smozoma

Thanks for the insights, guys.. I've definitely been 'blindered' by my hardcore-league bias. The Capitalism league showed how strong interest in the game and site is due to its simple 'pick up and play' rules. And since i never play non-league games, I don't see the more casual guys. Any thoughts on adding a wiki part to the site, Evan? It's nice for tutorials, since anyone can edit them when they become out of date or someone gets bored of maintaining their tutorial thread.

canadiensfan66 takes FLA

Bad Economy Prompts Goalie Hoarding I'm sure everyone noticed how fast the goalies went this season. It started a bit slow, with Roy being drafted 6th (his worst since 8th in GDL1) and Belfour being drafted 8th (worst since 7th in GDL5). Fuhr and Potvin as well were a bit late at 32nd and 45th (averaged 20.9 and 34.3 in the past, respectively). Joseph and Barasso were pretty much on pace, but when EvitageN took Essensa with the 3.2 (50th) pick, it started a goalie shortage scare that saw 10 more goalies drafted in the 3rd round. 17 goalies were taken in the first 3 rounds. The most goalies taken in the first 3 rounds before was just 10 in GDL5. 9 goalies were taken in the first 3 rounds in each of the first 4 seasons of the GDL. Weight Bugging Increases Yet Again The average weight of the top 72 non-goalies picked has fallen every season since the GDL's inception, and it continued this season, dropping to an all-time low of 6.29 (190.32 lbs) GDL1: 7.18 (197.44 lbs) GDL2: 7.01 GDL3: 6.72 GDL4: 6.51 GDL5: 6.40 GDL6: 6.29 (190.32 lbs) Miscellaneous Facts Roenick was drafted 1st for the 3rd time. No other player has been drafted 1st more than once. This was the first season Bourque was not the first defenseman chosen. Sweeney went 17th. Some "best ever" draft position players: Mark Recchi, 14th (previous best was 17th). Don Sweeney, 17th (18th) Robert Reichel, 26th, (34th) Denis Savard, 27th (33rd) Pelle Eklund, 35th (45th) Some "worst ever" draft position players: Ed Belfour, 8th (previous worst was 7th). Ray Bourque, 24th (21st... and he was a "10 pick rule" pick this season!) Tomas Sandstrom, 37th (31st) Gary Roberts, 57th (46th) Gary Suter, 60th (53rd) Some "better draft position every year" players: Cam Russell: 157, 157, 111, 109, 102, 61 Mike Richter: 112, 91, 82, 81, 78, 67 Ted Donato: 148, 131, 131, 117, 83, 81 Gary Leeman: (undrafted), 206, 159, 150, 112, 107 Sylvain Cote 184 164 138 134 132 128 Mark Howe 213 175 154 145 137 132 Bruce Driver 205 200 164 137 133 133 Some "worse draft position every year" players: Ray Bourque 14 15 16 18 21 24 Al Iafrate 34 46 60 80 85 112 Some "way earlier than usual" players (in the top 100): Gord Hynes, 63rd (avg: 129.5) Cam Russell, 61st (avg 119.1) Paul Ysebaert, 75th (124.1) Ted Donato, 81st (126.5) Jon Casey, 70th (109.6) Robert Reichel, 26th (53.2) Some "way later than usual" players: Ed Belfour, 8th (3.9) Mark Messier, 137th (73.6) Al Iafrate, 112th (60.5) Pierre Turgeon, 85th (46.8) Cam Neely, 93rd (52.8) Tomas Sandstrom, 37th (22.2) Gary Roberts, 57th (34.5) Some "really consistent" players: Bob Essensa G 52 58 56 55 59 50 (std.dev: 3.46) Calle Johansson D 138 126 139 131 140 163 (std.dev: 3.91) Gord Murphy D 100 107 108 101 103 114 (std.dev: 1.95) Adam Graves F 189 166 180 195 187 185 (std.dev: 9.95) Doug Gilmour F 12 8 13 10 10 9 (std.dev: 1.86) Steve Larmer F 39 48 39 47 51 41 (std.dev: 5.15) Some "really inconsistent" players: Dallas Drake F 156 (undrafted) 67 34 61 35 (std.dev: 46.34) Don Beaupre G 222 253 114 103 161 108 (std.dev: 64.13) Jaromir Jagr F 20 37 95 142 96 135 (std.dev: 49.92) Mark Messier F 55 23 91 72 135 137 (std.dev: 19.82) Rob Blake D 69 95 107 146 144 182 (std.dev: 40.99) Scott Stevens D 57 56 71 127 119 119 (std.dev: 33.6)

These coaches have picked teams: JacketsZherdev - HFD Freydey32 - MTL Iceguy94 - STL Zalex1414 - CHI jrodimus31 - PIT canadiensfan66 - FLA These teams are available: NJ (no players) FLA (no players) ANA (no players) OTT (no players) NYI (no players) HFD (Sean Burke , Tomas Sandstrom , Benoit Hogue , Pat Verbeek , Gord Murphy , Zarley Zalapski , Geoff Sanderson , Sergio Momesso , Frank Musil , Adam Burt , Mark Janssens) STL (Curtis Joseph , Brett Hull , Valeri Kamensky , Claude Lemieux , Al MacInnis , Glen Wesley , Ed Olczyk , Garth Butcher , Doug Lidster , Nelson Emerson , Dirk Graham ) MTL (Patrick Roy , Kirk Muller , Brian Bellows , Denis Savard , Matt Schneider , Steve Smith , Steve Thomas , J.J. Daigneault , Andrei Kovalenko , Brian Bradley , Bryan Marchment ) PIT (no players) CHI (no players) Please post a list of the teams you want. Precedence is given by the coach order in the list at the top! If you are far down the list, you'll need to give a longer list in case the guys with higher precedence take the teams you want. Remember that the weight bug is fixed in this league, so Sandstrom, Hull, and Muller are all pretty good/tough. Each team with players will lose 7 random players and need to redraft those 7 spots. If you pick a team with no players, you'll have to make 12 draft picks instead of 7. If a team with players (MTL, HFD, STL) isn't picked, the players on that team will be dropped into the draft pool.

I wanted to make each league have 10 teams, but that would put canadiensfan66(HABS) and jrodimus31(jrod) in line as replacement coaches. If we lose coaches, they'll likely be from the "B" league, but having either of those coaches in "B" would be crazy since they have .600+ winning percentages in GDL (I'm .498). So, I put them straight into the "A" league. But, I didn't want to screw Iceguy94 and Zalex1414 (since they signed up before HABS and jrod), so, what I have done is expand the "A" league to 12 teams and kept the "B" league at 10. The downside of this is that it makes the waiting list very short, and there are 3 coaches in "B" who, to me, are unknowns. So... I really need the new "B" coaches to be dedicated, or we could have a very tumultuous season! "A" EDM Icestorm NHL94 PHI snoboarder3211 TB angryjay93 - "A" league champ NYR thegr8199kings WPG Vocally Caged TOR skoolyardpuck PIT sebe82 DET Flamingpavelbure - "B" league champ DAL smozoma - "B" league finalist -2- Freydey32 -5- canadiensfan66 -7- jrodimus31 "B" WSH hokkeefan2 BOS sonoffett87 L.A rynweinmeyer BUF Houlanov CHI metzgerism CGY Rage93 VAN gihtarman -1- JacketsZherdev -3- Iceguy94 -4- Zalex1414 "Farm" -6- blackandgold94 / donnybrook94 --- burerr9610 - ?didn't check in? --- WagsTh - semi-suspension for quitting weirdly last season

It looks to me as though the NHL94 community has maxed out. We are losing people at the same rate we are gaining people. The GDL league has 24 coaches and a few on the waiting list. The Blitz League has a couple fewer. When I started Blitz, I thought we would keep getting new guys and I could have 36 teams! (3 leagues of 12)! Here are some ideas for helping the community grow: If you make NHL94 YouTube videos, post a link to http://forum.nhl94.com in the description, and add a short annotation bubble at the start and end of the vid with the link. Do this to your old existing NHL94 videos, too. Stop arguing, especially dumb things like cheap anti-USA or anti-Canada comments. No insults. Be friends or just ignore the people you don't like. People won't want to stay if they see a bunch of petty drama. I need to watch this, too If you read sports-related blogs, slip in an NHL94 online reference when appropriate (if they mention video games for example) Add your own, and do your part!

Don't worry, it takes everyone a season or two to learn who the hidden gems are. Gotta get burned by players on other teams a lot to learn which guys are good. Always learn which players are on your opponent's team before playing them so you see the strengths and weaknesses of the players during the game. You have to think of the stats in terms of the bell curve. The farther a stat is away from the average, the more disproportionately valuable it becomes. Of the top 100 forwards by Overall rating (that's 68-99), the average weight is 7.13. Only 16 of them weigh 5 or less, so Ronning can usually check 84% of forwards. A guy weighing 6 can only check 61% of forwards. Average speed of the top 100 forwards is 3.93. Only 17 of them have 5 or greater speed. Ronning can out-skate 83% of the top 100. A 4 is only faster than 26% of them (very few 3-speed guys see ice time). Gagner's shot is way better than Ronning's, but without any 5s in power or accuracy, it's not really that much more dangerous.

Ronning and Gagner are definitely not almost identical :/ 5 vs 6 weight and 5 vs 4 speed/agi. Ronning is a really effective player, while gagner is just average. Not a bad trade though, with Pederson thrown in.

not much point emailing just log on to AIM whenever you're at your computer, and if you see guys online on your contact list, talk to them and see if they want to play

not sure.. when i get to it. might be next weekend instead of this one.

too late, sorry. sebe won the contest to switch teams. the winner could choose to trade cities and/or entire teams. your team is awesome man a bit of tweaking in this draft and you'll be killer.

Sebe changed to QUE instead.

it's v1.0 now!

In otehr news.. if you post an image and then use the 'quick edit' option, the image disappears after you submit... (i had to manually put it back in the post)

As you can see in the screen shot.. the forum menu doesn't work in the Google Chrome browser! Everything is crammed to the left, and all the dropdowns are open

Sebe is the winner (he was the 4th to request a team change and I rolled a 4) PIT moves to NYI Alternately, Sebe can choose to switch teams with any other coach (they get PIT, he gets whatever they had)...

Videos now in High Quality! Soooo much clearer. (see first post for youtube links)

Same is true in weight-bug-fixed Genesis version, though... taking on Pittsburgh with Ottawa = DEATH. But, yeah, that is one of the neat parts of the weight bug -- how the weak, light teams could hold their own against the bigger teams.

I thought the deke was killer in SNES, too?

burn But... everyone knows if you want to play games, PC i mean Genesis is where you want to be! [edit: SNES-vs-Genesis (serious) comments removed to avoid console war thread!)]

yep.. try the genesis version! takes some getting used to, but it's just as fun [edit: statements suggesting which version is better redacted in the interests of avoiding a SNES-vs-Genesis war!]

Whoops, what I meant was, #2 forward.

yeah, it's not too work-safe!

Lebeau is a solid 2nd-rounder for sure. But Kovalenko was the 2nd-string guy #2 forward for Pill, EA, and Carse -- and the only reason AJ took him as his #1 was that he was bored of Sandstrom. Anyway.. you'll do OK with those guys, but I just wanted to show your pick progression and how you, at least numerically, lost ground. Remember that someone will only accept a trade if they think they are 'winning' it, so chances are you are losing it. It's not like the NHL where there are lots of tradeoffs like salary vs skill vs age.. there is only skill in GDL.

Cool, I think he may be the first person to play NHL94 online on a Mac!