League Rules wrt Prospect Lists

[hoopej2]

I often hear people say they have \"prospect\" lists and am confused. Our league has 24 players on each team with 10 teams. We can keep 8 of those players from one year to the next. The top 19 players count towards our totals and you must have two goalies so there is very little room for a true \"prospect\" because if you pick a guy who doesn\'t play, then you are shortening your bench by 25%(4 skaters down to 3) so not many GM\'s do it. I drafted Radulov the day they announced he was going down to the AHL and he\'s been in my reserves all year long and it has cost me as I\'m in the bottom half of my league.

How many guys can you have on your prospect list? How do these prospects graduate to your regular roster? If you drafted Radulov as a prospect and he starts playing in the league as he has done this year, do you need to drop a player from your regular roster in order to activate the prospect?

Please enlighten me. I\'d like to suggest something like this to my league but need to know how it works.

What works best for you poolies?

[Dobber]

Looking at your rules that you have outlined, I would suggest reducing the amount of players that count for points.
My one keeper league has 12 and a goalie. My other one just has 12. Even if you roll things back to 15 players, that would mean your bench grows from five to nine. With nine on your bench, suddenly you have spare spots for prospects.
I would suggest just counting 15 instead of 19, increase your overall roster to 25, and increase the amount you keep to 10 or even 12 (actually, I\'m against limiting the amount of keepers period, but since the rule is already there it would be hard to eliminate).
Also, add a \"prospect status\" rule at the end of the season whereby you can declare two players (with 25 NHL games or less experience) as \"prospects\" that can be added to the 10 or 12 that you keep.
Making these changes would allow you to draft and hang onto two prospects...plus another one or two if you wanted to make them one of your 10 or 12 keepers.
It would save your league from choosing Matt Stajan over Peter Mueller...which is kind of embarrassing, but given the format you describe I bet you that very thing happened in your pool this year.

[Steffen]

We have 16 teams of 30 players each, with 20 active per week (12 F, 6 D, 2 G). We can have any mix of players, as long as we can start the 12F-6D-2G each week (and carry no more than 4 G max).

We can keep up to 15 players into the next year, as long as their salaries total under the $40 salary cap, and we leave ourself enough cap room to fill our roster out to 20 players at the auction (10 cent min salary). The last 10 players per team are added through a draft phase (with pre-assigned salaries declining from $1.50 to $0.10). Draft picks are tradeable.

Any player can be bought at auction or drafted, as long as they have been drafted or signed at some point in the past by an NHL team. So, for example, our September 2006 auction/draft was the first point at which Erik Johnson, Nicklas Backstrom, Jordan Staal, etc could be picked up.

This excludes all undrafted/unsigned prospects, and since a player can only be kept for 2 years before a long term contract signing decision has to be made, we end up using our middle and later draft picks for players that are likely to see at least some NHL time within 2 years. With 10 guys on the bench, it\'s quite rare that a team carries more than 2 or 3 non-playing prospects. Most teams have one.

[dynamo45]

My one keeper league has a farm system. As long as a player achieves rookie status by NHL standards, he is a rookie to our league as well, and can be put back on the farm team and kept for the next year at no extra cost to the owner. Our draft picks are tradeable, and the farm team system makes them very valued, as you can accumulate a wealth of talent if you do the homework.

[hoopej2]

I\'ve tried to change our league in the past and unfortunately we have a mix of guys who want to manage their teams more and some that are very passive after the draft takes place. Because we are all good friends, it\'s difficult to kick a guy out of the league without stiring things up a little.

Given that our league will likely stay the same, what should I do to take advantage of the rules we have? Like I said, 24 man roster, you have to have 2G, 12F, 6D and we can keep any 8 players at the end of the year.

[gdon]

We have two minor league spots. We can put anybody in the minors but once you bring them up to your \"pro\" team and sign him to a contract he can\'t go back down. Each minor leaguer can be kept their for a max 2 seasons and then either must be brought up or dropped down. These spots are in addition to the 20 roster spots in our 16 team league.

I suggest just setting up a seperate list that don\'t count against your roster. If your website isn\'t flexible enough, the commish could just keep a list that is emailed to all owners.