07-13-2023, 09:29 PMSburbine Wrote: A ninth waiver spot is someone that was passed over by eight out of 14 teams, not some social outcast. They would have played somewhere over an inactive easily. I didn't really mind the benching all that much and didn't make a stink about it even though we were swept in the final, but the discourse that Maine did some selfless act and is getting punished for it is simply wrong. I'm glad the rule is now in place because it not only helps level out teams but it makes it so everyone can play without feeling pressured to sit on the bench.

piggybacking off sburb's post here just to add - I do not think this was ever malicious. From the sound of it, this season at least, the players who rode the bench were totally fine with doing so. I'm not looking at this from an angle of "these poor innocent afflicted players, look what horrible Maine has done to them!" I'm sure the majority of people would be fine splitting playing time if they thought it got them a better chance at a cup, but that doesn't change the fact that it screws over other teams who could really have used active players to boost their locker room activity and improve their team competitively. Just because people are okay with doing something doesn't make it fair to the rest of the league. I'm sure there's a ton of us who would just play for free and not take any contract money if it was allowed and wouldn't be bothered in the slightest, but we have salary requirements anyway because it would break things or imbalance them to not have those guidelines in place.

The issue isn't that people were forced to settle for something they didn't want to, the issue is that it's competitively imbalanced for one team to have players not even playing, just waiting in the wings to replace everyone who ages out or gets called up, while other teams are struggling to fill their teams with actives. I've heard a decent amount of trash talk from a couple of teams about "dead locker rooms" on other teams, but how is that actually a fair criticism when one team has an entire forward line worth of actives just stockpiled?

I don't think this was some grand conspiracy on Maine's part to screw over the rest of the league or anything, and I don't want to discredit the work they've done to foster an active locker room and a culture that people want to be a part of, this is just something that doesn't really have a place in a dev league any more than the skewed system of free agency was that we had before. And I don't think it's fair to say that all of these players were just castaways that nobody wanted - that's just not something that can be said for certain when they were either drafted while other teams had still not passed, picked up only halfway down the waivers order, or (worst, in my opinion), traded for from other teams who were only moving them because they didn't have room to play them.

It was broken, it's been addressed, I'm glad it was addressed, I am tired, I hope we can all move on.