Restoring Parity in a Keeer League

[roberto_alomar]

After 5 years of bad trades, rule changes and folks leaving the league... one team has unbalanced the player pool.

What is the best way to approach restoring parity?

12 Team league - Points Only (No +/-,SOG,PIM) Keep 10 .. Here are the top three teams:

Absolute Prust's Keepers:
Stamkos, Malkin, Tavares, Seguin, Benn, T. Johnson, Karlsson, Doughty, Rinne, Bishop

Slava's Girl:
Crosby, Landeskog, Monahan, Ladd, Kreider, Steen, Giordano, Bennett, Price, Dubnyk

Victoriaville Jags
P. Kane, Perry, Kunitz, Dubinsky, Gaborik, Toffoli, R. Strome, Huberdeau, Krug, Rask


Any one in similar situations? How to fix?

[Pengwin7]

I hope that's not your commissioner with the uber-strong team.
Not much you can do if one team is super duper strong... (is that the case?)

Anyways... people always show up & cry when I say I favour the veto concept.
But it's severely unbalanced trades that kill a league most quickly.
You have 1-3 teams go into Gorilla-mode (super strong) and the league crumbles.
From what I've seen... there's no repair for this... because those teams don't want to make new rules that weaken them... and why would they?

[GretzkysMullet]

One thing you could do is expand the league. In that case you would allow a certain number of players protected, and the remaining go into a pool that is drafted to form the new teams. Ideally this would allow the strong teams to keep their favourites, but enough strong players would go back into the pool that it would even things out a bit, and everybody would be happy.

[LawMan]

Wow, those teams are disgustingly good, especially #1.

First off, make sure you have buy-in from all teams, especially the really strong ones. The top teams worked to make their teams strong (presumably within the rules that existed at the time) if they are absolutely opposed to giving up their advantage it's hard to argue it is fair to force them to do so.

If they are just completely dominant than hopefully you can convince them it's in the league's best interest to agree to some sort of re-organization, without it the whole league may fold. If it's a money league it's double important they believe it's fair.

From there the next questions is how much leveling of the field are you looking to do. How much work and time are the bottom dwelling teams willing to do? Will they trade aging stars for top picks for years to try and build up a young team? That means years of losing and building in hopes that in 3-4 years time they are competitive.

The easiest approach would be a full-on re-draft. Start every team from square 1 and let the best managers rise to the top, while it's simple it might not be fair.

A slower approach is to drastically reduce the number of keepers, these reduces but doesn't eliminate the edge for the top teams. The problem here is even if you go to 5 keepers team 1 is still stacked. Or perhaps you stay at 10 keepers but you can only keep 3 guys in the top-25 in league scoring, then team 1 gets to keep Seguin, Tavares, Stamkos and 7 weaker players, that would greatly reduce his strength. Combining that with the worst teams drafting first would certainly help to level the playing field.

Finally, whatever you do make sure you address the root of the problem: impatient or otherwise terrible GMs. If you re-distribute the wealth evenly but have impatient GMs you'll end up with the same problem in a few years with one team owning McDavid, Eichel and Strome.

[Dennis4022]

What exactly do you want to fix ? The fact that one GM was doing a fantastic job and other did stupid trades with him ? That's part of fantasy hockey.

[GretzkysMullet]

What exactly do you want to fix ? The fact that one GM was doing a fantastic job and other did stupid trades with him ? That's part of fantasy hockey.

Yeah, it gets to a point where it's just not fun anymore though. Also, often the GM making the bad trades leaves the league. Owners that don't know what they're doing usually don't last very long.

[Hoopo]

A few options:

-lower the number of keepers to 6. won't solve all the problems but he loses a few big names.
-institute a salary cap. He can't have all those guys with a salary cap and will have to cut some loose.
-try to bring new people in and do an expansion draft where only a certain number can be protected on any given team but only a certain number can be taken from a given team
-leave the league. I see teams like this in peoples' signatures around here and I wonder how it's even fun. He can just plug his guys in and forget about it until the end of the year when he wins the championship. It's boring for everyone else.

Also, "Slava's Girl"? Yikes!

[roberto_alomar]

Wow. Thank you for all your responses.
(I tried giving you each REP - not sure how the REP system on these boards completely works yet)

Liking all these great ideas. People are not wanting to participate anymore - but mostly because of their own doing!.... It's just lopsided and money is involved, so you know how it goes..

Taking all your perspectives into consideration. Big THANKS TO ALL

[Moses]

What about proposing a complete reset, redraft the entire league. The lesser teams should/could go along with this. The good teams, who might be getting bored, might be talked into this as well. It's worth a try.

[SuperMario]

I'd say a re-draft is the last resort. Those teams are not going to want to hit reset on their work.

For me, a salary cap introduction is the way to go. It helps the league evolve (that's how you could sell the change, rather than parity) and will help the lesser teams have a chance.

[Dennis4022]

Yeah, it gets to a point where it's just not fun anymore though. Also, often the GM making the bad trades leaves the league. Owners that don't know what they're doing usually don't last very long.

So what did the rest of the league do ? If only a very few gms are doing good trades, then all the others were obviously sleeping. No need to penalize anyone for that.

So let it roll how it is and make sure everyone is active.

[Kabonov]

After 5 years of bad trades, rule changes and folks leaving the league... one team has unbalanced the player pool.

What is the best way to approach restoring parity?

12 Team league - Points Only (No +/-,SOG,PIM) Keep 10 .. Here are the top three teams:

Absolute Prust's Keepers:
Stamkos, Malkin, Tavares, Seguin, Benn, T. Johnson, Karlsson, Doughty, Rinne, Bishop

Slava's Girl:
Crosby, Landeskog, Monahan, Ladd, Kreider, Steen, Giordano, Bennett, Price, Dubnyk

Victoriaville Jags
P. Kane, Perry, Kunitz, Dubinsky, Gaborik, Toffoli, R. Strome, Huberdeau, Krug, Rask


Any one in similar situations? How to fix?

Best option - #1 Fold the league, as trust is broken and pretty much impossible to re kindly no matter what you do... Start new. (have a league committee to vote on trades)

#2 Reduce the league protects to 3. "since one is hoarding them all... though the other GMs seem to have no clue what they are doing.... and (have a league committee to vote on trades)"


Good Luck man.

[roberto_alomar]

The league is unwinnable by anybody else. As mentioned, it's lost all its fun.

Nothings been decided but I shall incorporate these responses into our decision.

Thanks again!

[Moses]

So what did the rest of the league do ? If only a very few gms are doing good trades, then all the others were obviously sleeping. No need to penalize anyone for that.

So let it roll how it is and make sure everyone is active.

I think the root of the question is how to make people active. If the league is so far out of balance that 75% of the league are out of it before it even starts what is the incentive to be active?

[pmkidd]

Make keep 6. More stars in player pool to pick from. Making it easier to improve team. But teams need to be active to make it entertaining. It's tough when only 6 of 12 teams only do the trading. We had that lastyear. so expansion from 12 to 14 teams this year.