Wasn't sure which forum to put this in. I'm planning on starting a Keeper league this fall. As a manager used to running points-only One-year leagues, is there anything I should know before starting?

We're looking at a healthy buy-in, running it fantasy points only. The stats will be very similar to those displayed in my sig (goal-heavy league). Hoping to get 10-15 committed managers (all friends/friends of friends) for a minimum five-year commitment.

I had a few questions for seasoned Keeper vets. What is the generally viewed best amount of players to hold as Keeper's? We are looking at running with 3LW, 3RW, 3C, 5/6D, 2G, 1-3 Util and 4 BN, depending on our number of GM's (we want it to be deep). If we have a 23-man roster, I'm thinking of keeping between 6-12 players each year. Does it make sense to designate GM's to keep say 4F, 1D, 1G? Or does it make sense to just allow a GM to keep x number of players at any position?

What is perceived to be the fairest way to commish the league? I'm thinking every major trade I would post a forum poll asking managers if they want it vetoed. If say 3/4's of the league wants a veto, I would step in and veto it. I feel having the 'league votes' veto button often gets abused in my One-Years.

Any thoughts on these or other keeper issues would be more than welcome!
Cheers

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1 Year - 16 Team Yahoo - Yahoo Pts Only
G-5 A-3 +/-1 HIT-.2 SOG-.2 PIM-.25 W-5 L-3 GA-.5 SV-.25 SO-5

C: Roy, Benn(lw), McDonald (lw), Backstrom
LW: Hartnell, JVR, Pacioretty, Whitney
RW: Kane (C), Neal (lw), Bennett
D: Vishy, Shattenkirk, Goligoski, Whitney
G: Bernier, Emery
IR: Hornqvist

I personally prefer keep more to keep less. I find that the less players you keep, it really destroys the point of the keeper league. Example RNH having a tough year this year, in a keep 6 you just drop him, doesn't matter. It makes having guys young guys with lots of upside less valuable.

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12 Team Keeper, Keep 17, Keepers
Roster: 4C, 3RW, 3LW, 5D, 2U, 3B, 3IR, 4G (Start 2)
Stats: G(3), A(2), +/-, PIM(0.5), PPP(2), SHP(3), GWG(2), HITS(0.1), BLKS(0.2), W(3), L(-1), OTL (1), GA(-1), SV(0.2), SO(3)

C: Crosby, Tavares, Nugent-Hopkins, Johansson
LW: Hall, Parise, Silfverberg, Skinner, Conacher, Jokinen
RW: Seguin, Hossa, Wheeler, Burns, Pavelski, Yakupov
D: Doughty, Fowler, J. Johnson
G: Schneider, Hiller, Fasth, Nabokov

It may be useful to establish a league charter to try to preempt issues that arise.

Veto rules should be included as well as other common pressure points like draft order (snake draft after year 1 or for lack of a better word NHL style pick last in all rounds), tiebreaker rules those types of things. there used to be a great forum/article on this site about those things.

If you have new managers you may want to start the first year as a non-keeper year so that bad trades don't tilt the playing field going into the first keeper year. You'd hate the one sophisticated manager to own Crosby, Malkin, Stamkos, Lundqvist after year 1 just bc the rooks didnt understand player value.

IF you want commitment consider having managers pay 2-3 years in advance. It does two things, makes them committed, or if they leave and another manager takes over their obviously crappy team they play a year or two for free to try to improve it.

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12 team, Keep 8 H2H daily start
Start 2C, 2LW, 2RW, 1Util, 4D, 2G
Categories: G,A, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, SOG,
W, SV%, GAA, SO

C: Malkin(RW), Kopitar,
LW: Sedin, Kovalchuk(RW), Moulson,
RW: Voracek, Wheeler,
D: Byfuglien,
G: Rask, Bryzgalov,
2013 Picks: 1,2,5,6,7,8,9,9,10,10

Three time defending league champion!

i like having many keepers but i disagree that less destroys the point of keeper league

all leagues should be about the prowess and decisions of the managers

it doesnt take much cunning to drop 40 point players every season

but choosing between a 70 point 35 year old and a 19 year old 50 point player is a real decision with real implications

to me it all depends on the people as to how many keepers it should be

the OP is talking a friends and family league for that i would suggest minimal keepers in that case

minimal keepers gives more teams the ability to compete from year to year and it also allows rebuilds to be done very quickly

also it is generally easier to start with smaller numbers of keepers and increase them down the road if it is warranted it is much more difficult to cut the number of keepers as you get some butt hurt people that way

i just had this come up in the league i co-commish...

right now we only keep 1 F, 1 D, 1 G, and we allow draft pick trading. as a Crosby owner, that makes my trading options limited, as my keeper is automatically set and unless his health declines, that will never change.

for instance... one manager is having a firesale and offered me Toews for a 2nd rounder... sitting in 2nd place right now as the reigning champs, I'd take that in a heartbeat... except I can't keep him, so it's a waste of a pick. it forces me to make the call whether i need him to make a push for the championship or not...

i proposed to change the rule to any 3 keepers, or 3/5 keepers with 2/3 max per position, but it got voted down by a majority because they prefer to have a higher player turnover each year. I own Crosby and Tavares (and in the market for Toews as I mentioned), so that hurt my trading power.

I've made stabs at upgrading Niemi at G, but the top guys (Lundqvist, Rask) are owned by fans of their team, so they're not even available. I probably won't even keep a goalie, and will take my chances with the extra early round draft pick.


$ League:
G A +/- PPP SHP SOG HIT BLK W GAA SV% SO
| C Crosby Kopitar | LW Nash Tlusty | RW Kane Simmonds | D Markov Phaneuf Franson Grossman Orpik | G Halak Hiller Allen Ward |

Keeper League:
G A PIM PPG PPA SHG SGA GWG SOG FW HIT BLK GS W GA GAA SV SV% SO
| C Crosby Tavares Benn | LW Moulson JvR Whitney | RW Hossa Eberle Wheeler | D Doughty Seabrook Streit Markov Bouwmeester | Util Zajac O'Reilly Grabner | G Niemi Bryzgalov Hiller Allen Lehner |

Most of it is what you and the rest prefer.

I prefer keeping more players, for example, because it forces you to make good deals and good drafting. If you only keep six, for example, one bad year can be fixed pretty quickly as long as you have six solid keepers. But that means you need to be really good at drafting to have a shot, which some prefer.

As for vetoes, I'm not in favour of it. As long as there's no collusion, let the horrible trades happen. We had one GM in our first two years of my league in the sign trade Stamkos, Backstrom, Doughty, etc. all early on. He all made fun of him for giving up on all these guys, but he ended up coming second two years in a row. He has to rebuild now, but he took his shot and finished in the money twice, while most of the rest of us haven't. So because something is a stupid deal, maybe that's what the GM prefers for whatever reasoning.

I agree with the poster about having a charter. One thing to remember to include is what to do if someone leaves a league. Do you simply find a new owner, or have a dispersal draft?

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12-team Keeper pool, straight points for forwards & dmen. Goalies get: 2 points per win, 3 per shutout, 1 point per assist & 1 point per shootout loss.

Top 8 forwards, 5 dmen and 2 goalies count.

We keep 8 forwards, 5 dmen, 2 goalies & 1 rookie.

Forwards: Malkin, Stamkos, Getzlaf, Hall, Kunitz, St. Louis, Pavelski, Kadri, Purcell, Hartnell, Brunner, Weiss, Bouchard, McDonald
Defence: Letang, Enstrom, Schultz, Markov, Keith
Goalies: Price, Niemi, Brodeur

My personal blog: http://theryancokeexperience.wordpress.com

Thanks a lot for the responses guys. Really appreciated. We're hoping to draft around 300 of the NHL players, so roughly 22-25 man rosters depending on our numbers. Looking at keeping 7-8 depending on people's responses within our group.

A few more things came to mind. Is it possible for a new manager to join a keeper league in progress? IE go from 12 teams in year 1 to 14 in year 2. Have an expansion draft, where each manager gives up one of their keepers that league to the new manager or something? I suppose the easiest way would be to wait until a manager bows out, and have the new manager take that team over.

I'm defintely going to be crafting some sort of signed document outlaying the 'rules' in stone. We're looking at either paying for one year in advance always (First 2 years due at the start of the keeper), or else making a downpayment sort of like a 5-year lease, which you could opt out of after five years, or sell your lease to a new manager if you wanted out before. This might make for a bizarre year 5 though if more than one or two managers wanted out at that point.

Any insights on draft pick trades? They are commonplace in all keepers correct? Seems like it could get pretty greasy and hard to decipher possible collusion from just taking.

Also, what's to stop a manager from tanking and dressing 0 players half way through year once they realize they can't cash (IE playing for the first overall pick next season). I guess if they lose, who really cares?

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1 Year - 16 Team Yahoo - Yahoo Pts Only
G-5 A-3 +/-1 HIT-.2 SOG-.2 PIM-.25 W-5 L-3 GA-.5 SV-.25 SO-5

C: Roy, Benn(lw), McDonald (lw), Backstrom
LW: Hartnell, JVR, Pacioretty, Whitney
RW: Kane (C), Neal (lw), Bennett
D: Vishy, Shattenkirk, Goligoski, Whitney
G: Bernier, Emery
IR: Hornqvist

I think you can have a manager join in but you will have to ensure that they get a chance to have a competitive team. If you just have 1 less keeper I am not sure if the new team is going to be good enough to complete. You can come up with creative ways to fix that but it is probably easier to get a new manager if someone leaves the league.

I would have very specific rules in to prevent tanking and I would not hesitate to kick managers out who try to do that. So no putting your line up in and stuff like that. Having some veto votes to ensure that lopsided trades can be prevented.

I would stick with allowing to trade only next year rookie draft pick and not going further into the future. That would be less painful to track and also prevent some managers from going crazy with all future picks and not competing for a long period of time.

Hope this helps.

how serious are the managers will determine how many keepers

exactly a fun not too serious league you have a couple of keepers so you give people a small reward for what they are doing and give them a small group to constantly 'root' for

at the same time since it is a small number everyone can be competitive every year so no one gets frustrated and feels the need to quit the league

i know with my family league when we started it we went with 6F 3D and 1G right out of the gate but the problem was by the end of the first season it was apparent that everyone came in with vastly different amounts of player knowledge

as commissioner i suggested that we drop the keepers to 1F 1D and 1G for that first offseason to sort of reset the league without a full redraft and it turned out to be the right decision

but we also have another wrinkle we add to keep things competitive as we do an actual waiver draft prior to our regular player draft

what happens is after keepers are declared all players on rosters at the end of the season but not kept go into the waiver pool

we then hold a waiver draft in straight order based on inverse standings where you can pick up a player from the waiver pool and drop one of your keepers and the draft continues until every team passes in one round

it works out real nice because it balances out the league as much as you possibly can while having 10 keepers per team