Eastside Hockey Manager - Part VIII

[37 others]

Back from holiday so plan on finishing up the rollout of the 2019-20 NHLX project database in the next few weeks. It's a pretty massive and universal update that includes feedback from the current season for major leagues and prospects and all the "extra" fixings the X database brings - key of course being the 36-team NHL setup and expansion. For those uninitiated with the project (and all the variations) over the years - it's what I would call a personal sandbox to play with the capabilities of the game and give users a simming experience firmly grounded in reality but with interesting new scenarios to play out.

That said, here's a sneak peak of the expansion draft setup as I ran it this weekend...this may of course be tweaked by the time the official rollout happens as real world performances/values and team depth charts fluctuate but it will give you a good idea of how the expansion teams are shaping up. I'll go over the full rules I used for the draft with the rollout but I did let Seattle do it's own draft first by itself and then the other 4 teams participated in a round-robin format of picking in a separate draft. Since Seattle is of course actually happening I wanted to stock them a little better.

In my test sims, Seattle has been performing pretty well, usually around 8-12 spots in the Western Conference, occasionally making the playoffs while the other 4 clubs tend to vary but they still often finish at or above teams like Ottawa, Minnesota and LA.

If you want to try the DB now, PM me...I'm not ready to release it publicly but I'll upload where it stands now for trial for people who are interested (along with all the graphics of course).

Does the import file (preferably this already baked into the DB) include staff for the teams? I trust neither the AI's ability to hire enough quality staff nor the "generate key staff" option when starting a new game.

Edit: Also, does the DB include the transfer rules fix someone posted a few months ago? It had to do with moving salary caps from league rules to financial rules, or something like that. Apparently it helped teams fill out their rosters better.

 

[BKarchitect]

Every existing team should have lost 5 players (after protections, exemptions and a pull-back after the Seattle draft).

These were the rules I used...if they seem a bit complicated...I will release the database with empty expansion teams with a Draft Import File which you can edit to whatever you want it to be.

- Players 20 and under and 35 and over (as of the end of 2019) were exempt. I didn't want to go through the effort of analyzing contracts so this was a quick way to auto protect prospect and entry level players. Also, I didn't want to load the expansion teams with crusty old farts.

- Teams got 10 protection slots plus 2 "new player" slots. The new player slots allowed me to extend protection to key players that teams just signed or traded for this off-season. It didn't protect every single new player on each team but covered most of the key ones. So essentially each team got to protect 12 players but 2 were forced to be new faces. I wanted to make sure most of the key moves made by real clubs weren't "erased" by the expansion draft before they even played for their actual club.

- At the end of the Seattle phase, each team got to protect one more U23 player to just soften the blows of the Seattle picks a bit.

- No team could lose more than 4 forwards, 3 defenders, 1 goalie or 2 players from any specific position (C, LW, RW, LD, RD). Obviously positions are flexible so some tweaking was done to first listed position of multi-positional players to ensure balanced depth charts.

- Other than Seattle, which has 1 player from each of the 31 teams, the other four expansion clubs picked in a round robin based on the pool of available players and whom they selected from wasn't a priority (otherwise it results in really weird, unbalanced and poor rosters). However, say Portland picks a player from Boston with their first pick - Boston then was off the board from getting a player chosen from until all other 30 teams had a player picked. So essentially the draft had four rounds. This prevents Boston or Tampa losing 4 players in the first 10 picks of the draft due to quality available and makes the choosing of players more strategic.

If you want to use Montreal as an example:
- Protected (10): Price, Domi, Gallagher, Petry, Weber, Drouin, Tatar, Danault, Mete and Fleury.
- New Player Protected (2): Chiarot, Kinkaid (hey...let's face it the Habs were pretty quiet this off-season!)
- Seattle picked Paul Byron in the first phase of expansion.
- Montreal pulled back Juulsen as their U23 protection.
- Montreal loses Armia, Lehkonen, Kulak and Evans in the second phase of expansion.

Now Armia is off to a real good start this season and perhaps you can niggle that hey I'd rather protect him than say the older Tatar but overall I tried to maintain a balance for protection between competitiveness and assets unless it was a team that really is either rebuilding or competing now in which case I might lean protections one way or the other overall. For example, Anaheim leaves club legend Getzlaf exposed to protect younger players like Max Jones and Troy Terry. Getzlaf is a declining asset and that team is trending towards a rebuild. On the flip side - you can argue the Bruins leaving a valuable young PMD like Grzelcyk available over a 33 year-old Krejci isn't the best long-term move but the Bruins are built to win now and Krejci as their second line center is not replaceable.

Some teams were hit fairly hard by expansion - but that's what happens when you expand the league by 5 clubs! Time to rely on depth, dealing and scouting to ensure your team is successful moving forward. As always in this database series, real prospects in future drafts, especially at the top, are very "healthy" in ratings and potential so building up over the first few years should be pretty rewarding.

 

[BKarchitect]

Does the import file (preferably this already baked into the DB) include staff for the teams? I trust neither the AI's ability to hire enough quality staff nor the "generate key staff" option when starting a new game.

Edit: Also, does the DB include the transfer rules fix someone posted a few months ago? It had to do with moving salary caps from league rules to financial rules, or something like that. Apparently it helped teams fill out their rosters better.

- No on the staff, you have to use the generate staff option. I agree the CPU generated staff generally suck. For a team I control, I just fire them all on day one and hire my own staff. For the other CPU expansion teams - they just have to make do for now.

- I've not had an issue at the NHL level with CPU controlled teams filling out their rosters. Some of the more minor leagues I could see potentially. The NHL salary cap is inflated to allow the CPU more "wiggle room" to not make stupid decisions but the expansion draft also helps alleviate some of that cap pressure that causes the computer to behave stupidly.

 

[BKarchitect]

I'll just post the files it people want to play around here...this is not an official release so no "blank" version of the DB with empty expansion teams and a draft kit yet.

DB
Dropbox - NHLX20 v1.0.zip - Simplify your life

Graphics
Dropbox - NHLX20 v1.0 Graphics Pack.zip - Simplify your life

Here are the rosters again bumped from the last page but I'll put them in spoiler tags so as not to kill your screen space too much again:

Seattle Sockeyes

Spoiler

Houston Aeros

Spoiler

Portland Lumberjacks

Spoiler

Quebec Nordiques

Spoiler

Toronto Toros

Spoiler

 

[37 others]

- No on the staff, you have to use the generate staff option. I agree the CPU generated staff generally suck. For a team I control, I just fire them all on day one and hire my own staff. For the other CPU expansion teams - they just have to make do for now.

- I've not had an issue at the NHL level with CPU controlled teams filling out their rosters. Some of the more minor leagues I could see potentially. The NHL salary cap is inflated to allow the CPU more "wiggle room" to not make stupid decisions but the expansion draft also helps alleviate some of that cap pressure that causes the computer to behave stupidly.

Is it even an option in the editor to make an import file for staff? If so, I might make my own to upload.

 

[Voltana]

I'll just post the files it people want to play around here...this is not an official release so no "blank" version of the DB with empty expansion teams and a draft kit yet.

DB
Dropbox - NHLX20 v1.0.zip - Simplify your life

Graphics
Dropbox - NHLX20 v1.0 Graphics Pack.zip - Simplify your life

Here are the rosters again bumped from the last page but I'll put them in spoiler tags so as not to kill your screen space too much again:

Seattle Sockeyes

Spoiler

Houston Aeros

Spoiler

Portland Lumberjacks

Spoiler

Quebec Nordiques

Spoiler

Toronto Toros

Spoiler

Is there going to be a version of the database with just Seattle?

 

[BKarchitect]

Is it even an option in the editor to make an import file for staff? If so, I might make my own to upload.

Yeah, just like for players - export a players & non-players file from the NHL if you need a template...but basically you can add all the info in the spreadsheet and keep for importing any time the database is updated.

If you want to add new staff, you can still do it in the spreadsheet, you just add an "A" to player mode at the beginning.

Were you thinking of filling the import file with real staff to spread to the new expansion teams or just creating a bunch of new staff who have NHL-worthy non-player ratings so these teams can start with a decent staff? I'll note that one area my DB lags well behind Eck's is with staff - I keep NHL GM's and Head Coaches updated but it's been a while since I've done a lot of work on the rest of staff. At some point I may infuse thise DB with the work Eck's group has done with staff just haven't gotten around to it.

Either way, if you do take on the task of creating a staff import file (fake or otherwise) for the expansion teams, I'd be more than happy to add it to future releases of the DB so people can have the option of a better staff to start with as an expansion team.

 

[BKarchitect]

Is there going to be a version of the database with just Seattle?

Not right now, I know there is an appetite for it but it's a lot to maintain both tracks (I know because I used to do it with Seattle only as well). Basically involves me building a bunch of import files I have to layer on to the DB to remove clubs, restructure leagues, disassociate affiliations and then I still have to manually adjust league rules and a few other things.

That's still better than the alternative which is to edit two separate entire databases which would be an insane amount of work.

After I officially roll this database out, I'll consider a Seattle only option again.

Sorry!

EDIT: Just updated the DB download a few posts above - the original post wasn't quite matching the posted rosters. It should all match now.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Thanks for the update @BKarchitect . I'm gonna wait for the full rollout. I wanna set it up my own way (less players avail for draft, only 4 teams choosing as my team I'm going all ufa).

 

[Smirnov2Chistov]

When people play juniors, how long do you typically have your career there?

I was watching a junior EHM play-through on Youtube and I feel like it's a different animal from the NHL to junior. Don't get me wrong, I love the aspect of the draft. It seems like there are so many rounds and the pool of prospects in the later rounds that you are hoping for a home-run.

Is all you need just 'Teamwork' and 'Work-Rate' for the junior leagues?

 

[Empoleon8771]

I'm playing through my first sim with the new databases, and I have to be honest, I think randomness may have been overemphasized with the most recent update. I've been noticing that while using more -14 and -15 rankings does result in more randomness, I feel like it waters down the quality of prospects. This is why I'm excited for the next EHM update that adds more intermediate potential levels. It's kinda frustrating where you have to decide between "this guy is a guaranteed fine to great 1st liner" or "this guy can either become an elite 1st liner or not be a NHLer". For example, you don't want to give a prospect like Kirby Dach a -9 potential because it removes the randomness in a game, but giving him a -15 can easily result in him having a 115 potential (what happened in my most recent simulation). I don't think either one is a reasonable representation for a #3 overall pick.

That's not a criticism of the database, that's just a limitation of the game. There isn't a good potential ability yet for a 5th overall pick or something like that.

 

[BKarchitect]

It’s why I pump up prospects in my database and give lots of the top ones a set high PA. I’d rather err on the side of too many great prospects than a wacky random pool. By setting PAs I can control top prospect rankings to something similar to reality. So Dach will always be the Hawks’ star #1 prospect with #1 center upside, Boqvist with top pair upside and #2, Mitchell, Beaudoin, etc as top four defender upside prospects...every single game. I know that takes too much of the randomness out for some but it’s just my personal preference. Right now there’s not a lot of choice...either you go for the randomness and have things become wacky or do a lot of set and high PAs and remove a lot of the randomness.

And I don’t think this can be emphasized enough - just because a prospect has a high PA does not guarantee they max out. Frankly any prospect with a decent shot at having any chance at being an impact NHLer should be a -8 at minimum. 90% of -14 and -15 prospects amount to nothing. And -7 prospects barely ever make it even as low end NHLers.

I do think the new potential ratings are going to help a lot. And from what I’ve read, the prospect generator has helped a lot for beefing up CPU draft classes.

 

[Bank Shot]

I just started playing again after a long break and am already around 15 years into the game using the updated 19/20 rosters.

It seems to me like the amount of second/third/fourth or later round draft picks that turn into stars is substantially higher than those from the first round.

This makes things a little weird as the game still treats firsts and high firsts like they are gold when they don't seem to be much better than any other round.

 

[filip85]

. This is why I'm excited for the next EHM update that adds more intermediate potential levels.

Is it confirmed for 1.5 update ?

 

[Empoleon8771]

Is it confirmed for 1.5 update ?

I believe so but someone else would be able to answer more definitively than me. I remember someone posting what the new potential abilities would b, I'll try to dig through some old threads to find them. It's probably 2 or 3 threads back.

Edit: found it in the last thread:

Eastside Hockey Manager - Part VII

If this ends up being the case, a -19 would be absolutely perfect for a high 1st rounder. A 130-180 PA range basically says this guy can be anywhere from a great 1st liner to a decent 3rd liner, which I think covers the potential abilities of a #5 pick pretty well.

 

[xECK29x]

I believe so but someone else would be able to answer more definitively than me. I remember someone posting what the new potential abilities would b, I'll try to dig through some old threads to find them. It's probably 2 or 3 threads back.

Edit: found it in the last thread:

Eastside Hockey Manager - Part VII

If this ends up being the case, a -19 would be absolutely perfect for a high 1st rounder. A 130-180 PA range basically says this guy can be anywhere from a great 1st liner to a decent 3rd liner, which I think covers the potential abilities of a #5 pick pretty well.

Yup it's that perfect melding of -8/-9

 

[francis246]

@xECK29x just a heads up in your updated rosters, the Olympic years are messed up. First olympics is 2023 instead of 2022

 

[xECK29x]

@xECK29x just a heads up in your updated rosters, the Olympic years are messed up. First olympics is 2023 instead of 2022

Yea we fixed it, will be in the next update, will patch TBL too, damn start year offsets. I fixed the World Cup also.

 

[Juve]

Is there a way to import the prospect generator if you are a few years into your save?

 

[xECK29x]

Is there a way to import the prospect generator if you are a few years into your save?

Nope, well not easily and likely you will corrupt the save

 

[Juve]

Nope, well not easily and likely you will corrupt the save

I figured. Thanks for confirming. I guess I can scrap my current file. It's hard to find good regen prospects, especially goalies, dmen who can shoot or all around forwards, etc...

 

[xECK29x]

I figured. Thanks for confirming. I guess I can scrap my current file. It's hard to find good regen prospects, especially goalies, dmen who can shoot or all around forwards, etc...

Riz confirmed on Twitter he may be back at work on 1.5 so hopefully some fixes will be coming before Christmas, would be a nice gift to the community!

 

[Juve]

Riz confirmed on Twitter he may be back at work on 1.5 so hopefully some fixes will be coming before Christmas, would be a nice gift to the community!

Awesome!!!

I meant I was going to scrap my save file to start a new one with the generator.

I downloaded @xECK29x steam roster file. Thank you! Do I need to do anything special to be able to use the prospect generator?

 

[filip85]

Riz confirmed on Twitter he may be back at work on 1.5 so hopefully some fixes will be coming before Christmas, would be a nice gift to the community!

I hope but I doubt (after all this will be 3rd year of waiting), because after FM is released, then there are usually few updates/patches for it, so it means more time spent on FM. My predicition is either Easter or summer 2020.

 

[xECK29x]

Awesome!!!

I meant I was going to scrap my save file to start a new one with the generator.

I downloaded @xECK29x steam roster file. Thank you! Do I need to do anything special to be able to use the prospect generator?

Pivot is the DB that has the generator so make sure you are using that, also make sure you use the recommended settings.