"A season mode (later developed into a Franchise mode) with a retirement feature, drafting, and player trades were added to the series in NHL 99, and similar gameplay was used in this version, as well. NHL 2000 kept features from NHL 99; for example, created players can use any photo for their face, which is textured onto the head. Another mode in NHL 2000 is the Tournament mode, in which the user chooses 16 countries (only 18 countries were available in the game) to play a round robin. After the round robin, eight teams are eliminated and then the remaining eight have a "playoff," but instead of it being out of seven games it was single-elimination. Eventually, a winner is crowned gold in the championship match. There is also a third place match for the losers of the semi-finals. The game has a total of 28 NHL teams, including the new expansion Atlanta Thrashers, which was the only team in the game that didn't exist in the 1998-99 season. Online leagues of the game also became more organized. Daryl Reaugh left the series as color commentator in this game and was replaced by Bill Clement. Jim Hughson remained as play-by-play announcer throughout the series." Source: Wikipedia, NHL 2000 , available under the CC-BY-SA License.