[Tiger Fan]

I like to do dynasty reports and have done a number of them over the years primarily focusing around OOTP. Originally I did a lot of historic MLB dynasty reports and even branched out to include a lot of different sports. Lately, I switched to doing primarily fictional but I have been stumped when trying to come up with a new 'concept' for my next one.

In the end I have decided to go back to my roots and do a historical replay, but instead of baseball (which is my second favourite sport) I will focus on my first love - hockey. Looking on the FHM dynasty board there do not seem to be a lot of historical dynasty writers, so lets see if my old History of Baseball format will work well with hockey.

So I present the HISTORY OF HOCKEY.

The sim will begin in 1931 and the goal is to sim a year at time as we move forward to modern day. I will write some short notes and random thoughts on each season as we progress but the great joy - for me anyway- with this type of sim is in going back and looking at the careers of great players, and little known names who may have a big impact in this version of NHL history.

I will not run a team, as I am letting the game evolve as it sees fit. I will start in 1931-32 and assign rookies to the real original team they debuted with. This should keep Howe, Richard and Orr with their proper teams but it will also be very interesting to see what happens with Turk Broda being a Red Wing or Phil Esposito a Black Hawk. Also be very interesting where Gretzky ends up as he should start with the Indianapolis Racers at the tail end of the WHA.

There will be no amateur draft but I did enable the expansion draft in order to help populate the new teams as they appear.

I want some randomness so I decided to let the FHM engine develop players career paths rather than have their ratings adjusted each year to compare to real life. This bit of randomness I have always enjoyed in my baseball replays. It is why Cliff Markle (the photo in my avatar) is the greatest pitcher in my HOB replay. Let's see what little known names step up in my History of Hockey replay.

I hope a few people enjoy it and follow along. As I get through the seasons please feel free to ask for more information on any player or team you would like to find out about. Hopefully I can update things regularly, but I am much busier (and older) than I was back in my History of Baseball days tracing back to OOTP2 and 3.