Honestly, I'd consider moving Pitkanen, I don't think you can afford to lose Hall, as he seems like an important part of your offense. I'd trade him for a teams best D prospect and 1st round pick.

Unlike Zweihander (we talk a lot and have different team building philosophies) I would rather get rid of Gudbranson and one of your 2nd line forwards. In my mind, a strong top D-pairing can take you a long way in this game, and with Larsson and Pitkanen it appears that you have that. The second unit doesn't NEED an 89 overall guy, and you can probably save a lot of money by signing a 84-86 overall d-man to replace him, as well as getting a good young forward to fill in on the top 6.

I have 2 questions though

1) How do you get your players good so fast? In 5 GM Modes I've played significant time on, I've only had 1 guy get to a 91 overall by the age of 26 like Pitkanen. All I want to know is what types of player training do you do?

2) How do you handle your contracts? If Pitkanen is 3 years into his deal, it strikes me as odd that he'd want $8.1M. Did you overcompensate a bit to get a longer deal from him or get him from a CPU team?
It just seems to be his is being paid a couple million more than he should have been signing the contract at 23.

Team looks really good though, I love the defensive depth. I will continue to follow you when you're not lost in your cottage. =p

I'm gonna be honest, you guys might consider it cheating the system, but I trade for most of my team. I originally fantasy drafted my team, and I now only have three players from it, Landeskog, Larsson and Allen. I was surprisingly able to trade for him relatively cheap, (mostly waiver wire pick ups and other prospects I had). I have butchered my trade rep with about half the league because I get stubborn when I want to trade for someone. (e.g. when I traded for Brett Stovin, It cost me probably 3 draft picks within the first 3 rounds, one of my starting centers and another star defenseman.)
I drafted Teravainen, who didn't get good until the last couple of years, (two consecutive jumps of 4). As for the player training, I rarely look into that, and I usually just let CPU handle it.

Your theory in the second question is spot on. If they have relatively high potential, I will raise their price by around 0.500M to get them inked a couple years longer. Stovin is a prime example. If I remember correctly, he only wanted around 3.500M when he was a 79 A-, but I raised it to 3.910M and got him signed for 6 years, so he is extremely cheap (for an 88).

Just to show my madness, here is a quick list of some of the players I have had:
Erik Karlsson D
Duncan Siemens D (87 B-)
Jack Campbell G
Anze Kopitar C
Evander Kane LW
Patrick Kane RW
Kent Ryder LW (86 B-)
Probably many more but I can't recall as I'm away from the PS3.

It's a normal practice to trade for your team. I do it a lot myself, but usually get the guys when they are 20 or 21 so I can develop them and sign them to long term contracts for almost nothing. I also trade for top 10 picks for pretty much the first 18 years of a dynasty, so in a way that's a little sketchy as well. But hey, I just like to rebuild through trade rather than free agency, so it makes perfect sense.

I thought that's what you did, I do it on occasion myself. Normally though, I get guys with high potential and low overall and experience, it tends to work out as I sign them to long term deals for nearly nothing and by the end of it I have the cap space to afford my core players. (For example, I got Dimitri Svitov the year of his #1 overall draft selection, he was a 68 overall with A,A-,B potential. After his rookie contract he had made it to an 80 overall, so I signed him to a $3.000M deal for 8 seasons. Currently he is 29 and still has 2 years on that deal, and is an 89 overall with the ability to grow to probably 91-92 before his deal is done.)

For me though, the way I build my core is how I am able to manage the cap.
Usually I lock down my starting goalie, top line, and top 4 d-men to long term deals, and sometimes my 2nd line center, and one winger. Usually by the 2020-21 season, I allow myself $15.000M to sign bottom 6 forwards and bottom 2 d-men, so usually I get big rookies or veterans, and usually they are very defensive minded, so they don't take up much cap room.

It helps that on my current Tampa team, my top line center is only paid $5.575M on a brand new contract, my top sniper only makes $6.700M and my best player somehow agreed to a $4.000M deal that expires this season.

So, I listened to your advice, and dealt Glebov and Gudbranson. Hoewever, I have screwed myself because in one offseason, I signed and dealt too many people, and now I have RFAs that won't resign with me. The one I want the most is Ruslan Khavanov C PWF (A A- B) 76 OVR. I don't know what I'm going to do, is there a way to regain FAs trust?

Oh, you just have to wait it out. If it's your first time doing that, it usually fixes itself by September sometime.