1. Cost: $50 - Must be paid BEFORE season begins.
COMMENT: you don't say if you can trade draft picks from future years, but if so - you should insist on collecting the fees for any years in which future picks are trades (and, at a minimum, first round picks). Nobody wants to take over a team without a 1st round pick.
Format: Active - 2 LW, 2 C, 2 RW, 2 D, 2 G, Bench - 5 spots, IR(+) - 2 spots
Comment: it's hard to comment on this requirement without knowing the size of the league, but I'd go 4D (or 3D at a minimum).
Action: Daily Starts, 10 FA pickups per year, 5 keepers (set one week before draft), unlimited trades, trade freeze: end of regular season to one month before start of next season.
Comment: If you want more league activity, you could consider a slight bump up to FAs. And is there a particular reason you want to shut the league down over the summer?
Draft Picks: a weighted lottery (from a hat) whose results stay for every round. Most slips for last place, one less for second last, all the way down to one slip for first place.
Comment: extremely vague. Do you pick one number from the hat and that team moves to first place? Or do you keep picking numbers until all teams have been selected? While a lottery is a good way to discourage tanking, I also am not a fan of making it so random that a team cannot "rebuild". Personally, I wouldn't go higher than picking 3 slips from the hate (i.e. guarantee last place to draft no worse than 4th overall).
Engagement: ALL trade offers must be responded to within 3 days or they will be deemed accepted (unless ridiculous as decided by co-commissioners).
Comment 1: Do you really want, as co-commissioners, to sit around and determine whether something is "ridiculous"? What if it's borderline ridiculous?
Comment 2: I've been in a league where you could post when you aren't available (e.g. camping, out of country, whatever). It's useful.
Comment 3: your desire is to have an engaging league, and yet you don't have any rules for people setting their line ups? A bigger problem than not responding to trade offers is teams that know they can't win, so they just stop trying for the rest of the year (i.e. don't set line ups, do use all FA pick ups, etc). If you want to prevent this, you could suggest that the last place team CANNOT win the 1st overall draft pick. It's harsh. But effective.
Comment 4: If I own Connor McDavid and I do not want to trade him, and another GM sends me trade offers for him EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR - would I be expected to respond to all 365 emails? Have you considered that all this rule really will do is to encourage than one @sshat to send "borderline acceptable" trades 24-7 to everyone, hoping the 3 day rule kicks in?
Trades must involve even number of draft picks. You can never trade away so many players that you have empty spots on your team (after FA pickups).
Comment: The explanation to this rule makes no sense. If I trade a draft pick for a player, and use a FA pick up to fill my roster back up, what's the problem? You can eliminate the "all trades must have an even number of draft picks" by simply keeping the 2nd part of this rule - you must always have a full line up. (Or, alternatively, you can drop the 2nd part of the rule because it adds absolutely nothing to the first part).
First ever draft: snake draft (reverse order every second round), draft order is chosen from a hat.
Comment: is trading allowed during the inaugural draft?
Last point: as long as all the GMs are good with the rules, and are quality people, then any rulebook should be fine. The above is just most my preferences, based on my experience playing fantasy hockey. Good luck with your league.