Using Cap Hits vs AAV vs Salary as a reference for a cap league

[JohnnyFantasy]

What does your salary cap league use as a reference point for compliance with its cap system? Is it "Cap Hit", "Salary" or "AAV" (average annual value)? And according to what source?

I realize most of these things turn out to be the same, but for Entry-Level guys with performance bonuses it can vary depending on what number you are looking at and what site you use as a reference. See for example Johnny Gaudreau - general fanager has his with a $925,000 cap hit (equal to his salary), but NHLnumbers.com has him with a cap hit of $1,850,000 (equal to his AAV, which includes performance bonuses).

Which number do cap leagues typically use as a reference? What do people find works better?

[JagrBomb]

just go with whatever your pool provider uses.

fantrax uses cap hits or salary (no AAV so far that i know of). so it's a bit of a pain to manually update contracts for AAV.

AAV - most realistic (includes bonuse (rookie, performance etc) but more work to get it working correctly especially with capgeek gone. not sure if any pool providers offer this right now
Cap hit - probably the best and easiest to use
salary - also a good option if you like the changing salary structure year to year (although i find it to be a pain especially when someone signs a front loaded contract, which was especially bad with the old cba rules where you have guys with like 10M+ salaries the first few years)

[Fast Tony DeNiro]

My league has always used salary, but we've been talking about switching to cap hit for a couple years now. If I had the choice, if would be cap hit.... With all of these new mega deals, salaries are rising quickly. Kane and Toews at 13.8 million, Stamkos probably about to sign for around the same, Tavares, Seguin, and Benn shortly after.... It gets to the point where you have to decide if they're worth the money.... And IMO in fantasy hockey there should never be superstars on the waiver wire for salary reasons.

Using cap hit, you keep the bonus of rookies on ELCs. Cap hit just seems like the best choice.

[JohnnyFantasy]

Agreed Fast Tony DeNiro. We moved away from salaries in my league given the flux between years of contracts. And further, those high performing entry level guys should cost more than just their sub-$1M salaries.

I'm just wondering if there is a definitive source for what a player's "cap hit" is. As I mentioned above, these sites seem to be inconsistent (RIP capgeek; I wish I knew where it would have come out in the mix). We're on Yahoo, which as far as I know doesn't have its own numbers for anything so we need to reference an outside source.

[JagrBomb]

Agreed Fast Tony DeNiro. We moved away from salaries in my league given the flux between years of contracts. And further, those high performing entry level guys should cost more than just their sub-$1M salaries.

I'm just wondering if there is a definitive source for what a player's "cap hit" is. As I mentioned above, these sites seem to be inconsistent (RIP capgeek; I wish I knew where it would have come out in the mix). We're on Yahoo, which as far as I know doesn't have its own numbers for anything so we need to reference an outside source.

cap hit is pretty easy to determine.

www.generalfanager.com or www.nhlnumbers.com (my preference) are good sites you can use.

[Fast Tony DeNiro]

Agreed Fast Tony DeNiro. We moved away from salaries in my league given the flux between years of contracts. And further, those high performing entry level guys should cost more than just their sub-$1M salaries.

I'm just wondering if there is a definitive source for what a player's "cap hit" is. As I mentioned above, these sites seem to be inconsistent (RIP capgeek; I wish I knew where it would have come out in the mix). We're on Yahoo, which as far as I know doesn't have its own numbers for anything so we need to reference an outside source.

We've been using capfriendly for my league.... It has salary, cap hit, and AAV. I'm pretty sure generalfanager has them as well.

[Dobbernomics]

We've recently switch from using annual salary to now using cap hit, provided by Fantrax. The main reason for the change was that people were uncomfortable about using annual salary given large variations in salary for the same player from year to year based on how their contracts are structured.

[Pengwin7]

I'm in two cap-type leagues, one is "Actual Salary", one is "Cap Hit".

I prefer "Cap Hit".
That way, if you've got a player, you know his number year-to-year.
Makes it a bit easier to manage a team.

There are some guys with strange contracts.
Mikko Koivu.
His "actual salaries" goes something like 7.2, 9.18, 7.2, 9.18... it's weird... and a pain-in-the-ass to manage.
I don't know why some guys do this.

I think since actual NHL teams use a sum of "cap hits", it makes sense to have a league use "cap hit".
For rookies, I don't mind the low cap hit to exclude bonuses.

Point of a cap-league is to make it a bit easier for a team to rebuild.
And this is usually through the value of drafting prospects who well-produce beyond their $925k (or whatever) league cap number.

[CHunter]

I'm in a "actual salary" league but I would prefer to use cap it with all the new contracts recently signed i.e Toews, Kane, Stepan and Stamkos in a few weeks.....

[butch]

I'd never play in a sal cap league , especially if it used actual salary instead of cap hit .

then again , I prefer using F instead of lw,rw,c -so what do I know

[roenick27]

We use salaries but I think whichever you use, you have to stick with it. Changing from Salaries to Cap hit, for the reasons above, completely derail the structure of the league. Trust me, it sucks seeing a Toews/Weber etc on the wire/benched etc, but changing halfway through isn't fair either. If there is a change, IMO it needs to be changed like 3-5 years out to give teams a chance to adjust.

Personally, salaries are a bit of a pain to manage, but I kind of like the variance year to year in salary. I think it also sometimes helps to separate the better GM's and surely should lead to more activity in the league

[kirknall]

Except for rookie/prospect draft players, all players are won in auction in our league. We ignore whatever a player makes IRL and use whatever the is winning bid on the player for salary.