I’ve been a player of Basketball GM for a few years, and when I saw the developer had released a hockey version, I jumped all over it. Hockey is a great sport for management games… team building matters, and you need to choose where to spend your salary cap and spread it across positions appropriately, but at the same time, it’s not an overwhelming, 55 player roster like Football. It’s manageable. And the way they executed a hockey version of their basketball game is outstanding.
Never have I seen a game be quietly packed with so many features… the thing that makes this game great is I can take it as slow or as fast as I want. If you want to tinker with individual lines, scout 4th rounders, browse league-wide stats while looking for trade targets, see where your team is strong/weak statistically, even go deep into how your players feel about the team and whether they think they’ll sign back with you when their contract expires… you can do all that. But it’s not essential… you can also just zoom through seasons, make the essential draft + free agency moves and maybe look for a trade occasionally, and ignore all the smaller stuff and be perfectly fine. It’s up to you. You don’t have a lot of stuff shoved in your face, required to do in order to run a competent franchise. You play how you want. (I’ll also add that if you DO go more in depth like I do to some extent, the attention to detail is INSANE, so many little things everywhere that most developers would never think about).
The history-tracking aspect is also one of my favorites. The game tracks all-time leaders in most every statistic, single franchise leaders, all-time team records, even all-time head to head records, and there’s a billion ways you can filter and browse that data. I always find myself just looking over historic teams or players in my save, it’s interesting to see this other universe and different career arcs.
The game isn’t perfect, I’m not saying it is. There isn’t a minor league, defenseman don’t score enough, asking prices can be a bit weird occasionally, and there’s some other minor statistical things which aren’t exactly lined up with the NHL. However whenever I report issues, 90% of the time they’re fixed within a couple days, and the game gets constant updates. For example, recently game-to-game fatigue was added for goalies so that your backup needs to play here and there. I have confidence that any issues with it won’t last long.
Overall, I think it’s one of the best sports simulators I’ve come across, not just hockey. I’ve been playing a ton in my spare time, it’s so much fun to execute a rebuild and watch a roster come together, to see draft picks rise to become franchise legends, and to even watch play by plays, live, for playoff games (not good for my heart but one of the most fun parts of the game). And hey, the draft pick busts, the regressions, the injuries are all fun in their own way too, even though I’ve ripped my hair out because of them. There’s often new challenges hurled at you which keeps it an engaging and difficult game.
So yes, whether you want an advanced, slow pace simulator or a quick, 10-seasons-in-an-hour game to really just play with the big picture of a franchise, I think this game will have something for you. 100% recommend.