Tracking salary cap and draft picks

[Dobbernomics]

Hi folks,

So here\'s my story. I\'m in a 10-team salary cap keeper league where we use Yahoo to track our day-to-day hockey pool activities, i.e. trades and transactions. We tracked each team\'s total salary in an Excel spreadsheet, and maintained it throughout the season by modifying it every time a trade or transaction would occur, so that everyone could have an up to date view of how teams lined up against the salary cap.

When draft picks were traded, we would record the trade and draft picks involved on a message board, and prior to the next season\'s draft, we\'d go back and look at all draft picks traded, put them in Excel again, and generate an updated spreadsheet based on the draft order.

It\'s a very manually intensive process. But due to the relatively small size of our pool, it didn\'t make sense to pay big bucks for a hockey pool system that may do this automatically for us.

So I decided to start developing a tool that would ease the burden of having to track everything manually.

Disclaimer (this should be in big bold red font): In no way was I intending to make this tool be a substitute for a complete hockey pool system such as Yahoo Fantasy Hockey, CBS, ESPN, and so forth. That wasn\'t the intent, and never will be.

However, the tool was developed with the following frame of mind:
- Automatically calculate total payroll and salary cap space available for all teams in the pool
- Automatically generate salary cap spreadsheets
- Track draft picks traded between teams and generate full draft pick list taking into account the draft order and traded draft picks

Now because it\'s completely independent of the system we use (Yahoo) to perform day to day trades and transactions, we still need to record player trades and transactions (adds/drops) in this tool. So it is definitely still manually intensive, just not as much as previously.

As I was thinking about this, I realized that maybe I\'m not the only one who is using this type of system to track salaries and picks. Maybe others who are in the same type of pool would benefit from this kind of functionality.

Would any of you be potentially interested in this? Bear in mind that if I were to release this tool to a more general public, I\'d have to put more work into it, since it\'s highly customized to the pool I\'m in. I also don\'t have a team of developers working with me and coming out with fancy flash animations. So if that\'s what you\'re looking for, sorry to disappoint you.

Please reply to this to let me know if this is something that you think you might use if it were available. I\'m just trying to gauge the level of interest before proceeding any further.

Cheers,
chilly

[kech]

it would be the *bestest*

[outcast]

I think every fantasy nut loves a good excel worksheet for tabulating players and statistics.

I\'m in a very similar scenario where the details of the pool are the same as yours and it has me updating a spreadsheet when any roster changes occur. My spreadsheet maintains player, salary, position, and team information for 23 manned rosters and 16 GM\'s. It can be sorted however way I want, but during the offseason its sorted by salary & UFA/RFA status.

We use the boards for maintaining the prospects & entry draft selections as Yahoo can\'t possibly do any of that. There really is no way to get around the manual entries for the roster movements(trades, waivers, and prospect callups).

Your targeting a pretty specific audience so I\'m not sure there will be a great deal of interest. But for your niche market it would be extremely helpful.

Here\'s a pic of what mine looks like...sorry no fancy animations of that sort. Adding shades of gray is about as good as it gets for me.

--- I can\'t seem to attach the image as it severely distorts this thread. Here\'s a link to what it looks like instead...

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/k...nd_8_teams.jpg

[outcast]

I\'ll use this double post to explain how it works I guess.

This was really intended for an auction style draft in which I participated in a few years back. I just modified it enough to fit my needs a little more this time around.

Entries tab are where the players are inputted. It comprises of a drop down list in which player is selected from the Validation tab. Once selected, the player is removed from the list.

The validation tab is the master list so to speak. It includes Player name, position & team currently playing for. I do have the salaries available to be put into the validation tab, I just haven\'t had the time nor the inclination to do so. I\'ve actually found updating the salaries manually not overly taxing on my time.

Sort tab is obviously self explanatory. I can sort the players in which way, but found that during the offseason to sort via salaries to keep tabs on UFA/RFA a little bit better.

[Dr.Smurf]

Cool. Both of your guys\' formats look (and sounds) like something i\'d be interested in.

There is a serious lack of tools for people in Salary Cap leagues, so anything along those lines would be fairly original and unique. I suspect this lack of tools for salary cap pools is due to the lack and variability of cap leagues. Outcast\'s pool uses a cap of $71mil, whereas my pool mirrors the NHL\'s cap of $56.7mil (until it changes this summer), and i suspect Chillyh uses a completely different number as well.

I think if you were to release something (and herein lies the challenge) you would have to find some way to generalize the formats to suit as many league formats as possible.

[Chuk]

Looks good Chillyh,

I would like to take a look at it if possible. I have been looking for a similar tool with no success.

It looks like you use Cap Hit and not Salary.

I was trying to work on something last year but I just do not have the time and brain power to get it off the ground.

I look forward to seeing what you have. Nice work.

[Dobbernomics]

outcast,

Thanks for your insightful comments. It actually looks like what we\'re both doing is very similar, just using different means.

Chuck,

In our pool, the salaries we use are the yearly salaries, not the cap hit, but I agree that it could work as well using cap hit.

Dr.Smurf,

The variability and sheer abundance of differences distinguishing one pool from the next certainly would make it hard (or impossible) to make something generic. But things like the value of the salary cap is not something that would be difficult to handle. I\'d just give the option of modifying the cap.

Note that I don\'t intend to make this a commercial enterprise, in case you were wondering. When I say \'make it available\' I mean if the effort isn\'t too massive I could potentially let some of you use the tool and customize it to fit your league structure.

Here are a couple of screenshots. Your feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

[img size=475]http://www.dobberhockey.com/images/fbfiles/images/screen1.jpg[/img]

[Dobbernomics]

And the second one.

[img size=475]http://www.dobberhockey.com/images/fbfiles/images/screen2.jpg[/img]

[strider2k2]

That\'s really cool. I\'ve been planning on starting a league like this, but the lack of tools has prevented me from doing so. I\'d love to take a look at what you have.