The 2009 season has begun, free agency period is long over, and still the following players are not signed onto teams:

Havlat
Nylander
Hannan
Brind'Amour
Legace
Smyth
Hartnell
Selanne
Conroy
Gionta
Fedotenko
Sundin
Kovalev
Zetterberg
Straka
Knuble
Sakic
Cole
Shanahan
Madden
Guerin
...and the list goes on and on...

I can't deal with this, even a few of these players signing later in the season can completely change a team - can completely change the league - when they sign for cheaper than they actually should.

I've never seen that many guys stay unsigned. Have you tried using the saved game editor to raise the salary cap to current levels? I believe it's at $53M this year and is supposedly going up next year.

That's just stupid, there's always a lots of really talented players and even "superstars" who are free agents. It's a pity to see players of that caliber waste a whole or almost a whole season in UFA.

I can't say that's ever happened to me. Are you using a mod or did you edit the game in some way?

no mod or edit, just 3.4 patch and unfaked the college names. cap is standard 44 million, figured the closed system of EHM without inflation would be fine without a higher cap, make it more challenging for me.

what really sucks is that I have zero room under the cap to take any of these guys at their discounted prices.

By December 30th, only Hannan has found a team. But players like Shanahan are only asking for the league minimum. If and when these guys sign, these teams will have good veterans at basement prices.

Oh well, more of a challenge for me I guess.

Bizarre. I run the stock database as well and I've never seen anything like that. I will occasionally see unsigned players, but it's usually players that are 39, 40, 41 years old that nobody wants.

The overwhelming majority of the quality UFAs in my game are gone by July 15th.

What is also bad is that there are a handful of teams that have career ECHL/AHL goalies as their number one starters in the NHL cause they can't afford the good UFA goalies.

This is just how the game goes. The mechanics surrounding the cap are terrible.

After a while, many big names will be either rotting on the FA list; signed later for a fraction of what they're worth; or simply playing in Europe since no NHL team will sign them.


... just one more reason why it's a shame we aren't getting a new game, or a new patch at the very least.

I remember this type of thing used to happen back in the old beta days. I think it's also a bit to do with the retirement algorithm. Guys on that list like Sakic, Brind'Amour, Shanahan etc...if there were no takers by the start of the season in real life would probably just retire.

quote:

Originally posted by Jackal05:
The 2009 season has begun, free agency period is long over, and still the following players are not signed onto teams:

Havlat
Nylander
Hannan
Brind'Amour
Legace
Smyth
Hartnell
Selanne
Conroy
Gionta
Fedotenko
Sundin
Kovalev
Zetterberg
Straka
Knuble
Sakic
Cole
Shanahan
Madden
Guerin
...and the list goes on and on...

I can't deal with this, even a few of these players signing later in the season can completely change a team - can completely change the league - when they sign for cheaper than they actually should.

I have that same kind of thing happen every seaosn (although not always as extreme). There will always be 4-8 top tier players who aren't signed until January or February (or even later) who are never signed or who go to Europe. Some very good NHLers (notably Havlat and Nicklas Backstrom) have gone back over to Europe for their careers b/c no NHL could afford them and at one point Jason Spezza retired at like 31 because he "couldn't support himself playing hockey".

I'm wondering if changing the cap to 53 or 56 million and starting over would help - anyone have any experience with making the cap higher?

Unfortunately Ive seen the same thing. Top tier guys are still w/o a team in December. I raised the cap and they start filtering back into the game.

PS: How can I view a list of pending Free Agents. The only way i know a player is a FA is when he gets an offer.

In the 'Player & Staff Search' screen you can filter for players with expiring contracts.

I've seen it too. Kopitar for instance stayed on FA market when Kings decided not to renew his contract when he was in his prime - then he moved to Frolunda (SEL) and stayed there for a season, went to FA market again and this time, Washington Capitals offered him a contract, but he decided to stay in Sweden for another year. Playing as Sparta I have also managed to sign Phil Kessel when he was 28 (he was sent to and also Henrik Zetterberg returned home before he was really needed to.

quote:

Originally posted by IslesEnforcer:
Unfortunately Ive seen the same thing. Top tier guys are still w/o a team in December. I raised the cap and they start filtering back into the game.

By that, do you mean you edited the cap and started over, or is there a way to edit it in saved games?

I'd say in the games I've played that maybe once every three years or so there will be a top guy who will go unsigned. I signed Lecavalier in January at a great discount once like this when he was only in his late 20's. I've seen Spezza available at only age 20-something too around January. But never really more than one, maybe two good guys in a given year. And most years it doesn't happen.

Something is wrong with your game fo sho.