I run a 12 team H2H keeper league. We\'re going into our 3rd season and everyone is, for the most part, quite happy. All of these people are also real life friends. We do not maintain separate prospect pools. Your average member of this league knows the difference between Jack Johnson and Erik Johnson, but probably would be just as inclined to draft Ales Kotalik as Milan Michalek (who is already taken, but I live in Sabres country, so it\'s an example). The average member of this league also is a big hockey fan but not quite to the level of, say, posters on this board. The majority of members are just as big football and baseball fans as they are hockey fans.

All that being said, I feel it\'s my job, as founder and commisioner, to come up with rules that help the league as a whole but that don\'t place too many restrictions on managers.

For example, a few of us made a significant number of add/drops last season, including people still doing add/drops during the playoffs (no formal rule against it, so I didn\'t stop it) and I had proposed limiting the # of add/drops to something like 10-15 per team for the whole season. I thought there was going to be mutiny, even though the average team maybe made 10 moves after the first week or so of the season. A final compromise that looks like it\'s going to go through is no limit to add/drops but no add/drops after the trade deadline unless by commisioner approval for really dire circumstances (like all of your goaltenders go on IR or something like that).

Anyway, after reading the example league rules posted on this site I became really interested in the idea of forcing prospects to be drafted as opposed to just picked up willy nilly on the waiver wire.

Most managers hate the idea of the rule. They think it makes it more difficult to find \"diamonds in the rough\". Yeah, whatever. What they really hate is the idea that we\'re going to hand Nicklas Backstrom to a bottom 3 team as opposed to someone being able to add him right before the trade deadline on a first come/first served basis. My original proposal was that any player 22 or under on Sept 15 of the season who had played less than 25 NHL games would be ineligible for the waiver wire for the upcoming season unless drafted and subsequently dropped by a team.

After a lot of discussion, I\'ve come up with a massively simplified version of the rule that I think accomplishes my purpose without everyone getting too libertarian on me.

The rule would be that any prospect who was chosen with one of the top 5 picks in any of the previous 3 (so for this season that\'s 2005-07) NHL entry drafts and has played less than 25 NHL games must be chosen in this season\'s draft or they are ineligible for the waiver wire in our league.

My entire goal is really just to make sure that the Crosbys/Ovechkins/Malkins/Staals/Heatleys/Gaboriks of the world get offered to weaker teams at the draft first.

I think it\'s a good compromise for a league that\'s semi-serious (we do play for money) but not one where people want to be paying attention to #25 picks for 5 years following te draft.

Thoughts?

Post edited by: blindedbyfear, at: 2007/06/15 17:28

One of the things I try to keep in mind is how much work is this going to cause me? In the pools I run, we had a young player clause allowing you to protect players 22 and under as long as they had played less than 82 games. I would have to look up the players birthdates and then do some math (which really taxes my brain) to figure out how old the player would be by the start of the next season. Then I would have to look up how many NHL games he\'s played. You get the idea, it turned into a fair amount of work that I could have spent working on making my team better.

I like your idea of having a prospects draft, but keep the rule simple for your own sake. I would go with your 25 games played rule and drop the age limit. A rookie in the best league in the world (NHL) is still a rookie regardless of how old he is.

Good Luck Commish

__________________
12 Team "Experts" Roto representing Dobberhockey 2nd
G,A,PPP,+/-,SOG,Hits,Blocks,Wins,GAA,SV% - Keep 4
4C-Kopitar,M.Koivu,Stepan,Matthias,Prospal
4L-Marleau,Steen,M.Foligno,N.Foligno,Morrow,Umberger
4R-Hossa,Hornqvist,Little,Alfredsson,Oshie
6D-Byfuglien,Phaneuf,Doughty,J.Johnson,Burns,Wideman, Kostka,Methot
2G-M.Smith,Backstrom,Reimer

12 Team Salary Cap Roto Dynasty 3rd (G,A,Pts,FPts,DPts,Pim,SOG,H,BS,W+OTL+SO,GAA,SV%)
12F-Ovechkin,Kopitar,P&E Kane,Kessel,Ryan,M&N Foligno,Ennis,Hodgson,Killorn,Horton,Wolski,Morrow ,Bonino
6D-Subban,J.Johnson,Carle,Wizniewski,Franson,Spurgeon ,Kostka,M.Fraser
2G-Rask,Anderson,Emery
Farm-Markstrom,Scrivens,Brunner,Nyquist,G.Bourque,B.Con nolly,T.Barrie,Brennan,Barberio,Orlov

I think I may need to clarify something. Although I state that we don\'t have a prospect pool, there is no intention of adding one.

The above rule that I was referring to proposing is for the standard draft.

Not having a prospects pool to me saves a lot of work (there are only maybe 3 of us who would really be interested in it) so I\'m just trying to come up with a way to make sure that players who are likely to be quite high end have to be chosen through the draft. Hence the rule applying only to top 5 draft picks from the past 3 or 4 entry drafts who have no yet played 25 nhl games.

I think it accomplishes what I want without being unduly cumbersome.

Thanks for the input.