Lee wroteCOLON
it's time for a course correction and you may need to think of the health of the league over yourself.
tbh, I think the health of the league would be helped much more by replacing ghost GMs by interested ones rather than by what you're proposing, as I don't think it would have much of an impact.
The first thing we'd need to do is looking for new good GMs. In fact, the best thing that has happened to this league in recent times has been the addition of Bruyns and such
Lee wroteCOLON
it's time for a course correction and you may need to think of the health of the league over yourself.
tbh, I think the health of the league would be helped much more by replacing ghost GMs by interested ones rather than by what you're proposing, as I don't think it would have much of an impact.
The first thing we'd need to do is looking for new good GMs. In fact, the best thing that has happened to this league in recent times has been the addition of Bruyns and such
There aren't a lot of. Really inactive gms if you look at the list of teams: monk, Tyler, maybe Hong or cliff? And 2 of those guys have been here since the beginning, I believe.
And I know it's an ass move naming them, but I assume they won't see it anyways...
Like at the end of the day I think Mik's hit it. It comes down to brining in motivated people who are willing to put the time in to get the most out of this community.
To just continue to toot my own horn. I took over a team that finished 4th to last in the regular season, void of draft picks, void of a substantial prospect pool. A couple stars but an overly shit aging roster. I think most would agree that I've managed to completely transform that team in the past (nearly) 2 years. A team thats now competitive with a brighter future. It isn't impossible to turn these dud franchises around. You just need to be motivated as hell, a good negotiator, a strong assessor of player value, and possess patience.
While I do think that we could do more to accelerate the overall league competitiveness. At the end of the day it comes down to the people running the franchises, and thats our #1 problem today in terms of overall parity.
Fraser your prospect pool was pretty solid. Would have gladly taken over that team vs Anaheim or SJS or ARZ or DAL. But yes, you've done well with it - just need a goalie
With a 30 team league, there are going to be some weak teams just like there are weak teams in the NHL. In our league players and picks are our currency when we don't have a free agent element as a way to refill holes in lineups.
If I need a player, I can't really claim or sign a free agent...I've got to cough up some assets to add a guy. In the NHL, you don't have to trade away some of your best prospects to fill a hole in your lineup. You can either call a guy up from the minors in season or you spend some money for a free agent in the offseason.
Bottom teams would be able to build quicker if they didn't have cough up their young talent to patch a hole in their lineup. I don't like the idea of having to give up (potential) NHLers for players past their prime just so I can reach the GP minimum and I don't look like I'm blatantly tanking.
If we want to create a more fluid roster situation...a free agency element is the way to go.
The best system I've been involved in revolved around the actual term of the contracts and we bid on players each summer using FAAB (free agent auction budget). Not everyone has the same budget from year to year because you spend more some years than others. The way you can accumulate more FAAB is with winning your division or making the playoffs or winning a championship. You receive rewards. There's also a yearly equal payout to every team to replenish everyone's budget. And you can trade FAAB as part of regular deals.
Restricted free agency is part of the league where you can bid on an RFA but the team can match the high bid or let the player go and get compensation in return.
Nothing to do with what we are talking about now. But for fun I just switched every teams points into what they would look like if every match were worth 2 points(just divided total points of a team by 16) and then calculated which division has the most points. This doesn't take into account strength of competition, but this is what I got on avg per division:
Atlantic = 84.3 points
Central = 84.1 points
Pacific = 73.4 points
Metro = 69.1 points
To Scott's point, what if Waiver draft was 2 rounds for only non-playoff teams? Then a 3rd round for the 16 playoff teams? That would be one simple change to improve player access for the lower teams.
Another easy idea, along the lines of the cap that Mik was talking about is that we could mimic the NHL in that during the offseason you cannot go more than 10% (or 5%... however much it is) over the salary cap. This way when top teams have lots of players re-signing for large deals, they'll be more pressured to move them to avoid going over.
We could even make a proviso, that any players who've played let's say > 50 NHL career games count towards cap in the offseason (even though they are still waiver eligible if less than 150 during season), and if you are > 10 or 15% (whatever we decide on) over the cap, you need to make moves to get under it. Would help with the hoarding of top players in the minors... but again this would be something that would target the few at the top who have this situation and not the rest of the league.
Honestly, I don't think a large revolution is needed. Issue comes into play when GM's make bad decisions... when bottom teams aren't acting like bottom teams and keeping their picks (or at least getting max value for them). Matt, Will, Fraser have been great at turning assets into more assets and are retaining their important picks. Other bottom teams are shedding their picks or betting them and they're leaving their cupboards empty - makes it hard to improve and top teams know that and have been preying on the weaker teams because they want to try to improve fast (because its fantasy hockey) and the "parity" in the league suffers.
once again I don't understand why those wanting to change things and complaining about parity don't jump over something along these lines:
- the new contract an UFA gets in real life would be the final request the player's agent would make to our team.
Just like in real life, teams could resign or lose their UFAs depending on their cap room.
- If adding his new salary to the deadline payroll the team exceeds next season's cap, than the player gets automatically released.
- Those (together with the ones left unsigned in real life beyond the established date) are the players that would become real UFAs in our league.
- As for who gets priority to sign UFAs that are not retained by their previous BBKL team:
Waiver-Draft: when a team gets on the clock, it has the chance to choose between picking from the waiver draft pool or the available UFAs.
