Changelog

Showcase Tournaments & Rivalries

Showcase tournaments are now a real early-season event. The Great Lakes Classic (December) and Harbor Cup (January) now genuinely invite that season's top 2 programs by prestige from each of their two conferences — four teams — and play out like a real small-field holiday tournament: semifinals one week, then both a championship game and a real consolation game the next. Every invited team plays exactly twice, win or lose, and the consolation game counts fully in the record book even though it doesn't crown a champion. Until the semifinals are played, your schedule shows the next game as TBD — it fills in with the real matchup the moment it's known, with a preview and recap in Around the League.

Rivalries got a real second look. Only your three fiercest series carry the rivalry badge at once now (down from six), and a matchup only badges if it's a top priority for both programs involved. To offset that, a brand-new dynasty no longer starts completely rivalry-free: a handful of matchups tied to a program's own history are flagged as rivalries from day one, instead of waiting the 2-4 seasons it normally takes real head-to-head history to qualify.

Program Management: Money, Facilities & Staff

Revenue Share can now run into real trouble — with fair warning. Revenue Share has never had a $0 floor, but running it negative used to have no real consequence. Now it does, via an escalating warning ladder: a quiet inbox note after one negative season, a stronger warning naming the streak after two, and on a third straight negative season you hit Financial Distress — a flat job-security hit, plus two real ways to fix it: release a staffer with no buyout, or downgrade a facility track with a prestige cost. The Financial Distress screen spells out the actual math (Income, Recurring Bills, Net This Season, Carried Balance, Projected Next Season), and if you try to redirect Revenue Share into the NIL Collective and can't, it now says exactly why — too early in the season, your job security's too low, or there's simply no surplus to move — instead of the option just disappearing with no explanation. AI programs face the identical Financial Distress consequence, so no rival runs a permanent deficit for free either.

You can now right-size a facility, not just build them up. Any built facility track can be dropped a level during the offseason — a Downgrade option sits right next to Restore Condition and Upgrade on that track's card. It costs a real hit to prestige and doesn't use up your once-per-offseason build/upgrade action, so you can downgrade one track and still build or upgrade another the same offseason. If your program is genuinely in Financial Distress, that prestige cost is waived. Relatedly, every built level of Medicine Center, Recovery Suite, Academic Support, and Video Lab now has a real impact — building the first level of these tracks didn't used to do much, requiring level 2 before you saw a great benefit, and now level 1 gives a real, if modest, improvement, with the full effect still building up to level 5.

A rebuilding program now gets an occasional shot at a name above its station. Your hire pool every so often surfaces one candidate who's a real step above what your current prestige would normally attract, priced accordingly. It's not guaranteed and won't happen every time you open the hire screen, but a rebuild is no longer structurally locked out of ever landing a standout hire.

Booster moments can now put real money in your NIL Collective. The bye-week "Booster Dinner" activity ($12,000, drawn from Revenue Share) and the narrative "Booster Pressure" moment both got a genuine financial stake on top of the mood/buzz swing they already carried: handle the donor well and you can walk away with a real gift to your NIL Collective; handle it badly and you can take a real hit instead. The size of the swing isn't fixed in advance — it scales with how strong your donor support already is — and the two moments share one season-wide cap, so a lucky run can't turn into a second, unlimited NIL faucet.

Your Roster

Your best players now feel the pressure of their own play. Every few weeks, the game checks whether your top-line forwards, top-pair defensemen, and starting goalie are performing roughly at the level you'd expect for a player of their quality and role — weighted toward what their specific archetype is actually good at. A real, sustained gap either way nudges mood a little, but it's a temporary swing that fades on its own over the following weeks, not a permanent verdict. The rest of the roster is unaffected.

Player development got three real changes. Two players with identical tools and ceiling won't necessarily develop at the same rate anymore — a hidden factor means some players simply convert their tools faster or slower than expected, and the only way to find out which is which is to watch their actual seasons unfold. Separately, the age-based growth curve was softened, so a junior or senior with real headroom left can still add a meaningful chunk of growth in his last couple of seasons, not just true freshmen. And a heavy injury season now carries a real, elevated chance of an actual developmental step back the following offseason, on top of whatever games were missed — one more reason to invest in Medicine Center and Recovery Suite.

A broken lineup now tells you about it, and offers to fix itself. If an injury, suspension, or eligibility change leaves a line or pairing genuinely short a player, a new banner on Home (and on the Postseason bracket screen) names exactly how many issues there are — tap it to review and fix the lines yourself, or tap Auto-Fix to let the game resolve it in one move. AI lineups, and any tournament series that spans multiple games, now also fill a short-handed line or pairing automatically instead of quietly playing a man short.

The Bye Week screen now shows what each option actually does. Previously every activity showed only one "most notable" effect, which in practice was almost always the same fatigue number. Now every option lists its real, concrete effects — training points, happiness swing, buzz, and (for Mini-Camp) a live injury-risk estimate based on your team's actual current fatigue — plus a caution note once you've made a pick.

Postseason

All-Conference and All-American defensemen are judged more fairly. A defenseman's award-team selection now gives real weight to his offensive production alongside his two-way play, instead of almost none — a shutdown defenseman can still make First Team purely on his own-zone play, but a genuine two-way defenseman's points now count for something too.

Watching or previewing a game is now consistent everywhere you find one. A tournament game you personally play now opens the same real preview screen a regular-season game does, instead of dropping you straight into the game with no scouting report first. That preview — including a live Watch Game option — is also now reachable from a lot more places: an upcoming matchup on the League Scores bracket used to do nothing when tapped, and "Your Games" there opened a read-only scouting report with no way to actually play it; both now open the real thing. A team's own profile page can now preview and watch any of its upcoming games or tournament matchups too, and every completed score across these screens now carries an explicit "Box Score" label.

A season with more than one championship now displays all of them. A program that wins its showcase, its conference tournament, and the national title in the same season now shows every one of those title badges on the Team/Coach/Staff profile's Season History, instead of clipping or dropping one.

Simulating a conference tournament now has the option to skip remaining games, instead of stopping after every single round and waiting for another tap — it surfaces your own conference's recap the instant it's decided, then keeps going.

A deep postseason run leaves a longer afterglow, and a runner-up finish counts for something. The buzz boost from a big postseason run now fades out gradually over the first few weeks of the new season instead of vanishing at the calendar flip. And losing the national championship game now earns its own prestige bump — behind winning the title, but ahead of a Frozen Four exit.

The Whitfield Award (top goaltender) can now only go to a team's actual #1 starter, not a backup riding a hot small sample.

Recruiting

A lowball offer kills interest, no matter how good everything else is. Every prospect has an asking price — offer nowhere close to it and his overall interest caps outright, regardless of your prestige, ice-time promise, or anything else on the table. There's no penalty for an offer that's merely a little short, but badly undercutting his market value collapses his interest even with a great pitch everywhere else — blue-chip (4-5★) recruits take it even harder than a lower-rated prospect would at the same relative shortfall.

Going truly all-in on one recruit buys something. Overpaying past a healthy margin (roughly 1.5× his ask) still doesn't buy away a real prestige gap or a poor fit, but a genuinely extravagant offer beyond that now earns a real, if modest, extra dose of persuasion on top of everything else. Offering a real role and strong prestige together also now earns more credit than either alone. And you can only run so many offers at once each round — the cap scales up with your program's prestige, with a standing bump on top so even a rebuilding program can spread interest across several targets.

A new Recruiting Assist setting lets you tune the playing field. Settings → Recruiting now has a Recruiting Assist option (Brutal, Standard, Boosted) to turn those extras off or push them further; a small slider icon next to Depth Chart in the Recruiting header opens the same control mid-round.

Your recruiters can now run scouting on their own. Each hired Regional Recruiter or Assistant Recruiter gets an auto-scout toggle — turn it on and they plan and send their own trips every week, targeting real roster needs and tapering off once a position's board is deep enough. It costs the same Revenue Share a trip you'd send yourself would, shows a weekly cost estimate up front, and turns itself back off (with an inbox note) if your Revenue Share ever goes negative. A recruit who maxes out rapport now gets added to your Watchlist automatically, too.

A won commitment could vanish from your incoming class. A rare bidding-round bug could let a recruit show as "Committed" to you without actually being added to your Recruiting Class. Fixed — every recruit you win now reliably lands in your class. There's also a new Recruiting Class Recap for reviewing your finished class in one place, and the "you still have roster gaps" tip after signing day no longer false-positives on a gap you'd already filled.

Eligibility and class year, fixed in several places. Freshly signed recruits were briefly getting aged a year and losing a year of eligibility in the same offseason they signed — a true freshman could read as a rising sophomore the very next offseason. Fixed. Separately, Draft Decisions, the Redshirt candidate list, Roster Cuts, the Draft's eligible-roster picker, and player profile sheets could all show the wrong class year depending on which offseason screen you opened them from — all now consistently show the year you're heading into. A freshly recruited player's Career History also no longer credits him with a team championship won before he joined.

Recruiting bid sheet cleanup. My Offers no longer double-counts or lists recruits you've already won. Estimated Interest now always sits right beside the Offer card. Scout This Prospect collapses to a summary once a recruit is fully scouted with an offer on the table. And the interest breakdown now opens automatically for a fresh recruit with no offer yet.

News & Notifications

Notifications got a lot quieter. Only severe injuries (three or more weeks out) trigger an "Injured" or "Cleared to Play" banner now — a short-term knock quietly updates your roster instead of interrupting you twice for something that heals before you've even reacted to it (Advance Week still flags your lineup if any injury breaks it, regardless of severity). Playing the same rival twice in one week now gets one combined "Rivalry Week" banner instead of two back-to-back ones. And several banner types that could otherwise fire once per player in a single advance — Mock Draft and Awards Race updates, Player Milestones, and players dropping into at-risk mood — now roll up into one banner ("3 Mock Draft Updates") that takes you to your inbox to read each one, instead of stacking up separately. AI "opinion piece" league-news stories are now capped at two per week too.

Around the League catches up to the current week. Marquee/spotlight preview stories for the week you just entered now show up immediately instead of a week late, and the feed now sorts chronologically (most recent week first) instead of purely by newsworthiness. A top-10 matchup that plays twice in the same week no longer earns two separate preview stories. Injury news is also noticeably richer, now caps at two stories a week, and skips anything that only costs a player a single game. League headlines overall are more varied week to week instead of the same couple of story types crowding everything else out. A recruit's own News tab no longer shows a full season of his new team's history predating him.

Smaller stuff: the League News tab now refreshes automatically as you advance weeks; the Home screen's Scouting shortcut wraps its subtitle onto two lines instead of getting cut off; showcase-tournament "TBD" matchup cards match the height of populated ones; Team Profile's schedule now labels game days and dates correctly; the Draft's "your player just got picked" banner no longer covers the round header; skipping the rest of the Draft now asks you to confirm first; tapping a prospect during a live draft now pauses the sim to show their profile and resumes once you close it; and the hand-off from Championship into the Offseason now shows a real loading screen instead of a blank, frozen-looking beat.

Also New

The Pro Draft now runs the right number of rounds for the year, not always seven. A typical year still runs the full seven rounds with plenty of eligible players going unpicked — but a leaner year simply runs fewer rounds instead of drafting every last eligible player just to hit seven. The mock draft board only ever projects the first two rounds either way. Custom data packs can also now supply their own list of 32+ pro team names so drafted players land somewhere that fits your world instead of the built-in fictional list.

NPI and Rink Report Poll tables now show trend arrows — an at-a-glance read on whether a team's ranking is climbing or falling this week.

A new dynasty no longer starts with an entirely undrafted league. A realistic slice of the best players already on rosters when you begin — mostly juniors and seniors, occasionally a sophomore — now start already holding a pro team's draft rights, exactly as if they'd been picked in a draft before your save began and chose to return to school. You'll see the same Pro Draft badges (team, round, pick, year) on their profile as anyone drafted during your own dynasty. It's seeded conservatively — seniors most often, underclassmen only when the odds of an early pro departure stay low. Custom data packs are unaffected; every imported player still starts with a clean slate.

Fun Stats. League → Stats → History has a Fun Stats tab alongside the Record Book — light, browsable leaderboards covering recruiting hotbeds, most transfers and injuries, the youngest and oldest players in the country right now, hot scoring and winning streaks, draft steals and reaches, and the deepest trophy cases in the league. Doesn't affect your program — it's there to give a long-running dynasty some texture and trivia worth checking in on.

Behind the scenes

AI support staff no longer climb toward elite ratings forever. A tuning run showed league-wide AI staff quality only ever ratcheting upward — Elite-tier staff averaged 76 in the first season and climbed to 98 by season 20, while below-average staff nearly vanished from the league. AI staff now occasionally regress a notch each offseason (and don't always chase the single best hire on the market), giving league staff quality a real equilibrium instead of a one-way climb to the ceiling.