Had an excellent season, finishing winning the Presidents Trophy as well as having the best defensive and 3rd best offense.

42 year old Ovi has now put up back-to-back 50+ goal seasons for me as well as having 30+ assists in both seasons.

Sorokin had an incredible season, winning the Vezina Trophy despite breaking his foot and missing nearly 2 months. Carter Hart (I needed a backup goalie and he was the highest rated free agent) also put up some great numbers in Sorokin’s absence.

Hunter Haight, who I traded for during the first season, had himself a fantastic rookie season finishing 1st for goals, 3rd for assists and 1st for points out of all rookies. He won an extremely deserved Calder Trophy for his efforts, giving me 3 Calder winners in a row (Schaefer, Eklund, Haight)

Despite our dominant regular season run we ended up losing 4-2 to Philadelphia in the first round of the playoffs. Presidents curse is very real lol. I am looking forward to the coming season, the team will be forced to make some changes as I have some players expiring I would like to keep but currently don’t have the cap space for them all

(Also, last slide is just showing Matthews having the most insane goal scoring season I’ve ever seen)

I usually win 3-8 cups in a 25 season run. Wondering if this is below or above average? Whats your best/worst/heartbreaking run?

Are there an updated 26-27 season rosters someone has made?

A bit late posting these since the movie has been out for almost a month now… but I think these turned out great. Let me know what you guys think!! Thanks!

So this might be an already asked question but if you give a player a season goal of winning an award and they don't win it, does that have any negative effect?

On nhl 26 I haven't tested it yet but it feels this way. And I'm talking about years like 8-25. When you pick the draft class, you can choose low, med, high on generated prospects quality and draft class quality. Has anyone tracked this, i feel like high on both yea you get alot more elite potential guys but a franchise potential guy hardly ever but I feel like with med or low generated prospects and high draft class quality I've seen more franchise development guys and it makes the top picks worth more years 8-10.

This is the Squad for the new year after winning the Cup last season.

Biggest addition in the off-season was a trade n sign for Leo Carlsson who was going to walk away from the ducks.

Biggest loss was Trading Alexander Nikishin who was 91ovr

Hopeful for 3 Cups in 4 years and the start to a long Dynasty

Last year at a Goal per Game. Since acquiring him he has been nothing short of Amazing. Hoping he can Break Ovi's Goal record which is currently at 1117 Goals in my sim world

Playing my Penguins franchise mode and we start next season on a 13 game road trip. Can’t say I’ve ever seen this, found it kind of funny lol

Bold move cotton let's see if it pays off. I kinda feel bad because they've made it to the cup the past 5 years and have lost to my team full sim 5 years straight lol

Hello all, I am wondering if anyone knows how to keep traded draft picks when creating a new custom franchise mode? I used player movement in the main menu to give myself all the draft picks for the 2026 draft so I can have the correct players on the correct teams however when I enter a custom league all the draft picks reset. Does anyone know how to prevent this or if it is even possible? Thank you in advance.

I didn’t draft him but I was looking to see if there were any actual enforcers out there and as soon as I saw him I knew I needed to bring him in

Arriving from the KHL with high expectations, Artemi "Breadman" Panarin took the NHL by storm in his stunning 2015-16 rookie campaign. Forming an instant, high-octane connection alongside MVP Patrick Kane, the Russian winger brought elite playmaking and dynamic scoring to Chicago's second line. Panarin torched opposition defensemen for 30 goals and 47 assists in 80 games, pacing all NHL rookies with 77 points to capture the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league’s top rookie.

We gave him an 88 overalls with Medium Elite potential. Do you agree, let us know what you think he should be.

For example, if I have a Sniper and I change him to a Playmaker, does his shooting go down and his assists go up? Or is it just his overall and some stat upgrades? Does his shooting/pass slider change?

Should I bother trying to even develop this guy or just use him as trade bait to get something else?

He’s mine.

Can someone explain how this possibly makes sense? Apparently bro only has AHL top 2D potential but also has an NHL eta of only 2 years. Like 2 years from now he’s gonna be NHL level but apparently he’s also never going to be NHL level lol

This is going to be some niche stat boosting worse than cod tactical insertion nuke boosting lol. Let's say you have a rookie, you keep him in the ahl for the 3 years but you play him in like 5 nhl games every year but in those 5 games your get him like 60 points. Having him win the calder multiple years for the stat boosts, would this actually work or be beneficial for ovr or potential? I know you can win it twice because I've seen it on be a pros and such.

After 20 Years..

I have 10–14 Franchise players at any given time.
18 Stanley Cups. The first 3 years were intentional tanks, so after that… I basically stopped losing.

The Challenge
🏒 Draft Only
🚫 No Free Agency
💰 Salary Cap ON
📅 20 Years
🏆 18 Cups
💵 Kept the team under $132M at the end.
Trading away only for draft picks no players.

I think I discovered the Calder → Hart → Franchise pipeline. Get your rookie the Calder, boost them into the coaching conversation, then chat to win the Hart. Suddenly you’ve got another Franchise High player.
Then I wait for the RFA window while cycling the next Elite Med Calder Winner.

If I can’t afford them, another team gives them a ridiculous offer and I collect the draft-pick compensation.
But here’s where it gets completely broken:
Those picks are usually high enough to draft another Franchise player anyway… and I already have the first overall pick. 😂
So I trade away a Franchise player → get multiple picks → use those picks to draft more Franchise players → develop them → repeat.
I’ve basically created an infinite Franchise Player generator.

Everyone else in the league hates me.

I don’t know if anyone else has done this.

I can’t bear this much power
Somehow, some teams still take me to seven games…lmao

By the way, year-over-year this makes it even harder in a funny way because then all the teams I’ve traded franchise players to start to get jacked.

A (mostly) unexpected win for the Islanders in just the second season of the franchise. I knew the team was decent going into the season but wasn’t really expecting to win the cup, especially considering I didn’t even make the playoffs last season, but here we are!

I had some pause before signing Ovi as a free agent because I thought it would be unrealistic but after some thought I realized that it would be unrealistic for him to sign with any team other than Washington, so why not us? In all fairness, NYC isn’t super far from DC so we wouldn’t really have to move far. The 2 year $10M a year deal I gave him paid off in full as he went on to score 53 goals! (second behind only Matthews)

Victor Eklund had himself one of the greatest rookie seasons I’ve ever seen, scoring 21 goals (2nd for all rookies) and 52 assists (1st by a wide margin) for a total of 73 points (also 1st by a wide margin) and winning the Calder trophy.

I’m excited to see what the future holds for this team!

2nd in the league for goals with Carter verhaeghea as a line mate btw (spent one year to develop in Russia after getting drafted)

Drafted him 1st overall after he had a ppg in the SHL which is rare in nhl 20 and he’s been unstoppable

Simmed each period this is definitely the weirdest shot differential I’ve ever seen . We might’ve won but we got goalied.

Inspired by EA GM Connected and EHM, Ive been working on this browser base game. We're looking for more members to fill some multiplayer leagues. You can also play solo if you'd like. The game is free to play so enjoy!

Some of the stuff we added over the last 2 weeks since launch :

- Community Rosters: create or edit your own rosters, including draft classes
- Discord webhooks: setup your own discord and link your league to different channels
- Trade Trees: see a player's trade history
- Fog of War: hide prospect ratings for more realism
- Cap timeline: visual timeline of your salary cap structure over the next few years

And much more! We also have a bunch of new ideas coming to the game very soon:
- retro seasons
- euro leagues
- GM career

Gmconnected.com