all UFAs will become UFAs, but the team owning their rights can match any offers and that means they sign the player.

or at least i think that's how we're doing it.

I think we need to run a new poll on this with 2 options

1. All UFAs go to free agency and nobody has an advantage on any player. (Free-for-all)
2. All UFAs go to free agency but previous team gets final say whether to match the top offer or let the player walk. If a player is allowed to walk, Vegas can pay slightly more than the highest bid and win or decide to pass on the player.

Once we figure out a new leadership order, UFA needs to be the next big topic tackled.

i find the poll a bit misleading, which i think is maybe causing the split (or maybe people are really torn). it reads as though the ufas are just the same as rfas. also for the "talks about resigning them", i thought that there was no influence from the real nhl aside from lottery

1. Teams submit the free agents they own the rights to as well as any unlisted free agents they wish to be included in free agency. Players who are not entered into free agency, will not be eligible to be signed, so if you want a player, it is your responsibility to make sure that player is added to the list of available UFA's.

2. Teams BID on players. This process has yet to be defined/refined.

3. The winning team is determined by the annual value of the contract in priority order.

First: Highest value
Second: Home team
Third: Vegas (waived expansion negotiation for this benefit)
Fourth: Waiver order (Only in the case of a tie, where the Home and Vegas teams have not decided to match the highest value)

HIGHEST VALUE: The highest annual salary offered by a team.
HOME TEAM: Team owning the rights to the player. May match the highest offer and sign the player. All other bids are then cancelled.
VEGAS: Has special negotiation rights. May match the highest offer for any player (if the home team has chosen not to) and sign the player. All other bids are then cancelled.
WAIVER ORDER: Can be invoked by a GM when there are multiple teams offering the same value for a player, when none of the teams involved is the HOME or VEGAS team.

4. Waiver order will be a list that determines which team has priority in claiming a player in certain situations. We would have to determine an initial waiver order first. For Free Agency, this would apply in instances where multiple teams have offered the same dollar value for a player. The team highest in the waiver order would be able to evoke or pass.

Evoke: That team gets the player and then moves to the bottom of the waiver order.
Pass: That team maintains their position in the waiver order and the next team is given the option to evoke or pass.

If no teams evoke their waiver priority, the player defaults back to the team highest in the waiver order without requiring them to evoke or lose their waiver position.

5. Contract term (years) will be added automatically, based on set criteria, once a team has won and successfully signed a player.

Years - Criteria

1 - All players begin with a default term of 1 year. This is the minimum term of a contract.
+1 - Three or more bids submitted for the player
+1 - Greater than $2M annual value
+1 - Greater than $4M annual value
+1 - Greater than $5.5M annual value
+1 - Greater than $7M annual value
+1 (Optional) - At the discretion of the team signing the player
-1 (Optional. Home team only) - At the discretion of the team signing the player.

Example 1 - Chris Pronger receives a winning bid of $5.25M from the home team and there were more than 3 bidders:
Contract = Annual Value x (1 year (default) +1 (more than 3 bidders) +1 ( > $2M) +1 ( > $4M) -1 (at home team's discretion))
Contract = $5.25M x 3 years

Example 2 - Guy Carbonneau receives a winning bid of $2.25M, not from the home team, and there were only 2 bidders:
Contract = Annual Value x (1 year (default) +1 ( > $2M)) The team signing the player decides not to add a year to the contract
Contract = $2.25M x 2 years

6. Special Cases

... To be continued

**NOTE**
This isn't all proofread or finalized and may need adjustments, I'm just rough drafting right now.

Personally Im not sold on the term calculations.

There will be some cases where signing a player to a high cost / low term contract would be beneficial. Having more than 1 bidder should not have any impact on the contract. If so, I will be making the minimum bid on all notable UFA's so that I won't have to sign that player more than likely and the GM signing that player will automatically have to give them an extra year (As long as there at least 2 others). Not only that say their are two bidders. rico offers Hanzal 5M and I only offer 4.9M. You win the contract but I would of offered more term thus making the deal more beneficial in the long run.

I'm not sure what's the problem with the original way of highest bid in contract value gets the player, which is closest to the real thing. If you are worried about some one making crazy outrageous offers to screw another GM, that is a slippery idea as they might be forced to actually pay out that contract after all.... If someone goes nuts and offers Tavares 15M or whatever the max contract is, he essentially screwed himself if no one matches.

Not sure why we are complicating an already established way of negotiating a contract? What are we trying to avoid by using this process exactly? the only downfall to not having real people to negotiate with is the players preferences. Take that out of the equation and its simply "pay me the most and I will sign", no?


IMO the winning bid should be by total dollars offered. That winning team chooses how to distribute that highest bid. 15Mx2, 5x6, 10x3, etc Now that 7 years is the highest a term can be for a UFA, no one can get sneaky and sign a player to a 100M dollar contract anymore ( 5M x 20 years for example). It has to be within reason as their would only be so much variations in contract terms a team can use to their advantage anyway.

Player is guaranteed to get the most return and the team gets the flexibility of varying the term to their advantage.

The order of winning bid works perfectly though. Highest bidder, Home team, Vegas, Waiver.

The criteria may need tweaking. Those are a rough idea.



This is a possibility as well, especially if it's simpler and easier to understand.
The goal is to remove the term from the process, so we can just focus on one variable ($) in determining a winner.

How do we prevent GM's from making every contract 7 years in order to reduce the cap hit?
Thornton for $7M ($3.5M x 2 years) becoming $1M x 7 years, for example.

Opposite end of the spectrum?
Thornton for $10M for 1 year instead of a more reasonable $5M x 2 years. Making sure I get him, but with no long term commitment.

Those are the type of issues we're up against.

If you are worried about crazy offers, then cap the amount that can be earned per year. Cap it at say 9 mil. No one can offer more than 9 mil per year of a contract. Everyone puts their bids in term doesn't matter. Home team and Vegas has the right to offer max contract of 8 yrs at 9 per. Home trumps Vegas, Vegas has next priority. If neither the Home team or Vegas are involved, highest yearly salary wins and no team may offer term more than 7. If there is a tie, use the waiver system as a tie breaker. The team that wins via tiebreaker moves to the bottom of the list. Essentially, this makes teams more strategic about free agents they go after.

Rico, why not cap 35+ players at say 6 mil and use the same system as I suggested above?

Well that is an idea but when you think about it, Thornton signed for 7 years is a terrible contract even at 1M. Sure that person now has Thornton at a very cheap contract but one that will take him into his mid 40's. The only reason some feel that won't be a problem is because " ahh we won't be playing the GM game by next year anyways" But that doesn't negate the fact that if this is to be a representation of real life "GM'ing", you just signed a bogus contract and that is generally mocked and would constitute being a bad GM........

Regardless though, the highest bid still wins it. So if no teams are willing to offer more then 7M total contract for Thornton, then it really isn't a big deal then is it? If a GM wants to sign him to 7 years at 1M, whose to say Thornton wouldn't want a steady stream of money going into his 40's? Even at a lower cap hit? Obviously these are the extremes and more than likely won't happen very often but the idea behind it isn't as flawed as we think. The same reason for not wanting to sign Thornton long term (His age) is the exact reason signing him long term is a bad idea.

This isn't a fantasy season thing where all the teams players accumulated points totals dictate the "winner" of the GM game. Its more so based on how good a GM you've been. If signing a 38 year old to a 7 year contract is your idea of being a good GM because you saved 2.5M on the cap for the next 2 years but are stuck with a 35+ contract for the following 5 years after that, well then I guess it'll be up to masses to decide if that makes sense or not. I guess it depends on what "winning" the GM game means to the player. Signing Thornton to a 7 year deal even at 1M a season is what I would consider being a bad GM.........Might not be to someone else and that's fine.

Potential solution?

You submit your bid as total contract value and number of years.
The highest total contract value wins, but is then divided by the average number of years from all the bids to set the final term.
That way one person can't go too crazy.

Thornton has 4 bids:
$5M / 1 year
$14M / 7 years
$8M / 2 years
$12M / 3 years

$14M bidder wins
Average of 3.25 years (rounded up to 4 years)
Final contract = $3.5M x 4 years

So the guy being silly and trying to sign him for $2M per year, ends up signing him at $3.5M for 4 years.
I think that might be enough to discourage those extreme situations?

Perhaps the home team gets the advantage of being able to reduce it by 1 year, so if the $14M bidder were the home team, they could make it $3.5M for 3 years instead, since we are rounding up in determining the number of years. That also means the home team gets a "discount" because the final contract value is $11.5M now, which is less than the other bid of $12M.

We'd have to check some other permutations, but I think it looks good so far.

Stop posting a link that we need permission to access.

Go to sharing permissions and change it to view: anyone with the link

Jackets: I think we may have a solution in my previous post. Take a look at that.

I feel like there should be a point system:

1 point for every year
1 point for every .5mill AAV

whoever has the highest goes to a showdown with the team who has the UFA rights
from there, the UFA righter has the chance to either match offer, or add "x" points to the deal.

Or, you could give the home team an early signing period. But based on the system above, home team may only sign that player if they offer max contract. Otherwise, they hit free agency and the teams have to bid for them.

Still feel this skews a GM's ability to modify the contract to his liking.

The problem here is crazy offers right? So why not eliminate that specific problem?

No player can be signed to less than 50% his previous AAV per year? Thornton cannot be signed less than 3.375M per year as a base because he made 6.75M in his last contract. The term is dictated by the overall salary offered but still interchangeable for the GM's preference.

So if the winning bid is 14M and his minimum AAV can be no less than 3.375 per year.. these are the options available to the winning bidder:

3.5M x 4 years. Longest possible contract to give Thornton.
or
4.66M x 3 years
or
7 x 2 years
or
14 x 1 year shortest possible contract to give Thornton.


Obviously the rules for UFA's still applies:


Home team advantage to match any offer wins
Highest bid wins
Vegas tie breaker
Waiver order tie breaker

what is the waiver order? i read it but i don't understand what it is.

Home teams will still have some control by being able to reduce the final term by 1 year.
As for the rest, the player/market is deciding the term, which sounds right to me.
GM's control the term for RFA's, the player controls the term for UFA's.

All the teams get in a line.
The first team in line can take the player and move to the back of the line, or they can stay in line and let the player go.
The next team in line gets the same choice, take the player, or move to the back of the line.
Repeat until one team takes the player and moves to the back of the line.
If no teams take the player, the first team can take him without moving to the back of the line.

okay, i think i get it.

I dont agree with the idea of the waiver order. I think that we should make it was close to real life as possible.

each team should submit the players that they are interested in to the BOGs. after doing that, the most commonly selected player will go trust through the procedure that I have laid out. the players that they submit are the only ones that they can bid on through the UFA process, to keep all fairness in the game.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zUKDm7GUMSQB4nayio7RPnej3KCqmiJnH_S4Jo1_LSM/edit?usp=sharing

We need a tie-breaker method. There are some UFA's who will be on max ELC's and we at least need a way to determine who gets them.
It would also work for any situation where there are 2 matching highest bids.

Your thing you set up would need some opinions from the BOG to start. That's a lot of work and can get really messy. We can't even get people to format their picks and posts properly to help keep things organized.

Look, it should breakdown like this:

Cap hit per year cannot exceed 9 mil for players under the age of 35.
Cap hit per year cannot exceed 6 mil for players 35+.

Team that owns the rights to a UFA is the home team. This team should have a two day window to offer one player, in which they have the rights to, a max contract of 8 yrs at 9 mil per. If they choose not to go this route, the said play goes into the free agency pool. Each team is required to submit a list of 3 players, listed by priority, and the offer they wish to submit.

Home team has the right to match an offer to a free agent they hold the rights to.

For example: Buffalo holds rights to Cody Franson. He reaches the open market. Say Chicago offers 4yrs at 3 mil per. Vegas offers 3 yrs at 2.75 mil. Buffalo offers 2 yrs at 2.5 mil per. Buffalo has the option to match that offer to retain. However, they must match term and amount per. If Buffalo chooses to pass, Vegas gets an opportunity to match. Same deal for Vegas. If they choose to pass, Chicago is rewarded the player.

Example 2: Buffalo owns the rights to Franson. They do not pursue an offer on him. Neither does Vegas, then the player goes to the team who offered the most money per yr. If there is a tie, the team who offered the most term ends up with the player. If both offers are exactly identical, then it should go by the waiver process.

This creates two things:
1 Strategy
2 Competition

These two things will make sure no one offers stupid contracts.

This allows people to sign players short term or long term.

What do you think?