EHM The Blue Line

Have any of you ever had a surprise player put up huge points or anything like that?

I picked up Madden for a 4th round pick, and put him with Ovechkin, and Madden finished with 144 points that season to win the scoring race. I had him for 4 more season after that, but he would only break 100 points one more time. But wow, I had never seen him put up anything close to that in the game.

Well Madden is a tremendous player... my biggest surprise performance in the game to date is that I had Jaroslav Balastik beat out Crosby for the Calder Trophy last year in my Carolina Challenge team with something like 43 goals on the year, at one point he scored in 11 straight... so I found that much more surprising.

Also surprising to me was that in my Columbus game first season I had Ilya Bryzgalov win the Vezina.

In CBJ challenge game year 2, after 20 games Gilbert Brule had 27 points. At age 20. Playing on the 4th line and 2nd line pp. Tried him for the next 10 on second line. Ummm...After 60 games he has 47 points. Still awesome, but darn he has slowed down. After 20 games 8.7 rating, after 60 down to 7.08. But this means next season (I am continuing with this team because I love it) Mats Sundin may be gone.

On 4th line he centred Picard and usually Shelley or played right wing with Gaustad centreing Brule and Picard.

PP was RW most of the time with Conroy and Modin. Sometimes centred Picard and Trent Hunter.

Chris Clark scored 97 points for me in my first season with the caps and rating close to 8, that was pretty surprising :O.

Forsberg wrote:Chris Clark scored 97 points for me in my first season with the caps and rating close to 8, that was pretty surprising :O.

Wow thats incredible, I don't think I've ever had him put up more than maybe 30 points.


Also I wasn't aware that Balastik qualifies as a rookie when starting the game.

I had a surprise player in the freeware EHM... and it went kind of backwards.

I had a nice career going with wizard mode, and I drafted this one kid who ended up doing really well with me. He was on my second line almost right off the bat, and I was looking at him as a potential star. Several months later when I got bored of the game, I turned wizard mode off and found out that that kid had terrible attributes. And they were bad enough that I would have never even considered using him had I seen his attributes beforehand.

B. Stinson wrote:I had a surprise player in the freeware EHM... and it went kind of backwards.

I had a nice career going with wizard mode, and I drafted this one kid who ended up doing really well with me. He was on my second line almost right off the bat, and I was looking at him as a potential star. Several months later when I got bored of the game, I turned wizard mode off and found out that that kid had terrible attributes. And they were bad enough that I would have never even considered using him had I seen his attributes beforehand.

I wasn't around during those days, what was wizard mode?

Joe wrote:

B. Stinson wrote:I had a surprise player in the freeware EHM... and it went kind of backwards.

I had a nice career going with wizard mode, and I drafted this one kid who ended up doing really well with me. He was on my second line almost right off the bat, and I was looking at him as a potential star. Several months later when I got bored of the game, I turned wizard mode off and found out that that kid had terrible attributes. And they were bad enough that I would have never even considered using him had I seen his attributes beforehand.

I wasn't around during those days, what was wizard mode?

Wizard Mode was an option to hide player attributes. When on, you would have to evaluate players based on their performances, stats, history, and scout reports. Personally, I have been in absolute love with this option from the second I used it, and I have been pushing since EHM 2005 for it to make a comeback. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only one who wants it back, so I don't think they're considering it too much.

B. Stinson wrote:

Joe wrote:

B. Stinson wrote:I had a surprise player in the freeware EHM... and it went kind of backwards.

I had a nice career going with wizard mode, and I drafted this one kid who ended up doing really well with me. He was on my second line almost right off the bat, and I was looking at him as a potential star. Several months later when I got bored of the game, I turned wizard mode off and found out that that kid had terrible attributes. And they were bad enough that I would have never even considered using him had I seen his attributes beforehand.

I wasn't around during those days, what was wizard mode?

Wizard Mode was an option to hide player attributes. When on, you would have to evaluate players based on their performances, stats, history, and scout reports. Personally, I have been in absolute love with this option from the second I used it, and I have been pushing since EHM 2005 for it to make a comeback. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only one who wants it back, so I don't think they're considering it too much.

Sounds like a fairly more realistic approach to the game, although I don't think you can determine an attribute such as a players slap shot by watching a a simulation like this one.

Joe wrote:

B. Stinson wrote:

Joe wrote: I wasn't around during those days, what was wizard mode?

Wizard Mode was an option to hide player attributes. When on, you would have to evaluate players based on their performances, stats, history, and scout reports. Personally, I have been in absolute love with this option from the second I used it, and I have been pushing since EHM 2005 for it to make a comeback. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only one who wants it back, so I don't think they're considering it too much.

Sounds like a fairly more realistic approach to the game, although I don't think you can determine an attribute such as a players slap shot by watching a a simulation like this one.

Agreed. Not only would it be hard to judge attributes it would be next to impossible to judge potential. How did you get by like that??

Sounds like a fairly more realistic approach to the game, although I don't think you can determine an attribute such as a players slap shot by watching a a simulation like this one.

Agreed. Not only would it be hard to judge attributes it would be next to impossible to judge potential. How did you get by like that??

Good scouting was the answer to both of these. Which made it very important to not slack when hiring your scouts(something I can easily get away with in the current game).

B. Stinson wrote:

Sounds like a fairly more realistic approach to the game, although I don't think you can determine an attribute such as a players slap shot by watching a a simulation like this one.

Agreed. Not only would it be hard to judge attributes it would be next to impossible to judge potential. How did you get by like that??

Good scouting was the answer to both of these. Which made it very important to not slack when hiring your scouts(something I can easily get away with in the current game).

hmm. interesting. that would make the game more realistic theoretically. Although, much more challenging.

Anything else you want to tell me about it to convince to get on the Wizard mode band-wagon?

Well, There's really not much else I can think of to say about it, especially since I haven't thoroughly used it in a while. The basics of it is that once you turn it on, all player attributes are masked by an X. From there, the only thing you can determine about that attribute is whether it's improving(green) or if it's dropping(red). Though, for the best and most realistic experience it's best to ignore the entire idea of attributes, and just look at how the player is performing. When it comes time for acquiring/drafting new players, you can read over the scout reports, look at career/current stats, read over histories, etc. It sounds hard, but it really wasn't once you got used to not relying on attributes. And one thing to remember is that this freeware version is very primitive compared to the current versions. They've made many leaps since then, which is why I see this feature being more than plausible for the current games.

P.S. If you're really interested in this feature, you can always download the freeware version(I'd recommend version 1.16) and try it first hand (download is at www.fhockey.com).

Wizard Mode should be easy to bring back, so I don't know why they haven't done so, even without a lot of support for it to return. Having extra options for customization and personal gameplay preference is always a good thing. It would basically just be an eternal Fog of War on every player.

The SI baseball sim Out of the Park has a way to play like that, but it's not any kind of special mode. You just choose the way attributes are displayed, and "hidden" is one of the options. I usually play with a fictional database, current attributes hidden, potential shown on a 1-10 scale. It's a lot of fun, adds another level of challenge, and I'd like to try something like that in EHM.

The main problem is that lots of hockey skills cannot be measured with statistics, especially defensive and teamwork abilities. It's not like baseball where there are advanced metrics for everything and you can play OOTP with all the attributes hidden and have a successful and realistic experience using only the stats provided. So I'm not sure if it would work quite as well.

I picked up Sergie Brylin off of the waivers, and had him in the minors for 10 games or so where he put up like 15 points. I brought him up as an injury fill in and he took off, and he stayed in the NHL for the rest of the season putting up over 90 points.

Minstrel wrote:... Jaroslav Balastik beat out Crosby for the Calder Trophy last year in my Carolina Challenge team with something like 43 goals on the year, at one point he scored in 11 straight...

I can never get Balastik to score. I even named my World of Warcraft character after the guy and he still underachieves! He usually gets his fair share of shots on the power play (I won't put him any higher than 4th line for even-strength due to his lack of defense) but they're almost always stopped. Then he ends up with low morale and I have to scratch him.

On freeware EHM, Oleg Petrov got a 90+ pts season. Usually in my game he never score more than 70-75 pts..

Not bad for a Smurf!!

I also had a huge season with Chris Clark.

In the first franchise I ever played, Alexei Kaigorodov put up 80+ points in his rookie season, mostly from the 3rd & 4th line with sporadic PP time. Never reached the plateau again after I put him on the 2nd/1st lines.

one season with the B's Thomas had a 2.19 gaa and a .926 sav% 8.32 raiting in 63 games and took us to the semi finals

Bruins86 wrote:one season with the B's Thomas had a 2.19 gaa and a .926 sav% 8.32 raiting in 63 games and took us to the semi finals

What version of the patch are you playing? In one of the earliest versions Thomas was actually pretty decent. Then he got his skills scaled back in the next patch.

Anson Carter get 53 goals and 90+ pts season, finishing second for the Rocket Richard trophy.
Not bad for a second liner playing with Brenden Morrow and Jeff Halpern!

I was morally obligated to extend his contracts with Dallas, a 50 goalers coaster 2.3M what a bargain

What year was it in your game?

in my second second with Dallas, so 2007-2008.

In a previous version (2005, I think) I had Jordin Tootoo reach 75-80 points several times in a 2nd-line role. Once my team had turned into an unstoppable juggernaut, I put him on the 1st line with Ovechkin and tried to make him the first 100/200 player (100 points, 200 PIM) since Rick Tocchet, but it didn't work out. And the problem wasn't the 200 PIM.

Well, duh. I wanted to edit that post...