Rule change vote #2 (Prospect extension discount reduction)

[GypsieDeathBringer]

I'd do it because we are aligned closely to the economics of the NHL, and in this instance we are drastically different.  That result trickles down to unbalanced rosters.  I'd be good with reducing the extension to 3 years as it resembles a more established NHL bridge deal. .  Rebuilding teams would have more options to chose from as players can't be locked up for so long on top teams.

[shooter47]

I'd do it because we are aligned closely to the economics of the NHL, and in this instance we are drastically different.  That result trickles down to unbalanced rosters.  I'd be good with reducing the extension to 3 years as it resembles a more established NHL bridge deal.  Rebuilding teams would have more options to chose from as players can't be locked up for so long on top teams.

Other than the fact that our resign values are taken from actual NHL contract values I don't see how the economics in our league are aligned that closely with the NHL. Our salary cap is roughly based off the increases and decreases of the real life NHL salary cap but the NHL has alot more teams then we do. The 19/20 real life NHL salary cap is 81.5m. This means that the NHL can spend up to 2.5265 Billion Dollars on player salaries. DNHL has a salary cap of 87m this year which means we only have 1.74 Billion to spend on player salaries. This means that in DNHL we have 68.9% of the money that the actual NHL has to spend on salary. The other thing that DNHL has is rebuilding teams that aren't forced to spend all there salary cap space on players. Not to pick on anyone but lets look at Arizona's roster in DNHL. They have 5 players on there team that are signed to contracts above the minimum. They hoard prospects on their roster because they find more value in future players then they do the Nick Bonino's and Lars Ellers who are available as free agents. In the real life NHL this would never happen. NHL teams are forced to spend up to a minimum amount of the cap. Arizona, due to his roster construction, has effectively removed $50m of money from our league that won't go to player salaries. He will use that money to pay huge one year deals on older players to try and extract prospects and picks for more future value. These are things you would never see in the real life NHL and impact the economics in our league.

Beyond that there is a big difference between NHL value and DNHL fantasy value. We value players by how many fantasy points they produce per game. NHL values other things that we don't like defense and position scarcity. NHL teams value centers more then wingers. They also highly value defensemen, seems teams can never find enough of them in the real world. Those biases can be found in real life NHL contracts and are evident in our resign values. Lets look at the 60th ranked center, left wing and right wing in DNHL last year (I'm not going to take into account that some players have multiple position eligibility).

60th ranked Center = Casey Cizikas - 184.4 pts
60th Ranked Left Wing =  Josh Bailey - 186.15 pts
60th Ranked Right Wing =  Andrei Svechnikov - 185.8 pts

Now all of these players scored pretty similarly last year. You would expect that the resign values of these players in DNHL would be pretty similar. The 60th ranked center has a resign value of $4.8m, the 60th Left wing has a resign value of $2.0m and the 60th ranked Right wing has a resign value of $1.9m. We pay more money for centers in this league simply because the NHL values them more then wingers in the real life NHL. Centers don't provide more value in DNHL then wingers do though so why do we pay them more? This is why I don't really think it makes alot of sense to look at what a player is making in the NHL and comparing it to there DNHL salary. Its not going to make sense and it never will. Players have different values in DNHL then the NHL. Your argument against the prospect extension seems to be that players like Sebastian Aho are making $8.5m in the NHL but only $6.0m in DNHL. Is $6m dollars close to his actual value in DNHL? Do you know what his actual value is when comparing fantasy points across all the players in our league? Because his $6m salary is about 70% of what his NHL salary is and thats pretty close to the 68.9% of the money we have to spend in DNHL compared to NHL salaries. His contract is also 5 years long which is exactly the same length as our prospect extensions.

You're trying to take actual NHL contracts and compare them to salaries for players in our league. I don't think NHL contract values really align with the actual fantasy values of players in our league. Therefore I don't see the prospect contract as an issue in DNHL. Its may not exactly match the real life NHL but I think it adds a nice wrinkle and helps rebuilding teams lock up talent at a decent rate for a while. It results in salaries that don't match the NHL amounts but those NHL contracts don't match the value of a player in DNHL anyways.

[GypsieDeathBringer]

Once again this is all just my personal view on the issue with my personal model being trying to stay relative to the NHL.  Obviously half of the votes say it doesn't matter to them.  But, the reason we have a salary formula was to stay more in line with the NHL while taking into account a virtual cap floor for DNHL.  We use NHL extension values.  Those are foundational pieces to our DNHL economy and to me it is impossible to say we aren't directly tied to the NHL economically. 

A player's fantasy production is linked to how much the players are paid in the NHL.  Non-prospect DNHLer's extension contracts don't make 68% or 70% of what the NHL player makes.  They make 100% no matter how much total salaries are available between the leagues.  And my problem isn't what the 60th best anyone makes.  It is the top 10-20 players at a position shouldn't be able to make 40% of what their corresponding NHL contract would be over a disproportionate amount of time.  The prospect extensions when put into place approximated an NHL bridge deal.  That is no longer the case. 

It also makes it harder for rebuilding teams to rebuild.  A good team in this league is going to have a bunch of these low cost prospect extension contracts.  This allows them to stay good longer while rebuilding teams stay crap longer.  Obviously some GMs are just good and will keep finding prospects that produce, but in our current system there is less opportunity of turnover of players. 

If staying relative to the NHL isn't important to the majority of owners then that is cool and that is the direction we should move in, but it is to me based on all previous decisions made in DNHL. 

[Rob]

Other than the fact that our resign values are taken from actual NHL contract values I don't see how the economics in our league are aligned that closely with the NHL. Our salary cap is roughly based off the increases and decreases of the real life NHL salary cap but the NHL has alot more teams then we do. The 19/20 real life NHL salary cap is 81.5m. This means that the NHL can spend up to 2.5265 Billion Dollars on player salaries. DNHL has a salary cap of 87m this year which means we only have 1.74 Billion to spend on player salaries. This means that in DNHL we have 68.9% of the money that the actual NHL has to spend on salary. The other thing that DNHL has is rebuilding teams that aren't forced to spend all there salary cap space on players. Not to pick on anyone but lets look at Arizona's roster in DNHL. They have 5 players on there team that are signed to contracts above the minimum. They hoard prospects on their roster because they find more value in future players then they do the Nick Bonino's and Lars Ellers who are available as free agents. In the real life NHL this would never happen. NHL teams are forced to spend up to a minimum amount of the cap. Arizona, due to his roster construction, has effectively removed $50m of money from our league that won't go to player salaries. He will use that money to pay huge one year deals on older players to try and extract prospects and picks for more future value. These are things you would never see in the real life NHL and impact the economics in our league.

Beyond that there is a big difference between NHL value and DNHL fantasy value. We value players by how many fantasy points they produce per game. NHL values other things that we don't like defense and position scarcity. NHL teams value centers more then wingers. They also highly value defensemen, seems teams can never find enough of them in the real world. Those biases can be found in real life NHL contracts and are evident in our resign values. Lets look at the 60th ranked center, left wing and right wing in DNHL last year (I'm not going to take into account that some players have multiple position eligibility).

60th ranked Center = Casey Cizikas - 184.4 pts
60th Ranked Left Wing =  Josh Bailey - 186.15 pts
60th Ranked Right Wing =  Andrei Svechnikov - 185.8 pts

Now all of these players scored pretty similarly last year. You would expect that the resign values of these players in DNHL would be pretty similar. The 60th ranked center has a resign value of $4.8m, the 60th Left wing has a resign value of $2.0m and the 60th ranked Right wing has a resign value of $1.9m. We pay more money for centers in this league simply because the NHL values them more then wingers in the real life NHL. Centers don't provide more value in DNHL then wingers do though so why do we pay them more? This is why I don't really think it makes alot of sense to look at what a player is making in the NHL and comparing it to there DNHL salary. Its not going to make sense and it never will. Players have different values in DNHL then the NHL. Your argument against the prospect extension seems to be that players like Sebastian Aho are making $8.5m in the NHL but only $6.0m in DNHL. Is $6m dollars close to his actual value in DNHL? Do you know what his actual value is when comparing fantasy points across all the players in our league? Because his $6m salary is about 70% of what his NHL salary is and thats pretty close to the 68.9% of the money we have to spend in DNHL compared to NHL salaries. His contract is also 5 years long which is exactly the same length as our prospect extensions.

You're trying to take actual NHL contracts and compare them to salaries for players in our league. I don't think NHL contract values really align with the actual fantasy values of players in our league. Therefore I don't see the prospect contract as an issue in DNHL. Its may not exactly match the real life NHL but I think it adds a nice wrinkle and helps rebuilding teams lock up talent at a decent rate for a while. It results in salaries that don't match the NHL amounts but those NHL contracts don't match the value of a player in DNHL anyways.

 

I do want to emulate the NHL when and where it makes sense.  But we're forced to depart in many ways, as shooter points out.  And even if it's semi-unrealistic compared to the NHL - I still think it enhances our game. 

And I do want to stress that these "rebuild friendly" functions like the discount and the ability to stash in the minors are also there as a utility to keep the league alive and balanced longterm.  If we don't have tools in place for teams to rebuild it is really hard to attract competent GM's to take on a rebuild on a franchise torn apart by the trade antics of a player like Gilly.  This, to me, is the most important part of this argument. 

[Rob]

It also makes it harder for rebuilding teams to rebuild.  A good team in this league is going to have a bunch of these low cost prospect extension contracts.  This allows them to stay good longer while rebuilding teams stay crap longer.  Obviously some GMs are just good and will keep finding prospects that produce, but in our current system there is less opportunity of turnover of players. 

That's an interesting take.  Not sure I agree, but definitely worth considering. 

[Rob]

I just still think those guys would get signed anyway - if it leaves anything to FA, it's still going to be guys on the back 9 in their 30's - there will just be more of them..  Good for fishing for depth FA - not for rebuilding teams.

[WestCoastExpress]

That's an interesting take.  Not sure I agree, but definitely worth considering.

I would agree on GDB's point.

Looking at my roster, in 2021 I will have both Scheifele and Kucherov expiring. It will probably be over $25m to re-sign both of them at that time, 2 years from now, with the increasing NHL contracts. I'll also have to start paying Kane and Kreider market value (Kane was injured in consecutive years which is why his contract is low compared to what he "should" be)
And then Pastrnak the year after that.

Kane aside, if our prospect contracts were 3 years then it would be this year that I'd be in cap hell and probably would have had to trade one of those players to a team that could afford them.

To GDB's point, 5 years for players of that calibre is an eternity, and it virtually makes their contracts un-trade-able due to production vs. cap hit. Who in their right mind would trade Kucherov at a $4.1m cap hit in our league. Even if I wanted the next best skater, Ovechkin, it would be double the salary. I'd even say a guy like Nathan Mackinnon is even more un-trade-able with his $3.5m cap hit, playing the C position where re-sign values are through the roof.

In terms of FA, I think realistically the only noteable players we'll be seeing hit FA are Centres, which is the easiest position to fill anyways. Yes, Giroux is out there as a LW/RW right now, but he wasn't kept because he had C eligibility at the time of our re-signs. Look at the top FA's, they're mostly C's and some D like Giordano who wasn't worth a 4-5 year extension at the cap hit and his age.

I'm fine with the FA side of things, as in the real NHL it's not that often a young stud will hit UFA (mostly due to RFA).
For this league it's probably more about having "good" teams have to make tougher decisions earlier on their young up and coming or young stud players. Who to keep and re-sign and who to trade and get value back for. 8 years is quite a long time to be able to hold a player like Elias Pettersson or Jack Hughes at a very low cap hit. I mean even 6 years is a long time too, but better than 8.

I know it's tougher on some teams like AZ and BOS because they're now loaded with 40-45 very good young assets that they'll be able to keep on a reduced cap hit for the next 7-10 years depending on when they make the NHL, etc.
Slack has done an exceptional job and he'll be a top-3 team for a decade once those young guys start to make noise in the NHL.

[shooter47]

I don't see an issue with the length of the prospect extension. Most good young players who are superstars stay with there original teams for the first 7-10 years of their contracts. Tavares left the Islanders after being there for 9 years. Sebastian Aho just signed a 5 year extension that locks him up for his first 8 years with the Canes. Matthews signed a 5 year extension. Draisaitl and McDavid signed 8 year extensions. If anything 5 years is on the shorter end of the recent extensions.

Attached is a spreadsheet of an analysis I did today. I assumed that each team had 17 starters on there team and 13 roster spots filled with league minimum contracts (500k). I took the total cap space in DNHL in 19/20 (1,740 Million) and subtracted the the minimum contracts off (130 Million) to get the total salary cap space for starters in our league (1,610 Million).

I split that 1,610 Million dollars across the top 60 Centers, Left wing, Right wings, Goalies and top 120 Defensemen in the league based on last years overall season fantasy points. The values in bold are a rough estimate of what a player truly is worth in DNHL. Even Kucherov doesn't come close to touching McDavid's NHL value of $12.5m. I think most of the prospect extensions in DNHL are pretty close to actual DNHL values for those players.

[SlackJack]

The strength of all sides of this conversation is why I love this league and why I have embarked on my long-term roster build in the first place.

[WestCoastExpress]

The strength of all sides of this conversation is why I love this league and why I have embarked on my long-term roster build in the first place.

 

Quite literally the best league on here and best group of minds