For starters I’d like to reiterate that I do appreciate the efforts of the rules committee and that the balance between realism and practicality is also essential to keeping our game strong. However having said that I am one that votes for more realism.
In the NHL a player will usually sign 2-3 contracts before becoming a UFA. The player usually gets screwed on their rookie contract, which we’ve mimicked with our base salary. The second contract is still relatively cheap if one has less than 3 years of pro. If they have 3 years of pro, then the player has arbitration rights. By the 3rd contract everyone has arbitration rights, which results in a market correction in the player’s salary. How do we include arbitration into the game? Well how about basing salaries on ratings by the time the player has 3 years of RHL experience? Well love it or hate it the current demand structure does mimic this for us. For those with less than 3 years, they will continue to get screwed and receive their 10% raise. I personally have no problems with that because that’s the way the NHL currently does business. Now having said that if an owner wanted to minimize his risk, he could sign a player to two consecutive one year contracts followed by a 4 year contract, but this leave an owner exposed to offer sheets on two occasions versus the current one.
Richard wrote an article a while back about how various players are being treated unfairly http://rhlaviators.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-demand-to-be-treated-unfairly.html. So far with the exception of Bouwmeester I think arbitration has really helped players in the NHL get more money. However in the RHL’s UFA world I noticed a weird phenomenon. Why would an all-stars such as Alfredsson accept a contract offer close to the league minimum, as he did with the Aviators early on day 1? Now some of you may say, ‘well it’s supply and demand and this is the first offer.’ But my point is no player of Alfredsson’s qualities would ever accept a minimum offer. The flip side can be said about players like Petr Sykora or Anson Carter in the real world, where neither have yet signed a contract. Some may call it bargaining while others may say they’ve demanded too much. This is where the 3 rusted wheels in my head started to move. I think everyone would agree that Alfredsson is a $2M plus player in our league, so why not start the bidding at $2M? If after say day 3 he doesn’t get an offer of $2M then he goes back to the league minimum and the process for him begins on day 4.
Well the next question is where does one start? Once again love it or hate it, the demand system is currently the best thing, so I say for now use that as the starting point. Using Souray as an example, his demand for RHL16 was $3.9M, which was not accepted by his team (me). So under this proposed method he would start the auction at $3.9M. For argument sake lets say he doesn’t get a single bid at $3.9M then by day 4, his demand would drop back to the league minimum where the bidding for his services would begin. This will essentially keep all the pretenders away and hopefully add another element to the game.
