[FanIn80]

Good. Get rid of the draft. Let teams have to rely on scouting and allow players some freedom of choice. Let 32 teams try to sign 18 year-old Cale Makar and see who he chooses. Taylor Hall. Logan Thompson. Brayden Point. Gavin McKenna.

Instead of draft picks, have "signing slots." Teams get 7 slots every year, and slots are tied to player rankings...

- All signing-eligible players and are ranked from 1 to 224 (7*32) every year
- Teams have seven "signing-slots"
- Slots are assigned a ranking bracket, an "R1" slot can only be used to sign a rank 1 to 32 player. R2 slots can only be used on a rank 33-64 player... etc etc etc.
- Slots can be traded, but players signed to those slots can't be traded during the length of their ELCs. (So a player who wants to play isn't going to "only want to sign in Vegas" if Vegas isn't going to make room to play them.) (And a team can't take advantage of a player wanting to sign with them by only signing them to trade them.)
- Othen than that, teams are able to recruit and use their available slots to recruit and sign anyone they want to at any point between June 1st and the final day before training camp.
- Same rules we already have around ELCs with regards to when they kick in and one-way vs two-way.. etc etc.

Essentially it's the same as a draft. A team can only sign a player if they have an avalaible slot for that player's ranking. So, most of the time, it's still just gets one each of the best 32 and then one each of the next best 32, etc etc. Just like now though, teams can make trades to stock up on certain slots. So instead of trading a player and a 3rd round pick for a 2nd round pick (just a very loose example), you'd now trade a player and an 'R3' (Rank 65-97) slot for an 'R2' (Rank 33-64) slot. And then one team can now sign two players in the 33-64 range and the other team can sign two in the 65-97 range.

Also, players know that they have to sign with a team that has an open slot for their rank, so maybe they want to sign in Florida but oh no Florida just used their slot on someone else, and now there's only EDM, STL and BUF to chose from... better phone their agent and tell them to accept whatever STL is willing to offer them! There's no such thing as "I'm only going to sign with NYR" anymore, because if the Rangers don't have a slot for you then you're gonna have to suck it up and play somewhere else, because you can't be traded anywhere during the length of your ELC. So... do you sign a 3 year ELC somewhere else? Do you try to get a 1 year ELC instead and take another shot at getting NYR to sign you? ELCs are max 3 years, and ELC eligibiliy is also only 3 years, starting from the start of the first season that uses up your first ELC year. After those 3 ELC-eligible years are up, your RFA rights belong to the team that owned your final ELC year. So you better hope you can get the Rangers to use a slot on you, Mr. Fox, and that they're prepared to make room for you play... because maybe you end up having to choose between signing in Utah for your 3rd ELC and giving them full RFA rights, or pumping gas somewhere.