UFA "value" idea

[Swayze11]

I was thinking of a way to help the UFA process. I think it is probably the most unrealistic part of the CPHL that doesn't work like the NHL.

The agent process is by far the most realistic part - but there is a reason why the CPHL eliminated it. What if the commish team set the bar on each player in a batch.

ie:
Player X - Won't accept anything less then 2.5 mill
Player Y - Won't accept anything less then 4.5 mill

You could set the value very easily based on rating. For example: -2 mill based on what they would get if they were an RFA.

It would help people set a value on what to expect for each player. For a team with limited cap, they could target the players they would realistically target. It would also eliminate "steals" - which is very unrealistic. I know we had a bunch of steals last year because only 1 person bid. Again - this is an unrealistic process that doesn't work with the way NHL free agency works.

If a player doesn't get any bids from GMs, they get placed in the next batch at a lower minimum - which would probably be in parallel to what an NHL agent would do.

What do you think?

[Hanna Sniper]

If every team has chance to bid on a player and all choose not too.... except one GM. I really think putting a 2.5M pricetag on him is pointless if every GM had the chance to offer 750K and didn't think he was worth it.

The reason why steals happen are because GM's are greedy and they what all the top players. Maybe those that are upset about the steals should scale back on the star struck ways and target the other players.

One of the easiest ways to prevent a player going at a steal is to offer him more

[Swayze11]

I disagree 100%

You are missing my point. My point is that this bidding process is unrealistic in comparison to how it is done in the CPHL.

The best way would be to have agents - but like I mentioned before, this will never be brought back.

As an agent, you will tell GMs what your client is looking for. This is the best way to make this process realistic.

[TurdFerguson]

Originally Posted by Hanna Sniper

If every team has chance to bid on a player and all choose not too.... except one GM. I really think putting a 2.5M pricetag on him is pointless if every GM had the chance to offer 750K and didn't think he was worth it.

The reason why steals happen are because GM's are greedy and they what all the top players. Maybe those that are upset about the steals should scale back on the star struck ways and target the other players.

One of the easiest ways to prevent a player going at a steal is to offer him more

I dont beleive that is true. First off, "offering more" implies you know the bid you need to beat, which doesn't happen now. Steals happen because there is no ability to see who is getting bid action and who isnt. Some GMs, that dont have the cap for large offers just toss out a 0.5M deal (or similar) to every player just in case someone gets passed over by the league. That is not to say the entire league didn't want that player, but rather to say, they wanted others in the group more. To that end, the grouping and prioritization of players plays a big part.

I don't think the solution for "preventing steals" is to stop bidding on high-end guys. To run a blind bid process with no (meaningful) minimum bid is the problem (if you believe "steals" are a problem of course).

This ties in nicely to the conversation David and I had the other day about changing the UFA process from a blind process, to a transparent, multi-bid process (live auction if you will). That discussion is for another thread though...

[Hanna Sniper]

I get the point, just don't agree with it

Not everyone get a trophy, you don't like the players going for steals then offer them the 2.5M and he won't. The current system works for those that are not greedy and one thing that is preached from day one in the CPHL is the UFA isn't going to save your butt

[Swayze11]

This has nothing to do with greed, so you clearly don't understand my point.

What I am trying to say is, this "bid and pray" system is not realistic - we make changes to the league on a regular basis to try and make it as realistic as possible.

If you knew what a player wants (will happen 100% of the time in the NHL), you could get a sense of what free agents you should target. You are obviously not going to spend your time on the bigger names if you are on a limited budget.

This doesn't eliminate the problem you have brought up. If you want a player really bad, you can still offer large amounts of money for them.

[Hanna Sniper]

OT Side note

I have permission to write an article on exactly why the Agent system was a fail. The hard thing is that I'm not a writer so it's a lot harder task then I thought it would be. To word things to tell a story of how things unfolded but yet tell it in a way that it's fulling understood that never one one person ever in the wrong, nothing but the right intentions but unfolded in a Three's Company type of way

Me saying this now is a just a kick in the pants to finish it off and post it

[TurdFerguson]

I understand what youre aaying Doug but I don't understand the 'greedy' comments.

[Swayze11]

I agree with you, agents are a bad idea. I am not saying we should bring them back.

This idea would just be minimal effort to set value for a player to eliminate steals - which never happen in the NHL.

An auction system is the most ideal thing, but this is a solution that would take minimal effort.

[Hanna Sniper]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

This has nothing to do with greed, so you clearly don't understand my point.

What I am trying to say is, this "bid and pray" system is not realistic - we make changes to the league on a regular basis to try and make it as realistic as possible.

If you knew what a player wants (will happen 100% of the time in the NHL), you could get a sense of what free agents you should target. You are obviously not going to spend your time on the bigger names if you are on a limited budget.

This doesn't eliminate the problem you have brought up. If you want a player really bad, you can still offer large amounts of money for them.

That my friend is greed, you want to know what players to target because you're loosing out on the ones you are targeting..... If I can't get the players I want then I want to be able to get the players I want second.... greed

[Hanna Sniper]

plus I'm not right just adding thoughts as well

[Swayze11]

Originally Posted by Hanna Sniper

That my friend is greed, you want to know what players to target because you're loosing out on the ones you are targeting..... If I can't get the players I want then I want to be able to get the players I want second.... greed

Not greed, realistic.

If you are an NHL GM, and you target 3 free agents. Free Agent 1's price goes out of the range you are willing to pay, then you have to focus on the other 2. Alternatively, you can go onto plan B and target someone else. This is exactly what happens in the NHL.

What my suggestion doesn't even solve this issue because we don't know what everyone's bids are. If I knew what Player X's current price was at, then I can see the greed aspect.

This is just a solution to set the starting value of a player, there is a good chance this minimum starting point will get doubled. This minimum starting point is just to help people focus on specific players who they think they can realistically get. If I have 5 mill in cap, I am not going to target a guy asking for 6. I can focus on a guy asking for 5 or less.

[JiriHrdina]

Interesting suggestion but I guess I would ask what is wrong with steals? The ufa process is a game within the game. A multi bid open system would be a huge advantage to teams with more cap. As it stands now they have an advantage but still have to make smart bids. In short what is the core problem that is being solved by changing the system?

[Swayze11]

There is nothing wrong with steals, they are just unrealistic.

I disagree that a "smart" bid is spreading your cap over all the free agents and hoping nobody bids on 1 of them so you get a steal.

This would be an advantage with teams with more cap - which it should be, shouldn't it? Without weighing intangibles that happen in the NHL (contender vs non-contender, best fit for family, location, etc.) the teams with the most cap should have this advantage.

But, this also helps the teams with very little cap. They can focus on a guy that they can realistically have a chance of getting. Similar to the NHL - if a team has limited cap, they can go look at players who are asking for very little.

[Hanna Sniper]

The greed part comes into play for me by the fact that you need to know who to target with your cap. You want to get a player. that's the greed for me.

without being told who to target (realistically get) you can't help yourself and chance the bigger fish and chase other highly targeted players. The reason why some teams do get steals (and steal help trading in the cphl) is that they don't jump over the high profile player and target non highly touted players hoping to win a lottery. The lottery can just as easily be stopped by one GM offering a fair value to X player and not chasing unrealistic goals

My greed comes in by GM's not being able to help themselves from chasing the imposable .

[Swayze11]

With this option, you can still get steals. Just the minimum would be RFA value minus 2 million.

I get what you are saying Doug, but it is just not realistic and does not follow what happens in the NHL - our ultimate goal.

[GreenLantern]

The blanket bidding is unrealistic, I agree with this.

It would definitely help in the bidding process if we had a ball park of what the player is asking. I have been trying to go off of what they grid at and then working down from there to a reasonable deal.

I would love to see players reject deals if it is an obvious lowball and re enter the market in the next batch of UFA's.

Realistically would a player accept 500k just because it was the first offer? While there are still other UFA's out there and the season is far from started? I think more realistically he would reject these types of offers until all other avenues had been explored. So maybe we remove all lowball rejections in the last batch as it would be the players last ditch effort to find a team. THAT is a bit more realistic to the process.

However, I am not the one who devotes his time to running the league, simply being a part of it. So I understand how this complicates things. Having a minimum bid amount however would remove a lot of the leg work involved with rejecting offers. Then if he makes it to open bid, remove that minimum. Pretty simple..

[Hanna Sniper]

Realistic being our ultimate goal

Players I just signed with realism in mind

Vladimir Sobotka 1.2M NHL - 3.0M CPHL
Brandon Sutter 2.06M - 4.0M CPHL
John Tavares 5.5M NHL - 8.5M CPHL
Jiri Tlusty 1.6M NHL - 5.0M CPHL
Karl Alzner 2.8M NHL- 4.5M CPHL
Keith Aulie 375K NHL - 1.5MCPHL
Ryan Ellis - 1.44M NHL - 1.15M CPHL

Now I understand you may ask what this has to do with the actually RFA bidding process. My answer is, as we do chaise trying to be as realistic as possible, there's a SIM element that one can't help from happening. I grossly overpaid for my players, thats unrealistic but is the system we choose to mirror the NHL. But this gross overpayment league wide will have a huge effect eating up league cap and creating a lot more chances for steals to happen through UFA

Right now there is 22 players in Batch 1. For a GM's to spam 1M contracts he needs 22M free Cap, so just to play the lottery he's going to have to already make concessions on which players to not waste a useless bid on or which ones to.

I understand the want of realism, but the crap shoot SIM factor randomness is the fun thing about our current system. There's going to be huge losers such as GM that pays Ramo 9.99M, then there's going to be a GM that hits on a couple players like one team did last season landing 3 NHL defencemen for dirt cheap. At the end of the UFA there will be some huge losers, some big winners and a lot more teams caught on the outside missing out that thought the UFA would solve their problems... if you ask me, that sounds pretty realistic with the NHL

[Swayze11]

The RFA and UFA grids are unrealistic, but that isn't what I am trying to solve at all.

In your examples of NHL vs CPHL salaries, there is much more factors in place that we have no control on. Tavares has a low cap his in the NHL because he has a deal greater then 3 years (our max). There is also intangible things in the NHL that we can't control here like I mentioned before (family, players fit, weather, etc.) that may have an impact on their NHL contract.

[dsavillian]

heh, we should have waited until after UFA season to have this discussion



I have a few ideas regarding a bidding system for UFAs, but I'll wait until later in the offseason to post my ideas.


Either way, I agree that the current UFA process can be improved. I'll hold my thoughts until after the current process is done though