As long as I am being picky on rules, I am going to go a little bit into your play-off system (as I never really looked at it until now)... Why are we having 8 team play-offs with 9 team divisions? Seriously, just about ANYONE can make it in despite having a .500 winning percentage. We want to test our skills as much as possible, and how are we suppose to do it when 90% of the teams make the play-offs in each division.

I have two proposed systems:
  System One 
6 teams in each conference makes the play-offs. The top teams in each conference will be distributed across the top 3 seeds, and the last 3 spots will be wild cards, going out to the next top 3 teams (despite their division).

Week 1: 3 plays 6, 4 plays 5, 1 and 2 get byes.
Week 2: 1 plays lowest remaining seed, 2 plays second lowest remaining seed
Week 3: Winner of Week 2 play each other
Week 4: Conference winners battle for the CUP!

Pros: It gives a little more breathing space when it comes to making the play-offs while rewarding the GMs who worked hard to build a winning team. This will also reward competitive divisions, thus creating the possibilities of making a trade in your division a little deadly (like the real NHL).

  System Two 
4 Teams in each conference make the play-offs. The first three seeds will go to division winners while the final remaining spot (THE Wild Card) goes to the highest remaining seed in the conference.

Week 1: 1 plays 4, 2 plays 3
Week 2: Winners of Week 1 play each other
Week 3: Conference winners play each other for the CUP

Pros: We make the cut to the play-offs REALLY cut throat, thus increasing the competition in each division. We also add another week to the regular season, which will possible give us another week of trades and difficult decisions to make.

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I really like this league, but I HATE the play-off system you currently hold. I know you want to make this as close to the real NHL as possible, but 8 team play-offs in 9 team divisions is leaving no punishment for error or inconsistency. The NHL can do it because they have 15 teams in each division; while we only have 18 teams in the league period.

I honestly would hate to be the 1st seed and lose to an 8th seed that has more losses than wins on his record, as that would make my entire regular season look like a waste of time. So I say lets raise the stakes and cut the number of play-off contending teams down.

As the commissioner you could easily stop a team from trying to do that. I like the idea of traded players automatically being placed on the NHL team. High salary players like Gaborik, or any player for that matter (who are only sent down in the first place to make cap room) are practically impossible to trade from the minor league squad since to be called up they have to go through the re-entry waivers, and having to take on half of any given players salary (for the duration of the contract) is great for the team that would claim him, but for the team wanting to recall him to potentially make a trade is to big of a risk in my opinion.

As someone who just got jacked by this rule, I like the idea... It also opens up more trade options.

This is a great league really enjoy the concept of mimicking the real NHL. My only problem is with the pay scale for extensions. I believe it is way out of wack.  Example is Jimmy Howard's extension. Real contract is 2 years at 2.25 Mil per year. On Backyard he is to be payed 4.6 mil per year on extension. Just one example. Could we address the pay scale please? Thanks

The major problem with trying to fix this is you have no one to haggle with... In the real life, you have a manager and a player to haggle against. In the game, the only thing we have access to is the numbers. The player might want to resign with his winning team, but there is no one saying "I wanna leave" or "I want more monies" in the game. Thus we have the contract numbers; those numbers IS the agent we have to haggle with. And if we do not accept his price, I guess we are out of a player.

Honestly, I have no problem paying a player a base amount based off of how well the guy is playing... If the player is a good player, than pay the salary and be happy you have a star in your roster. That is what I did with Howard and I am glad I did (because he makes the most points on my team).

This sounds like a pretty good idea. I think this should be implemented right away. Am placing this in rule discussion for a bit of insight from others first. This doesn't solve the 1 year thing though because it is the extensions on a 1 year deal that are a problem. Person could bid 10m for player A then give him an extension right away to cheapen it.

It does if you establish a rule stating that you cannot resign a player that you signed to a one year deal... And the easiest way to see the difference is to use asterisk. And if a player that has an asterisk on his name cannot be signed to an extension, that can be applied to both the minor league teams and NHL teams. Am I making sense? If not, I'll find a more technical way to explain it.

There is a bone I do have to pick: Why are we aloud to resign experienced players that we send down to the minors to extensions? I would assume that if the player can get better playing time with another team why wouldn't he pursue that instead of playing with a bunch of rookies? I can understand if the player has not played 40 games in his/her career yet, but why should I be aloud to resign Tomas Fleishmen when all he is going to do is sit in my minor league system (cause I am definitely not making the re-entry mistake again)?

I know this move has been done already, but I feel like it is inconsistent with what would typically happen in the league. Maybe establish a rule stating that all players with an asterisk next to their name cannot be resigned? This can also help with the one-year contract problem that you mentioned earlier (place an asterisk next to the player who is only signed for a 1 year deal off of FA).

This will create a HUGE influx of FAs by the 14-15 season, as a lot of the higher priced players are sitting on minor league systems.