EHM The Blue Line

Or specifically, how frustrated my darn board makes me. Here's the situation: I drafted Peter Mueller, and he turned into an absolute stud. I managed to keep him happy on 2 mil per year for a few season, then the time comes for him to become a RFA. Naturally this is something I wanted to aviod, so I specifically capped my team out at around 35 million that year so I had some room to re-sign him. Well as it turns out he is asking for 3 million per year for many years, something I am more than happy to offer (he has about 1.3 PPG on his career with me). My board restricts my offer to 2 MIL! I couldn't understand this for the life of me, as he was undoubtedly my best scorer, and designated as key player, untouchable, yada yada. I had the cap space, he was considered by my board as a key member, my profit on the year was 25 million.....

So the season ends, Mueller still asks 3 million and my board only let me offer 2. His contract ends and he hits the market, and I decide to negotiate again. Well now he wants 4.8 million, but heres the kicker........my board is more than happy to offer it to him!! What the hell?!?!?

To cut a long story short I got him in for 4.5 mil, but in my eyes my board is completely wasting 1.5 million of my cap room that I was planning to use on my upcoming free agents for the current season (basically my entire core, except Mueller of course).

Now I'm getting the same business from the board with Malkin, Esposito, Semin, etc. Looks like I'm gonna lose my ass in the free-agency mkt this year. The nice thing is my great management (being able to afford all these players to start with) will lead to me probably getting canned after I win 3 cups in a row and decide to rebuild because I can't (or my board wont let me) keep the core of my team in tact.

Does anyone else have similar frustrations? The annoying thing is that I don't feel there is anything I can do about, though obviously it's wrong that this situation arises in the first place....

Oh and the other thing funny about all of this, is that the same day Mueller hits the free agent market, I get my board confidence update, telling me that they would like to see me add Peter Mueller to the team

No S#$t!!!!

I've been caught in this dance with the Board a few times as well The thing is that it's a huge set of variables on a roster-wide level that makes them think what they do when and it does always seem that they'll give you tons when you don't need it, 5.7 million for a 31 year old third liner on your team and when you really are in a crunch panicking over losing someone asking for 2 million the board allots you 600,000 or something.

Two things that can help though: one is don't pay out signing bonuses, they consider that money as allocated to your cap amount so if you resign a bunch of players you may have saved cap room but in their eyes all that bonus money counts toward what they see their budget limit being. This is how I got caught in it before.

Second, and relatedly of course, is sign nobody before you get your 'big guns' under contract, that gives you the best chance. It's easy to re-sign on the guys who want about the same for next year so you add on five million or so guaranteed for next year and still have the tough negotiations left over and your board starts to panic. Leave the easy signings for last and you don't make the Board as nervous that you're going to bankrupt them by next season if they don't reign you in.

Even so, my board are absolute idiots then, considering that due to my good work they are able to offload about 25 million per season as dividends for the shareholders.....

And incidently, this whole shareholder thing is something that needs to be removed, and is just a bad thing that was never taken out of the Championship Manager interface. In the US, isn't it simply an owner, and that's it? Maybe an ownership group. If I want the money I should be able to just ask the team owner......

We all tried it way too many times and it sucks . Especially when you have to rip apart our own drafted core of the team, coz of such events .

Yeah, I think I'll just let them sit on the RFA market for half a season and then get them in on the cheap. Of course, if another team makes an offer I will have to either match it or just take the draft picks. I never ever see AI teams make offers for group II FA's though. Ever.

On a somewhat related topic, Jarome Iginla's contract was expiring after the three year deal he's currently on in RL. I tried all season to re-sign him for the 7 mil he was getting before, offering option years and NTCs and all that stuff but no dice, Jarome wasn't interested. Finally, I resign myself to my fate and he becomes a free agent. From there I go to sign him, see that he doesn't expect a "key player" designation so I give him "core" and he's asking for 6.25 a year!! I guess Iggy thought he'd try to save me some money and wouldn't sign because he actually wanted to play for 3/4 of a mil less per year than he would've got otherwise....

I almost lost Simon Gagne after my first year. And then I almost lost Antero Niittymaki after my third season. But luckily, I signed him.

I have found that waiving and demoting pending UFAs in June can free up some space and the board will allow you to offer more.

What are the criterias for becoming an unrestricted free agent?

Unrestricted Free Agency - For the 2005-06 season, a player age 31 with four accrued seasons will be an unrestricted free agent; in 2006-07, a player age 29 with four accrued seasons or with eight accrued seasons; in 2007-08, a player age 28 with four accrued seasons or with seven accrued seasons; beginning in 2008-09 and for the duration of the agreement, a player age 27 with four accrued seasons or with seven accrued seasons will be an unrestricted free agent. For purposes of qualifying for unrestricted free agency, the 2004-05 cancelled season will be counted as a year of accrued service.

http://www.nhl.com/nhlhq/cba/index.html

So why does Simon Gagne, at age 26, ALWAYS hit unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2006 on EHM?

In his case I don't know but those are not absolutes; there's exceptions and other rules that affect that date involving arbitration (I vaguely remember there being talk of a choice between taking your team to arbitration or being allowed to enter free agency a year early) and a gajillion other things including contracts and such... they used to have that all online but the NHLPA has yet to put the new CBA online so I can't confirm why exactly

IIRC, it has something to do with the number of games played, or full seasons, or something along those lines.