Franchise Hockey Manager returns for the 2023-24 season with plenty of additions to the deepest, most authentic hockey strategy gaming experience you can find. Choose from teams around the globe and select a team to guide to glory, including a chance at the ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup®.
[b]Notes:[/b]
This is our first major update for FHM10, addressing issues that we weren't able to get to in the first-week hotfix as well as some that have come to light since then. There are no new features added yet; that will be coming as part of our first content update, which we're hoping to release shortly before Christmas.
We've fixed a number of crashes; in most cases, the game will fix existing saves to avoid them, but if you have a standard game save that's crashing in early 2024-25, the problem may have already occurred and is past the point where an automatic correction can help, but we still may be able to fix it for you: let me know in our forum if that's the case.
The database has been updated and the "Current" option is now the default; the playable league rosters are accurate as of last Monday, November 20. In addition to the new rosters, a number of reported data issues were fixed, we updated many player ratings, and added a large number of top prospects to the 2025-2028 NHL draft classes.
[b]Change List:[/b]
-databases updated; current db is now available (and is the default starting option)
-fixed potential draft-related crash in the first NHL season in games started in 1909
-fixed potential crash in the 1920 Olympics
-fixed issue that could cause a non-tournament team to appear in the playoffs of a youth tournament, causing a crash
-fixed potential crash during the CSV export
-fixed potential crash when using Lines-Goalie Starts-Next Games to choose a goalie for tournament games
-increased frequency of press criticism of players (and the GM's opportunity to respond to it)
-fixed broken schedule data in the 1912-13 NHA season
-added minimum/maximum age limit to July 1 league editing in custom and historical modes
-the "Allow Transfers in Own League" setting is now editable in League-Edit
-added scholarship limit, tuition cost, and academic reputation to the team edit screen
-disabled the Team Deactivation, Team Activation, and League Activation historical editing options for the 1909-1916 period due to potential for breaking the NHA-NHL transition
-strengthened the safety check in the Goalie Start System that avoids excessive starts by the backup
-player responses to an off-ice incident by a teammate will no longer occasionally include the same player twice
-fixed the "The Pinnacle" achievement (win Stanley Cup) appearing at random times during the year
-changed the name of the future Phoenix Coyotes arena to "New Mesa Arena"
-the "Defending Champion Qualified" option will now work properly in custom tournaments, instead of sometimes excluding the defending champion
-the "Team With Potential Interest in Your Trading Block Players" view in team-trades/transfers-Needs will no longer show the user's own team in some of the lists
-when using the "Start as Real GM" option in a standard game and choosing the Montreal Canadiens, the ratings of their GM will no longer all be set to default values instead of using the real ones from the database
-removed unneeded "Loss PS" from youth tournaments standings that was breaking the alignment of everything to the right of it
-fixed broken alignment in the youth tournament history screen's "Champions" section
-increased the number of scouts that the AI will assign to tournament scouting if the user has the AI making those choices
-players with injuries that have >60 days remaining are now ineligible to be shopped
-if you create a custom league with no playoffs and then make changes to other league rules (on July 1) after beginning the game, you will no longer get the error message "Invalid playoff format error" and be unable to continue without setting up a playoff system
-trading in the FPHL should now work properly
-the Swiss Ice Hockey Games tournament no longer stops after the first season
-Switzerland removed from the list of possible Deutschland Cup participants (since they now play in the 3 EHT tournaments)
-updated second round of the KHL playoffs to use the new inter-conference matchups
-added play-in for the bottom two (7 and 8) seeds in the Belarusian Extraleague
-removed the relegation game from the Tipos Extraliga (Slovakia); relegation is automatic now for the last-placed team
-goalies will no longer occasionally appear in the all-star skills competition shooting accuracy contest
-minor leagues league logo in historical now appears in 1909-1916 seasons as well as later ones
-added logos for youth tournaments
-fixed display issue that was leaving the team edit and team news options off the menu when in fullscreen at some resolutions
-fixed incorrect player ID in the presets file
-the (Swiss) National League player awards are no longer being recorded twice on the award icons on the player screen
-imported leagues in custom games no longer allow transfers even if the transfer setting is off
-when negotiating a contract with a free agent, the estimated contract quality will no longer change considerably when the player accepts the offer
-in custom games, if a junior league player is signed by a team in a higher league, it not longer sets his rights in all leagues to free
-if the league goals/game setting is edited (and then saved) on or after January 1 while there is an upcoming trade deadline later in the season, the deadline no longer disappears
-made a number of adjustments to the system limiting the willingness of players to change continents, they should be a lot more willing to talk to lower-level leagues now
-if free agency is disabled for a league, all players whose contracts expire will now have their league rights (if the league uses rights) retained by their team properly
-the Iron Curtain rule should work properly in historical challenges now
-junior leagues in custom games can no longer have reputations higher than their connected leagues, which was resulting in the generation of some players with ability ratings much higher than they should be, even exceeding their potentials.
-if the user selects the NHL+AHL or NHL+AHL+CHL pre-set custom game options and then changes his mind and chooses "Prev Step" on the Start the Game screen and attempts to add a league, some of the league options no longer go missing
-adjusted season goals for expansion teams to prevent unreasonable first-year targets
--moves to the transfer portal now become increasingly unlikely if a lot of the player's teammates have already gone to it; also made further adjustments to the Transfer Portal to reduce the frequency of portal requests and make multiple portals by one player extremely rare
-fixed several headers in the player summary section of the boxscores that were cut off
-the prohibition on shopping recently-acquired players now works properly with the new shopping system
-disabled the July 1 start option for Historical Challenges
-removed Kanji characters in nickname data that were causing issues in the csv exports
-made numerous changes to injury data to shift a number of injuries to minor/day-to-day status, and add deferral options for a few injuries
-made adjustments to 2D mode to adjust various stat levels, in particular lowering scoring and shot totals
-the view option for prospects tournament games is temporarily disabled due to a crash (we'll be restoring it, but the fix is going to take a little longer than we had for this update)
-clicking the "State" header to sort on the World-National Data-(select country)-Nation Profile screen no longer crashes the game
-the host countries for the Olympics in historical mode are correct again
-an "NHL All-Stars" team full of low-level players no longer appears in the Canada Cup schedules in historical
-various minor text and UI fixes