Congratulations!  Your reward for failing to
purchase NHL '96 or NHL '97 (and the fast Pentium
computer needed to run them) is this new version 
of NHL '95 that is far more up-to-date than either
of EA's newer versions.  In these files, you'll find:

	-- Complete and accurate rosters for each team,
	 as of opening day of the '96-'97 season (plus
	 trades that took place through mid-November).

	-- Accurate line combinations.  My e-mail buddy
	Eric Majeski in Pittsburgh, the proud owner of
	a satellite dish, spent several weeks doing 
	almost nothing except watching hockey games and 
	sending me the line combinations that each team
	was using in mid-October.  Eric did a great job,
	and I believe he is now considering checking himself 
	into the Betty Ford Center to try to lick his 
	addiction to watching hockey on TV.  (Good luck
	Eric! Get well soon!)  I pretty much stuck with 
	the lines he identified, although I changed them
	to put some injured players back in the game.  
	(You wouldn't want to play the Flyers without 
	Lindros, for example.)

	-- The ability to play the actual '96-'97 schedule,
	thanks to Daniel Colangelo, a true wizard with a hex
	editor, who lives in Buffalo.  (After you unzip these
	new files, when you start a new season, select "93-94
	schedule" and you'll get this year's actual NHL 
	schedule.  (The game dates are accurate, but days of
	the week are not, because the schedule had to be based
	on a 1993 calendar.)

	--  New uniforms -- home and away -- and center ice 
	logos for all the teams that have changed since the 
	'93-'94 season.  Really!  Pretty cool, huh?  This too,
	thanks to Danny and his skill with a hex editor.
	(Great job Danny!) 

	--  Higher skill values for a handful of players from 
	Finland, thanks to Oula Pulju, a high school student
	from Finland who wrote to tell me how talented some 
	of his countrymen are, such as Saku Koivu, Jere 
	Lehtinen and Ville Peltonen, and protested that my 
	'95-96 update didn't rate them highly enough.  Hey, 
	how could anyone not like the Finns?  They probably
	haven't started a war in 300 years.

	--  An empty Free Agent list -- so you'll have an 
	unlimited ability to swap players as time passes.

My son and I spent many hours trying to make the rosters as
accurate as possible. It  reflects the collective wisdom of
the Hockey News, the Sporting News Complete Hockey Book, 
and the NHL, Fox, ESPN, NANDONET and NHL Players Association
Web sites.  Sometimes our sources didn't agree, and they 
make mistakes, too. But we worked carefully, and this is 
at least as good as you'll find anywhere. 

So enjoy.  And if you spot errors, tell me about them.
Send your thoughts to alenhoff@rust.net. 

A few things you might want to know if you're as compulsive
as I am:

First, because the game doesn't let you clean-out the free
agent list, after a while, you run out of room to create new
players and to remove players who get cut.  The solution,
which I used, is to take a player who has retired or been 
cut from the squad and use an editing program to convert that
player to a new player on the team (changing name, position,
attributes, number, etc.).  That works fine, except that you
get someone else's statistics for the 93-94 year.  (If you 
create a new free agent through the game's central registry,
you get phony stats anyway.) 

For new players in the league, I gave out relatively mediocre
default attributes, altering only to reflect what I could 
learn from looking at their Sporting News stat sheets (i.e.
I altered some attributes to reflect players who were 
especially large or small, players who had a history of 
big-time penalty minutes or players who seemed to be scoring
machines.  I also made certain assumptions, based upon their
position, such as making centers better at faceoffs and 
stick-handling than your average player). For some players,
I was able to find scouting reports that helped, too.

A few of the teams still have a player or two who have been
sent down to the minors since the start of the season.
I left them there, partly to keep the Free Agent list 
clear, and also on the bet that many of them will likely
be back in the NHL as soon as injuries mount up.  (If others
are added to the roster, you can use an editor program 
-- try AOL's Grandstand area, Compuserve's SportsSims 
or various Web sites to find one -- to convert these players
into whomever joins the team.) 

Many of the teams have more than the legal roster limit of
players because they've got players on the injured reserve
list who we left on the teams. All jersey numbers ought to
be accurate.

I used an editing program to change the name of the 
Nordiques and the Jets.  But to avoid crashing the program,
I couldn't change it in every location of the game.  
So, sometimes you'll see "Phoenix" and sometimes "Winnipeg."

If you've guessed by now that I took this job pretty 
seriously, you're right.  But one confession:

You'll find on my beloved hometown Red Wings, a left wing,
#66, Alexander Lenhoff, who plays amazingly like a second
Sergei Federov.  (Well, let's be truthful:  A Fedorov 
who's motivated to play hard every night.)  Alexander is my
11-year-old son, who, in real life, plays a pretty fair game
of hockey, and, with our family's Russian and Canadian 
ancestors, carries excellent hockey genes, too.  I can 
guarantee you that if you play Alexander, he'll add spirit
and energy to the Wings. But if you're a purest, just scratch 
Alexander -- gently, please, he's just a kid -- and dress
another winger in his place. 

(On the other hand, if Alexander has a particularly good 
game for you, he likes to hear about it.  Send him a note 
at alenhoff@rust.net.)

Finally, I've got to say that I take a perverse joy in 
allowing NHL '95 users to play the game with rosters that 
are far more up-to-date than those in NHL '97.  I cannot 
imagine what made EA Sports decide to build new versions that
require a fast Pentium to operate them with all features 
activated.  I don't mind upgrading software, but I'm not 
willing to ditch my hardware each year, too.  (Take that, EA!)

DIRECTIONS TO USE THESE FILES:

Unzip these files into a temporary directory or onto 
a diskette.  Make backup copies of all the files in your 
hockey directory with the same names. (Really!  Do it. You 
never can tell what might go wrong.)  

Select the files you want to use and copy them into your 
hockey directory, overwriting the existing files.  Here's 
what they are and what they do:

"Schedule.db" gives you the 96-97 NHL schedule for new 
seasons you create.

All the other files with a ".db" extension give you the 
new rosters and line combinations.

Included in this update are home and away uniform color 
changes for the Buffalo Sabres jersey, Calgary Flames 
pants, Colorado Avalanche jersey, New York Islanders 
jersey, Phoenix Coyotes jersey. Edmonton Oilers jersey
and the Washington Capitals jersey, as well as center 
ice rink logo changes.  The files are:   

awaypals.bin    -       color palettes for away jerseys
homepals.bin    -       color palettes for home jerseys

buf.til         -       Buffalo Sabres Logo
que.til        -       Colorado Avalanche Logo
nyi.til         -       New York Islanders Logo
wpg.til        -       Phoenix Coyotes Logo
wsh.til        -       Washington Capitals Logo
wsh.map     -       Washington Capitals Logo support file

If you want the original files back, just copy them from 
your backup files (or, if you ignored my advice, from the
NHL95 CD-ROM).

Have fun!  (Remember, these new files won't update a season
that you already have in progress.  You'll need to play 
exhibition games or start a new season to use the new rosters.)

Feel free to upload this to your favorite web site. 
Just include all the files, including this readme.txt.

Comments? Questions? Love letters?  Hate mail?  
Try alenhoff@rust.net.

Alan Lenhoff




