European leagues (SHL)

[Niklasjo]

Hey!

I gotta say, ive enjoyed the experience of playing in the NHL quite a bit and that part of the game is mostly really good but...

Playing in the SHL is an extremely frustrating experience in many ways. Constantly requiring more players than actually needed in the lineup, the junior teams working really badly (Players having to adapt to a new team again when being sent to the J20s?) Cant just promote a player to the A team with an automatic rookie contract but instead have to sign them to a minimum of 50k contract?

The NHL teams absolutely love signing and moving the drafted players over a bit to quickly imo. I understand Lucas Raymond going over after being drafted, no issues there but a 3rd round pick should probably get sent back more often than they are atm. Having the B-C level prospects stay maybe one more year in average would make it a lot more fun/rewarding and not as punishing to develop talents.

Speaking from the SHL experience here, teams sell players in a super weird way and not realisticly at all.

Having HIGH talent UFAs who are not interested/to expensive in signing in the SHL or similar leagues instead signing in division 1 is another super weird thing ive seen. 15 years into the game and half of the swedish NT for tournaments like Karjala is in Division 1?

The trading is extremely wonky and ive not been able to do any trades myself. Only way ive gotten them to work is by shopping the players. It works well in the NHL though.

All in all, this game is good with a lot of cool stuff in it. Ive never played a game who does a good job with the European leagues unfortunately. Neither this nor EHM really made them fun to play.

One of the small issues ive noticed thats really annoying with the NHL is when you offer a max rookie contract to a FA and another club does as well, the player will now demand more than you can possible offer and you are out of it without being able to do anything.

[JeffR]

A lot of the problems stem from trying to adapt systems that are primarily designed to handle things like contracts, trading, and farm teams in an NHL-like environment to leagues with significant rule differences. The Canadian juniors and earlier historical seasons have some similar issues. We work around that as best we can, but in some places basic concepts like league rights and ownership are fundamentally different, so making it more realistic involves some complex workarounds. And those can take time to get into the game.

The junior contract thing is definitely something I want to change, but that's going to require a new type of contract and some work on the roster AI to get it to use it properly, so that'll be a project for a new version of the game.

We've done some work in the upcoming update with free agents signing at lower-level unplayable teams, that may help with the Division 1 thing, although I think it's going to need a little more adjustment based on your description of what's happening with the EHT teams.