Money Article Preview

[Spartan 4,531]

Hello all! In case you haven't seen it yet, I will be writing an article covering contract money/the salary cap in the VHL, as well as any overarching pain points the community has identified with anything contract-money related. If you haven't already already filled it out but would like to, take a few minutes to do so here.

 

In the meantime, I have 25 responses from a wide array of members on the site, including VHL GM's, VHLE GM's, VHLM GM's, BOG members, AGM's, and regular veteran members along with new first gens with no league experience. I'm actually quite pleased about the breadth of diverse experience levels the survey was able to reach. Below are the graphs of responses of of the major questions I asked, which will be providing a bit of an insight as to what my article(s) will cover, and to what extent and depth.

 

 

This question received the most overwhelming "I understand everything about this" responses out of the five questions I posed. 20 out of 25 people feel confident in their ability to understand the individual items in the store, what each one did, and how to claim things from it. I generally agree with this sentiment as well, that the options are clearly presented and are easy to purchase and evaluate for what they offer. 

 

Prominent questions/comments:
- Why it has never been updated in a while?

- Do you receive your contract money for the next season before the last date for dep. fighters for the previous season?

- Why doesn’t my balance show my true balance?

 

 

Another question generally up there in user familiarity, but a bit more shaky for sure. Only 15 out of 25 are in the "confident" bracket (7-10 range), but with the average centered closer to around 8, there is still uncertainty from just about every user spare about 4, in their ability to properly manage regression. Some of this extends out to Jagr's vs % fighters, how to balance purchasing the non-regression related store purchases, and how to identify what plan is the best for each specific user.

 

Prominent questions/comments:

- When is the right time to buy non-regression purchases? Is it ok to bite the full 3% in your first regression?

- It would be fantastic if someone were to make a dep. fighter guide

- If I’m not a top earner, which depreciation fighters are the best for me?

- Will there (or should there) be an added depreciation fighter option now that there's potential for some to depreciate 4 times? (Spoiler alert - NO!)

 

 

This is one of the weirdest set of responses that I got, like a quasi-inverted normal distribution curve? Focused primarily on the extreme ends than in the center, which makes sense. You either know the salary brackets - what TPA+Banked amount makes what amount of money - or you don't. If someone isn't familiar with the rulebook in terms of contracts, obviously they wouldn't be familiar with structures or brackets. It is a lot of information, and an area that new VHL GM's have struggled with at first, myself included.

 

Prominent questions/comments:

- Does the original amount of money a player is signed for matter at all if said player is going to change salary brackets?

- Why (are contract amounts/bracket tier amounts) so low?

- I still don't fully understand when your TPE kicks in for any given season. The way I understand it is your contract scales based off of what your TPA is. And during the latter half of your career its even more because that is your "prime". I just don't understand how that works in relation to a season-by-season basis and the cap.

 

 

I'll admit I started running out of money related questions to ask that the general community should know about, so I sort of went a bit niche and the responses reflect that. Stuff like bonuses, options, backup goalie cap deductions are mainly tools and options that really only VHL GM's have to deal with. Players only experience options if they have to opt into something, but not much else about it. 

 

Prominent questions/comments:

- I get bonuses and options but wtf about everything else?

- The VHLE stuff doesn’t make any sense. VHLE rule book says all VHLE contracts are $1.5 M but I see VHLE guys on $3M, so I’m guessing that’s just for players who are VHLE only (no VHL team has their rights)? Also looks like the VHL rule book hasn’t been updated to include the VHLE as there is zero mention of it.

- It's all way over my head

 

 

Another question I bullied folks with lol. Everyone VHL GM's favorite topic, mid-season trades that involve cap reductions/faux-retention, along with releasing players under contract and dealing with the future cap hit/penalty. A pretty niche topic, but I think it's cool and any future VHL GM will have to know how this area with partial cap-hits works.

 

Prominent questions/comments:

- Just like how does that work?

- Don't even think of trading me Spartan. (  )

- Yeah no clue here, do players get % of their salary as a cap hit for % that’s remaining?

- Huh? This exists?

- Should midseason releases involve more cap retention? I shouldn't be able to cut someone at the deadline for the same amount as I'd keep in the preseason.

[Shindigs 1,771]

@Spartan Anything with this many bar charts in it just makes me all giddy on the inside. The dataset is pretty small, because it couldn't not be in the VHL. But despite that potentially changing the framing on the more strictly VHL GM related questions to have one bar chart for actual VHL GM/AGMs would give a more telling result? Because if I gave a low number on the last two questions as a First season 1st gen, that's not really indicative of a problem. Whereas if a VHL GM/AGM did, that would probably be cause for concern/future investigation. Also it would give us 2 more charts, which is clearly superior.

 

Overall a nice read, and I'm looking forward to the main article.