Consequences of a rule change

[Locke]

Hey all,

I'm the commish of a 12 team H2H Yahoo league counting G, A, P, +/-, PIM, PPP, Sog, FoW, Hits, Blocks, W, Gaa, Sv%, and saves.

It's a fairly deep league, starting 3/3/3/5/2, with a bench of 8. Every year we keep 7 vets, and 3 prospects (goalies < 101 gp, skaters < 201 gp). Max two goalie kept. There are 4 max pickups per week.

I just had a gm complain about the lack of useful goalies on the wire, and wanting to go to a 4 (healthy) goalie maximum on every roster.

I don't really want to police the maximum, but my co-commish is willing to. If we did it we'd have to set out some kind of consequence for breaking the rule. We'd also have to deal with grey areas like how long a GM has to flip a now-healthy goalie off of IR, etc. However, I see the rule as likely having some unintended effects.

It seems to me that setting a max like this is going to further increase the value of the small number of quality volume starters (Shesty, Helly, Sorokin, Vas, and perhaps Markstrom, Demko, Jarry, and Saros). It's going to lessen the value of guys in platoons. In other words, it'll increase the gulf between the haves and have nots.

To make it a bit more concrete, if such a rule was in place now the following guys would be available who are currently rostered: Lindgren, Hill, Montembeault, Anderson, Raanta. So it would increase the G options to stream goalies, or supplement faltering goalies. I just see the negative consequences outweighing the positive.

I expect I'll be putting it to a vote, but before doing so I'm considering making a pitch to keep the status quo based on the reasons in this post.

Am I over-analyzing this? Making a mountain out of a molehill? Missing anything?

Cheers

[stevegamer]

First off, I think changes should be an off-season thing, unless there's something completely not covered by the rules that happens.

My first take on this actual proposal is math:

NHL: 32 teams, 2 goalies each = 64 goalies
I'd say that some of those 64 healthy goalies who get called up for 1-2 games as emergencies aren't useful. Some of them don't even play a game.

Your league: 12 teams, 4 goalies each = 48 goalies
I use 4 goalies because that is currently your maximum, and while some teams may have 3 healthy goalies, others may have 1+ on IR.

My second take on things comes from having been in leagues where no NHL goalies are on the wire. Note that's not "useful", that's every goalie on a roster is accounted for, and most 3rd string guys and prospects.

First, hunting for the 3rd-4th guy in a system can be educating, but man, it sucks when you can't meet start limits due to 2-3 guys getting hurt in the same week.

You listed the guys who'd go to the wire, and they are mostly guys who can fill in for injuries. I can see Raanta being wanted as a regular roster guy to handcuff Carolina, but he's also often hurt. I don't see this as changing the value of proven workhorses at all, but it would help teams who have massive injury issues make a weekly start minimum.

I conclude that this help the teams that lack healthy goalies who play enough, rather than teams with workhorses. Could it help desperate streamers as well? Yes, but if you're streaming Montembault or the like, you're playing with fire and lack protective gear.

My conclusion is that your take on it is very much over-analysis to look at it the way you already see it. That's very common for us as humans, sadly.

[tweetdrivr]

We have a 3 goalie maximum in my Yahoo league (league in sig). It works well. We also allow only one keeper to be a goalie year to year. This does more to preclude goalie hoarding than anything else. I also strongly agree that changes like this are to be made in the off season and after some good league discussion. Not mid-season. I’d probably quit a league that changed something like this part way through. Also, you can set your Yahoo settings to enforce this. You don’t need a commish to do it. And you can set it so that once a player is no longer IR eligible the GM has to fix it if they are to make roster changes. If a GM is inactive and so a goalie on IR just sits we have a rule in place where once a player has played a game in the NHL back from injury you must remove them from IR. This is something that I as commish do enforce. If you’re guy has played a game and is still on IR you are messaged about it. If you don’t fix it before the next game I fix it in whatever way makes the most sense. That’s the rule. In almost 20 years of this league I’ve had to do it twice. It works.

[Referee3083]

I agree with the above posts. Don’t do this mid season. Vote on it now, though, if you want it in place for next year so they GMs have ample time to adjust before next year’s keeper selections are due.

Also, yes you’re overthinking it. We have a max 4 (healthy) goalies on the roster rule, which is enforced by Fantrax. We limit our 4 IR spots to a maximum of 3 goalies. All of this is for the same reason your other GM describes. There’s far too few goalies to go around, and this helps keep enough in play that GMs can hit their starts each week.

[LawMan]

To add on. Yes, any predictable rule change (which this is) should be voted on now for next season.
Further, You really need to avoid rules that cannot be automatically enforced by the software, because otherwise there are just too many problems.

in my view, there is not necessarily a need to have goalie max. If one team has 8 goalies on their roster and are "hoarding goalies" then they will not have enough skaters..
But if your league wants a 4G (healthy) maximum that is fine, and the league software will enforce it.
Further, if your league can enforce a "once health IR must be moved" rule that is fine. But if the Commish, and Co-Commish are required to enforce rules that is not fair to the enforcers' because:
1. it is a lot of work; and
2. inevitably it will be missed and what is the outcome for that ??

my two cents.

[Locke]

Appreciate the thoughts folks. We'll only make a mid-season rule change if its got unanimous support. I'll put it to a vote, and see what happens.

Cheers