Introducing Salary Cap in a League

[SixtyPercentOfTheTime]

Not sure where to post this. Feel free to move this thread if necessary.

The question is for the league in signature. It's our league's 4th year and I feel we have a parity problem. The GMs don't want to reduce our keepers and I think a good way of evening up the playing field would be to have a salary cap.

1. What is a good salary cap number for a 11 team, keep 23 league?

2. How would you implement a salary cap in an already up and running league?

3. How do you adjust the cap every year?

My first thought would be to ask GMs to be within the salary cap in a 3 year range. ie. if the cap is 100M, the GMs have to be within 150M the first season (150%), 125M the second season (125%) and then within the cap the third season.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

[deantime419]

This will be very difficult to do and requires a lot more work than non-cap leagues.
If you want to truly level the playing field out, I think you'd need to keep it at 100mil or less.
Maybe 40% over the actual NHL cap in year one, 30% in year two, then stick it out at 25% over the NHL cap the rest of the way.
Or just re-draft.
Good luck.

[Savvy1982]

Not sure where to post this. Feel free to move this thread if necessary.

The question is for the league in signature. It's our league's 4th year and I feel we have a parity problem. The GMs don't want to reduce our keepers and I think a good way of evening up the playing field would be to have a salary cap.

1. What is a good salary cap number for a 11 team, keep 23 league?

2. How would you implement a salary cap in an already up and running league?

3. How do you adjust the cap every year?

My first thought would be to ask GMs to be within the salary cap in a 3 year range. ie. if the cap is 100M, the GMs have to be within 150M the first season (150%), 125M the second season (125%) and then within the cap the third season.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

The first step would be to make sure that your GMs are on-side with implementing a salary cap.

Being a good Commissioner is about making sure that the league rules are what the the league wants.

Adding rules arbitrarily is how you get into the situation Coyote is in - whether you think it helps the league or not, your GMs need to vote on this first.

[SixtyPercentOfTheTime]

Actually, the vote is to propose the rule to the league once I figure out the details. There was interest in a salary cap at our last annual meeting but we didn't have a detailed proposition on the table.

And a re-draft is not something the guys want to do. That is why a salary cap makes sense.

[SeaDawg]

1. What is a good salary cap number for a 11 team, keep 23 league?

I'd say a good starting point would be $100 million. If you have it at $125 million, the average salary would be over $5 million per player, which is way too high. You want it to be a challenge to get everyone in under the cap.

2. How would you implement a salary cap in an already up and running league?

This is going to be very challenging. I've been in leagues before that tried implementing this and the leagues folded because many GMs (usually the top teams) backlashed. You will have a really hard time doing this. I don't actually have any suggestions on how to make it work. You either have buy-in from the league members, or it won't work.

2. How would you implement a salary cap in an already up and running league?

There are a number of ideas. In one of my leagues, we had inflation each year to increase the cap. If the average salary increases by 10%, we increase our cap by 10%.

Another thing we do, which is interesting but sometimes causes issues, is after year 1, the salary cap is adjusted based on the standings. The team that finishes first gets a reward and their cap is increased by say $5 million. The team in second gets their cap increased by $4 million, the team in third by $3 million, etc.

In the past we have also awarded teams that finish the season significantly below the cap by increasing their cap the next year by a percentage of what they were under the cap the previous year.

We also have bonuses ($250,000 for example) given to the team that owns each of the major award winners (Hart, Norris, Vezina, etc.).

Having these "floating" caps that vary from team to team is more work for the commish, but it does add an extra element of intrigue to salary cap leagues.

[SixtyPercentOfTheTime]

This is going to be very challenging. I've been in leagues before that tried implementing this and the leagues folded because many GMs (usually the top teams) backlashed. You will have a really hard time doing this. I don't actually have any suggestions on how to make it work. You either have buy-in from the league members, or it won't

Like I said, my intention is to come up with a detailed proposal and then submit the idea to the GMs.

[Spleentastic]

First of all, instituting a salary cap is the nuclear option. It's difficult to do and I suspect it is likely you will lose a GM or two.

However, if you feel like it's the only or best option available to you, here's how I would structure the transition. The first year is uncapped. This will give GMs with strong teams one last year to compete, but will enable the forward-thinking GMs to prepare for the upcoming capped season. The second year is a soft cap, where teams are allowed to exceed the salary cap with their keepers, but a) cannot make trades that increase their cap number if they are already over the cap (they can exceed the cap if a trade pushes them over, but then cannot make further trades that increase their cap number) and b) will be fined a draft pick if they end the season over the cap. This entices (rather than forces) GMs to disperse their talent to the rest of the league. The third year is the hard capped year.

I like this approach better than just picking a cap number and slowly reducing it because it allows everyone to play to their situation and provides advantages and disadvantages to everyone; teams with a high priced roster don't have to lose so many great players all at once, and teams with plenty of cap space can maneuver themselves into positions to absorb the talent that will be on the market and/or provide cap relief to teams who need to get under the cap (for a price, or course).

As for how you set the cap, you have to set it carefully. With just 11 teams, it has to be a pretty high cap, otherwise you'll have a lot of those mid-level guys sitting on the waiver wire constantly, and the only players will be the stars and a bunch of entry level guys filling out the roster. Keeping in mind that although you have 23 man rosters (similar to the NHL), you only "play" 16 per week, and have to carry your prospects on the main roster:

Average cap hit of top 150 forwards in 2013-14: $4.3 million x 10 "active" players = $43 million
Average cap hit of top 50 defencemen in 2013-14: $4.6 million x 4 "active" players = $18.4 million
Average cap hit of top 25 fantasy goalies in 2013-14 = $5.1 million x 2 "active"goalies = $10.2 million

With 7 more roster spots, let's add 3 spots for bench players (2 x 4.7 million as avg for all positions) plus 5 for prospects (5 x 1.2 million) for and a small fudge factor, and you're sitting at a $90 million cap (based on 2013-14 numbers). I think that's just about right. That cap then floats with the NHL cap as a percentage (90/69 = 1.304*New NHL cap = 2014-15 salary cap).

Well then. That was a wall of text. Sorry about that

[SixtyPercentOfTheTime]

Don't worry, that was awesome info!