Another quick suggestion...

Many good players in the SHL decide to give their team a discount, when they sign a new contract and have already been in the league for a few seasons. While this is a good thing to do and shows loyalty, it screws up the financial foundations of the league if it goes too far, and I think that's what's happening right now.
With the higher media and PBP-payouts that have been implemented over the last few seasons, the importance of contract-money has declined rapidly. Active players can now write a few articles and get as much money as they get from their contract in a whole season, so more and more players who are active and are already pretty well-developed, decide to sign at or near league-minimum. They want to help their team and don't need the money anyway, because they have lots of it in the bank or can just write an article if they need more.
This leads to the strange situation we have right now, which is the exact opposite of what happens in reality. An example: A player gets drafted into the SHL and gets $3-4 million a year for 2 seaons on his Entry Level Contract. He steadily improves and after his ELC expires he is one of the better players in the league, but since he has so much money in the bank, he decides to re-sign for just $2 million per for 2 years. And after this contract expires, he is pretty much maxed out and needs no more money anyway, so he signs a 5 year contract where he will only get the league minimum of $0,5 million a year.
So the better this player gets, the further his career progresses, the less money he actually makes from contracts, which is completely unrealistic.
If you look around the league now, you find many cases where the best players actually make very little money, just because they don't need more.

Obviously we can't force players to demand big fat contracts, nor should we. But what we can do is implement a graduated (hope that's the right word) for contract-minimums. Players wouldn't be allowed to make less than a certain amount and this amount is based on TPE. The numbers could look like this:
400 TPE and less - no change/$0,5 Million
401-500 - $1 Million
501-600 - $2 Million
601+ - $3 Million

Let me know what you think of this. We might not see the negative results from the current developments just yet, but if we don't change something the leagues financial system could be broken very soon and the cap wouldn't matter at all, which I don't think would be a good thing.

Evan Winter
Edmonton Blizzard
Player Page - Update Page

no

I think ElCs max amount of money should be 1.75 mil in the first 3 years.

no thanks, players should be allowed to take whatever discounts they want

Originally posted by Dion.SoDmG@Jul 23 2012, 11:55 PM
I think ElCs max amount of money should be 1.75 mil in the first 3 years.

No (Biased due to my 3 year, 10 million dollar ELC)

Its a good idea

The minimum contracts based on the TPE is good, players can still decide to play for the minimum then, but should keep the salary structure better between all teams.

Update Thread - Player Page
Update Scale

Former players:
Ivo Willems (S9 SMJHL) (S10-28 SHL)  
Xander Green  (S33-35 SMJHL) (S36-47 SHL)
Vorian Atreides (S49-51 SMJHL) (S52-61 SHL)

don't see why people should have to take a minimum they don't want. They should be able to help the team. What benefit is there for a guy making a minimum of 1 million when he wanted to take a 500k salary?

Originally posted by JayTee@Jul 24 2012, 08:46 AM
don't see why people should have to take a minimum they don't want. They should be able to help the team. What benefit is there for a guy making a minimum of 1 million when he wanted to take a 500k salary?

This isn't about a single player and if he has an advantage from it or not, this is about the league as a whole.
Our contract-system and the salary-cap will be way off in a few seasons if we continue like that. When the rules that are in place right now were implemented, contract money was still very important for the players because it was hard to make money through media articles and PBP and only a few guys made more than 2-3 million a year through articles. Players needed their contract money back then if they wanted to be able to do consistent +3 or +5 trainings. Now, with the higher media payouts and everything, the players don't need that kind of money anymore, especially after their first few years in the league, when they are either close to maxing out or have millions in the bank. But the league still needs a cap-system in place and in order for this system to function, we need to make sure that the salarys are at least somewhat realistic. Players will still be able to take discounts for their team, but the times of superstars making only league-minimum should be over.

It's a way to circumvent the cap and it will only get worse if more and more players max out on the new update scale, teams will be able to have 1st lines that don't make more than $3-4 million, while a Rookie alone makes that amount of money. That would be just stupid and is in no was good for the league.

Evan Winter
Edmonton Blizzard
Player Page - Update Page

Originally posted by OcAirlines@Jul 23 2012, 11:58 PM


This isn't about a single player and if he has an advantage from it or not, this is about the league as a whole.
Our contract-system and the salary-cap will be way off in a few seasons if we continue like that. When the rules that are in place right now were implemented, contract money was still very important for the players because it was hard to make money through media articles and PBP and only a few guys made more than 2-3 million a year through articles. Players needed their contract money back then if they wanted to be able to do consistent +3 or +5 trainings. Now, with the higher media payouts and everything, the players don't need that kind of money anymore, especially after their first few years in the league, when they are either close to maxing out or have millions in the bank. But the league still needs a cap-system in place and in order for this system to function, we need to make sure that the salarys are at least somewhat realistic. Players will still be able to take discounts for their team, but the times of superstars making only league-minimum should be over.

It's a way to circumvent the cap and it will only get worse if more and more players max out on the new update scale, teams will be able to have 1st lines that don't make more than $3-4 million, while a Rookie alone makes that amount of money. That would be just stupid and is in no was good for the league.

how is it circumventing the cap? Players take discounts all the time. If you are gonna put a cap on something, put a cap on league maximums. Taking discounts should be rewarded not changed.

Also it is easy as shit to make 2 to 3 mill in media articles

While I like the idea, its not really applicable unless its actually causing issues with that. On its own, if a player doesn't mind taking a hit to help the team its not really a problem. If its to a point where 4 or 5 franchise players on a team all take 0.5 mil contracts so that the team can also sign 3 or 4 more franchise players for big money just to stack a team I would see that as a legitimate issue. I don't think (but I also don't know for sure) that is the case on any team.

Still, the idea of making changes to contracts in general interests me. The whole point of signing a contract should carry some kind of incentive. With the old money system, where money was a lot harder to come by, the contract was, like you said, pretty important. I remembered making ~2 mil one year through media and was pretty satisfied with that. This year I made 2 mil in one week with just a few articles, and that's what I make in a whole year with my contract.

Perhaps we could consider some kind of a change that simply incentivizes a larger contract. Players could still have the option to take a cut to help their team have more money for other players, but the contract itself would carry more value, making it a tougher decision. I don't really have a well developed idea right now so this is just off the top of my head. Maybe something like money spent from a contract for training isn't affected by the update scale (or just has less of an effect). So if I have say 90 scoring and its going to cost me 20 points to get it to 95, maybe if I used money from the contract it would only cost me 5 or 10, so you basically get more bang for your buck.

If a system like that were in place, players could still take only 0.5 mil, but a player that's needing 4 or 5 points to increase an attribute by one would really value a big contract. Just a thought, maybe something to consider.

Originally posted by JayTee@Jul 24 2012, 09:32 AM


how is it circumventing the cap? Players take discounts all the time. If you are gonna put a cap on something, put a cap on league maximums. Taking discounts should be rewarded not changed.

Also it is easy as shit to make 2 to 3 mill in media articles

It's not illegal, so maybe circumventing isn't the right word for it, but it defeats the whole purpose of even having a cap. Right now the players that could actually get your team in cap-trouble are the Rookies, while a lot of the veterans are super cheap. And that's just wrong and won't be good in the long haul.
Players can still take discounts if they want, like only wanting $3 million if their market value is actually something around $6 million. This would still be somewhat realistic while showing that the player is willing to make sacrifices to help his team. Only making $0,5 million while your market value is $5-6 million isn't.

And money-wise I was talking about the past, it WAS hard back then to make that much money through media, of course now it IS easy. Which is exactly why we need changes, the situation today isn't even close to what it was when the rules were first implemented

Evan Winter
Edmonton Blizzard
Player Page - Update Page

Originally posted by Derringer@Jul 24 2012, 09:39 AM
While I like the idea, its not really applicable unless its actually causing issues with that. On its own, if a player doesn't mind taking a hit to help the team its not really a problem. If its to a point where 4 or 5 franchise players on a team all take 0.5 mil contracts so that the team can also sign 3 or 4 more franchise players for big money just to stack a team I would see that as a legitimate issue. I don't think (but I also don't know for sure) that is the case on any team.

That's exactly the problem, thanks for helping me to clear that up. We might not be there yet, but we could very well be in 1-2 seasons.

Still, the idea of making changes to contracts in general interests me. The whole point of signing a contract should carry some kind of incentive. With the old money system, where money was a lot harder to come by, the contract was, like you said, pretty important. I remembered making ~2 mil one year through media and was pretty satisfied with that. This year I made 2 mil in one week with just a few articles, and that's what I make in a whole year with my contract.

Perhaps we could consider some kind of a change that simply incentivizes a larger contract. Players could still have the option to take a cut to help their team have more money for other players, but the contract itself would carry more value, making it a tougher decision. I don't really have a well developed idea right now so this is just off the top of my head. Maybe something like money spent from a contract for training isn't affected by the update scale (or just has less of an effect). So if I have say 90 scoring and its going to cost me 20 points to get it to 95, maybe if I used money from the contract it would only cost me 5 or 10, so you basically get more bang for your buck.

If a system like that were in place, players could still take only 0.5 mil, but a player that's needing 4 or 5 points to increase an attribute by one would really value a big contract. Just a thought, maybe something to consider.

I like the way you are thinking here. The idea with the update-scale not coming into effect probably won't work, but I also think that we should look for ways to incentivize larger contracts, if we don't want to implement higher minimums.
Maybe players could get a couple of free TPE at the beginning of each season, depending on the value of their contract. Or the contract could influence how effective training-camp is for every player. Training could become more expensive in general too (although this is too big of a change imho). Of course the incentives shouldn't be too high, but something that at least makes people consider if they really want to sign for almost nothing.
It probably would be better to find an incentive that doesn't have to do with TPE though, because the players signing those league-minimum contracts usually are players that don't need a lot more TPE anyway. I don't really know how we should do this though.

Evan Winter
Edmonton Blizzard
Player Page - Update Page

Maybe it would be just better to lower the cap?
That should have a similar effect.

Because I think players should sign for wouldever they want.

Originally posted by joecool37@Jul 24 2012, 04:17 AM
Maybe it would be just better to lower the cap?
That should have a similar effect.

Because I think players should sign for wouldever they want.

Salary rollback?

GoB's Writing Thread