AHL/ECHL Affiliation Not Present in Opening Day Rosters
 

Using the Opening Day quickstart, I notice that AHL teams aren't set to have the appropriate ECHL teams as their farm teams. The NHL teams are set correctly.



This makes it so AHL contracted players can't be sent to the ECHL. Is this a bug/oversight, or is there a reason for this?

Sorry, this should probably be moved to the bug forum.

I would have to check, but I don't think it's a bug. I believe it was done because people playing the ECHL were getting too many players stolen/dumped from/on their rosters.

You can still send someone to a reserve list though, can you not?

Yeah, the ECHL affiliates are listed under the NHL team, but with the AHL. I'm fine with this as long as the NHL teams are still affiliated with them.

It's a workaround - AHL teams tend to sign more players than they do in real life (aside from independent teams), which can make the experience of managing an ECHL team really unpleasant when they send them all down because their parent has filled their roster with their own players. Having the SemiPro team or reserve list as the AHL affiliate lets them keep those guys as a "taxi squad" rather than overwhelming the ECHL with them.

The workaround makes sense when explained. Do guys on these semi pro squads/taxi squads still have the chance to develop at the same rate? The AHL is a developmental league after all.

Would it make more sense for the ECHL team to be the one with a taxi squad, so that they can use that to put players they've signed if the AHL players sent are better?

One mechanic I've always liked in EHM was the ability to loan out players, so if you don't want to dump them all on one ECHL team, you can loan guys out to multiple different teams.

OK. Since this is 'working as intended', is there a way for me as a player to permanently fix it so I don't have to do the affiliations every single save?

Load a save, fix the affiliations, save it as a Quick Start game.

Taxi Squad/Reserve List players still develop like they are playing games, they just don't generate stats for you to look at.

While it's not a perfect solution, it does work. If you wanted to "loan" someone - so long as you're not in Challenge Mode, you could edit someone to a team.

This does sound more logical. Could this be considered Jeff?

While not realistic, I've setup a new game so all 5 North American pro/semi pro leagues are affiliated.

NHL>AHL>ECHL>SPHL>FHL>Reserve list

The SPHL and FHL don't have as many teams as the ECHL, so the affiliations are split. This gives the talented players more levels to play, and the reserve list is for the guys who really aren't good enough for any of those leagues.

I am curious how this shakes out talent wise.

Have you tried that out? I've thought about doing that myself. Does it work?