About the Game
The Franchise Hockey Manager series returns for its 11th version in 2024-25, with new additions that will further expand on the most authentic hockey strategy gaming experience you can find.
Choose one of dozens of leagues around the world and select a team to guide to glory, including a chance at the ultimate prize: FHM11 is licensed by the NHL®, allowing you to take the reins of your favorite franchise to capture the Stanley Cup®. Or, take control of a national team and try for international supremacy.
You can also choose a historical game, where you can begin in any year in NHL® history, play in a legendary international tournament, or (new this year) play in a historical minor league.
if you'd like to create your own customized league, you can do that, and FHM11 brings international play to that mode as well. If you've been playing FHM10 and can't bear to part with your team, import the save into FHM11 and carry on with the addition of FHM11's new features.
However you choose to play, you have control of your team and can oversee finances, select strategies, hire your staff, make trades, sign free agents, and draft the newest generation of stars as you try to build a championship team - and then make it into a dynasty!
All new for Franchise Hockey Manager 11:
International play has been added to custom games; the makeup of the international tournaments will adapt to the way you've set up your custom league(s)
Playable minor league hockey has been added to historical mode, starting with the full history (including all players) of the American Hockey League from 1940 to the present
Many improvements have been made to the AI trading behaviour; the AI will now draw from a bigger library of potential trade models, and some loopholes in the existing trading logic have been closed
Similarly, the transfer system AI in Europe has also had some significant improvements of the same type the trading AI received
The NHL's new 4Nations Faceoff Tournament has been added to modern games
Owner goals have been added: your owner will ask you to make changes to your team; failing to comply may put your job in jeopardy, but keeping the owner happy will help you stay employed
Additionally, job security mechanics have undergone a major revision and should feel more realistic now
Development tracking has been added for your players, so you can see how they're progressing
Coaches can now have specific tactical preferences and will be more effective when employing their preferred tactic(s) (and they'll use them more often)
Major adjustments have been made to the pool of younger players in the database at the start of the game, to fix the growing issue of there being too many NHL-caliber young players in the early years of the game
Long-term player generation has also been adjusted to improve the top end quality of new prospects; combined with the above database change, the overall talent level should be maintained at a much smoother level over the course of the game
We've improved the 2D engine's play execution logic to build upon the play calling improvements in the previous two versions, so teams tend to stick with their set play execution longer, and also made a major change to the passing mechanics to allow for more use of indirect passing
New league reports, including (among other things) a Demographics report for the league and a review of Draft Sleepers/Busts from past drafts
The AI's roster management in the period between the playoffs and the start of a new year has been improved, particularly in how it grasps the roster changes that will happen on July 1 due to things like losing free agents
Playoff series will now get a preview in the news
As always, complete team and player updates for the new 2024-25 season, as well as smaller changes like a mid-season award candidate preview and "Exceptional" status in the Major Junior leagues, new interface additions, and many other improvements!
Screenshots
19 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
This update fixes a few NHL data errors, primarily with young players on entry-level contracts. Additionally, it corrects a bug that was causing some display errors with award winners. It also adds a few contracts that will take effect on July 1, 2025, mainly college and junior players signing with NHL teams as well as some similar moves in European leagues. The actual rosters still remain as they were on the trading deadline, though.
Changes:
-fixed a number of errors in the contract lengths and other data for players on NHL entry-level contract
-corrected the rights on a couple of NHL players whose rights weren't switched after trades earlier in the season
-fixed bug that was causing the player with ID#0 (Luke Adam) to be incorrectly displayed as the winner of some awards (the update will fix this in existing saves)
A couple of potential game-breaking issues have become apparent, as well as a few things we'd rather not wait to fix, so we've decided to release a hotfix to correct them rather than wait until next month's full update. The biggest problems was an unavoidable crash in smaller custom game setups that had players being generated in a large number of nationalities. In addition to the more critical fixes, we're also including a few other things that had already been completed and are safe to include at this point. Their inclusion here doesn't necessarily indicate that they were a higher priority than any other fix or change, just that their relatively simple nature allowed them to be included early. The next content update will still be coming out in mid-March after the trading deadline.
Changes:
-fixed crash in custom games on July 1 when number of national teams exceeds the number of regular teams
-fixed potential error in format of international tournaments in custom games
-custom game creation with the CHL leagues included will no longer crash partway through the setup
-historical farm team affiliations are now working properly again for all leagues
-AI teams will no longer have multiple players using the same uniform number
-major junior teams will no longer release recently-drafted high-potential players in early August
-major junior players with $0 contracts (aside from players loaned from NHL teams) will no longer start to appear after a few seasons
-historical challenge popup has been rearranged a bit to classify the challenges by year (no new challenges added yet, but there will be 12 minor league ones coming in the full update)
-fixed ties not counting as GP on international tournament histories in custom games
The fourth post-release update, this is a little bit more than a hotfix but not quite a full update, so we'll stick with calling it a hotfix. The changes are mainly changes that took a little longer to implement and test properly, but there are also a few smaller things that were reported recently and made it in. The next update, barring the discovery of any urgent game-breaking problems, will be the first proper "Update", probably in mid-late November, when we'll also add the current database start option with updated rosters.
Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, but some issues that are data-dependent may require a new game before you see them; also, see the note below regarding a crash during the 4-Nations Cup that may require some additional help if you're already getting the crash in your save.
Changes:
-made a number of adjustments to AI trading mechanics and frequencies: should be a lot more transfers in Europe now, a few trade types that hadn't been working properly have been fixed, and a handful of the newer playable leagues are now using transfers properly when they weren't previously
-added 2023-24 playoff/promotion/relegation changes to Finnish Liiga, Mestis, and Suomi-Sarja
-fixed jobs for a large number of staff in the modern database that had changed from "Assistant Coach" to "Player", which effectively removed them from the game
-fixed repetitive invalid playoff format error for the AHL in historical mode; this will fix the problem in saves that were created prior to the update
-if any teams in the league have an empty roster (e.g. pre-draft expansion teams), clicking on the Demographics Report will no longer crash the game
-players are no longer missing their AHL stats on their career stats screen at the start of a new historical game
-the new check that forces teams to try trading good players before putting them on waivers now looks at player's potential, rather than their current ability
-the Busts screen for the WHL's Draft Surprises report no longer uses the CHL Import Draft rather than the WHL Bantam draft
-removing teams from the WHL at the start of a new game will no longer cause a crash a few weeks later
-the "Re-sign star player" owner goal will no longer be targeted at players who have already signed extensions
-the "Re-sign star player" owner goal will now complete properly when the player is re-signed
-the "Acquire some chemistry" owner goal will no longer be used if all the potential chemistry targets are ineligible to play in the league
-the major role determination for defencemen at the start of a new game will now select the Two-Way Defenceman role when appropriate instead of only using offensive/defensive templates
-new expansion teams in a standard game no longer get assigned newly-generated GM's and Head Coaches with reputations of 0 (which was also leading to very quick firings of those guys); they'll hire a GM and Head Coach from the existing staff pool (this was already working properly for the other staff roles)
-corrected warning on the popup that appears when the user attempts to hire a head coach to reflect the changes to GM-only mode that now allow the user to retain control over lineups, etc.
-fixed data error in one of the hotfixes that broke all AHL affiliations in historical games that were started with the new version of the game
-historical AHL teams multiple affiliations now work correctly at the start of a new historical game, i.e. they'll have both parents instead of only one
-fixed potential crash during 4-Nations Cup; this fix will work on existing saves, but only if the 4-Nations tournament hasn't begun yet in the current season (if that's the case, we can still fix your save manually, please let us know and we'll make the fix for you)
-European teams will no longer make transfers for players in the North American college leagues
-fixed problem with 23-24 Arizona stats for players in historical database, which was leading to the team being empty in a 2023 start
-fixed issue causing responses to user-made contract offers to say that the user's own team had made a better offer to the player
-added NCAA to the "Rights" filter on the player search screen
-fixed a few more player data errors
And, finally: after all these years, we may have fixed the long-standing facegen bug that would, every few times the game was started, break the facegen images so only the bottom-left quarter of them was displayed, requiring a game restart to get them back to normal. The fix is as weird as the problem; basically, we're using a rendering mode that's intended for Macs, but on the Windows version of the game. Do we know why it works? Not really. But does it work? Apparently so; we've started many test games since making the change, and no one's seen the bug reappear yet. Either it's fixed, or much, much more rare now. And it doesn't seem to be causing any other problems, despite the odd implementation. Fingers crossed that this has corrected it for good.
Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, but several of the issues fixed this time (missing NHL renewals, Colorado history, CHL Import Draft, historical transfers, Wanderers challenge) will require a new game to be started.
Changes:
-added a bunch of missing NHL contract renewals and a few other contracts, as well as fixing a few smaller database issues
-"hire a scout" owner goal now gives a clearer location for the scout
-CHL Import Draft is working properly again
-23-24 stats for Colorado Avalanche players now have the correct team
-transfer relationships between leagues in historical should be correct now, there was a problem in our editor that was corrupting the changes I was making, which led to problems for NHL teams signing their draftees and AHL and WHA teams signing players away from (nonplayable) minor league teams
-fixed issue preventing some NHL-contracted players loaned to CHL teams from being returned to their NHL team on July 1, eventually leading to their contract expiring and them becoming UFA's
-fixed crash with Montreal Wanderers historical challenge
-if a player who is the target of an Owner Goal retires, the goal now immediately terminates, instead of staying active and pointing to a new player
-fixed issue preventing trades from teams attempting to trade for a pick, and made some smaller trading adjustments; we're continuing to work on the trading/transfer volumes (the fix has left them a little player-for-pick heavy); trading is getting to be around the right overall volume now, but the transfers in Europe need a lot of improvement, there are too few of them
-regenerated records/leaderboards to work with the database changes
We were going to wait until Tuesday to release the next hotfix, but in the course of working on something else, we discovered something that we didn't want to leave until then, a bug that will fire you as GM/Head Coach when you weren't supposed to be fired, and will almost always fire your Head Coach when you're playing as GM-only. A few other things that were safe to release right now also made it into this update. We're still aiming for one more on Tuesday, which will contain database corrections (we need one more day to build and test those) and the remaining major postt-release problems.
Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated games, and now you won't get fired unjustifiably, which is nice.
Changes:
-when playing as GM-only, lines can now be changed when you have the Setting Lineups option set to yourself rather than the assistant
-"acquire a foreign player" owner goals will no longer happen when playing as a major junior team
-fixed missing affiliate switch in 2000 for Vancouver in historical
-the icon for championship wins now appears in the player pages of players who should have been on championship teams
Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game; saves that were getting crashes in February 2025 during the 4-Nations Cup should will now continue without a crash.
Changes:
-fixed excessive firing of head coaches after first season
-fixed issue in 2D mode that would cause the game to freeze and only advance when the play button is pressed
-players can now be dressed when playing as GM-only while managing lineups yourself (the issue with not being able to place them on lines is a little more complicated to fix, still working on it)
-games should be viewable in classic mode again, no black screen/crash
-fixed potential crash during the 4-Nations Cup when playing as Montreal or Toronto
-historical mode now has its correct preset injuries/suspensions file
Current Release
Not available
System Requirements
How to Install
setup.exe
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
2.1 GB
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