EHM Wishlist thread

Reposting some things I've posted in other threads:

Manager tendencies, like "signs older players", "signs players of own nationality", "tries hard to sign his favourite players", and so on.

League expansions, including expansion drafts. I'd love to take Las Vegas to NHL glory.

A "disable first window transfer budget" option, just like in FM. So European clubs stick to their roster at least until the first transfer window.

Option to loan players back to European leagues (sorry if it's already in the game, I can't find it).

3D match engine!

But since that is probably a ways off, how about the ability to "praise" or "criticise" a player as in FM? Right now, we can only do this on the off chance the media talks about the player.

Training

• More feedback from staff and players

• Attribute progression charts to show increase/decline of the past calendar year

Scouting/Shortlist

• Assign scouting assignments from scout profile.

• Individual assignment queue so that a scout has minimal idle time.

• Accommodate multiple shortlists.

Contracts

• Expand No Trade/No Movement Clause

Trading

• Salary retention in NHL trades

• AI Draft day trades

GM Interaction with Board/Coach/Players

• Conversation with board to set goals/expectations (i.e., "this team is a few years away from competing, bear with me while I blow it up and rebuild").

• End of season interviews with players/coach at the end of season/elimination from playoffs: Set goals for the next season; Let a pending free agent know you do/don't want to re-sign him; Identify an aspect a player should work on independently; let a player know you may be looking to trade him; et al

• Request player waive NTC

Tactics/Roster Selection

• Identify to coach/player the preferred position (to override natural position ability). Especially necessary for the wings. If I let my coach set the roster and run tactics, the lines get unbalanced because of a player's natural position.

Farm Team/Prospect Interaction

• Specify preferred role when assigned player to farm team

• Indicate training regime for prospects/farm players (still affected by assigned team's coaches though)

• Rookie camp for all unsigned/free agent rookies, optional for other players/free agents

I would like to be able to assign scouts permanently to previously only temporary assignments like the draft. I send the same guys every year, and keep them on it all year anyway, so it just ends up being routine busy work.

Retire jerseys.....

In history department there should be some kind of "legend list", like at eliteprospects where you have "star and cult players". Of course you are the one who will decide if some player is legend after he retires or leave your club after long spell.

It'd be nice for your league scout for the one you're in, or your AGM to flag guys who have their trade values lower than expected. Like with disagreements with draft rankings.

Right now (and keep in mind to this point I've played ECHL and OHL), there seems to be zero reason to not compliment/defend players. I think the place to go with this is to make it a more careful balancing act where if you just blindly defend & praise everyone, the fans get onto you. There's pretty much always a scapegoat for the fans, and that could be an interesting thing to play with.

It would make for interesting gameplay where the fans and media can pile on a player, the guy gets upset, which prompts you to defend him, and then you get scorned because you don't 'see it', or you stay out of it and the guy gets mad at you for not saying anything. I can keep my players and the fans happy very easily as it is. It'd be interesting to run into occasions where outside factors like that would encourage a trade, rather than always purely hockey reasons.

Better line-matching controls. Defense and Forwards should have individual line-matching controls. Hockey does not work in 5-man units, it is 4 forward units and 3 defensive units. Tactical settings for defensive units would be nice as well.

I'd like to see a coach report for each player that shows what kind of player they are (two way forward etc.) and have focused training to improve / alter this.

Well, of course I would love a better KHL simulation and deeper tactics, but a thing that may be more doable is to have more history stored. More numbers, more records, more stats. I know that this will lead to a slower game, but I frankly don't care. I would be very happy to trade speed for numbers. Maybe to achieve this you could let the player decide if he prefers speed or data depth.

Better line-matching controls. Defense and Forwards should have individual line-matching controls. Hockey does not work in 5-man units, it is 4 forward units and 3 defensive units. Tactical settings for defensive units would be nice as well.

Outside of North America, and in international competition, there's 4 defensive pairings. The 5-man unit is a reality, or at least has been, in places like Russia. Then there's places like the ECHL where you can only dress 16 skaters, which usually ends up being 10 forwards and 6 defensemen.

More control over TOI. Right now, the amount of PP/PK is skewing ice time heavily to the top 4/top 2 lines. However, I don't have a real option to play the 3rd line a little more or something immediately after 3 consecutive powerplays, or to opt for a 3rd PP unit, etc...

As mentioned in another thread, control over zone starts.

More flexible contract negotiations. Adding extra years and compensating with more money should mean something to a player who wants a short term bridge deal.

From a statistical standpoint:

- historical shootout results for individual skaters/goalies

- advanced stats (Corsi, Fenwick, stats/60)

- WOWY stats - if a new line isn't working, whose fault is it?

- line matching stats - its hard to tell if my line is just playing poorly overall or is just getting demolished by the opposition 1st line.

It would also be nice to have a semiautomatic way to assign lines when you play. You can roll your lines as per tactics, but you can intervene and decide what line you're icing.

Youth intake for euro teams where applicable like in Football Manager. My junior teams are almost empty.

Champions Hockey League!

Excellent return from you guys, many ideas. I'll start with the least likely ones since otherwise it'll get buried.

• Relocation and or resuscitation of old franchises. Not the biggest deal, but I'd love to be able (if the team fulfills certain criteria) to be able to move a team if I wanted to. Perhaps the most illogical movers could be blocked (Original 6 etc) or then not, it's a game. No-one's looking. I'm just a nostalgic, but relocation could be a nice touch.
  
• The market/fan interest/whatever is used to determine ticket sales and such for teams needs a recalibration. I'll give you an example. The men kind enough to make the most current NHL roster also have the New York Islanders moving from Nassau Coliseum to Brooklyn quite correctly. However, also the number of empty seats per game moves with them, even though the capacity of the Brooklyn arena is significantly smaller than Nassau's. That seems very illogical. So whereas I pulled 15-16 000 to Nassau in the first season when I wasn't even doing so well, now I'm averaging around 13 000 in Brooklyn. This after I've won the Stanley Cup.
  What I mean to say is that success doesn't seem to impact ticket sales much, but also that it appears with arena moves and such the empty seats figure correlates with arena size rather than actual attendance figures.
  
• The teams income on NHL TV rights is well off the new deals. The correct figure is around 20 million US dollars per year these days I believe (my income is 9 mil per) and there are local TV deals on top of that of course. My Islanders keep losing about 15-20 or so mil per year and the board needs to inject new money at least once per season. Wouldn't be quite as necessary if the tv figures reflected the new deals. The local deals could play like FM kit sponsorships, make a deal for a few years related to market size, fan interest, attendance etc. Especially if and when annual fiscal results affect budgets, these could be corrected.
  
• The player-manager (and board request) conversation system needs more depth. As with old CM/FM games the players are stuck as numbers and letters. The interaction could mirror those of more modern FM games as there really isn't much now that affects GM/coach/player relations other than winning or losing. Now you can send big time prospects, established NHL players with big contracts who clear waivers etc to the minors with no backlash at all.
  
• The salary cap and salaries in general. The cap never moves, which of course creates issues a few years down the road. I've got Anaheim putting Corey Perry and LA Kings putting Anze Kopitar and other on the block because of accumulating salaries during the offseason before the third season.
  This has a two-sided effect. Star players and those who develop to that seem to get their big paychecks which of course is correct, but at the same time many other young NHL players are very easy to retain at ridiculously low costs. A few examples. I've had Danny DeKeyser score 114 points in two seasons from the blue line and was able to tie him to a four year contract paying him 3 million dollars per year. I've been able to tie down young, talented players to similarly cheap and quite long deals on many occasions.
  I'm not sure how the engine determines what a player asks for (CA/PA or more likely reputation), but perhaps if you'd somehow be able to glean additional information from players of a similar age and CA/PA in terms of how they have played and what they're being paid. Of course as a GM I don't mind being able to retain future stars on the cheap, but it's a bit off base. In general it seems like there are very few legitimate mid tier free agents and most either get paid huge salaries or optionally something between 1 and 2 million. The 3-5 million tier seems a bit light.
  
• It's still very easy to package players and assets to get better ones. In 2½ years I've added half a roster of young future stars and many top picks (I nabbed the draft picks to draft McDavid AND Eichel by targetting the most likely lottery teams before the start of the first season).
  
• You can still hire big name NHL coaches as assistants when they're free agents. Right now in year three of a game I have eg. Claude Julien and Joel Quenneville as assistants. I doubt that would happen. Of course there are some HC's who need to take a step down, but not the biggest names I'm sure. Conversely I'm surprised you cannot hire an existing NHL coach as your National Team (USA or Canada) head coach for eg the World Championships if they are out of the playoffs. That could be a possibility, as that does happen in real life.
  
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I'm seeing that guys who are graduated from Canadian junior still have in their 'future' that they're aiming to play Canadian Major Junior. It only seems to be until they sign a contract however.

I also had a crash when I attempted to exit the game right after it had changed to Jan 1st AM.

You can still hire big name NHL coaches as assistants when they're free agents. Right now in year three of a game I have eg. Claude Julien and Joel Quenneville as assistants. I doubt that would happen. Of course there are some HC's who need to take a step down, but not the biggest names I'm sure. Conversely I'm surprised you cannot hire an existing NHL coach as your National Team (USA or Canada) head coach for eg the World Championships if they are out of the playoffs. That could be a possibility, as that does happen in real life.

If you keep clicking the shorten contract length options, you can have them monthly or rolling. With rolling contracts I've signed coaches who have found jobs elsewhere, but still are on the staff screen for my U-20. EHM: EA may have changed this from 2007 to apply to long, fixed, contracts, but you can at least bring them in while they're free agents and not feel like you're wasting years of their life for a handful of games. The problem with it is that the coaches with international teams don't leave their full-time team for the length of the tournament. They are presumably in both places at once.

There are a few British phrases that take a second to figure out. One of which is 'Thinks the team should be topping the table'. I think 2007 actually had it as 'Thinks the team should be at the top of the standings', which immediately makes sense to North Americans. "Topping the table" sounds like could mean that they want you to stock up on high-end players, and comes off as very British, which isn't bad, but the specific phrase isn't really accessible to NA.

Wishlist: Make the game as close as you can to Football Manager. I'd be ready to pay 50-60$ for a game like that. Easily

I would like to see the option of letting the coach run practice, but overriding that for specific players. For example, if I wanted to try and convert one of my wingers to a center, I would like to be able to assign him his own training program, without having to take over practice for the whole team.

I would also love to have a system where you can tell the coach what you would like to have him do in games - from there, he can choose to do as you ask, or ignore you. ie "I want you to put Player X on the first line power play, and I want you to quit playing Player Y on the first line." That allows for more gm-coach drama and interaction, and it gives you more reason to hire or fire a guy than "he's got the best stats".

I just thought of something else I'd love to see. I would like to see a little more interaction with the players during contract negotiations. For example, if a player asks for 1.8 million for 2 years, instead of just trying to guess how much money I have to throw at him to talk him into a 5 year deal, I'd like to be able to ask "would you sign a 5 year contract, and for how much?"

I had a workaround to the OHL/CHL overage limit. My guy had the option for another year, he activated it, and continued to play. He counted towards my overage limit, but he had two years of that.

My U-20 team also had an issue in 2020. The first game of the group stage was Dec 4, with the next game on the 27th.

edit: It'd be nice to be able to change the color of names on the depth chart, or some other similar system. The circumstance that made me think of it is when I'm planning for the next season with my OHL team. Since there's a roster limits to work around (2 foreign, 3 overage, 4 underage players), being able to go in and mark who is what would make planning a complex roster like that easier.

It'd also be cool if in the news item where a player wants to know his status as he's too old for being considered a prospect by the organization anymore to also contain the head coaches report of the player.

I would like to play with Bosnia national teams and would be good to have all national competitions (from World cup to division III). U-20 and U-18 all national teams should be present.

Also if there is no players in database fake players like in fm 2015 would be good.

Pre game editor is must have so we could create leagues and custom national competitions.

It occurred to me that player favorite staff could get a tweak (if it doesn't exist already). Foreign players who play with countrymen should more likely become each other's favorite staff.

edit: it should probably be based on shared language rather than purely nationality so things like an American and Canadian playing together in Europe would apply.

An idea if you're planning to go about limiting things like staff for leagues like the ECHL is that your players will approach you and recommend guys that they have played with that have become available.

Minor league teams could also get solicited by unemployed, generally freshly generated scouts, where they'll try to prove themselves as worth being paid by providing free reports for a limited time in their home region/league.

Maybe like a Fallout thing where the percentage of success speech check appears for appealing suspensions? lol

but seriously, Surgeon Simulator like control signing contracts. Trade deadline day would be fun. And the facial tech from LA Noire when negotiating with other GMs.

Missing attribute: Flow (hair)

Not sure if posted but Line Chemistry/Harmony is needed.

Draft boards would be nice. A kind of shortlist that allows the GM to target players for each draft pick they own. Perhaps associate with scouting. A scout could recommend the likely draft round/ position when reporting on players.

Sliders for goalscoring in the game, penalties, AI difficulty, etc.

pre-game editor. With creating custom leagues... options

All National Teams divisions with promotion relegation (We lost to North Korea on OT on promotion match But I want took my NT to first division in game)

A simple button with the option to go back to the menus instead of just exiting the game completely would be nice to have

I don't think this would be hard and it would be a great option.

I would love to be able to change the cap from in game options when ever i want. So this way i can change it yearly or even just set it to a number i would like it to be at.

But the NHL Salary Cap changes from year to year so i think adding an option so we can do this would be great.

Please think about adding this.

Please delete. duplicate on accident.

Captains! Captains do not change just because someone gets injured. Just make it so that you set the captain and assistant captains each season like you would on FM.

Also I find that sometimes players ask for absurd contracts, so take a look at adjusting that?

I saw someone else post an idea over at hfboards - it would be nice to be able to approach teams, and ask for permission to talk to their staff, and let them do the same - ie, you could approach a team, and ask for permission to hire one of their assistant coaches as head coach of your own team, or they could ask permission to speak to your assistant GM about their GM job.

Also, perhaps during the draft, each team could have their own prioritized draft list, that way a team can assign more appropriate value to their draft picks. Based on how many picks are left before the pick in question, they could look at the 1 to 10 players that they consider best around their projected pick. ie, if they have the very next pick, they obviously are only going to pick one player, so they can weigh your offer against the value of that player. On the other hand, if there are still another 20 or 30 picks left before they make their pick, perhaps they can look at the player they project to take at that pick, and the 4 or 5 players they project as going before or after, and place the value of that pick as being the same as the best among those 10 players. That way, pick values really are dynamically based on who the team thinks they can pick.

I'm going into my 3rd season (using an NHL roster pack, so it's with the Flyers). In my critique here I've tried to avoid calling out problems that could or probably are just due to the nature of the roster pack I'm using. Some of the problems I've run into, though, make the game either unrealistic or flat out difficult to play:

• Veteran FAs are cheap: Usually it seems like the top free agent or two will ask for a realistic $7 to $8 mil, but after that there is a sharp drop off. Mike Green coming off of a 50 point year only asked for a 4 year deal worth like $2.7 or $2.8 annually. I signed him for $3 for 4 years. I signed both Kesler and Backes coming off of big years for under $5 million for modest contract lengths. Veterans should ask for more money on the FA market.
  
• A lot of teams don't highly value their prospects: Every summer a slew of highly touted prospects with 1st line or top pairing potential either are left to go to free agency, or are put on the block. I've signed a few top end prospects on cheap deals over the past couple summers, and acquired a bunch more for 4th liners and low picks. Leading to the next point:
  
• Role players are heavily overvalued: I was able to trade 3rd line role players like Ryan White and Bellemare for high end prospects and 1st round picks. Ryan White was the key part of a trade acquiring the prospect who was picked 2nd overall in 2016. I think I ended up paying like Ryan White, Chris VandeVelde, and maybe a 3rd or 4th round pick for the can't miss prospect. The value of average players needs to be deflated.
  
• Financials destroy every trade: I can't trade any veterans. It just isn't possible. No team will accept a trade for any player paid more than $4.5 mil, just because of the "financial problems". I've made sure to offer fair or even negative value trades to teams with lots of cap space. It just doesn't work. I tried trading Claude Giroux (coming off of an Art Ross year) straight up for Alex Pietrangelo. They wouldn't take him cause Claude is paid about $2 mil more annually. Just to see if it would work, I offered Wayne Simmonds AND Claude Giroux. They didn't accept because of financial concern (keep in mind that this was in the offseason, where there would've been a higher offseason cap). Then I tried offering Giroux straight up for Jonas Brodin, they refused cause of the financial concern, when they had plenty of cap space. Then I tried offering Giroux to every team in the league with the "offer to all" command. The ONLY offer I received for a Art-Ross and Hart winning Giroux was from New Jersey. They offered a 2nd round pick, and refused to give any more. So there's something up there, as well. I tried offering him to low salary teams who were close to the cap floor, and no one would take him cause of the financial concern.
  
• Teams part with high picks too easily: I've traded for the 1st overall pick for 2 straight years now. In 2015 I actually traded for the 2nd overall pick, too. I didn't have to pay very much. I again also traded for the 2nd overall picked prospect post-draft in 2016. So I really ended up with the 1st and 2nd overall picks for two straight years without having to give a whole lot up.
  
• Teams often don't mean it when they put players on the block: Many times, a team will place a core player on the block for whatever reason. Many times I'll see other teams bombard them with trade offers for this player for sometimes even months. The original team will continue to reject every offer sent at them because they "don't want to upset their core of players". It's a little silly to see a team put a player on the block that they won't trade for anything.
  

Because of a combination of these issues, I'm finding it difficult to continue playing. I signed Backes and Kesler assuming I would be able to trade Giroux and Simmonds, which would really be hard to do without ******* off the board and the fans. I have a slew of young players like McDavid, Eichel, the 2016 1st overall and 2nd overall, a bunch of top-tier prospects acquired through free agency or by cheap through trade, who need new contracts soon. I no longer have a real way to make space for any of them except to trade Giroux and Simmonds for essentially nothing. I just tried offering Giroux to all again and actually got no offers, so I might even need to send him through waivers before next summer and hope he gets claimed.

I love this game, I just hope you guys sort some of this so I can play a career longer than 3 years.

• Veteran FAs are cheap: Usually it seems like the top free agent or two will ask for a realistic $7 to $8 mil, but after that there is a sharp drop off. Mike Green coming off of a 50 point year only asked for a 4 year deal worth like $2.7 or $2.8 annually. I signed him for $3 for 4 years. I signed both Kesler and Backes coming off of big years for under $5 million for modest contract lengths. Veterans should ask for more money on the FA market.
  

Absolutely this. I wrote about it here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/425203-Europe-Players-making-much-more-out-of-contract-renewal-than-through-free-agency

A really small wishlist thing to consider (keep in mind that I haven't played Europe in EA yet, so it may already be there) would be something like where certain leagues have their top scorer wear a golden helmet, and that would be indicated in the in-game match engine somehow by filling the center of their circley bit, or the edging/border with gold.

I don't know the extent of how favorite staff works, but if players are bros, then that maybe should be a factor in if a player will sign for less/sign at all with a team. IRL, after Ryan Callahan joined the Lightning, he helped persuade his Ranger teammates Brian Boyle and Anton Stralman to sign with Tampa Bay, and that was noted in the media. It seems to happen quite a bit, (I always hear about guys texting each other about potential teams) and it would be good flavor text to have the 'reasons' why a player signs with x instead of y, if available. Like if they have a friend on the team/former teammate or whatever. It would also make how you handle your players discipline-wise a factor as some players would want to avoid environments where they're more harshly treated, while others would relish in it. Some other reasons could be having a star coach and/or good practice facilities/arena. Stable management or coaching could be another as it would encourage managers not to dump and change staff at every opportunity someone better becomes available. Having it be a universal thing (and relevant to each league), and not limited to just news/signings about your team or the NHL would differentiate the teams and you'd put together the picture of what other teams do/don't do well because right now it's all very samey.

The reason to make an offer public also eludes me.

Goalie stats should show shutouts.

I would like to have the abillity to expand the number of teams in a leauge so that for example 12 teams in a leauge season 1

and when the second season starts there will be 14 teams in the league.

Also the ability to change the leauge rules and how many teams plays in the playoffs or in the regulation to stay in the leauge.

NHL Lockouts

NHL Lockouts

Not going to happen if they want the league's license.

I really like the way the final transfer day is handled in FM, and I think deadline day in EHM could work the same (ie. the option to participate, and the longer sim day)

definatly a way to scout every individual player on your reserve list scouting each one over and over gets ......

In 07 I loved taking control of Suomi-Sarja team and trying to earn promotion in to higher leagues.

Two wishes:

Buy/construct arena - In 07 you could not increase arena capacity if your team didn't own arena in first place.

Found and invest in junior team - If you didn't have U20 or any other affiliated junior team you junior production were nonexistent.

In 07 I loved taking control of Suomi-Sarja team and trying to earn promotion in to higher leagues.

Two wishes:

Buy/construct arena - In 07 you could not increase arena capacity if your team didn't own arena in first place.

Found and invest in junior team - If you didn't have U20 or any other affiliated junior team you junior production were nonexistent.

Regarding junior team, to be able to hire coach for juniors. And if you hire coach who has strong attribute for "working with youngsters" then within few years you should get better juniors. Sure not all of them needs to be first rounders, but very good players on KHL level for example

Having junior teams actually signing foreign players! Players from lesser nations should move to Sweden/Finland/C. Republic/Slovakia/Russia for better opportunities

Assistant GM should give you recommendations on which players you should pursue or call up.

Team report should tell you where the team is struggling, whether they're struggling offensively or defensively. If the PK is doing badly or the PP is doing badly.

I like the Press Conferences from FM15, so maybe there should be a variant of it for after the draft or signing of a player to a major deal.

Ex: GM you drafted XYZ in the first while most projected him to be a second rounder, whats your reasoning behind that move?

A player's potential should have a 1-10 ranking. The positional rankings are good but it'd help when making decisions.

There should be a very slight chance of an average-above average player showing up at your open training camp. Not like there's always a good player showing up yearly, but like an Undrafted College player shows up.

I have to say up front, i am very pleased sofar with how the updates are improving the game. now suggestions,

would it be possible to be able to implement the possibility of sending your scout out to other clubs, outside of the NHL to scout the clubs? and also an online component to the game ? thus making it possible to have league rosters and ccompete with other people or friends?

cheers

---EDIT----

i just realised with 15.2 theres a massive problem with the contracts, all of my players contracts now say 0.00 with a cap hit of 0.0 insteaad of the actual contract!!!!

J20 and J18 leagues for Sweden would be nice

Having junior teams actually signing foreign players! Players from lesser nations should move to Sweden/Finland/C. Republic/Slovakia/Russia for better opportunities

Good idea !

Players sometimes declines invitation for NT....for example if player played long season with deep playoff run and during the season he battled with injuries...

Having junior teams actually signing foreign players! Players from lesser nations should move to Sweden/Finland/C. Republic/Slovakia/Russia for better opportunities

Good one. I'd love to see young prospects take the SuperElit route just like Fiala, Kopitar and Pastrnak.