Quote: Originally Posted By rammers on 5/18/2010
§1
Players without 20 regular season games played INELIGIBLE for playoffs. NO SUBS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

§2
Each GM will have to decide on the need for backup for injury replacement in playoffs - making sure those players also have 20 or more games during regular season.

§3
Use of an ineligible player would result in automatic loss of a playoff round.
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Thanks to everyone for voting, and hope all are cool with thenew rule.

OKP - great if you can update league rules on page 1! :)

I'm sorry to be the first one to have a problem with this, but...

I try to play the minimum number of players in a given season. If I were to make it through the season without an injury, and then have an injury in the playoffs, I could not substitute in another player, as none would be eligible.

So I can either choose to have a player who I sacrifice a year (or more if I make the playoffs consistantly) of career time so I can have a back-up for the play-offs, or I play in the play-offs short handed.

This is the situation I have been mentioning in most of my posts on this subject. I really believe we need to address this.

Quote: Originally Posted By max259 on 5/18/2010
So I can either choose to have a player who I sacrifice a year (or more if I make the playoffs consistantly) of career time so I can have a back-up for the play-offs, or I play in the play-offs short handed.

Max, I understand that you don't like this. My personal viewpoint is that I am fine with it. The way I see it, right now I have to set my lineup for the season thinking of exactly what I want it to be at the end of the season. And if I want to have injury reserves, I have to plan ahead, and rotate in a couple of guys during the season, and yes, use up seasons of eligibility for them... or take the chance or having to play shorthanded if an injury occurs in the playoffs. Again, just my personal take on it, but I am totally fine with it.

Wow. This goes too far the other way... enforcement is going to be next-to-impossible.

As max points out, it really screws you over if your first injury is in the playoffs.

But... well... I guess I demanded it so I'll live with it. I just hope the cure isn't worse than the poison.

The one positive is that after a few seasons, scoring is going to soar.

I feel we should have an absolute rule on 20 games or more = playoffs.

First of all - it would be much easier to police such a rule without exceptions.

Secondly - we do have 35 man rosters, and I suspect more veterans than before will retire each season, to make room for more below average players as roster fillers - so sacrifice one season for one or two of them to have injury replacements in playoffs should not be a big deal IMO. Or?

Also - if you skate someone with not so high stamina their chances of getting injured in regular season are rather high - and then you need to dress a 19th player regardless (or use more than one to have the subs not hitting 20 with purpose). I can't say I've ever had an 82 games player picking up a random injury in playoffs.

What we could do differently than I stated in the § before - but that will be harder to police - is to make it so first season rookies (note - only the ones that was drafted the LAST offseason) could be injury replacement in playoffs even when not playing 20 regular season games.

While I am fine with the new rule as stated, it is after all, how I voted, I can understand why some may have a problem with it. (Not everyone voted this way).

Rammers, your suggestion kinda is a medium between choice "B" and "C" and I would also be fine with that idea. This way the issue of bringing in an entirely different team for the playoff would end up being a none issue while enabling a GM to not sacrifice a season of a good vet just to make sure he doesn't play shorthanded in the playoffs if an injury happens.
The 1st year rookies would have at least developed some while in the minors for a majority of the season but wouldn't be bringing in a team of ringers which I think is most of the GM's problem with the idea of warehousing.

Just my nickle. But in the end, I will go with whatever the group as a whole goes with.

-Modo

Well, first of all, whatever the solution is, I do think it should be the easiest possible thing for the commissioner(s) to handle. I am also someone who doesn't piddle around with rulings, failure to comply means flatlines in my tiny little world.

This is the longest running, most dedicated group of owners I've played any simleagues with. I have seen the thought the collective ownership puts into this league. I know that in this league you don't get the same lame excuses and "I forgot"s that you do in others. So if there's any league that can handle hard, fast and manly rules, this is it IMO.

NOW, if anyone thinks the penalty of forfeiture of playoffs is too harsh, maybe an alternate method might come from real life... teams are penalized draft choices in real life for various offenses. An alternate solution could be that use of an illegal player means forfeiture of the upcoming first round pick.

I think the 20 game rule should apply to goalies too, too many teams have playoff only goaltenders, they can be used season after season in the playoffs without using any TOI

Agreed corbs. Although you do have to roster two goalies, and many owners do like to run an ace goalie out for 70+ games per season. I'd say more often than not, the majority of owners have only one goalie play more than 20 reg season games.

Goalies may require an exception, I don't have any brilliant ideas right now.

Anybody know if any of the Millers won any league awards last season? Thanks.

As far as goalies go, my suggestion is that, to be playoff eligible, a goalie must play at least 15:00:00 TOI during the regular season.

I also like the forfeiture of the 1st round pick of the team caught using an ineligible player in the playoffs, draft pick should go to the team that was done wrong.

I wonder how this will effect the upcoming seasons will teams with a lot of warehoused players play a few each year or will they play a majority for a final season and go for broke? There could be some extremely strong regular season teams this year, although my belief is the teams that have been winning championships will only use 3 or 4 a season

I'll go with the majority because that is what is voted in..... but....

I still believe my suggested is still the way it should be simply because there is NO gray area. no policing issues. no questions asked... it is what it is.

just my opinion.

canuk, then you are talking about option D, right? True that, but still that will not happen now, since we all agreed on going with majority vote. I didn't vote on option B myself - but that one will also make sure we have no gray areas, and easy to police also - if we have a clear cut penalty if someone play a non 20-games guy in playoffs.

Most GMs have opened/read the sitemail with vote recap and new rule info. Even though we have had some posts, I think it's rather quiet here on the forum. And more input - the ones not posting - are you cool with the new rule? What about injury replacements and forfeit of series if breaking the 20-games rule?

As for bringing up goalies, I agree that we should think about doing something suited to address playoffs-only-goalies.

But setting a min TOI limit at 20 or 15 will make it so a GM can't have his top 100-stamina goalie go a full regular season. I'm not sure I like the idea of not being able to play my goalie more than 60-65 games, when I really want him to do the full 82. Being forced to play my backup more than I want. This is not as easy to fix, as you always need to dress a backup goalie, reg season or playoffs.

Take a look at Henderson season 20 - just a random example:

Name ENG% GP W L T GA GAA SO SA S S% TOI
1. 2010 Shannon Casey 100 8 6 2 0 20 2.56 0 137 117 85.40 7:48:35
2. 2010 Chris Graham 100 67 56 9 0 138 2.15 15 1167 1029 88.17 64:11:32
3. 2010 Luke Manchester (ML/P) 100 15 8 1 0 18 1.80 1 188 170 90.43 10:00:32

If we had a minimum 15 TOI rule, then Henderson could not play two backup goalies as in season 20. Had to dress either Casey or Manchester the minimum 15. And would not be able to use Graham more than max 2 games more even if his stamina would support a 82-games season.

And what about Yowlers in season 19???

1. 2010 Tim "Polly" Armstrong 100 75 57 13 4 119 1.63 13 1063 944 88.81 72:56:08
2. 2010 Ethan Fabrell 100 12 7 0 1 10 1.04 2 134 124 92.54 9:34:36

Btw...I've done all I can to help handling the pressing issues on using players with warehoused seasons in playoffs. I don't think I have much more time to dedicate for this right now.

So I hope we all can agree on going forward with the new skater rule, and also have a agreement on how to handle any rule breaking in the upcoming seasons.

Would actually be very surprised if we ever had some non-20-games issues, as we have an amazing bunch of guys here. Peace out.