[Sylvanfan]

Well a weak trade deadline....and consensus is what can we do to stimulate activity?

I suppose my number one suggestion is really up the ante for how much you get for winning a playoff round. Maybe if you get 2 million for every round won. Really make it worth your while to win a playoff round and give those teams an advantage going into the next season. If you go to the win the cup you have 8 million right there to keep your team together.

Maybe we need to start using agents only in the offseason or something. Ever since they came about I see less and less trading every year. Maybe it's the Cheese rule adjustments we've tried more than anything. In the old system we were basically forced to lose players, but the tradeoff was that we knew there would be free agents to in the summer to sign. Right now a lot of teams say no to pending UFA's because they fear they'll lose them for nothing. And in a lot of cases these guys get over paid badly in the last year of a contract for an extension. Technically 33% of all players 29 and over should be free agents every year. Knowing that you could only protect one, I think it made teams look to move more guys as opposed to resigning all of them and than keeping them type of thing. I know this would sort of punish GM's who are a bit schrewder with the agents as they tend to trade for a pending UFA, sign him and than deal him off. But I can't be convinced that after 3 full seasons of agents that it's helped create more trading. Not to mention agency turn over has been relatively high and I've found in the past that some agents seemed to be all over the place with things. But again, I don't know if it's a solution or not. Maybe have a full time agent to handle all season long guys who get added to the database, and than let that agent pick the top free agents for himself and bring in summer help for all other UFA's?

Other than that maybe another increase in the Cheese rule. It does appear some teams simply ran out of Cheese room to keep themselves from more deals, although no guarantee they wouldn't have done so if it was more.

Curious to hear the suggestions of others.