Salary Cap Leagues, While I'm At It

[finminer]

While I’m on a roll, I have to talk about my misgivings on salary cap leagues, or what I’ve found to be “standard” cap leagues using NHL salaries. Two things:

1) Trying too hard to duplicate NHL rules, and they wind up making player movement so restrictive that nothing happens and the league isn’t much fun.

2) Applying a $71.3M salary cap designed for a 30-team league to a 16-team league, for example. The result is that you’re either chopping off the high salary end of players or forcing a “Stars & Scrubs” type of strategy. To get full distribution of players, you should adjust the cap to $133.7M.

How about some input on this one?

[The Comish]

Yeah, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine as well. Nothing grinds my gears more than see guys like Toews and Parise available on the Waiver Wire - yeah, way to emulate the NHL guys!

I am trying to bring guys in my league around, but it's painful. I grabbed an idea from something I read in these forums, using a franchise player. Each team can "tag" a franchise player and their cap hit doesn't count. That means each team can carry one more superstar on their roster. I hope it gets voted in...or I'll be pissed (well, pissed off...I'm working on the getting pissed part as we speak...ah May 2-4, Wooooooo!!!!).

[Pauls Coffey]

Simple: Don't use NHL salaries.
Let the market within the league determine salaries.
I'm in a league that does this and it works great.

[Pauls Coffey]

BTW, we are recruiting for a salary cap league. 20 team league. 3 teams still available. Player salaries are determined by the market as determined by our managers. PM me if interested.

[butch]

you either love em or hate them (cap leagues)and I can respect both sides of the argument .

[Axeman33]

I agree that if your league is that size, you shouldn't mirror the NHL cap limit. There has to be some sort of adjustment.

That being said, if you are in larger leagues, say 24+ teams, using the NHL's cap limit can create some interesting strategies in regards to keepers and can create activity by forcing teams trade away expensive players to stay cap compliant. Having cap space can be your friend and can help you score some great players at a lower than expected rate.

I'm in a lot of different keepers, some are salary cap and some dont use the cap at all. Some mirror the NHL's cap limit and use AAV, and some use actual salary. Some are smaller leagues (10-12 teams) and have adjusted the cap limit for the league's size. All leagues are unique in their own way and I like them because of this.

[finminer]

Simple: Don't use NHL salaries.
Let the market within the league determine salaries.
I'm in a league that does this and it works great.

This is my feeling exactly. In my sig league, we determine the market by open auction, where the winning bid becomes the salary. The auction draft also brings in a whole new set strategies; for example, do you spend up front for the big boys, or do you hold your cash to the end to get bargains on guys that slipped by? Auctions are WAY more fun than snake drafts, and it works really well.

@Pauls Coffey: how do your managers determine market value? If they are going by some guide, wouldn't that net the same effect as actual salaries? This is why an auction is so fun, you can sometimes get significant bargains.

[peatrc]

I'm in agreement with the crowd that prefers to have salaries determined by the 'market' in one way or another. In my latest dynasty league we are using a series of a dozen or so FA Blind-Bidding periods spaced over a few weeks just before each season starts so that the market will adjust the salaries of the most sought-after FA's. (Full details can be seen in SECTIONS 10.1 to 10.4 OFFSEASON in our league charter here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing .)

[Pauls Coffey]

I should also mention that we average 120 trades per season. 6 per team/year.
So, plenty of movement ... if salaries are league market (and not NHL).

[Ingolo]

I find that a good way to go with cap leagues is to set the overall cap to be what a team would cost by fielding all league-average cap hit players.

By that I mean (and these numbers are just made up), if the average for all players in the NHL is 4 million, and each team in your league counts 12F, 6D, and 2G, then the cap should be somewhere around 80 million. Adjust anywhere you need for the average player contract, or the number of players on the team, and it makes it so that GMs can field a few superstars so long as they balance it out with some smaller contracts.

It makes things interesting, as GMs have to balance things, especially when players start getting big raises. For example, in the league in my sig we do something similar, and I've got Kucherov, Barrie and others set to jump up significantly this offseason, so I'm looking to move some bigger contracts out in order to promote some prospects to stay cap compliant. It makes sure that no single GM can have too many superstars, unless they can draft rookies really well and capitalize on ELCs. It also helps add value to other players who contribute to peripheral stats (Mark Borowiecki comes to mind here).