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Offer sheets would add another element from the NHL. Wouldn't change the importance of our supplemental draft. Would allow rebuilding teams to rebuild faster, thus adding more parity, and increase the contracts for prospects who are performing. It would also force a bit more participation. I think it addresses many of the issues folks are bringing up.
I'm contemplating the differences between Backyard and DNHL which are both generally structured in a very similar way. For some reason however, Backyard has a much greater amount of turn-over/rental players. Players on expiring contracts are worth a premium and it is commonplace to trade good picks for older rentals.DNHL has a higher salary cap but also higher extension values. This is especially noticeable at the upper end, but really it's across the full range. At first I thought that freezing the salary cap might help push some players onto the market, and it would, but intuition is telling me that's not the whole answer. Like Snug, I think some part of the solution lies somewhere in the extension values, though I am not certain I agree with the idea that new contracts should exceed the old. Also, and maybe more importantly, the amount of roster space we have in the minors directly impacts the value of picks. With 6 picks per season and only 15 minor roster slots, there is a lot of pressure on everyone to deal or discard their lower valued picks. Everyone wants to bundle multiple assets together in return for a single higher value piece. Lowering the number of picks we get and/or increasing the space we have to warehouse our assets would have the effect of raising the value of lower ranked picks. My specific recommendations:1) Continue Snug's conversation re: the structure of extensions, and consider a cap freeze.2) Drop the 3rd Keeper pick as it is not trade-able.3) Consider another increase to the minor league count.
4) A version of Dedreger's idea (being able to bid up a bonus on free-agent prospect contracts) is interesting too. Not sure that the supplemental draft needs to be protected as we're already drowning in prospects. Opening up bidding on players with under 40 games could be interesting.
While we're throwing ideas at the wall. I don't like the idea of nixing the under 40 GP FA rule because I fear it will water down the Supplemental (same reason I don't support larger prospect rosters). But what if we allowed it with the stipulation that the player can be bid on if the opening bid meets a minimum standard - let's say $5m for examples sake. If you're willing to start off with a $5m signing bonus, then the bid is allowed. Something like that.
It's a tangent for me. Bidding on prospects under 40 games might help increase activity or make the league more interesting but it doesn't address the main issue we were talking about here, which was the lack of trading at the deadline.I think it's more important to consider dropping the 3rd keeper pick as a way of increasing the value of trade-able picks.
I think in general that 3rd keeper has been somewhat useless. I know I've only picked 2 instead of 3 in several seasons. I may have only picked 1 keeper last season or the one before, due to the lack of roster space and there being better players in the Supplemental than the Bruins drafted.