Here is Aaron's two cents on what has been said so far:

1.) Roster size - has to be 23, not 20. I think this was already clarified.

2.) Awards Voting Payout Adjustments - I agree on the awards voting, they should be decreased for collusion purposes between friends. Its sad though cause those are big achievements. I would say that they shouldnt go below 1% though for some of the ones that are 2%. Also I think ones that are automatic should stay as is. Things like scoring champ, rocket richard etc... I think that the MVP should also stay pretty high.

One other award I think we could payout is the Jennings. This is another automatic award that I dont think actually made money last year.

3.) I dont think we should have retired players who still have contract years count against the cap. The biggest reason I am COMPLETELY against this one is because we simply do not have the insider information that the NHL GMs do to avoid something like this. I would suggest maybe saying the first year would count against the cap if we did implement anything. But if there are years beyond that then I say no.

4.) I dont think we should allow any front or backloading to salaries. Especially not backloading because its like spending a potentially future GMs money. The common knowledge that you get what you paid for comes in here. He didnt pay for the money down the road to backload a contract. Not to mention it complicates things way too much.

5.) Something I think we should add to the website is a rookie contract scale to show what the max each rookie can make on his entry level deal. Its different depending on his draft year and how old he is when he signs the deal. There is also criteria for signing euros that are older too. An old guy like Niklas Backstrom (G) could only sign a 1 year entry level deal. I think we should have the same rules. I can supply these if requested.

6.) I think that the penalties for being below the cap and above the cap need to be adjusted heavily. I think its a real shame that some teams lost THEIR BEST PLAYER for being above the salary cap and it just ruins teams because one GM was careless. It could get hard to replace some teams GMs if a team keeps losing their best players.

I think we should say that they lose the player that has the appropriate salary that puts them just below the cap WITH THE HIGHEST RATING. If they are over the cap by 1M then they lose a player who's salary is just over 1M and is rated the highest if their is a tie...

That all for now. I'll likely have more later.

What would be unfair is changing a rule (ESPECIALLY retroactive) that we were all aware of when we started drafting, trading and signing contracts.

A couple more points on why the SB should be retroactively changed:

- The biggest reason we signed RFA contracts during the year is to save time at the end of the year. In reality, this would have never happened for any other reason than to save time. So all of these contracts should be considered as signed during this current offseason. To me, that means they fall under the jurisdiction of any rule changes that occur during the offseason.

- Dispite some GMs ability to "work within the rules to their advantage", by signing players to huge SB's to have a lower cap hit, I think it would be unfair if the league did not adjust the signing bonuses because it is unfair to teams whose GMs disappeared and didnt have the opportunity to sign these types of deals. (Meaning only a select 4-5 in the league benefit from this poorly drawn out rule.)

- This rule should not have been in the league in the first place and only effects new contracts. These new contracts are not even in place yet, so retroactively adjusting them doesnt effect any "equilibriums" or whatever you want to call them.

- TB is fighting for his unfair advantage, which is fine, but I think everyone needs to realize that this advantage has not yet been realized and still stands the chance of being retroactivley altered since the actual contracts have not yet even been in place.

I suggest that whatever the signing bonus max is set at. Be it 10 or 15% or something near there, we would alter the signed deals to have SB's equal to that and tack on the extra that is left over onto the cap hit. Otherwise this is an unfair advantage that will be reaped by only 4-5 GMs for 4 years until all these contracts expire.

The key here is that these contracts are not even in place, so we are not altering something that has been in effect.

Here are what players signed for in real life and here is what some teams got them for here:

NHL contract -Daniel Briere 8 years for 52M =6.5M/year cap hit
TB's BRHL2 contract - 4 years for 18M and 2M signing bonus = 4.5M cap hit

NHL contract - Alex Tanguay 3 years for 16.125M = 5.375M cap hit
TB's BRHL2 contract - 2 years 6.4M and 1.9M signing bonus = 3.2M cap hit

NHL Contract - Chris Drury 5 years for 32.5M - 6.5M cap hit
Calgary's BRHL2 contract - 4 years for 15.2M and 1.8M signing bonus = 3.8M cap hit

NHL Contract - Jason Spezza 2 years 1t 10M = 5M cap hit
Carolina's BRHL2 contract- 4 years for 17M and 3M signing bonus = 4.25M cap hit (AND 2 MORE YEARS ON THE DEAL!)


Thats just a couple of the big ones. This is obviously an inaccurate rule and the cap hit has got to be higher. I mean kudos to the GMs on signing their guys to an overall cheaper contract by doing it a bit earlier, and that shouldnt change, but the fact that the signing bonus makes the cap hit almost 2M less across the board is something that needs to be looked at.


The only way to make this rule present a level playing field are one of three ways.

1.) Alter already signed deals to reflect a lower maximum SB of 10-15%
2.) Count SB's against the cap in conjuction with the yearly salary. Either average it out or else tack it onto year 1 as a front heavy contract.
3.) Allow every single contract to expire and resign to the current rule before altering it, so that EVERYONE has an opportunity to sign ever player on their roster to this type of deal.


-- Edited by Sabres at 17:45, 2007-07-07

-- Edited by Sabres at 17:45, 2007-07-07

Lets see what the rest of the league thinks cause we obviously disagree on how the rule should be.

I am actually going to agree with TB for now.....rule changes should never be retroactive. He signed contracts under the rules as they were, everybody else had the same option. He also made plans knowing he had these contracts done as they were set before the trade deadline.

Contracts also aren't signed early just to save time. I like to lock up players early if I think they are going to have a great year and ask for more money later. I also like to sign them early so that I know exactly what my cap situation is for the future, having my guys under contract gives me more info when making trades. For instance, my first order of business next season is to lock up Lundqvist. If he costs me 3-4M under the cap I will be able to make more trades than if he costs me 5-6.


One other thing....don't forget that Drury & Briere were UFAs in the NHL and RFAs here, so the #s don't compare well.

-- Edited by Panthers at 14:07, 2007-07-08

I understand your point of view Panthers. However, the changes to the contracts wouldnt actually be retroactive. The contracts would stay the same but the cap hit would be more realistic. Retroactive isnt actually the best word I could have used.

Also, if you get lundqvist for 3-4M then thatd be another concern of mine... :)

Lastly, it is nice to sign guys early at a discount or proactively based on your intuition that you might save money. But the primary reason we ALLOW the early signings is to save time.

Sabres wrote:

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Phillippe, you know I like you as a person and have a bit more of an understand than you and Aaron, but I tend to agree with Rex quite a bit. Yes you discovered a great way to sign players and "work the system", but when it comes down to what's best for the league, it's really not that. We might as well not even have a cap if you can sign people for so cheap.


Seriously listen to this man- In 4 years we'll have to pay contracts of Crosby, Kopitar, 2 of (Staal, EJ, backstrom, toews), harding, erhoff, Price, O'sullivan, Weber. Carter, Brown, Bouwmeester. Not going to be cheap contracts. The system to suggest is wayyyyyyyyyyy much beneficial for us as a team. We could keep all the players into their prime and still sign some other UFAs if we keep the signing bonus the same at 50%.

Just think about that. It is in no way out of our own selfishness that we'd like to see the rule changed to around 20%-25% and decrease the advertisement bonuses by about half of what they are otherwise there will be pointless money laying around.

Thanks,
Luke

 

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The rule Bryce has been using is 20-25% if not less and if you see a signing bonus higher than that then in most cases there was an overpayment for the player.
You cannot make them retroactive because in contracts quite a few times Bryce did not value signing bonuses as much salary dollars.
If you read the 1st post in this thread, I asked for the rule to be clarified and I asked this in mid-season too. Bryce did NOT allow any high signing bonuses around 50%, I tried to sign those and he said no and he limited them more or less to what he believed was correct.
The concern here is Bryce and Eric need to decide what they want the percentage to be and they can write it in the rulebook and everyone will be aware of it. I asked to get this done in mid-season because I thought it was important but they couldn't come to an agreement so it was delayed until the off-season.

I want the rule clarified but when I asked to have it done in mid-season it didn,t work so why would we make it retroactive now? That would make no sense. This isn't even a new rule because as I said Bryce wasn't allowing 50% for RFA's, that's for UFA's, the percentage just has to be clarified and told to everyone .