Jamie's Minnesota Wild Franchise

[jamiedx]

After Cole brought back his Caps Franchise, it inspired me to start playing EHM again. I didn't have any franchises going so I decided to start a new one. Thus we have the Minnesota Wild franchise.

I chose the Wild, because they have a tight budget which I feel makes the game more challenging. Right now my budget is at 35 million and I don't plan on it going much higher. Also they have my favorite player not in a Sens uniform PM Bouchard.

Some rules I've placed on myself outside the budget. I will always make deals that are in the CPU team's favour. It is way to easy to cheat the CPU. When teams place players on waivers I will only claim guys(if needed) that a team would place on waivers normally.

I've done the summer and I'm about to start the pre-season here is a brief re-cap of my transactions.

Traded C-Marc Cavosie to MTL for C-Corey Locke
Cavosie is rated higher than Locke. Locke is a favorite of mine since I watched him play with the 67's. He also had great chemistry with Matt Foy who is on the Wild.

Traded LW-Andrew Brunette, LW-Christophe Brandner, 3rd DP to OTT for C-Mike Fisher & LW-Antoine Vermette
Brunette and Brandner provide size for the Sens LW and are not a decrease in talent. Fisher and Vermette are two players that I really like and Vermette is offensive upgrade over Brandner.

Traded G-Manny Fernandez, LW-Derek Boogaard, LW-Mike Hannula to NYR for G-Dan Blackburn & RW Jakub Petruzalek
NYR is loaded with young goalie talent and with the injury to Blackburn he was going to be lost in the shuffle. I lowered Blackburn's ratings to account for the injury. Fernandez freezes up some cash and eliminates the two goaltender system. Petruzlaek another 67's prospect got him because I like him.

After the trades I still had to glaring needs secondary scoring and some veteran defensive depth. With only 4 million dollars in cap space I needed to spend wisley to address the two needs.

My first signing was RW-Anson Carter to a 2-yr deal at 2.75 Million plus a Player Option.

The second signing was D-Brad Bombadir to a 1-yr deal at 950K plus a Team Option.

Up next is Pre-season and Waiver Draft.

Hopefully people enjoy reading this and I will continue to post updates throughout my season.

[DrkeX]

I'm eager to see how the Pre-Season goes.

[jamiedx]

Pre-Season Recap

My approach to the pre-season is to play all the youngsters and get a feel for the development of my prospects. I use the first 4 games to play all my prospects, I get my clock cleaned out but I'm able to see who can perform and who can't. After the first 4 games Corey Locke was our leading scorer with 3 pts in 4 games. Matt Foy and Brent Burns were tied for 2nd at 2 pts. A.J Thelen and Patrick O'Sullivan did nothing in the first 4 games and I was quite dissapointed. I was hoping Thelen could take the 6th d-man spot, but I guess I was wrong.

The next 4 games I took a different approach than normal and played mostly regulars trying to find different line combo's for the regular season. PM Bouchard and Gaborik developed some nice chemistry and they finished with 5 pts a piece in the final 4 games. With Thelen performing so poorly the 6th d-man spot was given to Bombardir who I was going to use as a 7th d-man, now is going to have to step up and play big for us.

Going into the regular season we're seriously lacking depth at all positions. Any major injuries could spell major trouble to my young Wild team. I'll hopefully get some good depth players in the Waiver draft to fill some holes.

Waiver Draft
In the Waiver Draft we picked up two solid depth players. We picked up W-Dan Cleary from Phoneix and D-Mike Commodore from Calgary. Both players will start the year on the farm.

The 2005 Minnesota Wild Lineup
Rolston-Bouchard-Gaborik
Dupuis-Fisher-Carter
Johnson-Walz-Park
Vermette-Chouinard-Daigle

Kuba-Schultz
Mitchell-Zyuzin
Bombardir-Burns

Roloson/Blackburn

Not much room for error with this team, we're gonna need bigtime production from our top 2 lines. I'm worried that if we get any serious injuries we'll be hurting bigtime. With limited room inside the budget. I only got about 1 million to play with it's going to be an interesting season. I'm hoping we can challenge for the 6-7-8 playoff spots, but I won't be extremly dissapointed if we don't. I think we may be a season or two away from being a legit playoff team. But anything can happen, so we'll have to wait and see.

Next update will probably be at some point during the regular season. I'm not sure exactly how to do it. I don't really wanna post boxscore of each game. If anyone has any suggestions I'll gladly take them. Odds are I'll do a monthly recap.

[fireholder]

park park park!!!!

ill read just to see his success. :) you typically need to find park a player that he meshes with and he gets 45-50 points on the second or third line. :D

I played 3 franchises with the Wild in the freeware EHM, in one Park got to be a 74 OA, became my captain, and had consistent 60 point seasons and was on the top line. In another he stuck around 70 OA and got 40-45 points on average alternating 2 and 3 line. The other he sucked and I shot him in the forehead. :/

KEEP SCHULTZ KEEP ZYUZIN depending on your rosters. They were awesome for me, both becoming 77 OA. I guess your rosters are more updated than the one's i've used before though, cuz I always had Zholtok, who always ended up good, too.

[jamiedx]

Originally Posted by FireHolder

park park park!!!!

ill read just to see his success. :) you typically need to find park a player that he meshes with and he gets 45-50 points on the second or third line. :D

I played 3 franchises with the Wild in the freeware EHM, in one Park got to be a 74 OA, became my captain, and had consistent 60 point seasons and was on the top line. In another he stuck around 70 OA and got 40-45 points on average alternating 2 and 3 line. The other he sucked and I shot him in the forehead. :/

KEEP SCHULTZ KEEP ZYUZIN depending on your rosters. They were awesome for me, both becoming 77 OA. I guess your rosters are more updated than the one's i've used before though, cuz I always had Zholtok, who always ended up good, too.

Thanks for the advice, right now I have Park in kinda the 3rd line checker role with Walz. However I'm gonna need some scoring from those two if I hope to compete. I remember Park from his days with the Belleville Bulls man did I hate that kid, knocked us out two years in a row from the playoffs.

My rosters are updated as of middle of last summer.

[DrkeX]

Zholtok should be the #1 man. If he's still in the game, I'm not sure.

[jamiedx]

Wasn't really tired so I decided to sim the month of October.

The month of October was a real up and down month for the Minnesota Wild. They finished the month at 5-7-0-0 good for 10 pts. This places them 14th in the Western Conference and 21st in the NHL. The story of the month is how poorly the Wild are playing defensivly. Allowing a league high 41 goals against, the defence has seemed to go right out the window. The struggles of Brent Burns have seem he demoted to the minors in favour of Mike Commodore. The lineup juggling just doesn't seem to want get the team to play defence. Coming into the season I thought are problem was going to be scoring goals and now it seems to be stopping them. I am now on the search to find a defensive stopper on the backend. However with all the struggles the big club is having, down on the farm things couldn't be going better. The Houston Aeros have a perfect record of 12-0-0-0. They have only allowed 8 goals against so far this season. Goaltender Josh Harding is putting up record breaking numbers so far. The first line of Stephane Velleiux, Rikard Wallin and Dan Cleary have combined for 57 points in the month of October and are ranked 1,2,3 in AHL league scoring.

Minnesota Wild Scoring
Anson Carter 4g 7a
Pascal Dupuis 5g 6a
Richard Park 3g 6a
Marian Gaborik 6g 3a
Brian Rolston 3g 5a

Dwayne Roloson 2-7-0 .911% 2.96
Dan Blackburn 3-0-0 .885% 3.71

Houston Aeros Scoring
Dan Cleary 10g 10a
Stephane Veilleux 11g 8a
Rickard Wallin 5g 13a
Kyle Wanvig 4g 4a
Mikko Koivu 4g 3a

Josh Harding 12-0-0 .940% 0.67

Around The League
1st League - Colorado Avalanche (19 Pts)
30th League - Florida Panthers (4 Pts)
1st West - Colorado Avalanche
1st East - NJ Devils (15 Pts)
Leading Scorer - Glen Murray(COL) 5g 13a
Leading Rookie - Jared Aulin(WSH) 3g 5a

CSB Rankings
1. Sidney Crosby
2. Gilbert Brule
3. Guillaume Latendresse
4. Jean-Philippe Levasseur
5. Chris Durand

I'll do November and probably December tomorrow.

[ColeJ.]

the wild are a franchise with angry bitter fans :(



but either way, i'll try to keep up to date on your EHM franchise :) i'm a nerd, but i love these things. it's nice to see how other would-be general managers think, and build their teams... especially if this thing lasts a few seasons, so we get to see your overall style in team building.

i just hope running your own EHM franchise won't make you disinterested in my crapitals one :) you're one of the only people that i think honestly reads mine.

[Mizu]

Originally Posted by ColeJ.

i just hope running your own EHM franchise won't make you disinterested in my crapitals one :) you're one of the only people that i think honestly reads mine.

For obvious reasons I'm following both of your franchines.

[danson]

i read cole's, mizu's and will now read this one, you just gotta make themn interesting and people will read them.