Let me tell you guys, I love hockey, and I loved playing NHL 12. The Be A GM Mode is better than ever and I love starting new ones and trying to build teams up.
If you follow the real NHL, you'll see that the Montreal Canadians are in a skid. Despite having great young talent like Subban and Carey Price (who I hate, btw) they are full of overpaid, past their prime veterans and under performing folks. Even though NHL 12 didnt predict this skid, I figured my latest venture would be to start a Canadians franchise (with the most recent roster update) and try to reinvent them.
My strategy was to obviously build from the net out, with Price. To give a brief history, I decided I would do this by only have one major scoring line of superstars and having the rest of my forwards be gritty two way players and grinders. I started putting together insane packages of players and while I don't remember who I sent off for the most part (wish I had written about this from the start) I ended up accomplishing that. I know I sent Markov off with a prospect for Patrick Sharp (a deal the computer offered me, actually). I had him at center with Bourque on the left and the newly aquired TJ Oshie on the right. Bourque and Oshie really fit my vision more for the second line than the first, so I put together other huge deals that shipped off guys like Scott Gomez and Thomas Plecanic for Claude Giroux and eventually Hendrick Zeterberg. In turn, it was also easy to grab guys I really wanted for depth like Daren Helm, George Parros, Cal Clutterbuck, and Sean Avery.
Im currently in the offseason after the 2015-16 season. The first season I was in town, we barely made the playoffs and got dumbed first round, since these trades will still coming together. The 2012 campaign got us a bit closer as I added some better pieces to depth and ended up signing great Dmen to compliment my maturing forwards with guys like Brad Stewart and young folks through trades like Jason Demars and Cam Fowler. In doing this, I have pretty much sold all my high draft picks for forever. Alas, we got booted in the second round.
2013, I had the team pretty much the way I wanted it. Despite that, it was up and down most of the year and we were very streaky. I decided we needed another top six scorer to sit inbetween Oshie and Bourque to help us score. So I sent off Brad Stuart and some picks to aquire Ryan Keslar. Keslar was a higher caliber guy than I had even planned on getting and even fit the big body, two way mentality I wanted out of my fowards. I was then able to deal some pieces to get Lucas Sbisa from the Ducks to plug the hole left by Stuart. We squeaked into the playoffs, and with these two big deals, surged on to beat the Sharks for the Stanley Cup.
2014 I was torn. I couldn't decide to stay and try to repeat (where they wanted a seemingly impossible 48 wins) or move on. I stayed and luckily got all the guys resigned under the cap for long term deals. I also added some new pieces and adding more scoring, getting away from my bang'em forward style. Well, 48 wins was apparently not the task I thought it was, as the team continued to steam roll as it did the previous year in the playoffs. We won 56 games, the presidents trophy, and whooped the Sharks' ass again in the cup finals.
2015, we again stayed strong and resigned players. My only big move was to send some prospects to the Blues for Brian Elliott. The talent was just too much. We steam rolled the compition and went 61-15-6. We again captured the presidents trophy. We even netted our first individual awards (beyond Prices two Conn Smythes). Subban won the Norris Trophy. Price nabbed the Vezina and the William M. Jennings Trophy (although, Elliott should've been listed too, as he played in nearly 30 games and had a ridiculous season. Alas, some how, it was not our year as the NY Islanders (43 god damn wins!) booted us from the 3rd round and went on to beat Nashville for the cup.
I'll keep this updated. Its going to be a hard off season, we will see who I can and can't sign as Sbisa, Keslar, and Giroux all wanna get paid.
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