EHM The Blue Line

Thanks everyone for letting me explain what I meant and giving me the benefit of the doubt. I like Archi's summary too, and the list is great, it shows what's been added to the challenges.

I have been thinking that keeping more of the core of the team around longer might make it more challenging. By the 5th season, there are only the HG players in the core. So, maybe either keep more of the A,B,C,D core around throughout the challenge, or add another HG player to make 2 per season and they have to stay through the whole challenge.

The only way it could be difficult is if they ask for too much to re-sign.

What about introducing a rule whereby you can't trade more than three players into your team per season? Sounds simple, but isn't it the most we could do to ensure that a Chicago Challenge involves Chicago players - users won't be able to give the team a massive facelift. Instead, users would have to prioritise which weak areas in the roster to improve. They'd also have to plan for future seasons, e.g. "if I bring in two defencemen and an enforcer this season then I'll have to ensure I renew the contracts of my forwards as otherwise I'll lose my offensive talent."

But users could trade as many players out as they like - in order to keep salaries down, etc.

You alternate idea on the TBL budget is interesting, Archi. I'm thinking we might want to test it both that way and with batdad's idea and see which is more feasible.

I like your idea on limiting incoming trades but have some questions on that as well. If someone made a trade and got back 3 roster players in return (on that one trade), would that count as 1 of their incoming trades or 3? I'm guessing 3 because you said 3 players but I wanted to make sure. Also, the 3 players would only count if they're on your roster, not on your farm team's roster, right? This could be a bit tricky when factoring in the TBL budget as well. If we start off by having to trim (for example) $5M from our payroll to get under the TBL budget and can only bring in 3 players, we're going to have to look to deal our highest paid players for much lower paid players. We'll have to trim as much as possible from our payroll in as few moves as possible. Hmmm... I'm not sure. Definitely needs testing.

Timmy, we've talked about adjusting the core roster numbers. It could probably use some *slight* tweaking. Not too much but a little. I don't know about increasing the number of homegrowns required though. It may have worked with the Blackhawks. They had a TON of legitimate NHL prospects. Unfortunately, the teams we're looking at for the upcoming challenge don't seem to have as much to work with. I think people may struggle to find one for the first couple seasons. Plus, we'd like to see people develop their prospects, working them into their farm team, having them spend a couple years there, and then finally working them in as a homegrown. We don't want people rushing their prospects, especially since the whole point of the homegrown player was to teach people to develop their own talent rather than always trade for it.

This trade limitation should be a good idea... And it still lets flexibility... 3 players traded for, 2 FA signings, 1 homegrown player... That's potentially 6 new players per season, which is way enough flexible IMO.

About the core roster, i once thought about putting the FAs signed in the core roster, in replacement of the players pulled out of the core. This would keep the same core size every season... Either you keep your original guy in the core, or his core status will be transfered to a FA signing.

Thoughts?

I'm not so sure about the core being the same size through each season. Wouldn't that just make it so you're got to account for 20 of the 23 players on your NHL roster? I really don't see this one making much of a difference. I do like the idea of having to keep your FA signings though. What about requiring your UFA signing to stay on the team for at the current season, plus one additional season? Kind of like we do it with the homegrown's?

bruins72 wrote:I like your idea on limiting incoming trades but have some questions on that as well. If someone made a trade and got back 3 roster players in return (on that one trade), would that count as 1 of their incoming trades or 3? I'm guessing 3 because you said 3 players but I wanted to make sure. Also, the 3 players would only count if they're on your roster, not on your farm team's roster, right? This could be a bit tricky when factoring in the TBL budget as well. If we start off by having to trim (for example) $5M from our payroll to get under the TBL budget and can only bring in 3 players, we're going to have to look to deal our highest paid players for much lower paid players. We'll have to trim as much as possible from our payroll in as few moves as possible. Hmmm... I'm not sure. Definitely needs testing.

The limit would be on the number of players you can bring in - i.e. three per season (or whatever number we choose). So you could potentially make more trades by just trading player rights and draft picks. Thinking about prospects, signing prospects shouldn't count towards the limit of three players.

I think it definitely needs testing - I admit my idea could certainly fall flat on its face. The reasoning behind my idea is that it would force users to play largely with the original team. It would make things more challenging because users would have to think really carefully about which three players to bring in. Also, not being able to rely on bringing in a large number of "challenge players" will mean that users will have to use their tactical skills to get their team ahead.

The fact that users would be playing with very similar teams might close the gap between the experienced users and the newer ones. The fact that it would make things harder might result in fewer users accruing 50+ wins, etc.

Another idea would be rather than having a homegrown player system, why not give a list of players from the original roster that you must choose and for the players you choose, you are required to keep that player to the expiration of their contract. For example, you could take a team with a lot of expensive long term contracts and force people to commit up front to retaining contracts until they expire. It would be less complicated than the different tiers of homegrown players.

You mean the core roster? The homegrown player is just the young guy you've been developing that you bring up to the main roster each season. Anyhow, back to your idea about the core roster. It's an interesting idea. Something to keep in mind for future challenges but for the time being we're not looking to reinvent the wheel. We just want to tweak some of our existing rules.