EA Sports released a ton of new information about what’s new in Franchise Mode for NHL 21. Their deep dive covers community requests and much more. Of course, we have the details below. Take a look!
NHL 21 Franchise Mode Deep Dive
Trade Deadlines
EA Sports added an all-new trade deadline experience. Before the trade deadline begins, players will need to reevaluate their team and decide what route their franchise will take heading into the deadline. This will consist of four options:
- Seller
- Conservative Seller
- Conservative Buyer
- Buyer
This decision shapes the experience within the trade deadline and influences what kind of trade offers teams receive. Upon entering the Trade Deadline, players are officially on the clock. Starting at 6AM(PST) they’ll have until 12PM(PST) to finish up any deals heading into the final stretch of the season. They are then immediately presented with top players on the trade block. Important information about each player like their contract status, trade value, and what the team is looking for in return will be visible.
Whenever a trade is made, notifications go out via the ticker at the bottom of the screen. It will deliver details on every move during trade deadline day. Market value of players fluctuate as the day goes on. Additionally, available players will go on or off the block based on prior trades a team has made.
NHL 21 Record Book
The community has long requested the ability to view league and franchise records throughout seasons as a GM. EA Sports is happy to finally introduce an all new Record Book where that will be possible. The Record Book allows GMs to sort through numerous categories including career, season and rookie records in league history. This includes:
- All-time NHL Career Stats
- Most Games Played
- Most Goalie Games Played
- All-time NHL Season Stats
- Most Goals
- Most Points
- 100 Points Seasons
- Most Assists
- Most Wins
- All-time NHL Rookies Stats
- Most Shutouts
- Most 50 Goals Seasons
- Franchise Leaders
- Most Games Played
- Most Goals
- and much, much more.
GMs can also view each team’s current and all-time leaders in Career, Season, Rookie and Game statistics. As seasons progress, GMs will be able to keep track of any players breaking team or league records.
Other Updates & Additions
Some players have been giving multiple positions. This should help with lineup generations.
There are two new settings able to be adjusted before starting a Franchise Mode. First, there is the ability to control draft class quality. This setting controls the frequency of a “Strong” draft class featuring highly touted prospects. When set to High, stronger draft classes are generated more often every year. The second setting is ‘Generated Prospect Quality’. This setting controls the quality of prospects generated in the NHL Entry Draft every year. When set to High more top end prospects are generated.
AI Logic for CPU driven teams has also been updated. Now, they will refrain from putting their draft picks on the trade block early in the season, waiting until their team is more established later in the campaign.
Trade value of players has also been revamped in NHL 21. GMs should notice a greater separation in trade value from player to player. Players like McDavid will have high value and be much harder to acquire. This adjustment also considers the value of certain positions. Centers and defenders will see an increase in overall value while goalies and wingers will have slightly less overall value than previous years.
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