Hey everyone! I have just completed a fairly ambitious roster project for NHL: Legacy on the PS3. I've created all 32 FIFA World Cup teams from this year's tournament in Qatar in NHL: Legacy! I created a spreadsheet to convert each player's Football Manager or FIFA ratings to EA NHL ratings.
Positions were assigned as follows:
Soccer Position -> Hockey Position
Goalkeeper - Goalkeeper
Fullbacks/Wingbacks - Defenseman
Midfielders/Forwards - Center
I chose to change all Midfielders and Forwards to Center rather than LW/C/RW because there seemed to be way fewer wings than centers when initially only assigning Side Midfielders and Wingers to the wings, which resulted in teams having few wings and those (typically less skilled) wings being placed on the top few lines, which I didn't like.
A big thing to note is that I didn't update player faces. I felt like EA offers very few choices for non-white player faces such that some teams would have so many players with the same face and that it might be a bit pointless to put in the work for that result.
Player numbers are accurate as to their World Cup squad numbers, and player heights and weights were converted to be more in-line with hockey player dimensions (using another formula on my spreadsheet). I've also changed the home stadium names for each NHL/World Cup team to the name of one of the eight real-life World Cup Stadiums in Qatar. The rink size was also changed from NHL to international dimensions for each arena.
I feel like the results are pretty good, still plenty of room for improvement, I'm sure. Here are the teams in game and which national team they are:
Anaheim: Ecuador
Arizona: Netherlands
Boston: Qatar
Buffalo: Senegal
Calgary: England
Carolina: Iran
Chicago: USA
Colorado: Wales
Columbus: Argentina
Dallas: Mexico
Detroit: Poland
Edmonton: Saudi Arabia
Florida: Australia
Los Angeles: Denmark
Minnesota: France
Montreal: Tunisia
Nashville: Costa Rica
New Jersey: Germany
NY Islanders: Japan
NY Rangers: Spain
Ottawa: Belgium
Philadelphia: Canada
Pittsburgh: Croatia
San Jose: Brazil
St. Louis: Morocco
Tampa Bay: Cameroon
Toronto: Serbia
Vancouver: Switzerland
Washington: Ghana
Winnipeg: Portugal
NHL Green All-Stars: South Korea
NHL Black All-Stars: Uruguay
Italy: Italy (threw them in as an extra team)
So with the exception of Italy, World Cup squads were assigned to NHL teams based on which group they were in (starting with Group A).
Knowing much more about hockey than soccer, I sorta used this project to gain a better understanding of current soccer players in the run up to the World Cup, and I have definitely familiarized myself much more with the key players for each squad and their playing styles with this project. Thanks to anyone who downloads this, please let me know how you like it or how it can be improved!