Hello Everyone,
I've had the chance to chat with most of you over the last week, and I'm glad to hear that everyone's summer has been so good. There has certainly been an increase in traffic on the forum (and an increase in trades and trade offers), which means the 2009-2010 NHL season can't be far away.
Indeed, our September slow draft is due to begin on Sept 1st (two weeks away), so if anybody has plans to be away for a week or more in September please let me know ASAP so that we can make plans to work around it.
Two very important things:
1) Please submit the annual fee of $60 to Greg no later than August 25th. This is one week before the start of our draft. You can do this by logging on to paypal and sending $60 (Canadian) to
gregchapler@gmail.com.
2) As well, you must have dropped all of your players (that are not keepers) by this date, which will allow one week for everyone to prepare for the draft, knowing who is available and who is not.
Just wanted to reconfirm a few things about the upcoming draft. First and foremost, AFTER the Sept draft each team can have a maaximum of 30 players on their roster: 25 NHL veterans and 5 farm-eligible players. A team can have more prospects if they chose, but as we know from last year they would be using up a valuable bench space with that extra prospect, unless they know that a prospect (ie. Tavares) will actually be playing.
As well, factoring in the cascading keeper format and number of players on everyone's farm teams, there will be quite a difference in the number of players every team can draft. For example, Jay is keeping 14 players and will likely have 5 players on his farm team. Since the maximum number of players every team can have after the Sept draft is 25 NHL players and five farm-eligible players, the maximum number of draft picks Jay can use will be 11 picks. If they are front-loaded in the first few rounds because of trades (ie. if he has three 3rd round picks for instance), he may only draft until the 9th round before he reaches his 30 player limit.
It is conceivable that if a team only has ten keepers and zero prospects on their farm team, that they may have as many as 20 picks during the September draft, as long as five of the players they draft are farm-eligible players.
Teams may choose to drop some of their farm-eligible players from their farm team, as long as it is done by August 25th. After that their rosters will be "locked" until after the Sept draft has taken place.
The two changes we voted on this off-season had the following results:
1) For this year a player is farm-eligible if he has player 25 or less games in the NHL. However, next year that game-total goes up to 50 games for skaters and 30 games for goaltenders. We may decide to increase these game limits again next year if a majority votes for it.
2) We've also voted on a different prize structure for this coming year. This is what we decided on:
1st place regular season -- $220
2nd place regular season -- $100
1st place playoffs -- $160
Highest Nightly Point Total -- $50
Highest Weekly Point Total -- $50
The final $20 will be used to cover Paypal transaction fees.
So I think that is about everything for now. I will also be posting this message on the fourm, so if you have any questions, please post them in the thread over there.
Good luck to everyone for the upcoming season!
Cheers,
Matt
