Ideas for next season

I've been meaning to post this topic for awhile so we can express some thoughts towards ideas to improve,simplify some processes/rules for next season .

I'll get the ball rolling

We're definately moving towards having gm's handle their own adds/drops , wire claims ,IR assignments, farm call ups (farm players will be right on your roster)at FANTRAX .

Something that I'm testing in the FANTRAX test league I've created is a free agent/waivers system not totally uncommon to some fantasy leagues.

Proposed new free agent/wire process

this system is sometimes niknamed blind free agent bidding

All available players(those not on a 70's league team) are technically on waivers daily until a specified time of day .

In the test league I have it set to process all bids at 1.30 AM eastern .
You would submit your free agent bid via fantrax system and find out at 1.30 am if you were successful.

For example
you submit a claim for Guy Lafleur and you find out at 1.30 am eastern if you were successful.

The initial priority order at the beginning of off-season 2011 would be based on our 10/11 season reverse order standings.Then , once any team makes a successful claim they would be sent to the bottom of the priority order.--I've been testing this at fantrax and it sends teams to the bottom of the order.

all waived players would simply be added to the free agents who are technically all on waivers each day.

I really like the system because it eliminates 1 process (no need for seperate waiver wire to babysit)

Free agent pik up limits per week
I'm totally open to keeping it at 2 per week or a modest increase to 3 ? 4 ?
the idea would be to limit the temptation to churn in and out of free agents

*as admin at fantrax , I would have NO IDEA who has bids on players on any particular day


Injured Reserve

You will assign /recall injured players at your leisure

Are you fellas happy with 2 spots ?
in the test league , I have it set at 3 spots --totally open to what you guys would like to see here as a limit

fantrax IR setting
fantrax offers admins 2 IR settings
1-player must be on actual nhl IR
2-looser rule which allows fellas who are DTD or IR be given IR status--basically so long as the player has a red flag beside his name at fantrax , he's IR eligible

I have no problem whatsoever using option #2 because as we all know , some nhl team/players can go weeks and weeks in some type of IR ''limbo''


Farm Players

in addition to your entire 20 starters ,10 bench , 3 IR being on your fantrax roster --so will your farm players

at fantrax you will call up farm players by switching them from ''minors'' to active or reserve.
by doing so , you will naturally have to release someone on your 20 starter/10 bench OR perhaps one of your 20 starters/10 bench can be sent down to ''minors'' status.

highly recommend you guys join the test league so you can fart around with all of this
hit me up and I can send invite

thats about all I can think of for now

repost from bob in the uno

i like the new idea with all Fas being on waivers..i would like the player pickups per week to be higher(as high as possible)

i also like the IR with as many as possible ..and the looser setting..


send me an invite for test league,i will check it out(have a wake and funeral this week,might not respond til late tonight..)

I love the idea of Free Agents/Waiver being lumped into the same category, and have a successful team at picking up a Free Agent/Waiver pick up being sent at the bottom of the order.

I prefer a maximum of 2 FA per week, to limit abuse. It will make us think twice before picking up somebody for one day or two.

Tested the Test League team and it seems to work fine.

I don't mind not having IR slots as we have plenty of reserves, and there's not many viable replacement options left anyway. But if we decide to, I'd like to have a looser definition also, so a to avoid confusion, or checking 10 different web sites (Hey, Fantasy Hockey is time consuming already lol). I would also increase to 3 IR slots (Some of us already have 6 and up lol).

Farm players: I propose to limit the number of call-ups and sending down in a given week. I foresee abuse with farm (still) eligible players playing in the NHL being sent down to the farm on days they're not playing then recalled on dyas their team is. Just a thought.

Danmor wrote:

Farm players: I propose to limit the number of call-ups and sending down in a given week. I foresee abuse with farm (still) eligible players playing in the NHL being sent down to the farm on days they're not playing then recalled on dyas their team is. Just a thought.

this is a valid concern of mine too Dan,but I have no intentions of manually counting how many times gm's call up / send down players to enforce a limit of some type because it would be a real pain in the ass .

10 man reserves + 3 IR slots should limit the amount of times gm's walk the line of abusing the farm system.

also like to add

fantrax doesnt offer an option to allow an extra free agent pik up should said pik up be for replacing an injured player.

so whatever limit we decide upon will have to include pik ups made due to there being an opening from assigning someone to the IR

I like anything that will streamline the process. I also like team that makes a successful waiver claim goes to bottom of priority list. The only part I don't like is every single transaction dropping you to bottom of list. I don't think picking up a player who has been in FA pool for several weeks should move a team to back of the waiver line.

Is there any way for Fantrax to have players stay on waivers for a certain number of days, then go to FA pool? I am thinking of Yahoo method, which is similar to what Butch is doing manually now. If that's not an option, I still think the simplicity of the proposed method trumps my displeasure with the specifics.

If we go to the full waiver method, I would think bumping the max moves/week to three would be in order. Our current method doesn't count the waiver claims towards the 2 pick up/week max. So if we keep the limit at 2, it would be more limiting that what we have in place now.

I like 3 IR slots with rosters this large, and I like the looser IR rule to make things simpler.

I definitely like the test league layout where the farm team is on same page. I especially like how each player's pull down menu let's you know if they are eligible for IR or minors. Even though an automated system for capping maximum call up / send downs would be ideal - I think the gains in simplicity far outweigh the risk for abuse.

thanks for setting up the test league Butch - it's a great way to experiment with changes to the league format.

Sudden Death wrote:

I like anything that will streamline the process. I also like team that makes a successful waiver claim goes to bottom of priority list. The only part I don't like is every single transaction dropping you to bottom of list. I don't think picking up a player who has been in FA pool for several weeks should move a team to back of the waiver line.

Is there any way for Fantrax to have players stay on waivers for a certain number of days, then go to FA pool? I am thinking of Yahoo method, which is similar to what Butch is doing manually now. If that's not an option, I still think the simplicity of the proposed method trumps my displeasure with the specifics.

yes , Fantrax does offer the ability to have both a free agent system where its simply first come first serve combined with a waiver wire system that sends a team to bottom once successful claim is made.

I like the idea of putting the day to day running of teams more into the individual GMs hands, as this much take a lot of Butch's time.

Moves per Week:
Since there is no way to distinguish between a normal FA acquisition and a IR replacement, I would like to see a bump up to 3 moves per week.

IR Spots:
Even though our FA talent pool is diluted due to our roster sizes, I would still like to see 3 IR spots with the looser definition of a player on the IR

All FA go through waivers each day;
I could go either way on this as I like the uniqueness of it, but as Sudden Death said you'd hate to waste your waiver position on a guy who's been a FA for weeks.

"Cycling" your Farm players:
I don't have an issue with guys calling up their farm players as much as possible, as long as only farm eligible players can have that designation at Fantrax.

Steve and I are in a Fantrax keeper where the minor players on right there on your main roster like Butch proposes. Last season some GMs were playing minor players, and putting ineligible players on their farms for the night.

One current issue with Fantrax is that there is no settings distinction between skaters and goalies as far as games played. When I contacted them this was their reply: "Yes, we will allow for that within the next couple of months."

Thanks for starting this thread Butch, and can you send me an invite to the test league when you have time.

Cheers,
Brian

I would like some IR spots next season and daily transactions. This weekly thing is confusing and I lost interest in making pickups pretty quickly. If I can manage my team's pickups on a daily basis it will keep my attention better. I'd also like the Fantrax league to list our farm players on our roster page. This would make trades easier since we can view a team's entire roster. I haven't bothered to make any trades yet because the process is too complicated. I have to navigate from Fantrax to the Deuce page just to see a roster and a farm team for one trade. Bottom line, some work could be done to make trades and pickups easier. I think the changes people are mentioning would help quite a bit.

Bruins GM wrote:

One current issue with Fantrax is that there is no settings distinction between skaters and goalies as far as games played. When I contacted them this was their reply: "Yes, we will allow for that within the next couple of months."Brian

I've contacted them recently regarding this and they replied that its a priority or theirs to roll this out soon .

fantrax will be charging $59.95 for leagues using their ''premium'' features

when poking around the admin menu there this morning I noticed a ''premium'' logo (lil gold circle)beside the ''minors'' section

the ''minors'' sub section in the admin screen was always free .

certainly wont be paying a dime nor collecting a chip in fee from all gm's like I used to when we used cbs.

so , its looking like we'll stick to the same farm system we're currently employing

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this is my email to them and their reply


On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:44:47 -0500, feedback@fantrax.com wrote:
> League ID: js9ids0lghb0esbl,js9ids0lghb0esbl
> League Name: T70FHL
>
> Username: butch
> Name: butch b
> Email: t70fhl@yahoo.ca
>
> noticed one of the current ''free'' features now has a ''premium'' logo beside it .
>
> ability to set gp,age etc... limits on minors designated players .
>
> just curious as to how much the service will cost for leagues using ''premium'' features in the future

their reply

Hi Butch,

Premium Commissioner leagues will cost $59.95 each and will have many great and unique features. Full details will be released in early Feb.

Thanks,
Neil
The Fantrax Team

maya has the knife wrote:

I would like some IR spots next season and daily transactions. This weekly thing is confusing and I lost interest in making pickups pretty quickly. If I can manage my team's pickups on a daily basis it will keep my attention better. I'd also like the Fantrax league to list our farm players on our roster page. This would make trades easier since we can view a team's entire roster. I haven't bothered to make any trades yet because the process is too complicated. I have to navigate from Fantrax to the Deuce page just to see a roster and a farm team for one trade. Bottom line, some work could be done to make trades and pickups easier. I think the changes people are mentioning would help quite a bit.

pretty sure when recruiting gm's at dobber boards this summer I informed ''would be'' candidates to read over the rulebook before joining to ensure the set up was to your liking .

Also did my best to express that some of the league processes could be complicated and would require more rolling up of the sleeves than other leagues .

I can understand if some gm's find it cumbersome to make transactions here , especially if they have lost interest.

no hard feelings if you dont want to stick around with us James .

after looking at the admin screens at fantrax a few minutes ago I believe using ''minors'' is still part of the free service but it is limited

its the added features to the ''minors'' section that are now considered premium
i.e --the feature that allows you to cap minors to 70 gp (or whatever number any league would use as their cap)has the gold circle beside it indicating premium feature .

I'm confident there will be a work around , so feel free to continue our discussion

I like the idea of us having the autonomy to administer to our teams in the capacity that Butch is suggesting.

FA procedure combined with waivers should have at least 24 hour waiver period before they are added to FA pool. Would eliminate any foul play.

IR, 3 spots sounds efficient. Loose setting also

Farm call-ups. I am not a huge fan of too much flexibility here. Limit a farm call-up one a week would be my solution.

in light of the new development / fantrax charging $$ to use minors system I've thought of a hybrid way we could do things for next season

we could still have gm's do their own adds/drops for their 30 man /3 IR roster

but keep our farm team seperate , as we currently do , and have all farm type transactions processed manually

I have been testing the daily moves and the use of the FA/waiver system in the test Fantrax league and I think it work very well. Certainly something I think most GMs would like to have.

Regarding other issues, I think the implementation of an IR system with 3 available slots is a great idea and much needed. Too many good players are dropped to get an active body on the roster. I would also agree with the sentiment that a looser IR restriction is a good idea, as guys like Fleischmann and Edler are both not listed on IR officially, but both are expected to miss significant time.

As for FA pickups, I think an increase to 3 per week would be fair.

we need to sorta change the direction of the thread to address something

fantrax has kinda thrown a wrench into what I would have liked to roll out next season.

if you are not aware of what I'm referring to I'll briefly recap

I had wanted to make use of their minors system so we could simply have our farm players right on our rosters (all 40 , 30 regulars + 10 farm )

after posting this thread a few days ago I went into the fantrax commish/admin screens where you set your league up and noticed a gold circle around some features .A gold circle = ''premium feature''

Fantrax will be introducing a premium product but will still have a free product .
the premium product will be 59.95

the ability to cap farm team players gp's to 70/35 was a feature we needed for next season , but it was suddenly added as a premium feature.

free leagues will still have access to use the ''minors'' system , but they wont be able to use the gp limit as its a premium feature/

therefore , it wouldnt really work for us because we allow ''minors'' (farm players) to have minors status up until they play their 70 th gp for f/d and 35 for goalies .

using the free version , the only ''minors'' that would qualify for status would be fellas actually in the minors .So for example , you wouldnt be able to assign someone like Jeff Skinner to minors because he's in the pros .

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to be very honest , I have no problem maintaining the status quo regarding our farm teams .

its not like they are difficult to access for viewing sake -you either clik on your farm team at fantrax or view it at the league website >roster page.

what we need to brainstrom on is a way to mesh gm's doing their own adds/drops at fantrax but keep any and all farm team transactions manual .

day to day simple adds/drops ,IR assignments for your 30 man pro roster is easily handled by yourself.

start mixing farm call ups/farm assignments/free agent farm player pik up into any transaction and it becomes a transaction requiring manual processing by me . Anything requiring manual processing will be a once a week deal (weds , 7 am as usual)

does that sound simple enough ?

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I think we should stick to the traditional free agent system (first come , first serve) and change the waiver wire system to where you make a successful bid you do to bottom of priority order )
*this is easily achiived at fantrax.

therefore my initial idea (check it out , first post of the thread )has been tossed in the dumpster

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F/A pik up limits per week -most of us seem cool with upping it to 3
the 3 would include any pik up made to replace someone on IR

WWire pik up limits --unlimited --but be aware of priority order .

IR -most of us seem cool upping it to 3 and using the ''looser'' fantrax setting

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I want to avoid having to police rosters daily and let the fantrax system enforce free agent pik up limits for your 30 man pro team

therefore , I'd like to somehow come up with something to govern free agent ''farm team'' pik ups

Since farm team free agent pik ups would still be done manually / then added to your fantrax farm team it wouldnt register as a f/a pik up at fantrax towards your 3 per week limit .

I would have to police to ensure anyone who used their 3 max wouldnt make manual farm team f/a pik up
this would be a pain in the ass

so ......

maybe a limit of 1 f/a farm team pik up per week ?
kinda helps curb prospect f/a pik up abuse

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3 f/a pik up max , enforced by fantrax for 30 man pro

1 f/a farm pik up max per week , enforced manually by me

I vote for it. Whatever is easiest is cool. Don't forget, we play for fun and bragging rights. As long as the same rules apply to us all, all is fair and still fun.

I posted the following at the Uno boards:

Man, this certainly is a lot to keep track of here now isn't it...

My thoughts on possible changes:

- If most guys want 3 IR, then I'm ok with it; however, I really think we should think about how much more watered down the FA list will actually become. If we allow 3 IR, then we run the risk of having pretty useless FAs available that probably don't help anyone's team at all. I'd rather have some FAs with value rather than an extra IR. It puts more onus on the GM to manage his assets better imo.

- I also like the idea of having looser rules for IR. Placing a player on IR and using this as a roster move will limit any abuse and make all GMs think twice about just placing their players on IR in the first place.

- I'd like to discuss why we don't just have our minor leaguers retain their minor league status for the entire season. If they are under the 70/35 at the start of the season, then this should be good for the entire year. Right now, its more a pain than anything keeping track of how many games your minor leaguer have actually played. Yes, it might mean you get to keep a player as minor league eligible for a longer period of time, but I don't see this as being a big issue. If anything, I'm more into simplying the management of your roster and I think change would definitely do that for all GMs.

- If minor leaguers retain their status all season, then I don't think there will be a problem keeping our minor leaguers on our rosters at Fantrax as Butch originally intended. This should also allow all GMs to use their farm team as they desire, rather than limiting the choice here to 1 move per week for our minor leaguers.

- Bumping our roster moves to a maximum of 3 per week is a good idea too. If we also included the farm team eligible players in these moves, then all GMs have more flexibility to run their teams as they desire.

- A separate list for WW pickups, whereby any team making a successful bid is automatically placed at the end of the WW priority, is definitely the way to handle the WW imo. Perhaps these players could be on the WW for 1 or 2 days maximum and then become FAs.

- As Brian mentioned, we're in another league together whereby your minor leaguers can be moved in/out of your lineup without any limits whatsoever... I think that is an abuse of the meaning of minor leaguers to me, because your farm team has then essentially just become an extension of your bench and something I certainly don't want to see happen here.

- So to recap, I'd rather see:
- 2 IR spots: keeps the FA list much more meaningful;
- Minor leaguers retain their minor leauge status for the entire season;
- Minor leaguers listed on our rosters at Fantrax;
- A maximum of 3 FA pickups per week.

steve-next year ,the ''free'' version of fantrax will only allow you to assign players who are actually in the minors to minors position.

anyone in the NHL would not be allowed to be set to minors .

i.e -fantrax will not allow you to set the likes of Hall,Skinner,Paajarvi to the minors position because they are in the NHL.

this is why I think we have no other choice but to maintain the farm team aspect of the league manually

If we were to simply lump our farm players with our regular 10 reserve players at fantrax then it would be a pain in the butt to ensure all gm's were complying .I'm not sure if this was what you were suggesting though.

someone would have to ensure that everyone had 10 qualified prospects via our rules instead of 7 prospects and 13 reserves (for example) -I realize were big boys and could police it ourselves but it would ultimately fall on my shoulders to enforce something that could be a pain .

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I dont mind the idea of prospects retaining their farm team eligibility all season provided they qualify when the season begins (70/35)

once the season ends though , anyone over the 70/35 would require calling up to the 30 man pro team in preparation for the 4 round waiver/free agent draft --meaning they would require protecting or exposing .

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fantrax will allow us to have F/A pikups be first come first serve and a customizable waiver wire where admin can choose how many days players are on waivers , what time do they process ,successful claim >>down to bottom of order etc..etc..

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simply lumping our 10 farm guys with our 10 reserves is kinda making me think tho.
20 total reserves , 10 of which we'd have to ensure were prospects.

if we all started season with proper limits we would just need to ensure daily transactions of a signed prospect involves a dropped prospect and so forth

and instead of processing things manually once a week I can use that time to do a once a week scan of everyones roster to ensure legit

Why would it be so bad to have (Ex: via trades) 13 reserves and 7 prospects vs 10-10? There are no rules either against having 13 prospects with 3 on a Reserve Slot. It would allow GMs different strategies.

Danmor wrote:

Why would it be so bad to have (Ex: via trades) 13 reserves and 7 prospects vs 10-10? There are no rules either against having 13 prospects with 3 on a Reserve Slot. It would allow GMs different strategies.

so you are suggesting a 20 man reserve bench and filling it however each gm pleases

be it 10 depth types and 1o prospects , or 15 depth types and 5 prospects and so on ......

I guess it would certainly simplyfy things
gm's would only be able to protect 10 prospects & 20 or 19 (see rulebook)regulars though for waiver/f/a summer draft

hmmm
what do you guys think of this idea ?

I love this idea. It's a true capitalistic idea. If you want to go NY Yankees and develop nobody and run out 20 reserves who are depth guys you should be entitled to. If you want to go Minnesota Twins and develop prime talent, that should be a choice as well. I couldn't agree more with this idea.

from mark in the uno
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I think with the last idea, you'd just want to put a maximum number on prospects. ie. you get hit by injuries and start dropping depth guys to sign more youth since you won't compete this year anyway and you end up with 5 depth guys and 15 prospects sitting on your 20 man bench...

Sorry been sick with the flu. will process the rest of this and add my 2 cents in the next day or so...

Mark

You may want to put a max on prospect (or for reserves for that matter), but a GM would only hurt himself since he has to protect a maximum number of players fr the following season.

thats also a valid point dan

you can only protect 19 or 20 of your pro (over 70/35)
and 10 prospects (under 70/35) for our draft.

so a team wouldnt be doing itself many favors by overloading the 20 reserve spots with too many prospect

It's a bit of change from the structure of our current rosters, but I am game for it. Like Slats said - GM's can go all out for the current season or develop talent for the future.

It would allow teams to handle their own transactions, free up Butch from manual processing, avoids the need to police the rosters, avoids taking on the cost of the premium services.

The only requirement I see, is teams need to at least carry 20 active NHL players - even though we can't protect 20 prospects, there has to be some minimum established to avoid tanking for better draft position.

mark from uno
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We have seen gms though who are fine with a slow build (and I mean a very slow build) who would be happy to load up with 20 prospects recognizing that even if they can't protect them all that they'd only lose at worst a couple in the annual draft.

From my understanding our intent has always been to attempt to field a competitive team for the weak to weak matchups so capping the number of prospects and requiring some depth guys gives you greater ability to put up points and helps maintain the integrity of the head to head structure.

I guess the flip side would be that if I load up with 15 depth guys in the current proposal that i'd only be hurting myself long term since i wouldn't have enough prospect eligible guys to protect in the draft (unless of course i make some trades before we declare our protection lists).

To be clear, though i like the greater flexibility in what is being proposed and don't foresee any issues with our current crop of gms. the question i guess i was asking in the first place, is would we care if a GM loaded up with a bench of 20 (approaching 20) prospects and had no depth to help try to put up points in the h2h matchup each week?

Mark