Future Salary Cap tweaks

[Beketov 9,225]

Not going to bother with the members tag on this as it mostly affects the @VHL GM’s but just wanted to get it out there.

 

This does not affect the upcoming Season 98 but for Season 99 and Season 100 we are slightly reducing the Salary Cap for the VHL. The cap for S99 will be 42 Million and the cap for Season 100 (and forward from there) will be 40 million. The goal of these tweaks is to spread out players a bit to get the league parity more evened out.

 

- @Commissioner

[dstevensonjr 519]

I voiced my concerns in the Discord thread, and I'll voice them here too. If these changes are being made in the name of parity, I'd suggest that 10 different Cup winners in 11 years shows that league parity is just fine. If the changes are being made because too many teams are selling off all of their players in the name of adding a ton of draft picks, put a cap on draft picks similar to what the VHLM has. Punishing teams who try to maximize the use of their cap space each season to reward the teams who are essentially tanking to add more picks is the wrong approach in my opinion. We don't have a competitiveness problem in the VHL.

[der meister 3,344]

If this is what's happening, the player store purchases should decrease in price 

[Daniel Janser 2,275]

7 minutes ago, der meister said:

If this is what's happening, the player store purchases should decrease in price 

I mean the Players will still receive the same salary as before. Teams just cannot afford to have as many starplayers in their roster as before... So I do not see the connection, but maybe I am missing something here (if I do, please enlighten me, I would like to follow your train of thought)

[dstevensonjr 519]

30 minutes ago, Daniel Janser said:

I mean the Players will still receive the same salary as before. Teams just cannot afford to have as many starplayers in their roster as before... So I do not see the connection, but maybe I am missing something here (if I do, please enlighten me, I would like to follow your train of thought)

Teams will be forced to stay specifically at the salary bracket price for players rather than be able to go above, plus they won't be able to give out bonuses that could have before with a lowered cap. I know that it's uncommon for players to receive contracts above minimum now, but it does still happen. The decreases ensure that no teams will likely be able to afford that possibility.

[Spartan 4,665]

1 minute ago, dstevensonjr said:

Teams will be forced to stay specifically at the salary bracket price for players rather than be able to go above, plus they won't be able to give out bonuses that could have before with a lowered cap. I know that it's uncommon for players to receive contracts above minimum now, but it does still happen. The decreases ensure that no teams will likely be able to afford that possibility.

Considering the league wanted to eliminate bonuses entirely at some point, this is a significant compromise that still allows for bonuses to be given out. Rebuilders are typically the only ones I've seen hand out bonuses historically, with maybe one or two fringe cases in my 20 seasons as a VHL GM. My first experience with it as a GM has quite literally been this season

[Ricer13 2,900]

Back in my day, hehehe

 

The salary cap was 40 mill and it’s completely manageable. Sure it’s nice to have the extra money to stack your team even further but now everyone’s got to strategize and learn to work within the constraints the league is providing. Should be exciting to watch who can manage this without much issue. 

[CowboyinAmerica 2,981]

My thoughts are less the team side and more the player side: I'm a bit worried about the chilling effect on max earners. It's already tough for some in the back half of their career to find a landing spot with the current cap, take the end of Merome Dilson's career for example. If this was applied to this season, take a look at Vancouver's roster and you're probably seeing someone like Wayne Gretzky ending up on a non-competitive team for the prime of their career for cap reasons, just because they're slightly older and slightly more expensive than other up-and-coming players. That isn't super fun. Adding a 1000 TPA player to like D.C. right now isn't magically going to make them a top team, and I think it's either going to lead to some disgruntled max players, or perhaps people dedicing being a max player isn't really worth it anyway (which would really be bad for the league and stifle overall activity).

[dstevensonjr 519]

11 minutes ago, Ricer13 said:

Back in my day, hehehe

 

The salary cap was 40 mill and it’s completely manageable. Sure it’s nice to have the extra money to stack your team even further but now everyone’s got to strategize and learn to work within the constraints the league is providing. Should be exciting to watch who can manage this without much issue. 

The issue isn't whether it's manageable or not, the issue is why are we doing this? Like I said in my post, if it's for competitiveness reasons, we've had 10 different teams win the last 11 Cups. Nobody has been stacking teams that are constantly keeping others out of Championships. If we had the same 2 teams win the last 5 Cups, I'd agree that we have an issue that needs to be addressed. In the last 10 seasons, 75% of the league has been to the Cup Finals. That certainly doesn't seem like a reason to be lowering the Cap for parity reasons.

[mattyIceman 1,242]

7 minutes ago, dstevensonjr said:

the issue is why are we doing this?

Best guesses would be, slower recruitment and since it used to be 40mil back then, with all the hybrid stuff coming out in 83, everyone seems to have settled into that and killed the previous meta.

 

Team building will be more interesting.

[Ricer13 2,900]

5 minutes ago, dstevensonjr said:

The issue isn't whether it's manageable or not, the issue is why are we doing this? Like I said in my post, if it's for competitiveness reasons, we've had 10 different teams win the last 11 Cups. Nobody has been stacking teams that are constantly keeping others out of Championships. If we had the same 2 teams win the last 5 Cups, I'd agree that we have an issue that needs to be addressed. In the last 10 seasons, 75% of the league has been to the Cup Finals. That certainly doesn't seem like a reason to be lowering the Cap for parity reasons.

When the league average salary was 11 million below the salary cap last season I’d say it’s reasonable to say the league can comfortably operate at 40 million. 
 

Parity is definitely a reason but there are many others as well. The league isn’t as full as it was during the Covid era where we needed more cap to allow more space on teams for the amount of players we had. Since then our numbers have declined so why wouldn’t the cap along with it. 
 

The process of doing it over a couple of seasons is a fair process for GMs to give them time to adjust. The cap is bound to fluctuate with league numbers so I’m sure we will see it back up again if we end up with a few good recruitment drives in the future. 

[dstevensonjr 519]

2 minutes ago, Ricer13 said:

When the league average salary was 11 million below the salary cap last season I’d say it’s reasonable to say the league can comfortably operate at 40 million. 
 

Parity is definitely a reason but there are many others as well. The league isn’t as full as it was during the Covid era where we needed more cap to allow more space on teams for the amount of players we had. Since then our numbers have declined so why wouldn’t the cap along with it. 
 

The process of doing it over a couple of seasons is a fair process for GMs to give them time to adjust. The cap is bound to fluctuate with league numbers so I’m sure we will see it back up again if we end up with a few good recruitment drives in the future. 

Then bring in a cap floor instead of reducing the ceiling. For teams who sold off like crazy the last 2 seasons (the teams who directly dragged that league average cap spending way down) and gained a truckload of draft picks, they're now rewarded by having teams who have spent to the cap suddenly need to offload players because they can't fit them in the cap. We're not addressing the actual issue here, we just have teams who now have large prospect pools and additional draft picks over the next 2 drafts, and will now get cap dumps that will accelerate their tank/rebuild.

 

It just feels like a backwards way of making teams stop from fully tanking and trading all of the players off their roster by rewarding the teams who just did that.

[qripll 539]

I definitely approve @dstevensonjr's point of view. However, I'm curious to see how it will affect the league and how GMs will cope with adjustments. On the other hand, as soon as s100 prospects become eligible we will have to edit cap again. So, how long will we manage around 40m? S99-101, mainly. Then, we will have to adjust the cap again. Seems like a belated change, or just action for the sake of action.

[Vice 425]

I imagine the snap back effect from this will more than likely actually hurt parity in the near-future. As someone mentioned, we've already had quite a varied champion record recently and this seems to just force a changeup for the sake of having a changeup. 

@dstevensonjr had a great point that cap floor basically prevents teams from sand-bagging and making only half the league viable. These teams will be poised to scoop up star players on the cheap to help free up space and it's not going to address parity at all really if we raise the cap. In fact it'll probably have the opposite effect. 

[Grape 829]

Let's go we gonna see cap dumps for picks

[Ricer13 2,900]

19 minutes ago, dstevensonjr said:

Then bring in a cap floor instead of reducing the ceiling. For teams who sold off like crazy the last 2 seasons (the teams who directly dragged that league average cap spending way down) and gained a truckload of draft picks, they're now rewarded by having teams who have spent to the cap suddenly need to offload players because they can't fit them in the cap. We're not addressing the actual issue here, we just have teams who now have large prospect pools and additional draft picks over the next 2 drafts, and will now get cap dumps that will accelerate their tank/rebuild.

 

It just feels like a backwards way of making teams stop from fully tanking and trading all of the players off their roster by rewarding the teams who just did that.

Raising the floor doesn’t do anything to fix the issue of a reduced amount of players in the league since Covid. 
 

How are these lower end teams supposed to spend to the floor when there aren’t enough players for them to sign to get to the floor. The answer is to reduce the cap.

 

We have to look at it from a league as a whole perspective and not so much about which teams you think this is screwing over. Numbers are down so the cap comes down. 
 

 

[Ricer13 2,900]

Everyone is also banking on the league bouncing back instantly with numbers but there is absolutely no garauntee of that. The recruitment drive could completely fall flat and we are in the same position.

[der meister 3,344]

2 hours ago, Daniel Janser said:

I mean the Players will still receive the same salary as before. Teams just cannot afford to have as many starplayers in their roster as before... So I do not see the connection, but maybe I am missing something here (if I do, please enlighten me, I would like to follow your train of thought)

 

What D-Steve said. I've definitely made it a point with multiple players to push for more than the predetermined salary. 

[Spartan 4,665]

Cap floor will just lead to more inflated bonuses and even less trades bc players on rebuilders are overpaid

[Banackock 8,327]

And by league parity we mean helping those who can’t build teams, build teams.

 

[Josh 1,704]

1 hour ago, Spartan said:

Cap floor will just lead to more inflated bonuses and even less trades bc players on rebuilders are overpaid

 

Tbf any implemented cap floor would exclude bonuses.

[Steve 2,001]

The league was very active before Covid. What was different back then?

[Berocka 2,268]

5 hours ago, dstevensonjr said:

the teams who directly dragged that league average cap spending way down

That's not how averages work

 

Total salaries/number of teams = average cap

 

Where the players play don't change the average cap hit

[Frank 5,338]

I propose two different options with this change. 

 

Remove the salary cap with a luxury tax and send the GM's a tab at the end of each season if they go over. Every 2 million over the luxury tax is a forced $50 donation and a spanking by @JardyB10.

 

Or allow retained salary up to 50% in transactions allowing teams to really go all in with a reduced cap. Also allow third party retained salary so rebuilding teams have an incentive to get a pick for taking on salary like in the NHL.  

 

 

[Ricer13 2,900]

39 minutes ago, Frank said:

I propose two different options with this change. 

 

Remove the salary cap with a luxury tax and send the GM's a tab at the end of each season if they go over. Every 2 million over the luxury tax is a forced $50 donation and a spanking by @JardyB10.

 

Or allow retained salary up to 50% in transactions allowing teams to really go all in with a reduced cap. Also allow third party retained salary so rebuilding teams have an incentive to get a pick for taking on salary like in the NHL.  

 

 

Option A is the only way!