Eastside's Hockey Elite Collide

Alright, it's 2021, so time to get around to that to-do list.

First, the (mostly) good news - we have 25 active GMs since Christmas, 20 of whom have logged in this year. Unfortunately, the new Florida GM seems to have abandoned us (that team must be cursed). That leaves interim GMs in Arizona (TB) and Columbus (DAL), the ongoing vacancy in STL, and WPG (Mason, who needs prodding every once in a while). So we're in a good-but-not-quite-great position, considering how other freeware leagues have been going. I'm going to bump the thread on HFboards again, and as usual, if you have good recruitment ideas, or really any recruitment ideas, have at it.

As I promised a while ago, I have posted the simulation procedures. This is partly as full disclosure for anyone who is considering becoming a simmer. I think I've had my fill of simming every night, so I am now officially recruiting new committee members/simmers. If you are at all interested in simming, or doing any other administrative things - that includes trade rulings, new GM applications, settling rule disputes/modifications - please let me know. We do definitely need at least one simmer from the Eastern Conference for the playoffs, and hopefully well before then.

Regarding rule changes, I have a few in mind - mostly for the next offseason. Vopatizing players (over 30 and on the farm) have been a thorn in my side all season as I found that their fighting rating can drop below 0, screwing up reading of players.ehm. So I'm probably going to tweak retirement rules to get rid of players at risk of vopatizing. I'm also considering some kind of rule so that players over 30 who clear waivers and have 800k or less salaries "go to Europe", though I'm not sure if there ought to be a small penalty so it's not just an easy way to get rid of contracts.

I will definitely look at suspension before the playoffs, since that came up last season. Personally, I'm of the opinion that suspensions should be longer - like 1 game per week of injury, rather than the current 2 games per month. I'm not sure how to scale them for the playoffs. Playoff game suspensions are a more serious punishment, but then again, right now players can get just 2 games for basically knocking someone out of the playoffs entirely. Of course, EHM has way more intent to injure penalties than the NHL, which basically never calls them, but I think the overall rate of suspensions is not unreasonable since the game very rarely suspends players on its own.

Buyouts are also something I looked into last year but didn't quite settle on. I want to have a new system in place for next offseason. The main change will be making the buyout penalty scale smoothly with the player's salary, rather than having sharp percentage jumps at certain salaries like it does now. I want to make it cheaper to buyout players making 800k or less, but not completely penalty-free. We will likely have a transition period in the offseason where you can choose which buyout rules to use, so just keep in mind that you may have more options if you're considering buying out a player with more than a year left.

Lastly, the draft. This year is definitely going to be strange. As usual, I've paid no attention to the world juniors, but there's very little to go by even for top picks since most players have barely played more than 10 games, and a lot haven't played at all yet. I don't really know what to do, but at the least, this year's draft crop will have even more guesswork than usual. Anyway, I'll definitely solicit help with the draft class in the summer.

Comments or questions?

I'll volunteer for trade rulings and handling applications. I have yet to achieve the tightrope act of getting EHM to work on my laptop without runtime error 53, so simming is out for now.

Do you have a thread on EHM the Blueline as well?

I think the geezers to Europe idea is good. I would be in favour of little tweaks like that which give the GM more flexibility. Most teams seem to have little room to move both cap-wise and roster-wise.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm [...] We do definitely need at least one simmer from the Eastern Conference for the playoffs, and hopefully well before then.

Regarding rule changes, I have a few in mind - mostly for the next offseason. Vopatizing players (over 30 and on the farm) have been a thorn in my side all season as I found that their fighting rating can drop below 0, screwing up reading of players.ehm. So I'm probably going to tweak retirement rules to get rid of players at risk of vopatizing. I'm also considering some kind of rule so that players over 30 who clear waivers and have 800k or less salaries "go to Europe", though I'm not sure if there ought to be a small penalty so it's not just an easy way to get rid of contracts.

[...]
Lastly, the draft. This year is definitely going to be strange. As usual, I've paid no attention to the world juniors, but there's very little to go by even for top picks since most players have barely played more than 10 games, and a lot haven't played at all yet. I don't really know what to do, but at the least, this year's draft crop will have even more guesswork than usual. Anyway, I'll definitely solicit help with the draft class in the summer.

I'll take a look at the simming stuff and potentially put my name forward. I'll obviously be out of the playoffs with my rebuild, so I may be an option to fill the "eastern" vacancy if need be?


I think you're right about the need for a "going to Europe" penalty and I feel like there would be a few options? One would be treating it like a buyout, having a cap penalty of some kind (not necessarily at the same percentage as buyouts). Another would be counting each "old guy in Europe" as, say, 0.5 of a roster spot, so if you sent 4 players off, you'd have max 48 roster spots, kind of thing. There's probably other options, but those are the ones that spring to mind for me.


Definitely happy to help with the draft stuff. I'm planning on having a spreadsheet of rankings as I did last year and will track profiles, I can try to add a bit more information in as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your existing system makes it less important to be accurate about who ends up being ranked where and maybe puts more emphasis on what a player is good/bad at?

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm Alright, it's 2021, so time to get around to that to-do list.

First, the (mostly) good news - we have 25 active GMs since Christmas, 20 of whom have logged in this year. Unfortunately, the new Florida GM seems to have abandoned us (that team must be cursed). That leaves interim GMs in Arizona (TB) and Columbus (DAL), the ongoing vacancy in STL, and WPG (Mason, who needs prodding every once in a while). So we're in a good-but-not-quite-great position, considering how other freeware leagues have been going. I'm going to bump the thread on HFboards again, and as usual, if you have good recruitment ideas, or really any recruitment ideas, have at it.

Here here to all of us fighting the good fight I'll kick tires again on my end, never know.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm As I promised a while ago, I have posted the simulation procedures. This is partly as full disclosure for anyone who is considering becoming a simmer. I think I've had my fill of simming every night, so I am now officially recruiting new committee members/simmers. If you are at all interested in simming, or doing any other administrative things - that includes trade rulings, new GM applications, settling rule disputes/modifications - please let me know. We do definitely need at least one simmer from the Eastern Conference for the playoffs, and hopefully well before then.

I'm willing to take on any admin roles. Simming, trade committee, new-GMs, rule disputes, whatever I can.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm Regarding rule changes, I have a few in mind - mostly for the next offseason. Vopatizing players (over 30 and on the farm) have been a thorn in my side all season as I found that their fighting rating can drop below 0, screwing up reading of players.ehm. So I'm probably going to tweak retirement rules to get rid of players at risk of vopatizing. I'm also considering some kind of rule so that players over 30 who clear waivers and have 800k or less salaries "go to Europe", though I'm not sure if there ought to be a small penalty so it's not just an easy way to get rid of contracts.

All the annoying stuff makes sense but this being my 2nd full season here I do have some questions about this. I think a few guys in the system to help with injuries/trades while also staying off the cap can be helpful. Not saying its a bad idea to clean up the file for sure. But I know when MDC got hurt, having some AHL flexibility was useful.

Maybe like we allow 1 underager in the AHL we can designate a guy or two to stick around for recall if needed. Anyone beyond that gets sent packing. Just a thought.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm I will definitely look at suspension before the playoffs, since that came up last season. Personally, I'm of the opinion that suspensions should be longer - like 1 game per week of injury, rather than the current 2 games per month. I'm not sure how to scale them for the playoffs. Playoff game suspensions are a more serious punishment, but then again, right now players can get just 2 games for basically knocking someone out of the playoffs entirely. Of course, EHM has way more intent to injure penalties than the NHL, which basically never calls them, but I think the overall rate of suspensions is not unreasonable since the game very rarely suspends players on its own.

Here's my feeling, having had a superstar injured for a month myself, and then Nash returning the favor in an unrelated incident that he is very, very sorry for. In the real NHL, people's actual health is on the line. Also, you have individuals who's motivations need changed or need to evolve or maybe its time to get out of the game (looking at you Tom Wilson). But since its much more random here - and no one actually gets hurt - its purely about fairness. In the real NHL - they can't say "if you hurt Sidney Crosby, we will destroy you" because his life can't be worth more than any scrub 4th liners. But here they can be. I think a legit sliding scale should be considered. If you hurt MDC, it can potentially ruin my season. If Alex Pietrangelo knocks out my 4th liner for 3 months, I don't think it's fair to suspend him the same length. Again, this would never fly in real life, but I think some form of this makes sense for a video game.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm Buyouts are also something I looked into last year but didn't quite settle on. I want to have a new system in place for next offseason. The main change will be making the buyout penalty scale smoothly with the player's salary, rather than having sharp percentage jumps at certain salaries like it does now. I want to make it cheaper to buyout players making 800k or less, but not completely penalty-free. We will likely have a transition period in the offseason where you can choose which buyout rules to use, so just keep in mind that you may have more options if you're considering buying out a player with more than a year left.

I'd also throw out some potential free buy out. I am not saying free reign. But perhaps something where there is a "buyout committee" that can allow a team 1 free buyout a year. It could allow a good, useful player to go UFA for the other teams, while allowing a team the cap relief. That way a guy can't buyout the 72 OA worthless D, but if a team wants to buyout a useful, good player because they are just capped to hell, I don't see the issue allowing that player out to the next highest bidder.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm Lastly, the draft. This year is definitely going to be strange. As usual, I've paid no attention to the world juniors, but there's very little to go by even for top picks since most players have barely played more than 10 games, and a lot haven't played at all yet. I don't really know what to do, but at the least, this year's draft crop will have even more guesswork than usual. Anyway, I'll definitely solicit help with the draft class in the summer.

There's always some guess work in it, but the NHL is still holding it in July and maybe we can do our best to just mirror theirs?

Maybe just don't count vopatizing players in the AHL under the contracts or cap. It's true that with the roster limits they may sometimes be called upon.

AvalancheGM wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 2:46 pm Maybe just don't count vopatizing players in the AHL under the contracts or cap. It's true that with the roster limits they may sometimes be called upon.

I think it still effects the ease of simming though.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm Alright, it's 2021, so time to get around to that to-do list.

First, the (mostly) good news - we have 25 active GMs since Christmas, 20 of whom have logged in this year. Unfortunately, the new Florida GM seems to have abandoned us (that team must be cursed). That leaves interim GMs in Arizona (TB) and Columbus (DAL), the ongoing vacancy in STL, and WPG (Mason, who needs prodding every once in a while). So we're in a good-but-not-quite-great position, considering how other freeware leagues have been going. I'm going to bump the thread on HFboards again, and as usual, if you have good recruitment ideas, or really any recruitment ideas, have at it.

I'm still pretty active to recruit new French GMs but they're so much used to (stupid) turbo simming leagues (yeah let's do 10 virtual seasons in 3 months) that It's really hard to convince them.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm As I promised a while ago, I have posted the simulation procedures. This is partly as full disclosure for anyone who is considering becoming a simmer. I think I've had my fill of simming every night, so I am now officially recruiting new committee members/simmers. If you are at all interested in simming, or doing any other administrative things - that includes trade rulings, new GM applications, settling rule disputes/modifications - please let me know. We do definitely need at least one simmer from the Eastern Conference for the playoffs, and hopefully well before then.

As I already said, I could give a try to it. (Probably mondays because I'm pretty busy the other nights)

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm I will definitely look at suspension before the playoffs, since that came up last season. Personally, I'm of the opinion that suspensions should be longer - like 1 game per week of injury, rather than the current 2 games per month. I'm not sure how to scale them for the playoffs. Playoff game suspensions are a more serious punishment, but then again, right now players can get just 2 games for basically knocking someone out of the playoffs entirely. Of course, EHM has way more intent to injure penalties than the NHL, which basically never calls them, but I think the overall rate of suspensions is not unreasonable since the game very rarely suspends players on its own.

My vote goes to more serious suspensions

SharksGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:57 pm Buyouts are also something I looked into last year but didn't quite settle on. I want to have a new system in place for next offseason. The main change will be making the buyout penalty scale smoothly with the player's salary, rather than having sharp percentage jumps at certain salaries like it does now. I want to make it cheaper to buyout players making 800k or less, but not completely penalty-free. We will likely have a transition period in the offseason where you can choose which buyout rules to use, so just keep in mind that you may have more options if you're considering buying out a player with more than a year left.

I'm 100% AGAINST a free buyout. Teams with cap space will still be able to take advantage of the ones in trouble.

I think it would be fine to buy out useless AHLers (above a certain age and 800k or less) for minimal penalty, like 100k. I cleaned out my AHL roster of a lot of scrubs when I took over last year.

SensGM wrote: ↑Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:15 am I'm still pretty active to recruit new French GMs but they're so much used to (stupid) turbo simming leagues (yeah let's do 10 virtual seasons in 3 months) that It's really hard to convince them.

Thanks for the effort. I think we got Jake (NJ) out of it and we've had other good Quebecois GMs in the past (ANA, ARI/PHI), so it's worth a shot - it's not like new anglo GMs don't also flake out.

SensGM wrote: ↑Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:15 am I'm 100% AGAINST a free buyout. Teams with cap space will still be able to take advantage of the ones in trouble.

I absolutely do not want to have free buyouts - I do not miss the days of entering free releases and signings every sim - but I do want to get rid of vopatizing trash and separately make it easier for new GMs to clear up farm junk. For experienced GMs, I was considering just replacing vopatizing players with equally bad (like 50OV) under 30 UFAs so it's not clearing a contract spot for free, and only for sub-800k contracts.

I'm still up for potentially simming some games and helping out with some of the day to day work.

I do like the idea of a once a year buyout - even if it has a limit say $4 or $5million max and if I was the Ave's wanting a Kassian buyout I would just take the penalty on the remaining $'s. Perhaps we run the buyout on a 3 year rotation?

IslandersGM wrote: ↑Tue Jan 05, 2021 2:11 am I do like the idea of a once a year buyout - even if it has a limit say $4 or $5million max and if I was the Ave's wanting a Kassian buyout I would just take the penalty on the remaining $'s. Perhaps we run the buyout on a 3 year rotation?

Buyouts already give - in most cases - a substantial savings over just keeping the player, even with a league-minimum replacement. I don't want to add free buyouts on top of that.

I have considered allowing spreading the buyout over N+1 years like the NHL did, but I'm a little concerned about encouraging GMs to borrow more from the future.

AvalancheGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:26 pm I'll volunteer for trade rulings and handling applications. I have yet to achieve the tightrope act of getting EHM to work on my laptop without runtime error 53, so simming is out for now.

What's that error? I haven't seen it before.

AvalancheGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:26 pm Do you have a thread on EHM the Blueline as well?

Didn't you post there? The freeware EHM forum is pretty much dead. I think half of the posts about freeware leagues were Justin advertising EHEC.

AvalancheGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:26 pm I think the geezers to Europe idea is good. I would be in favour of little tweaks like that which give the GM more flexibility. Most teams seem to have little room to move both cap-wise and roster-wise.

That's basically because there are no internal budgets like the NHL. The only reason not to spend to the cap is if you're tanking or trying to save room for the deadline.

Also, since it looks like the new Florida GM isn't coming back, do you want to go back to interim them again?

DetroitGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 5:00 pm Definitely happy to help with the draft stuff. I'm planning on having a spreadsheet of rankings as I did last year and will track profiles, I can try to add a bit more information in as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your existing system makes it less important to be accurate about who ends up being ranked where and maybe puts more emphasis on what a player is good/bad at?

Yeah, unfortunately, EHM is pretty limiting in the range of player archetypes one can make, so for the most part we just have to decide what a player will be like when fully developed. It just starts to get tedious around the third round when you're filling out the 50th skilled but undersized and weak skater with anywhere from 2nd to 5th line potential (with another 50+ to go), so having people actually read some scouting reports and say whether a prospect ought to be a sniper or playmaker or have good/bad skating is especially valuable. Filling out attributes that actually matter like LE and Strength also helps.

Runtime error 53 can mean pretty much anything - not an easy or obvious fix like some of them. Usually means a file is missing somewhere I believe. I reinstalled EHM, the OCX and VB files off a USB drive (no wifi on laptop) but still getting it. I was able to get into EHM on my grandmother's computer, but I'm only there for a weekend here and there.

I can run Florida again. As for EHMTB, yeah the freeware section is pretty dead. It's unfortunate the game is so hard-coded we can't make changes to attract a new generation of EHMers.

SharksGM wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 1:58 am

DetroitGM wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 5:00 pm Definitely happy to help with the draft stuff. I'm planning on having a spreadsheet of rankings as I did last year and will track profiles, I can try to add a bit more information in as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your existing system makes it less important to be accurate about who ends up being ranked where and maybe puts more emphasis on what a player is good/bad at?

Yeah, unfortunately, EHM is pretty limiting in the range of player archetypes one can make, so for the most part we just have to decide what a player will be like when fully developed. It just starts to get tedious around the third round when you're filling out the 50th skilled but undersized and weak skater with anywhere from 2nd to 5th line potential (with another 50+ to go), so having people actually read some scouting reports and say whether a prospect ought to be a sniper or playmaker or have good/bad skating is especially valuable. Filling out attributes that actually matter like LE and Strength also helps.

I'd be happy to help wherever I can with the draft stuff too.

Alright, so Kevin (DET), Nicholas (NYR) and Chris (NYI) have volunteered to start simming. Thanks to them in advance. Assuming all goes well, they'll do two nights a week each, and I'll take one plus leftovers in case of unforeseen events. Two simmers per conference will be ideal for the playoffs too.

We've had a couple of good applications in the last few days, so hopefully we'll also get some new GMs signed up shortly.