Rulebook 2.0 and some important rule changes

[McWolf 3,115]

Hi everyone. McWolf here with a couple of announcements.

 

 

1 - Revamped Rulebook

Since I was hired as VHLM Commissioner last offseason, I decided that my first big project would be to re-organize the rulebook. Most of the information that we needed to function was in it already, but it was necessarily easy to find or understand. There were years and years of changes added on top of each others until it felt like the whole thing was held together by duct tape and the hope that we wouldn't need to look for stuff in it too often. So I did revamp the whole thing tonight. Copied the format from the VHL rulebook, and also copied some parts from it, in cases where our rules are similar and inconsistent wording would be confusing more than anything else. One more thing that I also didn't like about the rulebook was that there no traces of the changes that happened in it over the years, so I'll do my best to keep that updated when we do make change some rules in the future.

 

VHLM Rulebook.

 

 

2 - Double shifting

In an nth attempt to make sure everyone follows the VHLM Prime Directive, which is that the development and retention of new member should prevail over competition, we have decided to limit double shifting. The new rules appear in sections 2.1 and 2.2.

 

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2.1. Roster Size

• The maximum roster size for VHLM teams is 22 players - 12 forwards, 8 defensemen and 2 goaltenders.
• A team isn't considered full until they have 9 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goaltenders on their roster. Teams below these threshold are expected to keep making offers to waivers.
• If half the teams in the league are at or over 9 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goaltenders, the requirements for a team to be considered full will be pushed to 12 forwards, 8 defensemen and 2 goaltenders.
• If most teams meet these new requirements, the Commissioners may elect to enable the farm league.

 

2.2. Lines

• To incentivize general managers into actively making offers to newly created players, they won't be allowed to double shift players that are on either the first or the second line. In other words, for both forwards and defensemen, Line 1 and Line 2 need to be unique. Line 3 can be repeated onto Line 4.
• Once the fulfillment requirement goes from 9 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goaltenders to 12 forwards, 8 defensemen and 2 goaltenders, double shifting won't be allowed at all. Lines 1 through 4 will need to be unique.
• Teams that don't have enough players to fill their lines according to these rules will be required to use bots.

 

In the past, teams were encouraged to make offers to waivers until they reached a certain amount of players. While it was mostly successful, it was tough to have all 12 teams follow suite. Most times, the result was that the teams that were the best at recruiting were actually at a disadvantage over the others, because they were filling their 3rd and 4th lines with newly-created, low-TPE, players, while some teams that were half-assing recruitment were coasting with 2 top tier lines repeated onto the two bottom lines. Trying to track down which GM offered to which player to see if they made a genuine effort to recruit new players or not was more often than not a mess, so we decided to give an incentive to teams that recruited better. With double shifting being disallowed (except for lines 3 and 4), teams that have less than 9 forwards and 6 defensemen will be forced to play 0 TPE bots - over which even newly-created, low-TPE, players would be an upgrade.

 

 

3 - Inactive Players Coming Back To Activity

We had a situation last season, where a player was released after they went inactive for the required 3 weeks, only to come back and sign with a different team. To prevent players from using inactivity as a weapon to change team as they see fit, and to penalize the team that sign or acquired the player in the first place, we are going to allow the teams releasing inactive players a priority claim if they do come back to activity.

 

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Players cannot use inactivity to be removed from a team. If an inactive player comes back and becomes active later in the same season they were released from their previous team, this team has a priority claim on them. They can elect to bring them back on the team as if they never released them, or they can let them become a waiver or a free agent, depending on if they were previously VHLM drafted or not. (i.e. Halifax releases Sven Eightnine after he's been inactive for 21 days. Eightnine updates again later in the same season. Halifax has the choice between bringing them back to their team directly, or letting them sign with another team.)

 

 

4 - Conditional Trades

The rulebook previously said that conditional trades weren't allowed, though they had been for a couple of seasons, under the condition that the general managers would keep track of the conditions themselves. Well, starting now, we're adopting the VHL way and allowing them altogether, as long as the condition is set to be resolved before the end of the upcoming offseason.

 

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4.3. Conditional Trades

• Teams may add conditions to trades, so long as they do not circumvent any other rules regarding player movement, including, but not limited to: Draft Pick restrictions or Violating the integrity of the league.
• Conditions must be explicitly stated at the time a trade occurs, and agreed upon by both parties directly in the trade thread. Once a condition is agreed upon, make sure to tag a commissioner, who will add it to the list of conditional trades to manage.
• All conditions must convert prior to the conclusion of the following off-season.
• Any draft pick that is part of a condition may be traded in a separate trade, so long as the receiving team understands that there are conditions attached to that pick. (i.e. Philadelphia and Houston make a trade where Philadelphia gets the higher of the two teams' 1st round pick and Houston, the lower. Houston then trades their 1st round pick to Yukon, who needs to acknoledge that they will actually receive the lower 1st round pick between Philadelphia's and Houston's.)
• The Commissioners hold the right to veto any conditional trade if they feel like it circumvents league rules.

 

 

A couple of other things were slightly changed here and there in the rulebook, but the rest of these changes are pretty much just tiny details and fixes to break in continuity between the rules that have been in place for a long time in the VHL and rules that, for some reasons, were slightly different in the VHLM. It'll make a lot more sense for everyone involved if we keep the details similar when it's possible.

 

 

McWolf

cc: @VHLM Commissioner @VHLM GM

Edited September 22, 2021 by McWolf

[Gustav 6,436]

7 hours ago, McWolf said:

• To incentivize general managers into actively making offers to newly created players, they won't be allowed to double shift players that are on either the first or the second line. In other words, for both forwards and defensemen, Line 1 and Line 2 need to be unique. Line 3 can be repeated onto Line 4.
• Once the fulfillment requirement goes from 9 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goaltenders to 12 forwards, 8 defensemen and 2 goaltenders, double shifting won't be allowed at all. Lines 1 through 4 will need to be unique.
• Teams that don't have enough players to fill their lines according to these rules will be required to use bots.

 

Loophole: a team can just give 50% ice time to the first and second lines.

 

Also, something I'm not sure I like here: what's wrong with giving the existing, active players all the ice time they can get until the roster is full? Obviously, someone doing this and not making any offers is going about things the wrong way, but if offers are being made on some sort of regular basis--why not let the players play?

 

Otherwise, good stuff.

[Banackock 8,073]

People double shift on the 1st and 2nd line…? Lol

[McWolf 3,115]

15 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

 

Loophole: a team can just give 50% ice time to the first and second lines.

 

Also, something I'm not sure I like here: what's wrong with giving the existing, active players all the ice time they can get until the roster is full? Obviously, someone doing this and not making any offers is going about things the wrong way, but if offers are being made on some sort of regular basis--why not let the players play?

 

Otherwise, good stuff.

3rd and 4th line would still play. The ice time% isn't exact. It's like how the coach will try to do it, but they still rotate the lines, and the 3rd and 4th won't just have 0-second shifts. They'll play.

 

And yeah, I guess active players losing ice time is the disadvantage of going this way, but if the last couple of seasons are any indication, teams will mostly be full by the time the playoffs start. Teams running two lines would be outliers at that point and should not be rewarded with the advantage of double shifting their better players.

[Enorama 2,038]

37 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

Loophole: a team can just give 50% ice time to the first and second lines.

 

Uh... that function just straight up does not work on our version of STHS

[Spartan 4,437]

How will this work for a team with 2 D-men? Both of them on 1st pairing and bots on the rest?

[samx 1,173]

22 minutes ago, Spartan said:

How will this work for a team with 2 D-men? Both of them on 1st pairing and bots on the rest?

or one of first pair one on second pair each with a bot. then 3rd and 4th pairs are both bots

[samx 1,173]

1 hour ago, GustavMattias said:

 

Loophole: a team can just give 50% ice time to the first and second lines.

 

Also, something I'm not sure I like here: what's wrong with giving the existing, active players all the ice time they can get until the roster is full? Obviously, someone doing this and not making any offers is going about things the wrong way, but if offers are being made on some sort of regular basis--why not let the players play?

 

Otherwise, good stuff.

doesn't sths have a thing will it will only let a player play so much anyways? so even if you did put first line at 50% they wouldn't actually play that much.

[Spartan 4,437]

Just now, Brewins15 said:

doesn't sths have a thing will it will only let a player play so much anyways? so even if you did put first line at 50% they wouldn't actually play that much.

It's been pretty well documented that ice time sliders mean nothing. Ice time is purely dependent on what lines you're in. 1st line gets the most, 4th gets the least.

[Nykonax 1,564]

3 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Loophole: a team can just give 50% ice time to the first and second lines

Icetime percentage doesnt actually do anything