Future of the League

[Wild Sabre GM]

OK guys, it's time to start to figure out what is going to happen with this league. The boards are dead, no trades are made, and with several teams that no longer have active GM's, it has created problems with rosters, trades, waivers, activity, etc. Here is a list of all GM's and their last login date:

Columbus - 4/2/13
St. Louis - 3/25/13
Boston - 4/23/13
Calgary - 12/10/12
Vancouver - 4/2/13
Carolina - 4/23/13
Colorado - 9/4/12
Dallas - 3/26/13
New Jersey - 1/31/13
Anaheim - 4/22/13
Edmonton - 7/18/12
Philadelphia - 5/16/13
New York Isles - 9/25/12
Winnipeg - 1/24/13
Los Angeles - 5/20/13
Toronto - 5/13/13
Florida - 5/20/13
Pittsburgh - 4/28/13
Phoenix - 12/12/12
Nashville - 11/30/12
New York Rags - 3/9/12
Buffalo - 9/4/12
Ottawa - 4/28/13
San Jose - 5/20/13
Tampa Bay - 4/19/13
Washington - 5/20/13
Chicago - 5/20/13
Minnesota - 5/20/13
Detroit - no GM
Montreal - no GM

By my account that is 2 teams that have no GM and 8 that have not logged in this year (2013). 2 teams that logged in January ( New Jersey/Winnipeg) but I don't think either are still participating and Dallas (3/26) was a new GM but once I got her signed up, she pretty much told me she did not have time for it. That is 13 teams right there that have no active GM. That means we have 17 "active" GM's, but to be honest it's more like 8-12. At this point, I need ideas and suggestion. If the draft goes the way the season has, 8-12 people participating, I can't see the league surviving and me continuing to run it. I want this league to keep going as I enjoy it and I know some of the loyal/die hard GM's enjoy it but we need to make it worth it which means we need new recruits, contraction or other thoughts. I want to start putting this out there now,as our playoffs will be starting next week and draft will be soon. So we need to figure out a plan on how to make the league be successful by getting new GM's or by using the GM's we have to make it effective. Thanks and I welcome ANY feedback!!!!!

Adam - Minnesota

[Capyotes]

I think what caused this mass exodus of GMs is when Phoenix just stopped doing anything and the league was dead for months until Adam stepped up. It inexplicably took months to even get someone to do the draft lottery a couple of years ago. Moving forward, we can't have these long extended periods of dead time, because GMs lose interest and eventually just abandon the league.

I thought of a possible solution involving folding all the inactive teams, and placing their players in a draft pool for new GMs. It might be a little easier to get new GMs if they can draft their own players. This would of course require new blood. Are you guys living in Canada and other hockey heavy areas even trying to get new GMs? I'd imagine it shouldn't be too hard in Canada or the Midwest USA to find hockey fans who would want to be in a league like ours.

I'm not a big fan of contraction, because every remaining team will just be stacked, and all the moves and draft picks we made up to that point won't really matter.

Ok i'm done now

[Panthers and Jets]

Kinda had a feeling this would have to be brought up sooner or later. When I first joined this league, I was single, had a job that only required 40 hours a week (with a ton if sitting around time), and had lots of free time to look for prospects and pickups and think about trades.

Fast forward 10 somethin years and I now have a wife and two little girls. A career that has me working all kinds of crazy hours depending on whats going on. Not much time to look at waiver pickups or think about trades

That being said, this league still holds a special place in my heart and I cant see myself leaving until it folds. At the very least until I beat Toronto in a playoff series

[Chicago and Montreal]

I like Caps idea.

But we would need to get a lot of people for it and set up a draft in the off season or somethin.

[Kings and Devils]

I think we need to reduce the teams. We could avoid stacked teams by maintaining a salary cap, the waiver pool would just be a whole lot stronger.

[Leafs/Flames]

You will never beat me. Its good to have goals though.
Sadly I don't know anyone else in my Florida area that would want to do this. So I'm tapped out with people I know. I can assist in other ways if you need.

I'd would of course rather just find new people to fill in the already set up teams, but as pointed out, yeah, it might be harder to get people in.

I love this league so I'm in for the duration. Especially now that I have a good goalie hah

[Wild Sabre GM]

Washington and LA have the right idea but that would mean some sort of "contraction" with the idea that we have new blood (GM's) coming in soon or lined up to draft their own teams based on the inactive teams being folded and using those players. I'm not sure how to do that in the sim. Basically if I put all those players on waivers which is how I guess we fold the teams, all those players are available for any team to pick up and not sure how we separate the folded teams players from regular waiver players. Also do the red-shirts/prospects go back into the draft pool. Basically a lot of questions to answer before we can do this. This would also mean only 15 or so teams in league and playoffs/scheduling would change as well. I think we have to have new GM's coming in order to make this work. We can't just do it and then have no one coming in. I have talked to a bunch of people and still trying to recruit, but really need other GM's helping out.

[Kings and Devils]

It might be easier to recruit guys with less teams. If we contract it might increase our activity because right now we can't make trades outside of a handful of active teams and any new recruits usually end up bored and fade away.

I'm not sure how it would work with the league. I looked a little bit around google and the STHS messageboard but I couldn't find much. You might have to start a new league and reenter everybody, I don't know if that's asking you to do too much work though.

[Capyotes]

you wouldn't have to completely erase a team. That would be a mess for sims anyways. How ever many new GMs we get can draft their teams from the new pool of players from folded teams. If a team has no GM, we assign a BPA based on OV stats and position needs of the team ( i.e. we make sure there aren't 15 wingers and one center).

Another option I'm not as keen on, but it would solve some probs, is that each active GM just takes on another current team until we can find new GMs. Foster GMs so to speak.

[Wild Sabre GM]

I think the first idea you propose is the better option Washington. And it seems like those that have responded agree. The problem is that while we may all agree with that, no one has come forward and said yeah I got a couple of guys that are interested. So it kind of leaves us where we currently are.

As for the second idea of taking on another team, I'm not really a proponent of that idea cuz it could affect trades and those GM's that we have that are active, not sure if they would put more time into it.

[Kings and Devils]

I think we need to accept that we won't be able to get thirty good GM's and start focusing on making the league the best it can be with who we have. Like Wild said before we could still use a few more recruits, but our goals need to be realistic and we've never had thirty guys before.

I don't see how a smaller league would ruin the schedule or stack the teams. STHS has features allowing smaller leagues, although that may be a lot of work (I could try and help). Also with the stacked teams we could make easily adjust rules to prevent that from happening.

[Capyotes]

could we be absorbed by another league? anyone know of a league that needs about 6 dedicated gms?

the issue i have with contraction is that it would be equivalent to completely starting the league over, because we would be dropping all our supporting players for first liners and top 5 prospects depending on the contraction salary cap rules. whatever moves we made in the past won't matter. there doesn't seem to be any good solution for this that doesn't involve new gms.

[Kings and Devils]

I don't see how we're going to drop our supporting payers for first liners if we have a cap. I haven't even thought how it could work but you could always have a pro cap as well as the current complete team cap that we have. That way your 23 man roster would have a cap of x, and to prevent stacking your minor league team we could find a complete team cap number that is fair.

I think this would increase activity because of the influx of talent to the waiver wire.

[FlyersGM]

Contraction would also make the draft pretty irrelevant. Now, if you get a 5-6 D in third round, you feel pretty good about that pick. Now, that guy would never make it into your lineup.

[FlyersGM]

Also, these log-in dates aren't necessarily right. I know I've been on in the past week, plus I often jump right to the league standings/stats page.