Off Season Process?

[Mud Hen]

Longtime OOTP player but new to FHM 6 and just finished my first season trying to rebuild the Blackhawks.

I may be missing this but is there a way to extend scouts on expiring contracts or a place to see about potential upgrades/replacements? Increasing the scouting budget?

I'd also be curious on how you perform your offseason assessment of roster turnover, approach to free agency and prospect review/signings.

I appreciate any insight.

Thanks!

[KevT90]

Yes you can extend scouts on expiring contracts.

On your team's Staff tab you can change the default selection inside the drop-down menu from info to scouting and see how good each scouts are at evaluating ability and potential.

For the budget, I am not sure if the amount fluctuates but there's nothing you can do to control it. However you usually have more than enough budget for staffs.

As for the off-season, since you have to work around a salary cap, it's usually to find a way to maximize your talent with good contracts but it also highly depends on where you stand with the franchise. To push for the cup is a lot about timing and building around certain players. So if you have a great core of star veterans that are at their peak, you'll usually try to sign some star and/or depth players during free agency and/or trade your own draft picks and prospects to acquire well established players who will make a difference immediately.

The other way around, if the team is struggling and your best veterans are aging and declining, trade them for picks and/or prospects and rebuild around those young players until they reach their full potential, then do as said in the above paragraph.

I do take a look at my current cap hit before resigning my players as to prioritize and start predicting next year's lineup. I get an idea of exactly where I will stand with the cap hit for next year (calculate how much I want to spend between contract renewals and UFA signings).

For your prospects, it all depends on your current depth and farm team roster but I will usually sign any 2* ability prospect as they are ready to turn pro and be top players in the farm team. They can help out in time of injuries at the NHL level too and since they are on a 2-way contract and won't be waiver eligible for a while they have no financial impact and are easy to move around.

[ExeR]

Originally Posted by Mud Hen

I'd also be curious on how you perform your offseason assessment of roster turnover, approach to free agency and prospect review/signings.

I appreciate any insight.

Thanks!

If you're interested/motivated to play long save, I would suggest these:
1) AI needs helping hand. So get spreadsheet and babysit/help them as much as you can endure.
2) Offseason is going to happen again and again so get into routine mode and build continuity.
Example: you can have extra quality Centers, so while you loan them or play them in AHL you can sign top players on that position. If they get injured, you season won't be derailed. And that's the biggest problems with 10+mil guys. In they are healthy and have good performance season, they will carry you to the top, but with extra prospects you can be ready for worst outcome and still get to playoffs, where anything can happen. After that you can just live happily with your star player for duration of his long contract and not feel his impact on cap. You can always trade developed prospects for younger ones and get picks to try and find another gem in draft. Just focus on one position/role(def/forward) and get those players in massive numbers on draft day. Sometimes it will require you to go with skill over talent, but scouts can be wrong and no talent guys can be awesome too (usually high skills, low physicals profiles). So pick defenders/forwards to carry your team and focus on drafting prospects to replace them. You can transition from one to another using good players too. I went from team with top defenders to team with top forwards over the course of years.
As for dates: 23rd is draft, if you're ready sign picks you need right away and be ready with what's left of CAP for free agency.
3) Try to get experience with roster filling right away. If you know you can draft guy who won't be good enough to just play, but can be perfect in PP, you can squeeze him in as 6th defender and ease his transition. So know your basic needs (PP units, PK units, player pairings). If you balance those well, you can get away with lots of stuff. I played forwards w/o pass and defenders w/o physicals and they still did well. Again, little practical experience&mistakes will help you to figure it out. And spreadsheets help too(or maybe it's just me )

[Mud Hen]

Thanks for the information.

If you don't mind sharing what type of help does the AI need?

Thank you.

[ExeR]

Originally Posted by Mud Hen

Thanks for the information.

If you don't mind sharing what type of help does the AI need?

Thank you.

I wrote about it in detail in other posts, look them up.
Simplest version is to have all team names, Goalie need, Defenders need, Forwards need and their CAP. Sometimes AI just load up on contracts and don't have Goalie at all while in contender (playoffs) status.