EHM The Blue Line

did anyone notice how stupid the AI gm's are sometimes. and i just cant take advantage of it. here is what happened and what i did.

1. carey price. rated as an exellent prospect by every scout, but montreal didn't even bother to sign him when it was time. so i signed him took over montreal and traded him back for some old prospect terrible prospect and then resigned as the montreal gm. and then of course released the rights to the "prospect"

2. josh harding. once again rated as an exellent prospect. before the season started minnesota released both him and niklas backstrom (the goalie). and signed some goalie from the uhl with 9 as he's highest rating to be their backup. then i sihned both of them took over minnesota and placed backstrom on waivers and picked him up and traded harding back for a terrible prospect. resigned from minnesota and then released the rights to the prospect.

3. martin hanzal. phoenix didnt sign him. i picked him up from free agency and gave him back.


why does this happen. this guys are great prospects and both hanzal and price had amazing seasons in juniors. and they dont even get signed. and when im giving them back its hurting me as a gm. i keep doing bad trades and my board dont like it.

when i gave back harding both the minnesota board and fans was happy about the "steal". now why release a guy that is a steal to get cheap?? i dont get it. and i hate it.

redwingsfan wrote:and i just cant take advantage of it.

Personally it sounds like this is the root of the problem, not that they are acting unwisely as mucha s you can't benefit from them doing so, so it sucks.

releasing josh harding to free agency is unwise imo, but i get your point. lol. yeah it really sucks.

redwingsfan wrote: 1. carey price. rated as an exellent prospect by every scout, but montreal didn't even bother to sign him when it was time. so i signed him took over montreal and traded him back for some old prospect terrible prospect and then resigned as the montreal gm. and then of course released the rights to the "prospect"

2. josh harding. once again rated as an exellent prospect. before the season started minnesota released both him and niklas backstrom (the goalie). and signed some goalie from the uhl with 9 as he's highest rating to be their backup. then i sihned both of them took over minnesota and placed backstrom on waivers and picked him up and traded harding back for a terrible prospect. resigned from minnesota and then released the rights to the prospect.

I wonder if 1. is a cap handling issue. If a team doesn't have that $800.000 or so cap room in May, they can't sign their top prospects, even though they might have plenty of cap space after June 30th when existing contracts run out. That's partly because the game is a bit counterintuitive with prospect contracts -- almost all contracts you offer during the 2006/07 season start from that season, even though you won't get the player until June and he won't play for you until the 2007/08 season, and partly because it doesn't properly recognize that next season's cap situation may be totally different from the current one. The latter has been brought up in the SI forums and I think Riz said he'll look into it.

2. seems to be a Wild issue. In my game, they put Bäckström and Harding to AHL and signed some ECHL-caliber guy.

they had like 5 mil cap space so thats not the issue. maybe they just thought a future francise goalie wasn't good enough

as for the wild thing. i dont understand why they do it. i would have if they had sendt harding to houston and keep backstrom as backup. anything else is just stupid imo.

Keep in mind their decisions are based upon their staff... so while we all have 20/20 in potential and talent for players it's very possible the team's ingame staffs told them to cut bait because the guys will never amount to anything and their scouts/management are telling the team that they should focus on vets with a more 'win now' approach. Hire a say 6/4 scout some time and see what they have to say about your roster

yeah thats true, but a team in the nhl should have good scouts, but maybe they dont. i dont know.

In one game where I was managing the Senators, the Flames released Miikka Kiprusoff to free agency a few games into the season. He had something like a 1.50 GAA and .943 Save %. That is absolute stupidity, expecially considering they brought in Brian Boucher to be the starter.

Krieger99 wrote:In one game where I was managing the Senators, the Flames released Miikka Kiprusoff to free agency a few games into the season. He had something like a 1.50 GAA and .943 Save %. That is absolute stupidity, expecially considering they brought in Brian Boucher to be the starter.

There's probably a chain of events leading to this, and you missed the most crucial news item: "Flames ownership change -- The Calgary Flames held a press conference today, introducing new owner Charles Wang."

Kekkonen wrote:

Krieger99 wrote:In one game where I was managing the Senators, the Flames released Miikka Kiprusoff to free agency a few games into the season. He had something like a 1.50 GAA and .943 Save %. That is absolute stupidity, expecially considering they brought in Brian Boucher to be the starter.

There's probably a chain of events leading to this, and you missed the most crucial news item: "Flames ownership change -- The Calgary Flames held a press conference today, introducing new owner Charles Wang."

It probably went something like this:

1. Ken King decides to sell team for some unknown reason.
2. Charles Wang purchases team.
3. Charles Wang renames the Calgary Flames to Charles Wang.
4. Darryl Sutter fired by Charles Wang.
5. Charles Wang hires Charles Wang as GM of Charles Wang.
6. Charles Wang releases Kiprusoff to free agency because he doesn't want to spend so much money putting 9 letters for "KIPRUSOFF" on the jersey. "BOUCHER" only has 7 letters.