Haha, thanks. I was really pleased with how the color portraits turned out. Would love to know how they look on a TV but I don't have an EverDrive yet.
Anyway, the IceHL was a sort of community design project turned fantasy league that went from the late 00s until about 2017, judging by the last version of its page: https://www.icethetics.co/the-icehl
I did think about including a readme that gives a brief overview of each team but I wasn't really sure how to describe most of them. I can offer some insight into my design process, though.
For a while I was going to make this a 16-team playoff ROM. The Other Scores screen needs a minimum of 18 teams, though, so I had California and Washington as secret cameo teams at first.
Everyone on Broadus's team (California) is named after a real life musician. The pictures aren't actually them since it's not meant to literally be them, but there's still a fair resemblance. Some more than others.
Washington is mainly inspired by movies that are either about hockey or have a hockey scene. For the most part they have the actor's first name and character's last name.
When I decided to expand to 24 teams, I kept their cameo origins for fun. And honestly it was hard not to expand further with the options available.
A lot of the players in the ROM either came from various projects I've done throughout my life or were generated specifically for this one. This is actually a pretty personal project for me.
The two teams on the title screen were mainly chosen for the practical reason of having similar palettes, but I decided to run with it and made them the default teams as well.
So, the "canon" for the previous season is that Calgary and New York met in the finals, with Calgary coming away as champion. If you look in NOSE, the first playoff draw is how the rest of that tree looked.
The Wheeler Cup is something I made up for the ROM. I chose Wheeler since it's the same length as Stanley and got it from one of the logo designers for the IceHL. He designed the logos for Winnipeg and Seattle as well as a few others I didn't use here.
Milwaukee was originally designed to be a wildcard team for Cinderella runs when this was still a playoff ROM. They're also one of my favorites because I had a lot of fun with the player names.
Minnesota is intended to be one of the better teams in the game. Not only do they have the highest rated player, they also have a top tier defender as well as one of the best goalies.
Salt Lake City's concept happened on a whim while setting up stats. Basically they're a mediocre team that happens to have a breakout star on its roster. He may have a 93 OVR but they still averaged out to one of the lowest team ratings in the game.
Honestly, a lot of the stats were done arbitrarily. Looking at them again I sorta wonder why some of them are set the way they are. That's something to think about more carefully when I try again on adapting the concept to 95.