My thoughts:

Your team is good but it\'s not like you have Crosby and Malkin and Thornton and Ovechkin and Kovalchuk and Ryan Whitney and Dion Phaneuf and Luongo and Brodeur. You have a very solid team, but I wouldn\'t say it\'s unbeatable.

Dobber\'s right, you can\'t go from like 20 keepers to 10 in one summer. You could step down gradually but keep in mind the people asking to step down the numbers now will probably be annoyed if it\'s going down to 12 or so in a couple of years because all of their good players will be maturing.

My league is going into its 3rd season and we\'re still growing as a league (8 returnees after year 1, 9 after last season, expanding to 12 now) so we haven\'t been willing/able to keep that many guys yet since there have to be players available for multiple expansion teams. This year we bumped up the keepers slightly to 14 and after this year we hope the # of teams stabilizes and we\'re talking somewhere around 16 keepers for subsequent years (maybe staggered based on previous year\'s finish, where better teams get to protect fewer guys), although we only have 22 man rosters.

I won\'t directly compare it to my main league scoring-wise as it\'s H2H and we have 7 skater categories and 4 goaltending categories and yours is more points-based.

One suggestion I will make is to maybe increase the # of players whose stats count. I would go to 9 F and 4 D.

My biggest suggestion, team-wise, would be to count 2 goaltenders. With a 10 team league you can afford to and it might give people a chance to try and beat you that way as opposed to just with goals and assists.

Finally, is this a money league? If it is, and it\'s winner-take-all, I\'d consider changing it to something like having the top 3 teams all win something, that would keep it more interesting and make people a little less bitter if someone wins 2 or 3 years in a row. On the other end, it makes winning a little less satisfying because you aren\'t winning a huge wad of cash.

But no, I don\'t think you should feel bad for doing well. Someone\'s got to do well, might as well be you.

My .02

100th post

Post edited by: blindedbyfear, at: 2007/08/24 15:40

The other guys in the pool are getting much better, I had a couple of drop outs last year and replaced them with some serious poolies.

Dobber what do you mean by limiting the keepers?

I am curious about putting a limited amount of time to keep a player, ie a max of 3 or 4 years. How would this be implimented or phased into an existing pool. How does it work when a players protected status is up, could you repick, what happens to the protection status when the player is traded, soo many questions, the wheels are turning in me noggin now.

Post edited by: Nuckfan, at: 2007/08/24 15:53

__________________
13 GM Points only Pool (keep 20 players)
Top 8 Fwds, 4 D, 2 Goalies (2 W,1 otl, 2 so)
(Fwds) Ovechkin*, Hossa*, Datsyuk*, H.Sedin*, D.Sedin*, Backstrom*, Kovalev*, OSullivan*, Erat, Wolski, Oshie*, Brassard*, Wellwood, Radulov*, Hodgson
(Def) Whitney*, Kaberle*, Liles*, Wideman*, Corvo*, Harrold, Barker*, Edler
(goalies) Luongo*, Nabokov*, Rask*,

Nuckfan wrote:
I don\'t want to speak for him but I think he\'s referring to the amount of time you can keep players. If you limit the # of players kept that\'s not that big of a deal to me because if it\'s fairly high it doesn\'t do much.

I think he\'s referring to \"you can keep 1 guy 1 year, 1 guy 2 years, 1 guy 3 years, etc\".

I would go salary cap with auction before I ever did that. If you want to make it so big name guys have to move, or are at least more likely to move, do it with a salary cap and auction style draft, not by saying \"you were smart and drafted Malkin as a rookie, but you\'ve had him for 3 years, time\'s up!\". That\'s just mean, and a little too socialistic for my liking.

Just my opinion.

Post edited by: blindedbyfear, at: 2007/08/24 16:00

Last summer we increased from 2 Def to 3. My thinking is if someone thinks my roster is too strong, (and I admit it is deep) that adding additional players, an extra fwd and D, would benifit me, (my 9th Fwd or 4th D being stronger than the avg).

I have the pool set up to pay out for 1st, 2nd, $ for the top Fwd, Def & goalie.
The big prise however is your name engraved on the trophy.

__________________
13 GM Points only Pool (keep 20 players)
Top 8 Fwds, 4 D, 2 Goalies (2 W,1 otl, 2 so)
(Fwds) Ovechkin*, Hossa*, Datsyuk*, H.Sedin*, D.Sedin*, Backstrom*, Kovalev*, OSullivan*, Erat, Wolski, Oshie*, Brassard*, Wellwood, Radulov*, Hodgson
(Def) Whitney*, Kaberle*, Liles*, Wideman*, Corvo*, Harrold, Barker*, Edler
(goalies) Luongo*, Nabokov*, Rask*,

No, I meant limiting how many guys you can keep. I don\'t agree with that limitation. Any limitation. It\'s been my experience that GM\'s don\'t hang onto players for more than four years or so regardless. No need to force limits.

__________________
DobberHockey Rules
14 Team Keeper, points only, best 12 skaters 2 dman 2 G count. Playoffs count.
F - Crosby, C.Smith, Wheeler, Parenteau, Hudler, Clowe, Grabovski, Atkinson, Frolik, S. Kostitsyn, Marchand, Peverley, Tavares, Read, Brouwer, Bickell, Gionta, Setoguchi
G - Anderson, Hiller, Markstrom, Brodeur
D - Letang, Del Zotto, I. White, Kronwall, Brodin, Nikitin

How does that work? Soes it give the previous owner a chance to retain the player, is he compensated like a UFA at all?

__________________
13 GM Points only Pool (keep 20 players)
Top 8 Fwds, 4 D, 2 Goalies (2 W,1 otl, 2 so)
(Fwds) Ovechkin*, Hossa*, Datsyuk*, H.Sedin*, D.Sedin*, Backstrom*, Kovalev*, OSullivan*, Erat, Wolski, Oshie*, Brassard*, Wellwood, Radulov*, Hodgson
(Def) Whitney*, Kaberle*, Liles*, Wideman*, Corvo*, Harrold, Barker*, Edler
(goalies) Luongo*, Nabokov*, Rask*,

Nuckfan wrote:
That\'s pretty generous on the prizes for a 10 team league. I think you just have too many whiners. The whole thing is supposed to be cyclical, which means you need to give it time to run its cycle. Trust me, a guy who gets his hands on Toews, Backstrom, and a couple of solid wingers might have you beat next year if you have any sort of bad luck.

I really think that if they disagree with increasing the depth for F and D (I disagree) then you really can\'t do much more. I think the extra F and D gives people more chances to try and beat you, but maybe I\'m wrong. If they\'re that whiny about it there\'s not much you can do.

I\'d say your main options are go to 2 goaltenders and/or do an auction draft with salary cap.

I\'m sure others will probably have some good ideas as well.

Dobber wrote:
Not to hijack but myself and a few of the guys in my league were discussing something along the lines of this as a twist on the \"Keep X number of guys\" thing.

Keep in mind we don\'t do a prospect pool / prospect draft anything of that nature.

With 22 man rosters you do this. Keep anywhere from 16 to 22. For every player you don\'t keep, you get a draft pick. So if everyone keeps 16, it\'s a 6 round draft. Make sense?

A lot of people seem to like that idea, I kind of do too.

Let me know what you think.

Nuckfan wrote:
I\'ve never run one in hockey although I\'ve been in some (one year, not keeper) ones in fantasy football.

There are lots of different ways to do it. Some have you use actual NHL salaries to start with, some have you do it other ways.

I\'d do a forum search on auction and read up on that, there are about a million different ways to do it, and people on here who are far, far more knowledgeable than I on how to set them up and run them.

I agree. That is why it was set up to keep 25 players. The method I came up with to encourage player movement was to make each roster have 22 NHL teams represented out of 30 players at the end of the draft.
I still like this format, I may propose a change so that more teams must be represented. My thinking was that when players changed NHL teams in the off season, you could be pushed to look for trades to get under our \"cap\". It also puts pressure to leave room on a team for our draft, ie: if you want a Toews you had better balance your roster to allow you to draft from Chicago.

__________________
13 GM Points only Pool (keep 20 players)
Top 8 Fwds, 4 D, 2 Goalies (2 W,1 otl, 2 so)
(Fwds) Ovechkin*, Hossa*, Datsyuk*, H.Sedin*, D.Sedin*, Backstrom*, Kovalev*, OSullivan*, Erat, Wolski, Oshie*, Brassard*, Wellwood, Radulov*, Hodgson
(Def) Whitney*, Kaberle*, Liles*, Wideman*, Corvo*, Harrold, Barker*, Edler
(goalies) Luongo*, Nabokov*, Rask*,