They did. Apparently it will be brought back eventually.

I believe that there is an iphone app that costs a buck that does this for you.

I finally found this thread.

I bought Flyer's Suck, and changed it to Alberta Beef. IT'S ON. I'm not looking to trade anyone in the first week or two, but once I figure out what I'm missing, I'll start talking to you guys.

What are payouts? How do the 2 divisions work?

I really botched the draft this time around. So many wasted picks where I could've gotten legitimate fantasy options late. Instead I took guys like Grigorenko and Corvo. Ugh. Probably shouldn't have used a keeper slot on Hiller either since he'll probably just split time with Fasth.

While it's very early on in the season what are everybody's thoughts on adding a few more categories for next year? We've talked about adding in wins for goaltenders, but that only makes sense to do if we also add in a few more skater categories. I'm thinking hits and faceoff wins but am open to ideas on that. Whatever we choose to add, we need to keep the ratio between goalie and skater categories around 2-1 for balance purposes (and I say that as a guy with a goaltending dominant team, or at least it will be moving forward).

Another thought is to keep the H2H format but instead assign raw point values to different stats and whoever has the most at the end of the week wins. The reason I think this could be a beneficial change is that you get better and more realistic value for your production. Right now it makes no difference whether you lose a category by one or ten goals and that doesn't seem all that fair, plus that sort of winner take all format increases variance which we all despise.

Just some of my thoughts on the future state of the league. I also wouldn't mind reducing keeper spots to 6-7 going forward just for the sake of making the draft more interesting.

Lastly, what does everybody think about having a few 'prospect' slots for promising players not yet playing in the NHL? Some keeper leagues do this and I think it could be an interesting addition.

Yes...welll...maybe....

Never been a fan of faceoff wins in a league like this as it gives such a boost to centerman and tons of added value to those few odd ball wingers who get to take faceoffs. I really like hits but ideally I think you add this and remove PIMs as realistically getting PIMs is often considered a bad thing. I have no problem adding goalie wins.

I guess I have no real problem with this although I do like our current format. Basically this just gives an edge to whoever has the better team which I suppose is fine and maybe ideal. I like that you can choose to draft a team and give up certain cats if you feel you can't compete, this requires you to try and be competitive in all areas. Probably makes more sense to get rid of H2H entirely if we wanted to go this route.

IMO the way to make the draft more interesting would be to add additional slots or bench slots. I find the first few rounds of the drafts the least interesting because everyone knows who all the top players are. It gets way more fun late where you need to make tough decisions between 50pt or even 40pt players and finding those gems.

Always been a fan of having a farm system myself but it's a pain in the ass if yahoo doesnt have a built in system. (they might, im not sure?) It greatly benefits those teams out of contention and those teams trying to rebuild but if only a few people are committed to doing a farm system then they just win forever by getting their hands on all the best prospects.

I like this idea a lot.

Yeah I think the part of my post Rat quoted is the most intriguing change possibility, although we'd have to hammer out the details together about the value of each stat.

I don't mind keeping things the way they are either. I think the state of the league is pretty good atm.

Also just went back and checked the draft results for last year. Holy cow I must have been drunk to make so many awful picks. Gems include:

- Drafting a 30 something Daniel Sedin in the first round
- Drafting a 30 something Joe Thornton in the 5th round
- Drafting Alex Edler ahead of PK Subban and Drew Doughty
- Drafting Ryan Clowe in the 9th round

Just shameful stuff and this year wasn't a whole lot better. Need to actually prepare next time because waiting until I'm up and then frantically scouring the rankings for players to draft is causing me to make some really boneheaded picks.

So what are payouts?

My other league has prospects, and its a gigantic pain in the ass. Highly recommend we don't add them.

Sorry for missing all this discussion. TJay, the payouts are $650/$350/$200 for the top three.

Re: scoring changes, I'm in a CBS league right now that does what A5 is talking about. Problem is, you need to pay for those and the scoring kind of blows. I'm sure we can edit it to our liking, but there are sure to be advantages and disadvantages to both. In my experience, points-based formats tend to give big advantages to teams with the most points scored whereas our system, as Pat said, rewards teams that are competitive in all areas rather than just raw scoring.

I'm definitely not opposed to shaking things up as long as we do it right. For now, let's see how the current format does over an 82 game season; I was really pleased with how it played out last year.

I think it's an interesting idea in theory, if only so top prospects like Drouin who are free agents because they're in junior or the AHL don't automatically go to the first person who hears that they were called up. Assuming prospect slots work similar to IR where you can have them in designated slots but not on your active roster until you drop somebody I don't see how it could be a bad thing. Can you elaborate on why exactly you don't like it in your other league?

I was mostly just spitballing ideas and seeing if anybody else liked them, but I've got no issue with keeping things the way they are. I think the scoring is overall pretty fair and balanced and there is value in having lots of different types of players as opposed to just scorers, but scorers of course still maintain their value because of the multitude of offensive categories and their scarcity around the league. The most intriguing idea to me remains the points based scoring system, but if we have to switch sites and / or can't properly customize the value of different categories to our liking then it wouldn't really be worth it.

How it works in my other league:

Prospects are defined as 25 GP for a player, and 42 for a goalie (NHL reg + playoff games are all that count).

The night that a player plays game #25, if his owner does not have him on the roster, you can submit an email to whoever is in first place at the time, and wheover is the lowest rank team to show interest gets him. Once he has played game #26, he's just fair game on the FA system. (Numbers are 42 and 43 for goalies). If first place wants him, I guess he just emails the whole league the next day that noone showed interest and he wants him. We've never had that issue.

This is all well and good for the first year, but now we are on year #3. I currently have the most with 16 prospects (I've drafted lots of them, and traded for some), and other people have 5-10. We currently have roughly 75+ NHL players now who are on FA but protected. This number just goes up every year. Sure lots of them are AHL/ECHL plugs, but it's still getting very bloated.

So every single time you go to pick up a player, you need to pull up hockey DB and see his games played, and then if it's less than 25/42, you need to pull out the prospect list and double check that noone else has him.

Then there is the pain in the ass of tracking your own players, to make sure you pick them up in time before they hit 25/42.

It also adds the loophole that someone who has a player like barkov, can constantly drop him and add other players, and noone else can touch barkov while he is on FA. Essentially adding a roster spot (as long as you stay within your 4 moves per week).

Some guys also got screwed last year. 2 guys had Baertschi and Grigorenko, the trade deadline hit, they left them off their roster (we freeze add/drops after the trade deadline too), and then both players passed game #25 during the end of the regular season (our playoffs). So both were draft eligible this year, and not an option for those guys to keep. Lame, but also poor management on their parts.

I use the system to my advantage FULLY in the other league, but it adds so much more work, and I honestly would rather it not be there.

and thanks cwice, solid payouts. So I assume regular season means nothing, and all payouts are based on playoffs for 1st, 2nd, 3rd?

Also, how do these divisions work? Do top 4 in each division make playoffs, or top 8 overall?

Forgot to add one big rule for our prospects:

we have 25 roster spots, but 15 keepers, so only 10 draft spots.

We actually draft 12 spots, so it implies that you draft 2 prospects. However you could draft 12 prospects if you wanted, and then just fill your roster with FAs.

If you draft the player, you get his rights until he hits the games played mark. However, if you pick up a free agent that was not drafted, but is under the games played cap, he has zero protection if you drop him again. You can only protect drafted players.

The divisions essentially mean nothing (except for scheduling purposes, maybe?). The playoff standings are the top 6 teams overall, and the top 2 get a first round bye. Also as an added incentive, the team that wins the consolation bracket wins the first overall draft pick and the rest of the draft order is determined NHL-style.

Also, I was thinking before the season of re-drafting the divisions every two seasons via random.org. Anyone have a problem with adding that rule?

Anyone want to trade me a goalie? I'm desperate msg me

Cwice, what do you think about adding the IR+ spot yahoo recently put in place which would allow players who are listed as DTD to be moved to IR? It's really annoying when you have a good player who is out for a week or two that doesn't get the official IR designation and you have to waste a roster spot until they return.

I wouldn't be opposed to changing one of the IR spots to IR+. Would like to have the league weigh in before I do it though, kind of changes dynamics halfway through the year.

I'm all for it.

Seems like a change we should make in the off season but either way

If we're going to make a change mid season, I think it should go to a vote and only pass if it's unanimous. I would like to see it though. Sometimes that IR spot takes forever.

Looks like we have five yes votes so far (Me, Khaos, A5, Rat, easternbloc). Will PM the rest of the league and report back.

I won't vote no, just because if it's 11-1, I don't care enough to piss everyone else off, but I'll try to explain why I don't think we should do this.

Yahoo is very very easy to give players the DTD designation. If a player misses a game due to the flu, yahoo gives them DTD. If a player leaves a game early, they get DTD status. Especially as the season goes on, players get DTD status more and more, because coaches become more and more cryptic.

The IR spots can be abused, and if used correctly you can basically stash 1-2 extra players for short periods of time. Allowing that for DTD players will make it too easy to abuse. We want turnover in this league.

The fun isn't in setting your lineup daily. It's in add/drops and trades. The more players a team can have, the less add/drops/trades there are. If a player has 3 DTD players, then he can either sacrifice that week, or try to make a trade, or drop him. It creates more turnover.

that said, it's a tiny deal, so I don't really care.

I think what Cwice proposed was taking one of the two available IR spots and switching it to IR+. In that case I think it's pretty difficult for anybody to abuse it. The worst case scenario is somebody stashes a player for a week or two, but if they're being intentionally kept off the active roster chances are they're not an especially valuable player that you couldn't just grab in free agency.

Yeah, I'm against doing it for both spots, at least for this season, for some of the reasons TJay mentioned. However, I think the maximum of three player adds for the week helps curtail total abuse of the IR+ spot. We're already limited in our roster changes for the week, so a guy can't load up a bunch of extra games by putting a player on IR+.

At the end of the day, it would stink if having an player on DTD status at the end of the season prevented a team from making an add during the playoffs. I know it's happened to me with Elias, Rat with Crawford, and I'm sure countless other players this year.

I have so many players on IR I don't care, so I vote yes.