give me either a good team to use, or a fun way to make it hard to do well.

Loui Eriksson, the rest doesn't matter

expansion draft, have to pick the lowest cap hit player in the draft. everything else is fair game

try to acquire every first round pick in a draft, any team allowed

Ahl team

Swap the best rated European team (to the NHL games still have EU team rosters?) Into the NHL, then give yourself an internal cap.

ooh thats a good one imma do this. thank you

I've always found it hard to go too far into franchise mode, because I find this game so easy to cheat the CPU, or, if I take my favourite team, I inevitably regret making a move.

With the idea of making it difficult, I did a 33 team expansion draft. Did the "add contract year" when I was setting up, so that year one contracts would be there, then I added me own house rules to make sure I put together an absolute dumpster-fire that is cap compliant.

The idea was to make a team where I could sim year 1, and still have the same roster going into the 2022 entry draft (basically a "start now" type option).

My house rules (there's probably more, but it's essentially a "try your best not to rip the CPU off" list:
-Only realistic picks in expansion draft (ie. No Sergachev, nobody under 23-Must be cap compliant at the end of the draft...Side note: I did steal Sam Girard because he seemed like the ideal Captain for my team ). Must be signed through '22-'23, or have RFA status going forward. With the "add contract year" option, it keeps you from getting the pending UFA's that you can steal otherwise.
-I did allow myself to trade one of two of the decent unprotected guys back to their teams for assets/cap dumps. I can't remember who I did this with, but an example would be draft Tarasenko, then trading him back to St. Louis for Scandella/pick/prospect. Essentially how Vegas rolled.
-I could have gone either way in the first draft, but flipped my 1st round pick as an asset to get a multi year cap dump+picks back. I think Vegas was who I traded with, but I can't remember...
-Only minor signings in year 1 free agency (essentially just guys to fill out the AHL roster). Because of the "add contract year" option, the rosters will stay relatively similar to what they are post trade deadline in real life.
-Sim year 1 with CPU trades turned off to keep roster set up.
-Finish bottom 5 or 6, but don't win the draft lotto. I just turned "auto save" off so that I could reboot and make sure that's around where I fell.
-Turn trades back on in the offseason.
-No major UFA signings. I think I said nobody over 80 when I was doing it, but I can't remember...Max Domi on a 1 year, $4 mil deal was my only NHL signing.
-Run free and enjoy!

I'm 8 games away from the deadline in the 22-23 season, and have had a great time doing it. Probably the deepest I've gotten into Franchise mode. The funniest part of it is that I made a move to give your beloved Islanders a solid asset and save you from one of the Lou contracts, while getting the Isles 2023 1st back, and did something similar with Vegas, and they're both currently sitting in the bottom 10 of the league Even when you try to make it fair for the CPU, they screw themselves.

wow thank you!

You are only allowed to sign players to one-year contracts

You are only allowed to have players under/over a certain age

You have a Coyotes-style "internal cap" and aren't allowed to get within a certain amount of the salary cap. You can sign 1-2 useless players to massive money contracts to enforce this more strictly

I tried the first two of these myself... the "one year contract" restriction is definitely harder, mostly because my natural tendency is to just hoard young players and draft picks anyways