down in the AHL before he's really ready for the NHL. He'll probably need a couple. Also, he's not really my type of player. He doesn't fit my game plan. So he's good to ship out in my mind and he should have some good trade value.

So do I want Zajac or Koivu? Their salaries are pretty close ($3.88M vs $3.76M). They're very similar in size. Koivu is 28 years old while Zajac is 26. They're quite different players though. Zajac is more of a shooter while Koivu is more of a passer. Zajac is stronger. Koivu is a better leader. Koivu is also better on faceoffs and defensively.

So who do I go for? Or do I just turn down both deals and wait it out?

I never had great success with Mikko. I was able to get Mike Richards for Burmistrov (also had a deal for Parise on the table), I would think you could do better.

I wonder if it was just a matter of time for your deal or if maybe my Burmistrov just isn't as good as the one in your game (due to variable potential). I offered Burmistrov to the Flyers in a deal for Richards and they laughed at me. Got the same result when I offered him for Carter.

Right now I'm leaning towards going with Koivu. I like his passing, face-offs, and leadership.

I think I'm going to hold off on making any UFA signings. I don't see anything out there that I really want/need right now. I might do better with a waiver claim.

bruins72 wrote:I wonder if it was just a matter of time for your deal or if maybe my Burmistrov just isn't as good as the one in your game (due to variable potential). I offered Burmistrov to the Flyers in a deal for Richards and they laughed at me. Got the same result when I offered him for Carter.

Right now I'm leaning towards going with Koivu. I like his passing, face-offs, and leadership.

I think I'm going to hold off on making any UFA signings. I don't see anything out there that I really want/need right now. I might do better with a waiver claim.

Maybe, but he wasn't really that good potential wise when I had him.

If you can get Koivu to play well on the 2nd line, it could be a good deal. though I just didn't see Antopov as a #1 center for too long; In fact his attributes started to decline by my 2nd season. I also don't see Kane, Bergfor or Little as an legitimate 1 as well. So keep in mind that you might be in the market for a #1 soon.

I ended up taking Koivu. I totally understand where you're coming from in regards to the #1 center situation. Antropov has been a perfect #1 center for me in the first season. I'm seriously hoping I don't see a serious attribute decline anytime soon. With Koivu centering the second line, my top two lines are looking strong. I've got Antropov centering Ladd and Bergfors on the first line and then Koivu centering Kane and Little on the second. Slater had been my second line center in season 1 but I wasn't too confident in him. Now he's centering a third line between Eager and Peverly.

I'm sure I'll have to look for another center in another season or two though. Right now on the farm team I've got Esposito, Cormier, and Holzapfel as centers and none of them really look like they'll ever become a center for a one of the top 2 lines on an NHL team.

bruins72 wrote:I ended up taking Koivu. I totally understand where you're coming from in regards to the #1 center situation. Antropov has been a perfect #1 center for me in the first season. I'm seriously hoping I don't see a serious attribute decline anytime soon. With Koivu centering the second line, my top two lines are looking strong. I've got Antropov centering Ladd and Bergfors on the first line and then Koivu centering Kane and Little on the second. Slater had been my second line center in season 1 but I wasn't too confident in him. Now he's centering a third line between Eager and Peverly.

I'm sure I'll have to look for another center in another season or two though. Right now on the farm team I've got Esposito, Cormier, and Holzapfel as centers and none of them really look like they'll ever become a center for a one of the top 2 lines on an NHL team.

Thorburn was huge for me on the 3rd line. Him with Eager and Buf is a scary line.

Nope, they never really become anything. Im in season 5 and Cormier is just now ready but only good for 4th line minutes. I also trained him as LW, didnt take that long, for some extra options.

Good luck!