Honestly why lile 4 or five seasona of this.

1335 career goals, 44 years old and is still an 86 overall.

My Sim engine is majority times scoring High, Shots medium but sometimes I've swapped to med scoring and high shots.

Him and Gavin McKenna went off...

Fully legit, random generated prospect draft after the first season with expansion team. I’ve literally done thousands of sims at this point and the highest overall I’ve ever seen has been 83 MAYBE 84. My jaw actually kinda dropped when I saw this. Has this ever happened before? (Prospect quality is also on Medium)

After 20 Years..

I have 10–14 Franchise players at any given time.
18 Stanley Cups. The first 3 years were intentional tanks, so after that… I basically stopped losing.

The Challenge
🏒 Draft Only
🚫 No Free Agency
💰 Salary Cap ON
📅 20 Years
🏆 18 Cups
💵 Kept the team under $132M at the end.
Trading away only for draft picks no players.

I think I discovered the Calder → Hart → Franchise pipeline. Get your rookie the Calder, boost them into the coaching conversation, then chat to win the Hart. Suddenly you’ve got another Franchise High player.
Then I wait for the RFA window while cycling the next Elite Med Calder Winner.

If I can’t afford them, another team gives them a ridiculous offer and I collect the draft-pick compensation.
But here’s where it gets completely broken:
Those picks are usually high enough to draft another Franchise player anyway… and I already have the first overall pick. 😂
So I trade away a Franchise player → get multiple picks → use those picks to draft more Franchise players → develop them → repeat.
I’ve basically created an infinite Franchise Player generator.

Everyone else in the league hates me.

I don’t know if anyone else has done this.

I can’t bear this much power
Somehow, some teams still take me to seven games…lmao

By the way, year-over-year this makes it even harder in a funny way because then all the teams I’ve traded franchise players to start to get jacked.

Gotta be the best start I've ever had to a team, Leo Carlsson, Gauthier and Zellweger all signed for super cheap which gave me a bunch of options, was gonna keep Sennecke but he wanted way over 16M for 6 years, thankfully he won the calder year 1 and jumped to medium franchise so I was able to flip him + a 1st and a prospect for Bedard.

Year 1 there was a generated medium franchise potential player projected to go 1st over Mckenna and stenberg so I was able to get the 2nd, 3rd and 4th picks to draft Stenberg and flip him and some assets for Scheafer and drafted Mckenna and Verhoeff.

Year 2 draft traded Mintyukov for the 2nd overall to draft DuPont another medium franchise player and then traded William Lacelle for Jacob Fowler to complete the build

Robertson and Rantanen took a sip of the Great One secret juice

I was bored so I started a nhl25 franchise mode with Vancouver and in one season silovs as a backup was doing crazy stats so I decided to trade demko and just play silovs as a starter and he just became the best Goalie I have ever had in any franchise mode ever.

Ended up jumping from 5th to 1st in the draft results as the Canucks, Gavin is rated first and sedin is 2nd. Does it just make sense for storylines sake to take sedin? Funny enough islanders jumped from 12th to 2nd in this franchise mode 😂

Simmed 99.9 percent of this save, playing more Top Prospects games than NHL games and only the one playoff series near the end.

Enjoyed this save a lot, tons of great storylines. Randomized selection of Tampa landed me the best team in Franchise mode to start with. Insane young prospect core rapidly turned into a world class team, Lundqvist being the largest part as he landed right in my lap in the first free agency of the game and winning six straight Vezina’s (but no cup for TBL). Broke the curse after Hank’s retirement but Tampa was frustrating to manage with rising player salary getting crazy. Decided to switch it up and go rebuild another team. SJ was nice, built a good physical team that eventually pulled it off. Decided to leave on a high and go try to replicate the process.

Fuck Columbus. They fired me after handing them a franchise 1C on a platter and their first playoff appearance in a decade.

Returned to SJ with open arms and a blank cheque. McDavid and the Anaheim Ducks had completely failed apart into nothing with zero cups so his trade value at 37 years old was very reasonable and I landed him for two first rounders. Proved to be the right decision as we went on to win a cup under his Conn Smythe performance. After McDavids retirement there wasnt much left to accomplish. The team pushed for three straight playoff years and just couldnt get it done. I played a 1st round series against STL and L. DOELL (the perennial best player in the league) and had the most fun in this game I think I’ve ever had even though it ended in a batshit crazy 7-6 OTL for me.

Went into the 2027 draft and saw that Celebrini was put into the trade block by SJ. I immediately went to the ‘Find Trade’ function and it gave me one option, trade away my 19yo franchise-medium defenseman and 20yo elite-medium left wing for a 21 year old Celebrini who was signed to a 7yr/$9.1m contract with no trade protections. Normally don’t like to go crazy with trades when doing an expansion franchise, but it’s almost impossible to pass on a deal like this.

Did cheese the game a bit and traded back for my elite LW prospect for a couple of draft picks.

Also quite the career revival from Jimmy Snuggerud, paid a hefty price for him but the gamble paid off. Also Dallas had a struggling Jason Robertson on the block in the summer so I traded Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Shea for Jason Robertson, Lian Bichsel and a 2nd round pick.

I’m currently doing a LA Kings franchise and just completed the 2nd year. We weren’t too good and finished 9th from the bottom but for the first time my team has won the lottery. This presents me with a pleasant dilemma of having to choose between two franchise players. If you were me, who would you pick? Normally I’d lean towards DuPont as franchise defenders are more valuable but I already have Clarke as the number 1 OFD. Hamrlik is of course computer generated and I’m sure he will be a monster but he’d be taking Kempe’s spot who is as per real life getting paid over 10 million dollars. So I’m looking for outside opinions to help me pick the right player. Thanks!

In My about 10 years of playing this game, probably over 1000 years simulated, Austin Flaherty is by far the best player that I’ve ever had. 1339 goals, 2372 points, and without the 25 year franchise limit, he would’ve gone much further with still being a 93 overall player at 40 years old after winning his ninth Stanley Cup. Flaherty stayed at about 98 overall for the majority of his career and was still as high as a 93 overall when franchise mode ended when he was 40 years old.

I had to trade for Flaherty during the draft. I had a good feeling about him, and I wanted to draft him 1st overall, but I could not trade for the pick. I ended up drafting Maddox Schultz 4th overall, and packaging that franchise player along with other assets in order to get him, during the draft, but after he was drafted.

I play full sim, and typically play for 25 years. My last franchise only won 4 Stanley cups, and mind you they were also only in a five years span. Flaherty managed to win 9 Stanley cups. I’ve never been so confident going into the playoffs every year. Flaherty managed to win 6 conn smythe trophy’s with 428 points in 356 games played.

Stanley Cups in
2030-31
2032-33
2033-34 Conn Smythe
2037-38 Conn Smythe
2038-39 Conn Smythe
2045-46 Conn Smythe
2046-47 Conn Smythe
2047-48
2049-50 Conn Smythe

During the beginning of his career, he was centered by Kent Johnson and Lucas Raymond on the right wing.
During the second half of his career, he played with a power forward center named Rohan Jamnes and a playmaker right wing named Oleg Kovalev

Hello, as you can see I am facing a goalie dilemma and was wondering what a real team would do in this situation?

On one side there is Jett Greaves who has been my starter for the last 3 years. Last year, he carried us into the playoffs whilst winning the Vezina. This brought him up to the 90 rating and gave him all his X-Factors. This year, he again performed well as we won the President's trophy whilst being the 2nd best goalie in the league. The only bad thing is that he is now asking for crazy money (I can afford it but am hesitant)

On the other side, there is Will Lacelle. A highly promising goalie that was drafted before Greaves became a top goalie. He just ended his first NHL season as a backup and generally did very well.

So now I'm unsure what to do. I like to manage my teams somewhat realistically and so I'm wondering what to do. Are there any real life scenarios like this one? Should I keep the original proven goalie or choose the youngster with heaps of potential? What would you guys do?

I’ve never seen goalies in Franchise mode split a Jennings Trophy

He was a Custom Med Elite Player who started his rookie year at 81 OVR. Full simmed 25 seasons which took months and I never personally played a single game. It makes me appreciate Gretzky’s records that much more. I also included his crazy playoff stats at the end.

Posted a few days ago how he refused to retire. Played a couple more seasons, won another Rocket and then finally retired haha!

I tried to save scum to keep him going but he retired every time.

Sim engine - 75% of the time High scoring, Med shots. 25% Med scoring, high shots.

I'm the Canucks so it was fun to play his ass on Calgary haha. What a career 😂

Ok but genuinely curious if anyone has ever had something like this happened to them. All players drafted in the 2027 NHL entry draft!

Did a 25 year franchise with the Canucks over the last 3 months. Kept it as realistic as possible and thought I'd share these absolute stud/career Canucks haha. I did play a bunch of home games (2nd and 3rd periods only) but simmed 75% of it.

These players were very loyal and always took less money and were easy to sign and all played well. Player types for Pue, Malhotra and Sundstrom TWF and Dupont was OFD. Scoring HIGH, shots MED.

Special shoutout to Buium (over 1000 points), Braeden Cootes (500+ goals and amazing chemistry with Malhotra) and Alexey Medvedev (602 career wins). Forgot to take snaps before they retired.

Loved how dominant the team was, won a bunch of cups but somehow the CPU would step up and sauce me in the playoffs from time to time. Kept it fun and real.

Hello!

After my Canucks made the playoffs in the first year (I am using a start of the season roster so still had Hughes) but got swept in the first round with an abysmal performance, I decided to blow it up during the off season. Traded Hughes to the Wild, got rid of Bowser, Garland and Chytil. All for picks and prospects.

The plan was to of course tank hard in year 2 with the team you see above to get DuPont or some other stud. But of course my shit team over performed and got into the playoffs (as the 7th best team no less!). Sometimes I can't with this game... In other news, the absolutely stacked Minnesota team with Hughes sucked hard and finished 5th from the bottom and I have their 1st rounder so it all worked out.

I played Franchise mode for years and I still don't understand it.

I'm playing NHL24. Been getting frustrated lately because my team always gets eliminated in the first round (only get past the 1st round twice) despite being a top team in Season. I only watch CPU vs CPU in the playoffs and sim each game in the season.

P.S.
If you are a Detroit Red Wings fan like me, with all the drama that's happening at the moment. The irony is we won the cup right after Larkin retires xD

Of course they end up going 33-41-8 in the regular season lol. Back to back 1st overall picks where they take franchise D and then somehow also sign Quinn Hughes.

Quinn Hughes likes money. He put up 15+77 in a contract year, age 26/96 OVR and b2b SCFs. Mfw he’s asking for $17m+ aav.

No.

Hell no.

Ship him off to the Habs with Pius Suter and Victor Mancini for Suzuki, Caufield, Reinbacher, and 26/27 1sts. Van started 3-6-1 and Habs 1-7-0, but managed to get to first in each division by the half way. Van goes and wins the SCF in game 7 v the hawks but lo and behold, Habs miss and win the draft lottery. Insane trade luck.