[Critch]

Warning - The following update starts with a bit of cheating so look away if you're offended by somebody not playing the game straightlaced.

The day before the season started the Anchorage Huskies owner set up a meeting and said "Look, I'm a multi-billionaire. How about I help out the team finances by paying some builders to instantly increase the arena size from 6,500 to 9,500. It'll still be a bit small for the NHL, but at least it might tip the balance to financial stability. And then we'll have no more silly talk about relocation".

In other words I used the editor to increase the size of the Anchorage Arena to try and get to a managable financial state. That's the only change I made, we'll see if it helps. Back when I first set this up I went into the editor and reduced all the Anchorage setting to "make it more of a challenge". What a dummy.

While in the editor I noticed that the Anchorage fans had gone from "disloyal" to "normal" on a Fan Loyalty scale (disloyal-normal-loyal-very loyal-fanatical). That playoff year a couple of years ago must have fired up the fan base up to a mildly interested level, hopefully that'll help out too.

We'll still have the lowest budget in the league (although Hartford are close because the AI seems to have really done a number on them), but at least it'll be more playable.

2028/29 Regular Season
Anchorage Huskies start off like a real competitor, it's like we finally have a team. The little chart mentioned in post 4 said "3.5 and above - Top player". We've got Forwards Lucas Karmiris (4.5), C Jordan Gavin (4.5), C Oskar Voullet (3.5), C Dylan Holloway(3.5), RW Vasili Podkolzin (3.5) and RW Emil Hemming (3.5), plus defensemen RD Henry Mews (4.0) and Moritz Seider (3.5). Apparently we now have enough players to just about make it as a challenger, roundabout the end of November we're at 16-5-1 and second in Pacific Division to the LA Kings who are apparently even better than a challenger.

(nb Dylan Holloway was one of the players dealt away in the great "team riddled with cliques' purge of a couple of years ago, but he was waived by his new team so home he came. The Anchorage scouts think two years in Nashville have made him a better player too.)

It was at the end of November that we learned the flaw in the Anchorage roster makeup, we were ok at the top level but didnt have any depth, most of the depth options got traded away in the summer to solve the dressing room conflict problems. When the injuries kicked in, and they did, the team struggled. We had some really poor players up from the AHL showing why they were career AHLers for a few months while Voullet, Karmiris, Podkolzin and Hemming were injured, we never got bad enough to fall too far out the playoff chase but LA Kings and Vancouver Canucks (led by Connor Bedard) ran away with the top 2 places in the division. Injuries cleared a bit and by the end of February we pretty much had a top 4 in the Pacific division locked up, 11 points clear of 5th place Edmonton. We were fighting with Calgary for 3rd in the division to avoid the wild card race. The Central division had a good chance of taking both the wild card spots, so 4th place wouldn't guarantee a playoffs spot.

Good news - despite a poor March (5-8-0) we stayed neck and neck with Calgary in the fight for third right to the end. Bad news - we lost on the last day to Nashville and Calgary clinched third place by 1 point. Good news - it didnt matter, we were already clear of the Central teams in the race for the wild card spots so we were in the playoffs anyway.

So we finished with a record of 44 wins, 32 defeats and 6 overtime loses for 94 points, beating our previous best of 92 points. And we're off to the playoffs.

Next up it's this season's Central Division champions, and reigning Stanley Cup champions, Dallas Stars in the first round of the playoffs.