A LONG WAY TO GO (2024-25 Season P2) | NHL 25 | New York Islanders Franchise Mode #2

TABK TANK TANK TANK SELL

I personally would try and wave any no-movement clauses try to trade what might be worth it and hopefully turn that into draft picks and see if you can retain 50% of sorkoin. I would also give Bo Horvat the captaincy.

I don't think the off season focus conversations are cheese, there is always a chance that the boost does not apply. It lets you control your player's growth based on your preferences, for example, you could ask eiserman to focus on defense or skating based on what you think he's missing.

I think you should talk to everyone

I would go for the OFD and Martone or Mcqueen

Bumpy ride for sure smart moves in moving out big contracts and acquiring picks and prospects but most importantly great episode like always ! All right lets dive into this ! Firstly for off season discussions i would ask Eiserman to work on in Def awareness because it was at a 70 rating at the start of episode one not sure if it grew or not but 70 isn’t nhl ready def awareness. Same thing for Lysell work on D awareness. If you plan to keep Duclair maybe ask gim to shoot more you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Now for the draft Fasth is a no brainer you said it yourself elite OFD are just to valuable and they can flip a franchise from bad to great should definitely help the low powerplay and scoring %. The Pelech moves make a lot of sense you could grab a lower overall top 4D man with either pick or/and prospects just need to find the perfect team to do so ! Maybe moving up for Matthew Schaefer could be interesting such at low pick with high value you should look into that could either become a great piece for the team or a super cheesy trade piece for the future, Varlamov might be the piece that could land you the low first round pick. It think thats all for me can’t wait for the next episode (like always).

Ravioli Ravioli give us the formuoli !

We did what we could Data. This team has been in a spiral losing their identity over the last few years. We need to rekindle the winning mentality.
That being said you always make the best of a bad situation so great episode.

Starting with the draft I think we should get one of McQueen or Martone. PWF seem to sim well and in my experience more like snipers.
If we get lucky and acquire another 1st rnd pick go for Fasth as well. (But if we have the value for another 1st why not swing for the fences with the first overall)

During resign I suggest trade Lee if possible or buy him out.
Also I agree money makes a long term deal for Dobson difficult but maybe qualify and see if it drops after July first or beginning of season. I still believe in him and think he should b on this team long term.
With that in mind the conversation tool could work for us and not b cheese bc in the opening you mentioned how players love to stay on the island and the game can't really account for that loyalty. if we use it to get his team interest back up and then pay him a realistic amount, even if it looks like an over pay by his new request.

With wanting to improve and give younger players spots we need to move out contracts. I think duclair was a nice try but underwhelming. if we want to resign Nelson and Palmieri in lesser roles we can't have foudy McLean wahlstrom and the others holding spots too.

I'm for Nelson over Palmieri if we can only get one. Strictly bc he's a home grown talent .

I also think this d core should have a do over. The Ufa options seem lateral in improvement in my opinion.

Boeser! Boeser! Boeser!
I think it would help any of him, bo, or barzy break out in points if not all three having him on top pair.

As far as conversations to boost overall horvat definitely deserves one and why not tsyplokov if we are going to try to keep him. We all agree he's a little low anyway.

Other than that great episode look forward to the next one and thanks for reading

lysell, eiserman, and Barzal should get off-season goals.

hot take but get what you can for Dobson. if that Buffalo deal is still on the table take it and run.

at pick 8 i think we actually trade down for Porter Martone.

The off season focus convos are not OP or broken and I’ve seen first hand how they can legitimately sometimes do nothing. One sim I did I asked an elite power forward to increase his speed 3 different off seasons… It never even went up 1 point. I understand that certain player types can’t develop some skills as well as others. However if a playmaker for example has a horrible passing stat you could tell them to improve it and they would be more likely to focus it during the off season.

Generally I keep it simple if he’s a big or defensive guy ask him to improve defensively or physically. If it’s a skill player tell them to improve their speed, puck skills, ETC. You can still ask a sniper for example to improve defensively but I find most of the time it does nothing to certain role players. It’s still worth seeing if players can grow certain stats but it’s very rare for stats “outside of their role”.

Brutal season.

I would definitely be looking to move on from Varlamov to see what assets can be acquired in the draft.

At the draft, the #1 pick should be on the Elite OFD, no debate required. I think your logic on moving on from Pelech when his NMC expires is sound, and we would have a homegrown player ready to step into his spot in the lineup.

Another thing to consider is that Barzal, Horvat, and Nelson can all play C. Would giving each of them their own line to drive be something to consider? Is a player as offensively creative as Barzal being stifled playing on the wing?

Bringing back Nelson (our leading scorer) as our 3C for 2-3 years would make sense from a stability standpoint. That would allow us to focus on developing our wingers like Lysell and Eiserman and have them playing next to a strong center no matter where in the lineup they end up.

It makes no sense to bring back an old Palmieri at his age and term ask, even though it's great to see him at an 85.

Is it time to move on from Lee or do we keep the captain for one more year? He's making way too much money. Is he too slow to be a center? We also have Eiserman, Lysell, Tsyplakov at LW that we'd prefer to develop more.

I am in favor of exploring a Robertson trade again because i think he'd flourish with more ice time.

In the Data administration we no longer have to be loyal to Lamoriello holdouts like Lee and Palmieri (although Lee does have a franchise legacy to consider)

These moves are going to help us get younger, faster, and more flexible financially, so I'd like to see our fwd lines looking something like this:

Tsyplakov Barzal Boeser
Eiserman Horvat Robertson
Lysell Nelson Duclair
Cizikas Foudy Anderson

Defensively, I wouldn't change a thing until we find our new coach, other than slot our new 8 overall OFD into the 3rd pair next to Mayfield ( I'd like to see Mayfield's defensive attributes- I suspect they are very strong)

Ultimately I think we'll see better results next year regardless now that weve moved on from that garbage head coach and our defensive minded interim coach.

I wish the game devs could fix the weird points, High scoring and Medium shot frequency makes all my players get 30 points and my good players 60. With only 5 or 7 getting over 100 somehow the sim is worse than last year personally.

Great video, I liked and support the moves you made they made sense in my opinion. I’m going to say what I believe we should do and then go crazy.

I’m not sure if acquiring a top-top line level winger is so necessary. Eiserman is going to be that guy soon and we acquired Lysell who in my opinion would play very well on the first line pairing with Barzal’s speed. Lysell-Eiserman could be our top left wingers next year, so our top 6 would be
Lysell-Horvat-Barzal
Eiserman-Nelson-Palmieri
The islanders are known for their bottom six being tough to play against, so I think we need to add a center to play on either the third or fourth line. Lee can be 4th line LW, Duclair can be on the third with Tsyplakov. If we really want an upgrade and get someone who scores goals, I do agree asking Duclair to waive could be the move. I know he just signed, but Lou signed him not us! Honestly, I would also included Lysell if it meant getting a top six sniper.

Now for my crazy take; Seattle is a tweener team like us and James Hagens is a DREAM FIT. If we wanted to go crazy crazy, we could entertain throwing for that pick. We could even just start kind of fresh and gear more towards rebuilding, send Barzal to Seattle (close to his home in Vancouver?) it’s something to think about…

There's so many possibilities for us this offseason.
I'll start with the draft.

I probably would go for Martone or Fasth at #8. We either want a top pair dman (especially if we end up having to trade Dobson next season if his long term demands aren't coming down after extending him for 1 year) or someone to play alongside Barzal. In an ideal world, we trade for another top 10 pick and get both, just not sure what we'd trade to make that happen but, if we can somehow make it work, I would definitively look into it. Maybe we add our 1st pick in 2-3 years and hope we're a much better team by then? If we can lock 2 big peices of our future right away, it might be worth it and I doubt we end up drafting in the top 10 again if we get both of them + we revamp a bit our top 6 in the offseason so it's a gamble that could pay off big time. Trading up from 40th to late 20s to get Schaefer could be something we look into although, I'm quite ok to pass on late 1st round nhl ready players... we know how this usually turns up and, with how depleted our prospect pool is, I'd prefer to keep all picks so I'd only think about doing this if we trade our 2nd pick + a player we do not intend to keep; I wouldn't do, lets say, both of our 2nd round picks for a late 1st. If we don't move up for Shaefer, I'd probably go with Aitcheson as we have to replenish our dmen pool, especially with how much $ dmen are asking for. We need cheap options coming over asap.

As far as contract goes, I think we need to limit as much as we can the amount of ntc we give players; we're already handcuff with the clauses we have, let's not give too many of these (at least, not a lot that are 50%+ teams restrictions). We also might want to wait until the resigning phase or until July 1st to extend anyone. As I mentioned in my comment last time, I'm not in a rush to extend our players with the way they simmed last season and, until we know who we can get as upgrades and how much they will cost, we need to keep wiggle room. If Rantanen ever drops to ufa, I think we need to go all-in; he'd cost more than Ehlers or Boeser would but he should produce a lot more than either of them and would be a perfect fit for Barzal. Signing him would mean letting Nelson walk and we'd probably need to trade Lee which, to be honest, I wouldn't mind. These 2 alone would pay for Rantanen's salary and he'd probably give us more than both combined as far as production goes. I don't think we can afford not to do this if this ends up being on the table. Either way, I wouldn't bring back a 33yo Nelson who's asking for 6m$ per year. If it's not Rantanen, I'd use that $ on one of Ehlers or Boeser (probably Ehlers). I also wouldn't go 2 years on Palmieri; at 34yo, he's bound to regress before the end of that contract. I'm on the fence about Tsyplakov; I don't think he'd be anything more than a 3rd liner for us so maybe we use his trade value right away? I'd trade Pelech if we can for sure, probably Mayfield too as I'd be ok with Bolduc and Xhekaj on the 3rd pair and trading both of these would give us an extra 9m$ of cap space. Pelech can probably be replaced short term by one of Lingren or Gavrikov on a short term deal or we draft and bring Fasth right away. I'd also look at trading Varlamov as, again, he has decent trade value and we can replace him easily. I get that he has a decent contract but, what's the worth of that good contract if performance is subpar? Might as well use the value on something that might actually help us.

I'm not sure how much of a boost these discussions / goals have. Looking at what we tried with Horvat, it's not looking like it had much impact but, if we do use them, we should probably focus on some of the prospects we want to see growth from (Lysell, Eiserman). I'm not sure it's worth using on 30yo ish players as they probably already are what they are going to be, I doubt it will impact them a lot.

There's an easy soft reset available to us here where we can get rid of a ton of cap space and upgrade with REAL top 6 players via ufa for similar money and there are also decent options on defense. Getting a 2nd top 10 pick would also go a long way into ensuring we're very competitive within a window of 2 years while having great options to replace some of our over 30yo players. This should be our #1 focus if there are available picks for trade. Looking a couple of years down the road, a top 6 or Barzal, Martone, Horvat, Lysell, Eiserman and one of Rantanen or Ehlers isn't half bad. Add a top pair of Fasth and Dobson (or whomever we trade him for if we can't extend him long term as we'd have to get a young top dman back in any trade we do) and you have the building blocks of a winning team. If Sorokin can get his ** together and we find decent options to take over for our aging defensive core in a couple of years, this could be our core for the next 6 or 7 seasons before we then have to cycle out Barzal, Horvat and Rantanen/Ehlers, giving us plenty of time to win and find suitable replacements for them.

This off season is probably already the most important one of our tenure and will go a long way into molding this team for the rest of our stay at the helm of the franchise so we need to ensure we take the proper steps to make this team a contender for years to come. Trying to do short term patching could end up delaying us bringing back this franchise to it's former glory by quite some time. Lets rip off the band-aid so the healing can speed up!

Looking forward to the offseason buddy!

Hey data great vid, I have a feel ideas I think Dobson is a good player but He’s not really seeming to loyal he’s asking for way to much in my opinion I think there’s two options we can try the 1 year deal or we can try to trade him if we were to trade him now idk if he has like a no trade list or anything but I think there is two teams that make sense the kings and the flyers due to them both missing the playoffs and the storylines that could come in to play. The kings players are getting older it might be time for them to look for there new number defence men and I think Dobson could totally fits that he’s still only 24 and he has proved he can play at a top level over the past years, there could be a few players we could be interested in getting back from them such as Mikey Anderson, Brandt Clarke or Alex Laferriere. On the other side if we decide to trade him to the flyers I think getting Drysdale and Bobby brink could help the team: Drysdale is only about 22-23 years old and still has room to grow as a defence men at 83 overall he could be a solid player for us in the future and I think getting Bobby brink could help the offensive he’s 21 years old I think and 82-83 overall so could be a interesting player to watch grow and I think this trade would also help out the flyers, when you look at there defence there’s not really to much that’s stands out so getting a player like Dobson could really help them out. That’s just my thought on what we could do with Dobson, for free agents I think that Jakob Chychrun could be a good defence men to go after he’s a 86 overall and at 27 still had some good years left in him he can also play on the left or right side a good player to cause he can pretty much play wherever we need him to be as for the forwards I do think boeser would be nice to pick up for a few years. I still think Robertson would be a good player to go after if we could find a trade that works for both teams. Those are just some ideas, great video can wait for part 3

SPOILER WARNING




So, first things first. It's nice to see you going back to your roots as the 2nd-ever trade under GM Data782 (back in Montreal '18 series) was with NYI. Much smaller scale trade as it was Episode 1 and the regular season hadn't yet begun, but a nice wholesome moment for sure.

I believe the Xhekaj claim was fine. We can't predict the AI's peanut-sized brain that sends Xhekaj through waivers instead of Pierre "Is It Too Late To Say Sorry" Engvall. If Montreal is going to make a braindead move such as this, then us capitalizing is no issue. Like you said, if we don't claim him someone else will. Imagine if that other team was an Atlantic Division rival? I think Montreal prefers he come here instead of seeing him 10 times a year and possibly more with playoffs. After all, maybe in a show of good faith we trade him back later for less than he's worth. (i.e. instead of Xhekaj for 3rd being even, we trade a 4th). Building GM relationships is part of the business side anyways. Even though we're communicating with braindead AI we're trying to keep the realism.

As I'm keeping track of things, I noticed for Dobson, we offered $8.75M/4 with final 2 years as M-NTC of 29 teams when his ASK was $10.7M/2. The day AFTER he rejects the offer his ask increased $500K to $11.25M/2. In what world do you increase your ask when a differently tweaked contract is offered? If he wants that, he has to earn it. I vote no contract, let him join the expiring club and we'll revisit him at the draft or day one of RSP. Furthermore at episode's end, Dobson's new ask has dropped ever-so-slightly by $100K. I'm starting to dislike Dobson. If you'll allow me to pitch something (of course you will because this is just a suggestion and you take every single one into account), Dobson and his agent are playing contract games. Dobson does not want a contract extension. Even as we fiddle with M-NTCs and such, the needle isn't easy to move. I vote we jettison him out in the escape pod on draft day. And let's say at #8 (or lower if traded away) we draft LD Robert Fasth OFD Med Elite guy, I don't think that one guy is going to entice Dobson to stay. I think we ditch Dobson and acquire as much assets as possible. I get he was drafted here, played better part of 6 seasons so far, 7 maybe, but you had an off-year last year after reaching 70 pts in 71 GP the year prior. And you still want upwards of $10M. Doing this will allow other extensions to get done without being as restricted. Also moving Dobson could allow you to get a high draft pick if you wanted 2 of those Med Elite guys (i.e. Fasth & Misa, or Fasth & Martone).

For the draft we pick 8th, 40th, 54th (MTL), 72nd, 104th, 136th, 168th, and 202nd (PHI). Assuming we use #8 for the aforementioned Fasth, I'd like to see screenshots of the draft class around these spots to better see who I would recommend we pick up. If there's no one interesting around 40th, maybe we can trade our 2nd up to end of 1st round for LD/RD Matthew Schaefer. In my experience multi-position D-men are a hot commodity, and to find one with elite potential and NHL ready at the draft? Pfft, the stars are aligning over Long Island. D'Aigle, if we go that route, sounds like trade bait. LD/RD Kashawn Aitcheson around 44th looks great too, TWD, Top 4 potential. G Jack Ivankovic, not 100% scouted but trending in the elite-potential range in the 73rd overall zone. Later, into the late 100s (160-175) there is LW Ralf Preissing, RD Igor Perezhogin, and RW Tero Piispanen. All elite potential. Any one of these at this part of the draft is a steal IMO. Some other late depth defence in this draft is LD C. Silvester TWD 4-bar Low Top 4, and RD C. Girard OFD also 4-bar Low Top 4 projected past 200th overall. Don't need to see anyone specifically but again maybe some screenshots for around our picks (72, 104, 136, 168, 202); this is in case if who we want is no longer available and we're not scrambling to figure out a new target in a minute and a half.

And for FA, very little to say here: Two targets, just one of which, I'd like to see come to NYI; Boeser or Ehlers.

And to cap off this lengthy comment...I may have a bold ask. Before I've just let it go. I've brought it up once and never since. But now I'm digging the hole that I will lie in. I understand EA just drops in too many back-to-backs (this past season was 12), but I think that's where we have to reign it in. I don't recall any NHL team putting in the same goalie on back-to-back nights. When I see that many back-to-backs it tells me that there are 12 games our starter doesn't take just like there's 12 games our backup gets guaranteed. Just to keep realism I think we make sure our goalies are properly rested and not overworked. Sure, this is EA but that's what where our fight is right? Re-working their work so that it's realistic. So really all I'm asking is to stop full calendar sims at the back-to-backs making sure the same goalie doesn't play back-to-back. Of those 12 back-to-backs here is our record: (L-W / W-L / L-L / W-OTW / SOW-L / L-L / L-L / OTW-W / W-L / W-L / W-L / L-L). So over those 24 games we went 10-14 with 3 post-regulation wins meaning we could've easily been 7-17 in those back-to-backs. We as an organization must be diligent and take accountability for not doing everything in our power to finish with a good record. Not that we have to do this next season but if the back-to-back results are similar or worse I'll bring this back up again.

As per usual another wonderful video! Thank you for keeping us entertained! Looking forward to the next one!
LETS
GO
ISLES

(P.S. Thank you to whomever brought up Robertson as a trade target! Absolutely! With the full year in the top 6 we could see Robertson break out to high-80s. He wants out of Toronto, let's get him in here without overpaying!)

AGM MightyJoeMaple signing off.

Hey data. That season was pretty rough to watch but I think you handled the “soft sell” well and made the best of the situation. Now this offseason is where we really have to make some moves because we can’t keep the same lines after last years poor showing. That being said, I still think we have a strong core here on Long Island, and I would not go out and sell right away knowing that the offseason might wake up the AI brains of barzal, dobson, horvat, sorokin, etc. and make them realize that they’re hockey players again. If we play our cards right we can give ourselves a chance at contention next year while also building for the future.

The blueline is where we really need to make a stand this offseason. For dobson it seems like we will be forced to do a short term deal, and maybe that’s not a bad thing because he has not proven to me yet that he can be a #1 D on a Stanley cup team. Pelech is also a guy where we could consider capitalizing on his value. He’s not old, but by the time we will likely be really hitting our stride as true contenders, he will be 34-36. Maybe he’s the major piece in a move for a young sniper.

For the forwards I think it would be smart to mostly keep status quo, and for extensions we should keep them short. Also clauses are great to keep the cap lower, but reminder the mess that Lou left us in with all of these NTCs. I also am intrigued by the idea of ehlers or boeser at the draft, although we need to make sure we leave enough room for dobson, palmeri and nelson.

And finally for the draft. Like you said it will be tough to find value to grab two med elites in the 11-14 range. If we could get lucky and duclair, varlamov, etc. all waive their clauses it’s worth a try, but it’s okay if we just stay at our draft position as well. i
It also feels a bit cheese going for schaefer because that draft position makes no sense. I think we should definitely draft Fasth though. He should hopefully give us a #1 OFD to use down the road if dobson doesn’t stay for whatever reason.

Great episode data and I’ll see you at the draft! Go isles ❤

The sim might be accurate Palmieri is leading the islanders in real life with a 58 point pace 😭😭

Spoilers







Hi Data,

Thank you for another episode, which gives us some hope indeed and I am sure we are in better situation than last year.

I had a list of things we should do in the off-season, but after those awful results you did the most important moves already and you did even better than I though we could. There have been some really good moves in this episode and I liked them a lot.

What I had on the list was also getting rid of Lee - if every goal from him cost us 700k then something is very, very wrong. That's not captaincy if you ask me... If we can use him as a trade bait in this draft, or trade for future picks. I don't care, which it would be. All I know is if we want to see successful team, it would not be with him in the line-up.
I am not happy with our star forwards, either. However I think we should get both Barzal and Horvat one more season to see, if they can be paid what they are paid.

Nelson was actually one of very few who performed well and I would try to get him 2 year deal, not much more...he has a lot of interest in the organization, so would little bit less money with 16 teams no trade list interest him? I am on PS4 and I am not familiar with those new features yet, but is there an option to promise him captaincy in those re-sign negotiations? If he asks for too much anyway, then let him go and get Boeser, or anyone who can score.

If you can sign Palmieri also for 2 years and I think we can go up to 2.25M, then we should be ok. If we can sign one of those two, I would not mind, but I would get higher priority to Nelson, if I had to pick one of them.

Then I was thinking about Pelech, but I will get there later...

As we spoke at the beginning, we are paying too much for goalies and there is no guarantee of anything. As you say, we would like to ask Sorokin, if we could move him...I don't see it working, but should try...if not than we should probably move Varlamov to free up some cap space and keep Halak as backup.

As for scoring I was curious about the options in the draft and I did not see any pure sniper very high in top 15 ranked players. There might be one among those PWF and I would check that, too. However, after seeing the options I would prefer to get some OFD instead, who can be future face of the franchise on the blue line. I am talking about Fasth and even his strengths are really good combination and as we know D from Sweden are usually good. And we are not forced to get him to NHL right now as he can grow nicely in one of the best leagues in Europe and in one year from now we can get him time on the second pair and trade Pelech out. Romanov can play on the first line until Fasth is ready to take what is supposed to be his spot for years and years to come. But let's keep an eye on his situation, if he gets his ice time in Sweden and if he is growing in SHL.

I almost forgot about your question about off-season goals. If I was supposed to get growth from three players, I would like that especially from Eiserman, Lysell and Romanov - the last one of them because we probably need to get more from him, when/if he would temporary get first line minutes in the season 26-27 with Fasth on the second line and Pelech out. However, I would adjust that if you draft someone else, of course...

I might come with some more ideas, or more detail later, but these are the most important ideas I had after seeing this episode.


Go Data! Go Isles!

I think you trade all the way back for Schaefer. Medium elite NHL ready left hand defenseman with the ability to play on the ride side. Trading back that far could could give you some great assets moving forward.

Rant SZN loading

I say Eiserman and Horvat should get the offseason goals. Definitely look to trade down I found some of the late first round D prospects sim and grow pretty well. Schaefer especially worked well in my Stars franchise! Here’s hoping for a quick retool/turn around rather than a full on rebuild!

1st time doing anything like this, so hopefully none of my suggestions are too crazy as I did a ton of research for this. Also apologies for the length, just kept typing and typing. Anyway, I've tried looking at this offseason from as many possible different scenarios as possible with a focus on maximizing Barzel and Horvat's primes and have come up with many suggestions and ideas to look at (along with my opinion on what's best which honestly doesn't mean a lot in this.) Good luck getting through this, it's gonna take a while

Resigning
Noah Dobson: Unfortunately I don't feel like those number will drop to a reasonable amount (Even assuming you can drop 3-4 million with either time or a NTC, is Dobson worth Draisaitl level money in the long term (Genuinely asking, dont know if he will develop to that level) If we can get him back to 10-12 mil then maybe a long term deal makes sense but I feel like the best move is to trade him this offseason while he still has a year of RFA eligibility left to give his new team plenty of time to sign him to a new deal

Brock Nelson: I understand the concern about his age, however unless we are rebuilding, it feels wrong to let our points leader from this season walk. That said, I would only sign him to a 2 year deal at most as he will slowly fall out of the top 6 as younger forwards such as Eiserman and Lysell develop and we don't want to be paying 6 mil+ into their contract extensions (it would also match up perfectly with Anderson's contract, opening up a significant chunk of salary cap for 2027)

Kyle Palamari: GONE! He's looking like he's hit his final peak before permanent declining and despite his cheap contract demands we have to many high end forwards to worry about anyway. The only reason we should resign him is if we intend to play Eiserman on the fourth line which seems unlikely due to you counting him as a top 9 forward in the offseason preview (Plus a conversation with him or Lysall may bump them up to true top line contention.)

(Continued in comments)

Maybe increasing the organizational interest for Dobson can increase the contract interest?

For contracts, I think you should sign Tsyplakov to a 4-year deal < $3.250M, Bolduc to a 2-year deal < $2M, and qualify, wait, and see on Dobson. Let go of Nelson and Palmieri.

For trades, trade Lee and Pelech for current/future picks and young roster players/prospects.

Our current picks are 8, 40, 54, 72, 105, 138, 170, and 204. My targets are Fasth (CS 11), Schaefer (CS 28), Haines (CS 45), Nikitin (CS 126), and Priessing, Raffle, Perezhogin, and Piispanen (CS 164, 165, 167, and 168, respectively).

With your 1st round pick, draft Fasth. With your early 2nd round pick, draft Haines. Use your late 2nd round pick to trade up to 25 or so to draft Schaefer. Probably use your 3rd in that trade-up as well. With your 4th round pick, draft Niktin. Trade down with your 5th round pick to the late 150s-early 160s to draft one of the targets in that area. Trade your 6th round pick and Nelson's or Palmieri's UFA's rights for another pick in that area to get another one of those targets. The other two picks in the 160s can probably be acquired in the trading out of Lee and Pelech. With your 7th round pick, either trade up with it, trade it for a future pick, or use it to trade for Boeser's UFA rights.

In free agency, sign one or two young roster players in the bottom 6, and a depth forward.

I think the lines could look like this next season:

1st F: Boeser-Barzal-Lysell

2nd F: Duclair-Horvat-Eiserman

3rd F: FA/TA-Cizikas-Tsyplakov

4th F: FA/TA-FA/TA-Anderson

Depth F: FA

1st D: Romanov-Dobson

2nd D: Fasth-Pulock

3rd D: Bolduc-Mayfield

Depth D: Xhekaj

G: Sorokin-Varlamov

Depth G: Skarek

Sim is so far accurate. Islanders can't score even in real life. But let's try to fix them here

Since Noah Dobson is asking for ridiculous price, I think we should trade him for some first round pick. There are many great players in top 16 and I think if we trade Noah Dobson for first and some other prospect, we could use that prospect and our early second to acquire another first.

Our prospect pool is miserable so it doesn't matter much who we take. I would use it take that LD OFD and if we can, then Martone since he is NHL ready and with out cap situation he could get into NHL with even 78ish rating.

I would love to draft Adam Benák, he is criminally underated in sim and real life as well, but we can't have everything

Great episode and see you in next one

I would try to get both Fasth and Martone. If not I think Fasth could be a good one to play with Dobson or argument to trade Dobson as you could use him as remplacement.

Sorry, I know this isn’t the proper video for this question but
Do you know how to delete slider presets?
I have like 10 of them and almost before every franchise game you have to load the correct one!
So frustrating 😢

Wow, I thought I did a good job scouting and when I got to my first draft it was a crapshoot with the potential. I always use 18 scouts in amateur leagues and only use potential/comparison scouting… guess I’ll have to watch your scouting video!

I’d try to have conversations with young upcoming NHLers or those who will be here long term.

I’d go for a center and then do what you can to get Schaefer if he actually falls towards the end of round 1.

Two elite players are better than a crop of maybes.

If you’re drafting a D-man, you draft Swedish. I think that’s basically law, right?