I got an idea on how we can make trading rights work in our league - we just the same system we have set up for extensions and contract lengths and apply a value to the player. For example, let's say a player that is eligible for a 4 year contract worth 7.7m per season is potentially on his way out. If we assign a value of a your own 2nd round pick to this player, then any team can request a trade for said players rights for the 2nd round pick.
Now, this does not mean you have to sign the player for the full 4 year 7.7m. But the return for his rights will always be worth a 2nd round pick. I'm thinking values could go like this:
Eligible for a 4 year contract: 2nd round pick
Eligible for a 3 year contract: 3rd round pick
Eligible for a 2 year contract worth more then 1m per season: 4th round pick
Eligible for a 2 year contract worth equal or less then 1m per season: 5th round pick
Thoughts?
My thoughts on this have changed to become more in line with favo's. Where if we decide to do this, there should be a benchmark for what needs to be moved so that to players are not traded for peanuts because their GM just wants something for them.
I think that if we simply go by the extension value that makes it easy for us to track. I would say that these standards would be the minimum so a GM could ask for more but this is the minimum needed so that the trade could pass.
Another thing is that the trading would only be open for pending free agents. So therefore other trades involving rostered players would not be able to take place. I would allow only picks, prospects and two way players to be traded this time but the trade must include a pending free agent.
Here are the standards, I think would be best fit. Player example in brackets.
$6.5m and above - 1st round pick (Ovechkin)
$5.0m-$6.4m - 2nd round pick (Couture)
$4.0m-$4.9m - 3rd round pick (Kesler)
$2.1m-$3.9m - 4th round pick (Staal)
$2.0m and under - 5th round pick (Bozak)