How would a team at the cap or near the cap get under the cap with a 10% penalty? Would it make more sense to apply the penalty to the season following the one in which the infraction occurred?
It is what we have had in the rules. I do think that part of the rulebook could be cleaned up for the better. GMs receive warning and then if they do not comply within 24 hours, penalties hit - that's fine, but the actual penalties could be better. The GM's roster should be automatically corrected to fix the roster violation on top of the penalty.
The automatic fix could be the release of players in the following priority order.
1) Expiring contract -> long-term contract, players with 2011/P-2011 contracts would be dropped before 2012+ contracts
2) Salary lowest -> highest, players with $500k contracts would be dropped before $5m contracts
3) Prospects -> prospect contracts which can be dropped for free would be released free
4) Points scored -> if there are two expiring prospect contracts and the roster violation is a 41-player roster $500k over cap then the player with less total points for the season will be released
5) In the event of a tie in deciding which player needs to be dropped, drop in alphabetical order A-Z, last name then first name, so an example of Evan Meek would be released before Henry Rodriguez.