The playtest went live today and a bunch of us didn’t get codes. Figured now’s as good a time to share what I’ve been working on the past few months.

Quick heads up, I’m the dev. I grew up on online sim leagues (Eastside Hockey Manager) and GM Connected, got tired of waiting for it to come back, so I built my own. It’s called GM Connected. Free, runs in your browser, no code, no console, no $70.

You just open it and play.

It covers the stuff you actually want out of an online hockey manager:
• Create a league and invite your friends, everyone runs their own team, you can also play with CPU
• Live draft room with real-time picks, prospect tracking, wish lists, and pick trading
• Full salary cap management with retention, waivers, buyouts, etc.
• Trades with commissioner approval and veto
• Dynasties that carry over season to season (standings, playoffs, records, Hall of Fame, retirements)

If you have any questions let me know in the comments.

Play or start a league here: gmconnected.com

If you spin one up, drop it in the comments so people can join. And I’d love feedback from this crowd since you all know what a good franchise mode should feel like.

Not affiliated with EA or the NHL. Just a fan who missed the mode.

I’m sick of HUT, online matches, 3v3, world of chel, etc.

All I want is a good Be a Pro.

Nobody in the industry can seem to do it with all the resources and people available, so I’m going to make a career mode that blows EA out of the water.

This is purely for my own interests by the way. It’s going to be designed to what I would hope for in a career mode.

I’ll be back here in like a year. I’ll update every few months or so, maybe.

Someone was streaming “Connected” in the play test this afternoon and this mode is as boring as it gets. There’s no “building” incentive at all, and that’s the whole reason we played GM connected.

I’ve been wanting this mode back for a long time, and I won’t be playing whatever this is. #bringbackRammer or not quite yet?

Like bro I swear any other company can make it a way better game like if Sony bought it and made it like MLB The show

I get this is a beta, but holy shit - nothing works

creating league of my own

join now if we get to ten ill open it, otherwise tomorrow it is!! MDXYL6UX5 is the code!!

This mode is super fun. Do yall play or sim games? Do you ever watch them as cpu vs cpu?

Join my league GOAT LEAGUE. 👍👍👍👍

Sorry if I missed something… is there a discord for those of us with codes to try the online franchise mode? Or will it be WoC only like previous years?

Hiya friends

I wanted to try out a round-robin style connected franchise, so I made a 4 team league.
It’s first come, first serve but I’ll put all the info below:

League ID: 89UJPACH8

Remaining available teams
- Atlantic All-stars
- Metro All-stars
- Pacific All-stars

Round Robin
- 2 games against everyone (6 total)
- Single 4v4 OT and then tie if still no winner
- 3-2-1-0 standings point system
•win=3
•otw=2
•otl/tie=1
•loss=0

Playoff Format
- Continuous OT
- Best of 3 (H-A-H)

Other Settings
- injuries off
- max claims per team: 2
- minor penalty jailbreak
- salary cap set to the absolute max since the teams are all-stars, I didn’t want to risk that breaking anything.

Since franchise is now in the playtest lol, making a league just to play and test it out!

Edit: thank you all for filling the league so fast! Let’s enjoy this buggy ass game!

Possible on playtest?

PLEASE INVITE ME TO A GM CONNECT LEAGUE

is just me or are line changes ABSOLUTELY DEPLORABLE in this game? not only do players refuse to get off the f***ing ice when all of their line mates are off (even if you make sure they stay cpu and dump the puck in), but sometimes players from the completely wrong line are subbed in??? what the f***?? am I the only one experiencing this, and is there a way around it?

Playing Be a Pro, you know… casual Bruins Vs Rangers and I see this…

Just created a league:

League ID is 5ZUKFVWWV

Let’s see how this thing plays

I’ve recently started an offline season in NHL 26 and am finding the jump from Semi-Pro to Pro difficulty to be both unplayable and unrealistic. I am currently using the TRUESIM NHL 26 sliders (v5, 3/5/2026) with my defensive strategies set to "Protect the Puck" and "Collapsing," but the gameplay still feels off.

In one frustrating instance, I landed two body checks, two poke checks, and a stick lift on an AI player, yet they still managed to complete a perfect tape-to-tape pass in front of my crease for a soft goal.

Is this a known issue that requires specific Pro-level slider adjustments? If so, where is the best place to find them? Alternatively, is this just a skill gap I need to work through? Any recommendations on how to balance the gameplay for a more realistic experience would be greatly appreciated.

I know they're gonna be rolling more codes out in the coming days but I've never seemed to wait this long to receive mine.

EA Community tab > My NHL > World of Chel

Bring an option to use the Hartford whalers with brass bonanza

Have “darkness” play on goals against Dallas

Don’t use player goal horn songs for those teams that use custom songs for some reason..
Aka the panthers, …use sweetness..

Am I the only one who wishes you could change goal horns in franchise without having too relocate or use a custom team, like I wanna stay as a certain team but change the goal horn because I get tired of it

I was spinning free

I am playing on an emulated copy of the game and whenever I try to create a character the game is unresponsive, not frozen as the music still changes. I am offline so that shouldn’t be an issue.