Hello everybody, Andy Agostini here again on the most important day of the offseason in the NHL; July 1st, unrestricted Free Agent signing day. There are two days of the NHL year that I love and dread at the same time; the trade deadline and July 1st. Every move made on these two days as a hockey fan is very interesting but as the guy that is in charge of the database for the NHL franchise it?s a lot of work.

This year we hired a person (Gurndeep Sumal) to help with the database. The additions of 3 new Euro leagues and the amount of effort to keep up with the NHL and AHL can be overwhelming when we are trying to get our features tuned. So today, which is Canada Day (Our nations birth date and a National holiday) our whole team is in the office trying to get this game done. (David Littman being American doesn't mind so much that we are here). I will be letting you in on what my day is like while I sit here and work and watch the NHL network getting the latest on all the signings and trades.

9:00 am PST - Arrive at work and settle in and notice that the Vancouver Canucks hated rivals Edmonton have already made two trades bringing in Erik Cole and former Vancouver Giant Gilbert Brule into their lineup. This along with the trade to bring Lubomir Visnovsky yesterday makes them a much better team. The Oilers just became another big hurdle for the Canucks to make the playoffs.

9:30 am PST - Spend the next half hour tuning the new player growth system for Dynasty and Be a Pro modes.

10:00 am PST - Check out the bugs left on my list and work on getting them fixed. Not many signings happening now.
Vancouver re-signs Kyle Wellwood. Hopefully this isn't the biggest move of the day for the Canucks.

12:15 pm PST - The action picked up a bit, lots of goalies moving around. Huet to Chicago makes little sense. I guess there is a trade brewing in Chicago. Lots of goalie pads to fix in our game now. :)

1:00 pm PST - The Canucks make an offer sheet to RW David Backes of St. Louis. Decent grinder but 2.5M a year is pretty steep.

2:00 pm PST - Came back from a meeting with our online team. We added some cool new leaderboards. Catching up on the day's action and am glad to say I didn't miss anything. Still can't believe how many goalies are going to be on new teams next year.

2:45 pm PST - First of the big UFA's on the market signs. Brian Campbell to Chicago makes their power play pretty good. Chicago has some work to do to keep under the cap but that is a good signing.

3:15 pm PST - David Littman came by my desk and reviewed some Be a Pro screens for when you become the captain of your team.

3:45 pm PST - Brian Rolston to New Jersey. Four years for a 35 year old player is a big risk. Lou Lamoriello still has a lot of work to do. Canucks get enforcer Darcy Hordichuk for the next 2 years. This is not the impact I was imagining for the Canucks.

4:00 pm PST - Played a game with Sean Ramjagsingh (Game play Producer) the game is feeling really good. Love the new dump and chase features as it totally fits into my style. Also, you guys will love the new deflections that we have in the game.

4:45 pm PST - St. Louis Blues say that they will be matching the offer sheet for forward David Backes. Still tuning Be a Pro mode.

5:00 pm PST - TV is turned off for the day and after seeing 35 players move so far including 8 goalies, I still have a few more hours of work to go with all these moves as well as some tuning of the secret feature we are working on. After all these signings today I think Chicago has become a pretty good team to play with in NHL 09. Also I think I am going to be starting a Dynasty with the Phoenix Coyotes. They are young, fast and have enough good talent at key positions that they could make a big run at the playoffs this year and they are just going to get better.

Hope you enjoyed a little bit of insight into what I do here at EA during one of the busiest days of the year. Well, I am off to have some dinner, and then back to my desk for a long night.