Question on Salary Cap Leagues
 

I've never been in a salary cap league before, but I'm tempted to try one next season (one-year) for something different. Does anyone have suggestions on any reading material to have a better idea on drafting/managing/strategies etc? Or share some of your experiences on what has been successful/unsuccessful in the past. If I do play, I don't want to go into it blind as I have no clue about anyone's salaries. Would it benefit being an co-GM for someone as an observer?

Thoughts and suggestions? Thanks in advance.

When I drafted I made sure twhen spending the big money, it was on players who had tons of hype and I could easily move by name. It's really hard trying to trade when you are housing some of the bigger contracts as people are unwilling to take them on sometimes just because no one wants to be cap strapped. As for material on strategy, I'm not sure to where to get any of the top of my head but I do know that here on the forums they have a Best Bargains set of articles written about quality players for cheap. The biggest thing is production to cost ratio. I am in a fantasy points league that might be a bit different than straight up categories as it's easier to do the math on points per cost ratio. If you have any specific questions feel free to message me in PM. My inbox is always open.

Thanks Old_Smokie. Yeah I do remember those articles so will give them a look. It would be cool if there are strategy articles around somewhere - whether on this site or elsewhere. Obviously in the beginning, I'll need to get a decent grasp on salaries in general (capgeek the best site?), not only for this year but next year. I guess that depends on whether the league is based on salary or cap hit. I'm also curious to hear a comparison between those going for value/balance vs those who go top-heavy and bargain bin.

Yeah right now we use cap hit with a salary of 65 mill. Capgeek is good but it can often times be monotonous and labour some in most cases to do the back and forth checking for salaries. I am the commish of our keeper and decided to go with Fantrax. It's cool because you can update the salaries throughout the season if you wish (contract extensions, late resignings in the case of Doughty etc.) or you can just do like we did and regenerate the salaries just before drafting and go with that for the year.

The thing I loved about drafting via Fantrax is that it showed the players with their proper cap hits so it took a lot of the "last minute" scramble work out as you could just peruse the players and their given salaries. If you are just looking at setting up a basic one year then you could probably get by with using the nonpremium features."

My roster is pretty much set for this year, but I did have a minor strategy I guess. I went the bargin route after a while but I made sure to splurge on the big names like Crosby, Malkin, Green, but I was also cautious enough to leave myself enough cap space in case a great offer came around and I couldn't accept because I was too capped. That is the biggest flaw in my opinion, sometimes you can't often do exactly what you want because there is no way to make the salaries mesh. Also save your bargin bins for fringe players that will spend a majority of their time benched if not it's a waste of salary. Cap geek is a great website, it's what I promote to all my GMs. As well you also have to be careful and look out for when contracts are up for renewal in the case of keeper leagues. That could come back to haunt you in the future.

When you mentioned Fantrax, I just realised that Yahoo doesn't have that option - sucks because I prefer to have all my leagues on there. Would have to consider going to Fantrax if I want to play. But that is handy when drafting, for sure.

I got no articles or reading material but I could tell you from experience all the nasty things you need to look out for and the major stuff to avoid doing from all the stupid mistakes that I've made in my salary league. You can PM me with your specific questions and I'll give you as much or as little detail as you want. I'll need to know type of league, scoring cats, number of teams to give very specific instructions.

Thanks. I'm not joining one now and my queries are more in general (I know specific questions give more specific answers), so if I get to that point, I'll keep you in mind.

I second Gaineramas offer. If you got precise questions feel free to PM me. I´m bascially only playing salary leagues and got used to them. Made enough mistakes myself and can share them when needed.

A general thing when drafting that isn´t a bad option. If you can keep your salary down and go for the guy with 5 points less upside but half the salary during the draft you can very often take advantage of guys that drafted themselves in cap hell and will sell you a overpaid stud like Kovy,Lecavalier,B.Richards for bargains. Younger guys and ELC´s help that strategy a lot, but don´t get addicted to youth.

There are several players that are signed long term to reasonable contacts. You should try to lock up some of those if possible.

Thanks keytolife.

For anyone, I assume that most salary leagues are keepers? I would only be interested in a one-year.

Most salary-cap leagues are keeper because there is a TON of work that goes into managing/policing them unless you use a host that can handle that capacity. (I personally restrict myself to Yahoo these days)

I adopted my first "salary-cap" team last year. It took me over a month to ramp up on it but I love, love, love the strategy. League turnover (with active GMs) is almost a lock because better players receive pay raises and force a GM to make moves.

We may have two openings in my 12-team league cap league (One team has Crosby/NiCkBack/Getzlaf/Rinne/Reimer - an upper-half team. The other team is a huge project: Kessel/Statsny/Semin/NikBack/Khabi).

I adopted my team (Ovechkin/Miller) - so I couldn't use strategy... but
In an original draft, I'd use a high-low strategy where I'd invest in ELITE performers and fill at the end with entry level players. By having lots of entry level players, you can use the waiver wire because emerging players have similar entry level salaries. This allows you to find great "value" in low salaries.

Not enough "ELC" roster allocations means you have less roster spots to try out new pieces.

With my own personal team, I took a 7th/8th place team to the semi-finals last year and just narrowly missed the finals. I signed up plenty of ELC PIM-goons and invested in spot back-ups (B.Johnson & Enroth). I straight dropped all of my players that I felt were overpaid to create cap space. Then I made a few crafty deals to take on more or less salary as other teams struggled with it (Added Lubo, then Backes, then Morrow/Ott, then Chara all from teams looking to shed salary).