How's your Franchise Mode Going?

[mbergh22]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

When does custom arena becomes avaliable?

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[pauliev]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

I've been away for a while but I managed to win a Stanley Cup with the Bruins in my third season as GM! Of course in trying to get younger and more cap friendly I did trade away several early round draft picks but so far in season 4 it seems to have been worth it.

Bergeron is still my Captain and oldest player at 33. I moved McQuaid and some picks for Gostisbehere but he was not happy - somehow I managed to get Carolina to take Gostisbehere, a couple of picks and an unsigned rookie for Hanifin

I've had to back fill my AHL team with free agent signings because I think the highest pick I have through 2024 is a 4th rounder. I've been signing young guys with high skating/speed ratings and so far the Baby Bs remain competetive.

I was a little disappointed to not see a Stanley Cup Banner ceremony in my first game fo my fourth season, but I'm 8-1-1 so I can live without the pageantry I suppose.

My main roster for the foreseeable future looks like this:

Forwards:
Marchand-Bergeron-Hayes
Belesky-Larkin-Pastrnak
Vatrano-Spooner-Griffith
Stransky-Patrick-DeBrusk

Defense:
Nurse-C. Miller
Wotherspoon-Hanifin
Zboril-Van Riemsdyk

Goal:
Holtby-Murray

I have about $11M in cap space so I should be able to sign my young players to relatively long deals and pay them well.

My season ticket sales base is in the high 90s percentile and I've consistently sold out all my home games to date.

My merchandise and concession revenue numbers aren't great but I've been keeping the prices on the low side to keep the fans happy and selling volume over profit.

I've also found that regularly maintaining the arena (at least once a month) seems to be most cost effective but is absolutely my 2nd largest budget item (salaries being first, of course). $2.5 -$3 million spent each year on maintenance and upgrades when the owner requests them.

All-in-all, this is by far the most fun I've had with the NHL series in a long time!

[YakCityGaming]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

After that 2-8 start to the season, my Oilers claw their way back towards a playoff spot! Can we finally get some goal scoring? Find out in the latest edition of my franchise!
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/whlYgYTCaqo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Bcolt93]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

Just got the game last week and decided to try Franchise mode because of relocation feature. Even though I'm a Sens fan I started with Carolina and immediately moved the team back to Hartford so I could bring back the Whalers. After looking at the Hurricane's roster I realized the best thing to do was gut it and start over fresh in Harftord, but I have trade difficulty on hard or whatever it is so I can't just reload easily. I traded Staal to the Senators for Nick Paul and their 1st rounder and also dumped Cam Ward for picks. Dealt away quite a few other players, forget the exact trade but I managed to get Nurse from the Oilers (pretty sure I gave up one of the 3 first rounders I had at that point). Anyway the team absolutely sucked but unfortunately I won my 2nd last game of the season (only played 2 games, 1st home game and the last one) to vault me into 29th and take myself out of the first overall pick. Draft class looked pretty weak but I had 4 picks in the first 2 rounds so I'm hoping they develop soon.

Anyways onto free agency and I had a ton of money to spend since all my cap space was freed up when I dumped my guys the following season and I wanted my first season with the Whalers to be a good one. Made a bunch of big pickups including Ben Bishop and Tyler Johnson for 7m+ a year. Also managed to snag Drouin which cost me my 1st and 3rd in the 2nd year draft. Picked up a couple more guys, the only one I'm disappointed with was Bryzgalov since I didn't need him anymore, he signed the day after Bishop signed for 4.5m to sit on the bench which annoys me.

Year 2 has gone really well so far, with such a young roster and not many draft picks for this season I'm hoping to make the playoffs and got a great start to the season, currently I'm 12-1-1 with some back-to-backs coming up. There's no way I'm going to be able to keep this team together when most of their contracts come up but I'm hoping for a good year or two.

My line-up is

J Skinner (86) - T. Johnson (87) - T. Teravainen (85)
J Drouin (85) - v Rask (85) - E Lindholm (85)
P Di Giuseppe (83) - M Fisher (83) - J Nordstrom (82)
L Stempniak (82) - N Paul (81) - V Stalberg (82)

J Slavin (84) - J Faulk (89)
D Nurse (83) - B Pesce (83)
N Hanifin (83) - M Tennyson (80)

B Bishop (89)
I Bryzgaolv (85)

[BlueJays09]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

Just started my usual Senators franchise. Thought about grabbing another D-man such as Russell, Quincy or Boyle but decided to stay put to start and roll with Borwiesky (spelling), Bartowski and Wideman. Lines look like this;

Hoffman-Turris-Stone
MacArthur-Brassard-Ryan
Kelly-Pageau-Lazar
Paul-Smith-Neil

Phaneuf-Karlsson
Ceci-Methot
Bartowski-Borwieski (spelling)

Anderson-Hammond

I like the look of things, although I would hate to have to spell out my 3rd defensive pair very often lol. Neil and Paul have to play well to stay dressed. I have Puempel and Dzingle ready to jump in if needed and will rotate Wideman into the mix for D. If a long injury occurs I will look via FA to snag a cheap replacement.

Come trade deadline, depending on my position in the standings, I will look for a top 6 scoring winger and a top 6 defence likely.


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[pauliev]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

When does custom arena becomes avaliable?

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I've been wondering this myself - I'm 4 seasons deep and the TD Garden my Bruins play in is 24 years old....would be great to get a budget to maybe do some customization or build a new arena in Boston

[pauliev]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

So - another season down - after finishing 1st in the East and winning the Stanley Cup in back-to-back seasons I was offered a 3 year contract at almost $4M/year. About 8 other teams were also trying to retain my services. Some of the offers were ridiculously low ($800K) others were comparable to the Bruins offer but being somewhat of a loyalist (and proud of the team I helped build) I decided to stay in Boston.

My first off season with my new GM contract is set to start today with a draft in which my highest pick is a 4th rounder. I currently have about $15M in cap space and really no over-priced or ageing veteran players I would be interested in unloading to obtain picks.

My untouchables on the team would be Bergeron, Marchand, Larkin, Patrick, Holtby, Nurse and Pastrnak. Most of the other players I would consider moving but it would have to be an exceptional deal.

Looking at age, salary and potential, any moves at this point is tough but I also have some young players that I believe are ready to make the next step in development and move up to the NHL

I've placed Trevor Van Riemsdyk, Ryan Spooner and Jimmy Hayes on my trade block to see if anyone bites at the draft - not great, but all 3 have had solid seasons the past couple of years, are still young and relatively cap friendly to interested GMs

I guess we'll see how it goes.

Oh and after spending $4M on arena maintenance last year (my budget ran out just before the playoffs) my facility is a mess! I'm hoping to get a significant operations increase but not holding my breath. Maybe at some point in the game I can build a new arena in Boston...

[pauliev]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

During this morning's draft I ended up trading Spooner, Hayes and Van Riemsdyk. Took future and current picks for them all in separate trades and feel my draft went as well as it could.

During free agency I was able to sign Matt Duchene and a couple of bottom 6 forwards to round out my roster for the season.

Currently my lines look like this:

Forwards:
J. DeBrusk - N. Patrick - M. Duchene
F. Vatrano - D. Larkin - D. Pastrnak
B. Marchand - P. Bergeron - S. Griffith
M. Belesky - A. Czarnik - J. Marchessault

Defense:
B. Carlo - D. Nurse
T. Wotherspoon - N. Hanifin
J. Zboril - C. Miller

Goalies:
B. Holtby - M. Murray

Offense - 91
Defense - 90
Goalie - 94

Played a lot of rookies in the pre-season and went 3-4-0. My locker room chemistry dropped from 81 to 74 though - that's a concern but I'm guessing the new players have a lot to do with it. Hopefully the growing pains don't last too long

[pauliev]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

After a horrible start to my season I had to shake things up. Traded Holtby and prospects to Anaheim for John Gibson and Matt Duchene to Buffalo for Sam Reinhart. Also packaged Seth Griffith and a couple picks to Columbus for Ryan Murray.

Cap space may be a little tight in the upcoming off season but got an instant boost in team chemistry

[SomeoneSuperBad]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

About to finish my first full season play through. Looking for a guide to who the best players are in the first NHL draft. Does anyone know where to find a post about this? Any good sleepers or high potential players to be had later in the 1st or 2nd round?

[Quarthon666]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

I just started one last night with the Sabres. I was trying to focus mostly on concession and ticket prices to make a profit the owner wanted. I kept the prices in the range where the fans were mostly neutral. Only had a few sellouts and missed the playoffs. Fans were at 85 happiness when the season ended but I still didnt make the owner the profit he wanted. I simmed all the games and had the assistant coach auto line changes.

So I tried again with Pittsburgh. I set all my prices so the fans were happy and amazed at prices. Had many sellout games and the fans remained happy most the time. Sold a lot of concessions but in the end still didn't turn a profit for the owner. Just as previously I simmed all the games.

This is where Im really disappointed in this mode. Pens record was terrible and many of the simmed games were totally unrealistic. Getting beat by the Sabres 9-4 and other bad teams just whopped the Pens butt.

So Im wondering if anyone has turned a profit for the owner and do you have any tips on how to accomplish this. Im thinking maybe you need to make the playoffs to make the target profit. Any help would be appreciated.

[pauliev]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

About to finish my first full season play through. Looking for a guide to who the best players are in the first NHL draft. Does anyone know where to find a post about this? Any good sleepers or high potential players to be had later in the 1st or 2nd round?

I traded up to draft Nolan Patrick - in his first year he progressed to an 82 overall and scored 20 goals. Timothy Liljegren is probably the top D-man to draft. I missed on the chance to draft Simon Stransky ended up trading for him before the season started. He's fast and also progressed to a mid-80s overall in his first year.

[onlybygrace]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

Hey guys...I'm video streaming game by game highlights on my dynasty thread here in the hockey dynasties.


here is the linky...enjoy. its pretty sweet.


http://www.operationsports.com/forum...al-thread.html

[1908_Cubs]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...-rivermen.html

You can follow the link to my story of my relocation team. I know I'm a new poster to the OS forums, but I put some decent amount of time into the backstory, universe, and will be keeping a twitter account, and fake news articles up and running with my franchise.

It'll be a fun follow and a fun project for me.

[Blue&Gold]

Re: How's your Franchise Mode Going?

Is anyone else having freezing issues inside Franchise mode? I have lost about 2 months of games in my second year due to 3 seperate freezes. Very frustrating