Game Guide · GM Mode

GM Mode — the salary-cap games

The newest family. You don't just draft — you run the front office: a hard salary cap, a spin wheel of franchise-era rosters, a coach hire, and a villain at the end of the season. Two games so far.

💼 The 60-8 Game (NHL) — play it

In 1976-77 the Montreal Canadiens went 60-8-12: sixty wins, eight losses, twelve ties, 132 points — the fewest losses any team has managed in an 80-game season. Their 132 points stood as the NHL record for 46 years. Your job: build a six that beats them.

Cap: $60.8M for six slots — C, LW, RW, two D, a goalie. League minimum $0.775M per slot. Star players run $19M+.
The wheel: each spin lands a franchise-era (143 in the pool). Sign exactly one player from it, or pay $5.0M to re-spin. Out-of-position signings show you the rating hit before you confirm.
The coach: a separate spin — legendary benches, zero cap hit, one free re-spin.
The season is played under 1977 rules. Eighty games, and about one in seven ends in a tie — there was no regular-season overtime until 1983-84. Your record reads W–L–T and your points (2 for a win, 1 for a tie) race the Habs' 132.
Beat the record: 61+ wins tops their 60 and pays the +150 IMMORTAL bonus. Then, whatever your record, you face the Canadiens themselves — winner-take-all, one game.
After the horn: the game shows the best six you could have signed from your spins, and the weekly BEST GMs board (top 10 — tap any row to see that GM's actual team).

How hard is it, really?

Numbers from our own tuning sims: a squad rated like the Canadiens themselves wins 61+ about half the time. A great build gets there roughly 1 in 8 runs, a good build about 1 in 30, and a casual build essentially never. The winner-take-all showdown tops out around 1-in-10 even for a perfect draft. Their 60 wins came in only 68 decided games — to out-win them you have to win at their .880 pace while ties eat a seventh of your schedule.

💼 The 16-0 Game (NFL) — play it

The 2007 New England Patriots are the only team in NFL history to finish a 16-game regular season 16-0. (They famously lost the Super Bowl — this game is about the regular season they owned.) Build an eight that outdoes them.

Cap: $175M for eight slots — QB, RB, two WRs, TE, OL, a front-seven player, and a DB. League minimum $0.5M. Re-spins cost $12M.
The wheel: 87 franchise-eras, from the 1950s Browns to the 2020s Chiefs. Same rules: one signing per landing.
The season: 17 games. Go 17-0 — a perfect season one game longer than the Pats' — and the +150 bonus is yours. Then face the 2007 Patriots, winner-take-all.

Where the rating actually lives

Slots are not equal, and the prices tell you so. In the NFL game the quarterback is about a quarter of your team's strength — which is why he's also the most expensive position per rating point. The front-seven slot is the quietly heavy one (worth more than any single receiver), and the two receiver slots together outweigh every non-QB slot. In the NHL game, center is the heaviest slot, the goalie is a close second — leaving your crease to a league-minimum depth goalie is the single most expensive joke in the game.

Tips that are actually true

Don't blow a third of the cap on spin one. A $20M superstar locks you into minimum-salary filler later. The builds that beat the villains spread mid-star money across four or five slots and get lucky in one.

Re-spin math is real money. An NHL re-spin costs $5M — roughly the gap between a decent player and a good one at another slot. Re-spin when a landing can't help any open slot, not because you wanted a different logo.

Read the fit warning. Signing a center to play wing costs him a slice of his rating, and the sheet shows the exact number before you commit. Sometimes the discount is worth it. Usually it isn't.

The coach re-spin is free — once. There is no reason to hire the first name unless you love it.

Every season pays. +5 points for finishing, +150 for beating the record, and the share button pays +100 once per day per game. A lost season with a share is worth more points than a silent great one.

Study the "best squad you could've signed." It's computed from your actual spins — if it's consistently 5+ points above your build, you're overpaying somewhere.