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Changes to Inactive Free Agency


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Hello VHL,

 

Today I have a few changes to announce that are being implemented for this upcoming off-season with respect to inactives and inactive free agents. While it seems like there is a lot here, these are really fairly minor changes overall given what little impact inactive free agency often has. That being said, we think these changes are long overdue to clean up a system that has been relatively broken for a long while. 

 

Priority-claim based system for dispersing inactive free agents

The current system for dispersing inactive free agents largely comes down to who can type 7M the fastest come the opening of free agency. The system is frankly a mess and results in inflated salaries and confusing questions about timing of bids and bid limits, many of which have been somewhat inconsistently answered over the years. For those reasons, in the S57 off-season we will be moving to a priority claim based system for dispersing inactive free agents. It will work as follows:
 

  • Initial priority will be determined by the reverse order of the standings including playoff results (the list will be identical to the order of round 2 and above in the draft). 
  • For claims opened on the first day of free agency, teams will have 24 hours from the time of the first claim to submit claims. At the end of 24 hours, the team with the highest priority claim gets the player. If at any time the team with the highest priority submits a claim, or if an existing claim becomes the highest priority claim, that team gets the player immediately. This means claims can be retracted at any time during the 24h period UNLESS it is the highest priority claim overall in which case it cannot be retracted because it ended the claim period. 
  • For all claims opened after the first day of free agency, 12 hours will be used instead of 24 for everything in the above paragraph. 
  • Only ONE claim can be active at a time per team. Once a claim is made, the claiming team falls to the bottom of the list. 
  • All players claimed will be automatically signed to one-year contracts at their TPE minimum salary. These players will not be eligible to receive bonuses. 
  • For each teams first claim each season, they may claim any player they choose. For subsequent uses, it must be used on the highest TPE player available unless there is a justifiable reason not to. We will certainly be reasonable with this. (Example: A team needs a goalie, so choosing the highest TPE goalie over a higher TPE player would be acceptable).
  • To prevent circumvention of the above rule, players claimed in inactive free agency cannot be released. This means a team cannot get around the requirement that the highest TPE players be claimed first by continually signing and releasing players to effectively 'climb down' to lower TPE players. They can still be sent down to VHLM teams but not if the only reason for it is to circumvent the rules. 

 

I think I covered everything but a hopefully more clear presentation of the new rules will be posted in the rulebook and in the new inactive FA section. 

 

Salary Cap Floor

We recognize that requiring inactive free agents to sign at TPE minimum salaries will make it difficult for some teams to reach the cap floor. For that reason, we have decided to abolish the salary cap floor. It will be replaced by a new roster minimum of 6 players. This number is roughly in line with what the current cap floor requires in most cases and should be easily achievable. 

 

This means:

  • All teams must have a minimum of 6 roster players prior to starting the season or face penalty. 
  • There is no requirement for a minimum overall salary expense but all TPE salary minimums and contract maximums for individual players continue to apply, as does the salary cap.
  • At no point during the season can a team fall under the roster minimum as a result of a trade or any other type of transaction. This will be enforced strictly so to avoid having trades delayed (or voided completely in the case of deadline trades), GM's need to plan ahead and sign players prior to making those deals. 

 

Defining Inactive

Lastly, a situation came up this off-season that challenged the current definition of an inactive which is that if a player hasn't posted in the last 30 days, they are deemed inactive. After reviewing it, we have decided that we will keep the current definition of inactive but make some administrative changes to improve free agency. From now on the blue team will be aiming to publish a pending FA list as soon as the season comes to a close and will keep it updated throughout off-season. Part of this will be tagging everyone without a contract but, specifically, questionable inactives (i.e. people who have visited but not posted). Those people will have a few days to respond or else be treated as an inactive. 

 

That's all we have for now. If anyone has any questions or concerns regarding any of this, feel free to post below and we'll do our best to answer them.

 

- The Blue Team/BoG

Link to comment
https://vhlforum.com/topic/44931-changes-to-inactive-free-agency/
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30 minutes ago, Bring Back Chat said:

excellent idea gentlemen

 

can't wait to tank and have 6 roster players with 30 tpe :)

 

Trust the process 

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