Aviator News

I confess!

2006-08-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

I confess! I have no motivation to user Blogger anymore. Yesterday, as I tried to post an article, I kept getting an error message. No, the error message didn't say the article was too long (smartass). The error message just said that my submission didn't go through. So, I'm making the move official: Aviator News 2.0 will be effective immediately, and it will be hosted by WordPress. Please update accordingly: http://rhlaviators.wordpress.com/ And don't be freaked out by the guy looking at you from the title bar.

Moving? Blame (Credit) Daniel!

2006-08-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Has anybody checked Daniel's blog recently? He moved it from Blogger to WordPress, and I'm very tempted to do that same. I've always liked the WordPress blogs, but I didn't realize they were free. For a while, I've been tolerating Blogger, but it's been extending my loyalties a bit. I'm not thrilled with its sketchy reliability ... Yet I've been using Bloger for over a year. I have almost 500 posts here. Should I be constrained by this legacy? I think ... maybe, so for now Aviator News, 2.0 should be considered a test release, until I make a decision. I'm going to be posting content here until that decision is made. Credit to Daniel for making the leap.

Sneak Peak: RMHL Ratings; AHL

2006-08-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

I'm going through today an finalizing the AHL ratings for the RMHL. This is really the folcrum of the whole project, as the AHL has players within the NHL ratings to whom I can compare ratings, and the AHL also shares performances, within a given season, with all the major junior leagues. So far, I'm happy with how the analysis turned out for most of the ratings, and today I'm going through and filling in those ratings where I couldn't write a program to estimate the value. In the end, the difference between a 2 and 3 in any category is secondary to just getting the job done and playing games, so I'm not spending a ton of time on any single rating. If you have input, just let me know. Oh, letting me know: USE DAVID'S FORUM!!! Start a thread there in addition to commenting here. Take over David's forum with RMHL talk! The goal for this weekend is to finish the AHL ratings. Next weekend, I want to finish the rest. NOTE: Done!!! With the AHL, that is.

TEAM PROSPECT NAME             POS RLG RTM        GP  G  A  PIM  DEFENSE FAT    SH/S+ SHOOTING    SSP 4PIC RPBF PN IN AS
500  Bell, Brendan             D   AHL St.John's  74  2  7  41   00022   17:00   7/3  46/20/15/18 332 0322 0000 6  6  10
CRY  Wellwood, Kyle            F   AHL St.John's  78  6  13 3    20000   14:00  20/4  60/11/8/20  333 2110 0002 1  4  17
TME  Colaiacovo, Carlo         D   AHL St.John's  62  2  10 29   00022   19:00   6/3  50/17/13/19 333 0222 0000 2  18 16
AVI  Newbury, Kris             F   AHL St.John's  74  1  6  88   12000   12:00   5/3  63/10/7/17  222 2320 0001 38 8  8
THU  Kondratiev, Maxim         D   AHL St.John's  18  1  2  6    00033   18:00  11/4  48/17/13/22 333 0212 0000 5  64 11
REA  Moore, Dominic            F   AHL Hartford   72  4  10 35   22200   13:00  11/4  77/8/5/10   443 3320 0002 5  10 14
500  Wiseman, Chad             F   AHL Hartford   62  7  10 26   02000   15:00  20/4  61/11/8/20  333 3220 0000 5  18 16
ROA  Healey, Paul              F   AHL Hartford   69  4  6  33   00200   11:00  12/4  58/12/9/20  222 2320 0000 7  13 9
SOC  Lampman, Bryce            D   AHL Hartford   70  1  4  29   00033   17:00   8/3  46/19/14/20 342 0323 0000 14 12 6
YDP  Labarbera, Jason          G   AHL Hartford   65  .911  8/40/4/47
YDP  Gaustad, Paul             F   AHL Rochester  80  3  8  97   21100   12:00   7/4  59/11/9/20  222 3430 0003 23 2  14
CAP  Pominville, Jason         F   AHL Rochester  68  10 11 17   00200   14:00  21/5  72/8/6/13   443 3210 0000 3  14 16
THU  Novotny, Jiri             F   AHL Rochester  49  0  5  9    20000   12:00   0/3  56/13/10/20 332 3330 0004 3  33 10
TME  Paetsch, Nathan           D   AHL Rochester  55  1  2  28   00033   17:00  10/3  47/17/13/21 342 0212 0000 16 27 4
CAP  Grebeshkov, Denis         D   AHL Manchester 44  1  3  20   00022   17:00   5/3  41/21/16/22 342 0333 0010 10 38 7
YDP  Clarke, Noah              F   AHL Manchester 73  7  10 14   02000   14:00  21/4  62/11/8/19  323 3110 0000 2  9  14
ROV  Lehoux, Yanick            F   AHL Manchester 68  4  11 13   20000   14:00  16/4  69/10/7/14  333 2110 0002 2  14 16
ROA  Scoville, Darrell         D   AHL Syracuse   72  3  12 42   00022   20:00  10/4  66/11/8/13  223 0322 0000 15 10 17
TME  Leclaire, Pascal          G   AHL Syracuse   47  .897  10/35/4/50
ROA  Woywitka, Jeff            D   AHL TorontoR   84  2  17 119  00022   20:00   5/3  54/17/12/16 323 0434 0000 26 0  20
CAP  Lynch, Doug               D   AHL TorontoR   76  3  10 44   02233   18:00  11/4  67/11/8/12  332 2322 0000 10 6  13
ROV  Bishai, Mike              F   AHL TorontoR   49  3  8  10   20000   15:00  15/4  70/9/7/13   323 3320 0002 5  33 16
ROA  Bekar, Derek              F   AHL Bridgeport 78  7  4  33   02000   11:00  17/4  62/11/8/18  322 2320 0000 10 4  5
GAR  Dubielewicz, Wade         G   AHL Bridgeport 36  .928  8/46/3/41
GAR  Dicaire, Gerard           D   AHL Utah       54  1  3  21   00022   17:00   4/3  41/21/16/22 332 0212 0000 10 28 6
SPE  Bacashihua, Jason         G   AHL Utah       40  .898  10/35/4/50
SPE  Goc, Marcel               F   AHL Cleveland  80  5  8  14   20000   12:00  12/4  76/8/6/10   342 2220 0003 4  2  10
SPE  Zalesak, Miroslav         F   AHL Cleveland  74  10 15 46   00100   15:00  23/5  68/9/6/15   443 2210 0000 12 8  20
THU  Boyes, Brad               F   AHL Cleveland  80  7  13 22   20200   15:00  20/4  61/11/8/19  333 3220 0004 3  2  16
ROV  DiSalvatore, Jon          F   AHL Cleveland  76  6  9  17   02200   13:00  15/4  61/12/8/18  222 4220 0000 5  6  12
GPS  Stafford, Garrett         D   AHL Cleveland  75  3  13 41   00022   20:00  11/4  50/16/12/21 333 0322 0000 5  7  17
500  Murray, Doug              D   AHL Cleveland  74  3  5  43   00022   16:00  14/4  47/18/14/20 222 0443 0000 8  8  7
VAM  Schaefer, Nolan           G   AHL Cleveland  28  .907  8/39/4/48
500  Patzold, Dmitri           G   AHL Cleveland  28  .897  10/35/4/50
VAM  Pivko, Libor              F   AHL Milwaukee  67  3  8  29   03300   12:00  13/4  79/8/6/7    343 3220 0000 10 15 12
THU  Gamache, Simon            F   AHL Milwaukee  69  6  12 17   11100   15:00  21/4  62/11/8/19  343 2220 0001 2  13 18
EAG  Shishkanov, Timofei       F   AHL Milwaukee  65  7  8  26   02200   13:00  21/4  62/11/7/19  442 2220 0000 12 17 12
GPS  Upshall, Scott            F   AHL Milwaukee  32  4  4  24   02200   13:00  24/5  65/10/7/17  333 4430 0000 17 50 13
EAG  Budaj, Petr               G   AHL Hershey    47  .898  10/35/4/50
ROV  Perrin, Eric              F   AHL Hershey    71  6  21 28   20000   15:00  16/4  69/10/7/14  323 3210 0002 4  11 30
VAM  Craig, Ryan               F   AHL Hershey    63  1  3  14   33300   10:00   6/3  60/11/8/19  222 4320 0001 6  19 18
STR  McCormick, Cody           F   AHL Hershey    32  1  2  35   11100   10:00   6/3  60/11/8/19  211 3440 0001 16 49 6
AVI  Artukhin, Evgeni          F   AHL Hershey    37  1  1  64   01100   9:00   21/3  46/15/11/27 421 4550 1000 102 45 3
STR  Niitymaki, Antero         G   AHL Phil       50  .909  8/40/4/48
MOU  Jones, Randy              D   AHL Phil       56  2  9  36   00022   20:00  10/3  47/17/13/22 333 0222 0000 18 26 18
500  Meyer, Freddy             D   AHL Phil       60  4  5  29   00022   18:00  21/4  53/15/12/19 332 0223 0000 10 22 8
AVI  Seidenberg, Denis         D   AHL Phil       34  2  5  18   00022   19:00   8/4  47/17/13/21 333 0212 0000 9  48 15
MOU  Wanvig, Kyle              F   AHL Houston    74  7  6  85   00200   14:00  23/4  57/12/8/22  212 3330 0000 15 8  8
REA  Roche, Travis             D   AHL Houston    62  2  11 10   00022   20:00   9/3  47/17/13/22 333 0212 0000 6  20 18
500  Foy, Matthew              F   AHL Houston    52  3  5  43   02200   13:00  19/4  53/13/9/24  222 3320 0000 13 30 10
THU  Schutte, Michael          D   AHL Houston    49  2  1  18   00022   17:00  11/4  50/17/13/20 211 0211 0000 2  33 2
MOU  MacDonald, Joey           G   AHL G. Rapids  39  .917  8/44/3/44
STR  Leneveu, David            G   AHL Springfld  39  .899  9/36/4/50
SOC  Westrum, Erik             F   AHL Springfld  57  4  7  52   21100   13:00  10/4  59/12/9/19  212 4330 0003 18 25 12
TME  Podlesak, Martin          F   AHL Springfld  58  1  3  12   20000   10:00   7/3  59/11/9/20  332 3210 0002 4  24 7
EAG  Vauclair, Julien          D   AHL Binghamton 80  3  11 22   00022   20:00   8/4  47/17/13/21 333 0211 0000 5  2  16
SOC  Laich, Brooks             F   AHL Binghamton 66  4  8  30   22200   14:00  22/4  61/12/8/19  223 4330 1000 10 14 12
ROV  Schubert, Christoph       D   AHL Binghamton 70  1  4  40   00022   18:00   3/3  40/21/16/22 322 0322 0000 8  12 6
ROV  Emery, Ray                G   AHL Binghamton 54  .904  8/38/4/49
VAM  Thomas, Tim               G   AHL Providence 44  .922  8/45/3/43
500  Jurcina, Milan            D   AHL Providence 75  1  5  30   00022   18:00   8/3  46/20/15/18 332 0320 0000 5  7  6
ROA  Samuelsson, Martin        F   AHL Providence 57  0  3  9    03300   10:00   0/3  56/13/10/20 432 4220 0000 4  25 5
500  Toivonen, Hannu           G   AHL Providence 37  .903  9/37/4/49
GAR  Fussey, Owen              F   AHL Portland   71  2  3  13   02200   10:00   9/3  59/11/8/20  232 4430 0000 3  11 4
GPS  Bryzgalov, Ilja           G   AHL Cincinnati 66  .901  9/36/4/50
DEF  Aucoin, Keith             F   AHL Cincinnati 82  5  11 37   11100   14:00  16/4  64/11/8/16  322 2220 0002 10 0  14
THU  Perreault, Joel           F   AHL Cincinnati 67  4  5  22   20000   12:00  15/4  64/11/8/16  332 2110 0002 6  15 8
SOC  Popovic, Mark             D   AHL Cincinnati 74  1  4  36   00022   18:00   6/3  46/20/15/18 342 0223 0000 8  8  5
DEF  Olson, Josh               F   AHL S. Antonio 75  6  6  19   02000   11:00  19/4  64/11/8/17  112 1350 0000 3  7  8
SPA  Campbell, Gregory         F   AHL S. Antonio 78  4  6  42   12200   10:00  14/4  65/11/8/15  332 3320 0001 9  4  10
GPS  Krajicek, Lukas           F   AHL S. Antonio 55  1  5  14   00022   19:00   9/3  48/18/13/20 342 0212 0000 4  27 8
DEF  Lajeunesse, Simon         G   AHL S. Antonio 8   .859  12/31/4/59
SOC  Krahn, Brent              G   AHL S. Antonio 22  .876  11/28/3/58
SPA  Babchuk, Anton            D   AHL Norfolk    73  2  5  51   00033   18:00   6/3  46/20/15/19 222 0444 0010 16 9  7
CAP  Keith, Duncan             D   AHL Norfolk    77  2  7  25   00022   19:00   8/3  47/20/14/19 322 0211 0000 6  5  10
AVI  Kukkonen, Lasse           D   AHL Norfolk    60  1  4  33   00022   18:00   5/3  41/21/26/22 332 0333 0000 12 22 7
ROV  Barinka, Michal           D   AHL Norfolk    41  1  1  46   00022   16:00  12/3  48/17/13/21 332 0333 0000 17 41 2
SPA  Perezhogin, Alexander     F   AHL Hamilton   77  7  10 30   02200   13:00  16/4  68/10/7/14  443 3320 0000 5  3  11
THU  Plekanec, Tomas           F   AHL Hamilton   76  7  16 52   22000   14:00  16/4  68/10/7/14  443 3220 0002 14 6  22
ROV  Higgins, Christopher      F   AHL Hamilton   67  6  10 10   22200   14:00  16/4  68/10/7/14  433 3210 0003 2  15 15
SOC  Beauchemin, Francois      D   AHL Hamilton   79  3  10 33   00022   19:00   5/4  66/13/10/11 333 0222 0000 9  3  13
AVI  Ferland, Jonathan         F   AHL Hamilton   70  1  4  25   00200   11:00   7/3  55/12/9/23  212 1210 0000 10 12 6
DEF  Hemingway, Colin          F   AHL Worcester  13  1  0  6    00200   10:00  16/4  68/10/7/15  221 2210 0000 14 69 0
ROV  Glumac, Mike              F   AHL Worcester  82  8  9  43   00300   13:00  19/4  62/11/7/18  222 3320 0000 6  0  12
THU  McClement, Jay            F   AHL Worcester  71  3  5  12   30000   11:00  19/4  59/11/8/21  342 3220 0004 2  11 7
SPE  Fast, Brad                D   AHL Lowell     79  3  10 20   00022   20:00  11/4  62/12/9/17  333 0211 0000 4  1  13
GAR  Nolan, Brandon            F   AHL Manitoba   48  2  4  10   22000   11:00  18/4  65/11/8/15  322 2220 0002 4  33 8
TME  Reid, Brandon             F   AHL Manitoba   73  5  15 11   20200   15:00  16/4  67/10/7/15  443 4220 0002 2  7  22
YDP  Ouellet, Michel           F   AHL Wilkes BS  81  8  7  20   00100   13:00  22/4  63/11/7/17  332 2110 0000 2  1  9
YDP  Suglobov, Alexander       F   AHL Albany     36  3  5  31   00200   14:00  24/4  61/11/7/20  332 3330 0000 24 46 14
SOC  Demarchi, Matt            D   AHL Albany     52  1  4  45   00022   19:00   7/3  46/20/15/18 222 0443 0000 22 30 8
AVI  Foster, Kurtis            D   AHL Chicago    69  3  7  55   00022   18:00   9/4  62/12/9/17  223 0222 0000 17 13 10
ROV  Lehtonen, Kari            G   AHL Chicago    40  .912  8/40/4/47

New Venue: RHL Forums

2006-08-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

David Bailey has stepped up and provided the RHL Community by providing a message board/forum environment for the league. For more information, check out the Freeze Blog: http://freeze.baileyweb.ca/ Or, you can go directly to the forums via the link to the right (in red) or by clicking below: http://rhl.baileyweb.ca/forum/index.php If you go diectly there, this note from David's post might be important, regarding site registration: The forum-only site registration requires the administrator (me) to authorize your registration, so there’ll be a time delay before you can actually post. If you register, please use the format of TeamAbbreviation_Firstname eg: FRE_David. If you think this kind of functionality will be useful in the league, please try to support David's effort, especially early in the process. I am very excited about having this kind of place to interact with people.

Aviator Prospect Report

2006-08-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

An organization which was dry of prospect resources one season ago has pushed itself the to middle of the pack, and while San Diego may lack the elite prospects other systems can brag of, the Aviators have a number of players on track to become contributors within 5-6 RHL seasons. Rank. Player Name, Pos., Age 1. Dustin Brown, RW, 21 2. Enver Lisin, RW, 20 3. Kurtis Foster, D, 24 4. Bruno Gervais, D, 21 5. Nigel Dawes, LW, 21 6. Stefan Ruzicka, RW, 21 7. Patrick Sharp, C, 25 8. James Wisniewski, D, 22 9. Dennis Seidenberg, D, 25 10. Lasse Kukkonen, D, 25 11. Ivan Khomutov, C, 21 12. Kevin Nastiuk, G, 21 13. Jason Ryznar, LW, 23 14. Kris Newbury, W, 24 15. Tyler Plante, G, 19 16. Evgeny Artyukhin, W, 23 17. Jonathan Ferland, RW, 23 18. Viktor Alexandrov, RW, 20 19. Mike Brodeur, G, 23 Dustin Brown Right Wing 21 years old Expected Arrival: RHL19 Projection: 2nd line forward Dustin has been consistently good throughout his major junior and minor league careers - good enough to always been considered a legitimate prospect. Yet, he has always been just under the level of an elite prospect, neither performing in a truly dominant manner nor exhibiting the raw skills which would lead you to believe him capable of dominating in the future. Despite these things, Brown has shown he is about ready to contribute, already making his way through many of the hurdles that have tripped up greater prospects. How the Aviators utilize him over the next few seasons will be telling as far as his development. Enver Lisin Right Wing 20 years old Expected Arrival: RHL20 Projection: 2nd line forward Enver has spent his last two seasons fighting for ice time on a loaded Kazan team in Russia. Despite its veteran-laden roster, the Ak-Bars could not keep Lisin out of the lineup as the speedy wing put up 7 goals and 5 assists in 43 games. Lisin has already committed to coming over to North America to play in the RMHL during RHL16, hoping to compete for a roster spot in San Diego within two seasons. Kurtis Foster Defenseman 24 years old Expected Arrival: RHL17 Projction: Top 4 defenseman Nobody doubts Kurtis's ability offensively. He will be able to man a spot with Mathieu Schneider on the Aviator power play for seasons to come. Doubts come in to play when considering his defensive ability. He has not developed as a skater, and his instincts in his own end lead to too many opportunities for opponents which could otherwise be stopped. To become a player who can man the top two pairs on a good team, Foster will need to improve enough to justify the role. Else, he will be a specialist. Bruno Gervais Defenseman 21 years old Expected Arrival: RHL18 Projection: Top 4 defenseman Gervais has never been highly regarded by scouts, but when the puck is dropped he always finds a way to distinguish himself amongst his peers. At every level he has both been underrated by scouting services but acknowledged through playing time and results as a viable prospect. Acquired in mid-season of RHL15, Gervais immediately impressed himself upon the Aviator staff as a player who has a strong future with the team. Do not expect this organization to undervalue his contributions. Nigel Dawes Left Wing 21 years old Expected Arrival: RHL20 Projection: 2nd line forward A truly gifted player who is a threat to create an opportunity on every shift, the questions surrounding the diminutive Dawes is whether he can adapt to the physicality and style-of-play at a higher level. His first year out of major junior will be spent in Las Vegas giving himself and his new team an idea as to whether the success he's had will continue as his career progresses. If he can, the Aviators could have more than your typical second line winger. Stefan Ruzicka Right Wing 21 years old Expected Arrival: RHL20 Projection: 2nd line forward Ruzicka possesses and shows the skill set you expect from an elite prospect, but his infrequent application of those skills forces us to wonder what his ceiling is. Truly elite prospects dominate at the lowest levels of development, and although Ruzicka has always caught the eyes of scouts and coaches, he's never put up a stand-out season. Hopefully a change of atmosphere and organization will shake something loose, and Ruzicka could be a valuable contributor to future Aviator teams. Patrick Sharp Center 25 years old Expected Arrival: RHL17 Projection: Third line forward Sharp has always been a good player, no matter the level. Although his potential is limited, we should expect him to also be a good player in the RHL. And really, he's already at that level, being kept in Las Vegas based on Aviator whim, not need for development. While many prospect rankings overlook the accomplishment inherent in being a third line forward, we should remember how difficult it is to climb each rung of the development ladder. That Sharp has reached the apex of his professional journey makes him a significant prospect. James Wisniewski Defenseman 22 years old Expected Arrival: RHL18 Projection: Top 6 defenseman Similar to Gervais though one year older, Wisniewski has always been acknowledges by coaches and awards but not by scouts. The same process is happening within the Aviator organization where, despite drafting him, the scouting department has failed to advocate the virtues Wisniewski brings to a team. Those virtues are a surprisingly solid all-around game and a high degree of adaptability. Now that the Aviators have signed him to a new deal, expect the organization to take notice of their up-and-coming defenseman. Dennis Seidenberg Defenseman 25 years old Expected Arrival: RHl18 Projection: Top 6 defenseman Seidenberg has been a long time coming, but it looks as if he's becoming a viable candidate to compete for an Aviator job over the next two to three seasons. The Aviators would like to see him take one more step forward before bringing him up for good, which means he has one or two seasons in the RMHL ahead of him. How Dennis responds to this will determine what role he has in San Diego's future. Lasse Kukkonen Defenseman 25 years old Expected Arrival: RHL18 Projection: Top 6 defenseman This Finnish national has engaged in a prolonged flirtation with North American hockey that seems destined to last a few more seasons. One of the better offensive threats from the blue line in Finland, the Aviators can expect a nice addition to the defenseman depth should Kukkonen decide to join their team. It won't happen in RHL16, the Aviators have already been told. But the fact that they were told anything shows Kukkonen is considering hopping the pond. Ivan Khomutov Center 21 years old Expected Arrival: RHL22 Projection: 4th line forward Can you call somebody who does everything decently but nothing well an all-around player? That's what the Aviators appear to have with Khomutov. He does everything you want a center to do, but he stands out in none of those areas. He's a player bound to fit in on a fourth line at some point in the organization's future, but he's yet to show that his potential is more than a space-filler. Kevin Nastiuk Goalie 21 years old Expected Arrival: RHL22 Projection: Back-up goaltender A player that has shown improvement in each season, Nastiuk has slowly put himself on the Aviator radar. In an organization down on the idea of goaltending prospects, the mere fact that General Manager Richard Farley is willing to common on him is an accomplishment for the young netminder. "Who?" Farley optimistically says about Nastiuk. Who indeed. Jason Ryznar Left Wing 23 years old Expected Arrival: RHL18 Projection: Checking forward When a forward has enough skills to make it to the RHL but lack the ability to ever be an average offensive player, he deserves a special label: fungible. While we can all admire the contributions players like Kirk Maltby, Mike Keane, and Claude LaPointe have made throughout their careers, they aren't the players in whom lore is founded. They are often indispensable parts of championship teams, but they are also readily available in trades and free agency. And nobody should draft something they can get on the open market. Kris Newbury 24 years old Right/Left Wing Expected Arrival: RHL18 Projection: Journeyman Newbury has shown some scoring touch in the last few seasons, but as that's been as much of a product of his acclimation to leagues as his raw skillset, Newbury's going to have to get by on those things which have always come naturally: hard work, the willingness to be physical. To that end, his upside is limited. He might explode for a 12-14 goal season in his eighth of ninth year, but that will be the high point of an otherwise pedestrian career. We might be looking at one of the first RMHL veterans in Newbury. Evgeny Artyukhin Left/Right Wing 23 years old Expected Arrival: RHL17 Projection: Journeyman At 6'4", 254 pounds, this Russian bear is on the ice to punish opponents. Beyond this, it's unclear what he brings to a team. Still young, Evgeny has a chance to develop into a productive role player for the Aviators. But unless he adds some more dimensions to his game, odds are he'll be contributing to the Pilots rather than the Aviators. Tyler Plante Goalie 19 years old Expected Arrival: RHL23 Projection: Back-up goaltender Recently acquired in the Kyle McLaren trade, Tyler is still too far away from the RHL to reasonably project. That he has performed will in major junior play says only that he hasn't precluded the possibility of an RHL career. For goaltenders, the road is long an filled with an unreal amount of competition. It's far to see to say whether Tyler will see an RHL game. Jonathan Ferland Right Wing 23 years old Expected Arrival: None Projection: Journeyman Ferland has more potential to flame out than anybody on this prospect list, but if he does hit he's likely to score some goals. He's not making the RHL as a "complete" player. Well, he's probably not making the RHL at all. But if he does, it will be because he finally developed enough of an all-around game to justify giving him more than the paltry ice-time he's gotten over the last few seasons. But it's doubtful he deserves it. Viktor Alexandrov Right Wing 20 years old Expected Arrival: None Projection: "I always said we should have gotten him into that Bloomingdales' executive training program!" Viktor took a step back in Russia during RHL15, regressing from his performance of the previous season. Unlike Enver Lisin, Alexandrov has not had to fight hard for playing time, making his inconsistent and disappointing results more telling. Unless he takes an unexpected step forward in development, Alexandrov will not see an M contract. Mike Brodeur Goalie 23 years old Expected Arrival: None Projection: Will be busy during intermissions If you said that Brodeur's development has stunted you'd be erroneously acknowledging preceding development that never existed. Mike Brodeur looks like a prospect who's always been behind somebody or something, but there has been insufficient upward movement in his career to label him a prospect. Something could click and he could into a valuable RHL commodity. But that seems unlikely, at this point.

Let's Take a Step Back

2006-08-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight's article is going to attempt to be a catharsis. There are some apologies, a lot of self-deprication, and (of course) some finger pointing. But the finger pointing (tonight) is designed around a theme: taking a step back, back away from those things we may be dwelling on. But before that, let's get to the bullet points:

You may have seen Andy and Brad came up with a deal. I'd like to congratulate them both and thank them for working through it. It was tough for both owners, as AVI had a terrible roster while MOU was put in a bad position of being forced to deal. Cudos to both of them.
Steve Stringer is reporting that Sandis Ozolinsh has found a new home. That's another mark on the ledger for Steve in the Francis race, as he just made that Pronger deal look better.
We are on schedule for RMHL ratings, with a good deal of work done this weekend. Remember: Since we are using 2003-04 NHL ratings, I will be making a rating set based on 2003-04 prospect data.
Finally, a reminder about the Hall of Fame. With preseason winding down, the Board of Regents will be winding up. Send any Hall of Fame thoughts to rhlhalloffame@gmail.com. To answer a question I get sometimes: Yes, I'm working on the web content.
Only 12 more days on the job for me! Then, new life starts.

And now to your Feature Presentation ("Silence is Golden"):

Let's all just take a step back for a minute. I say that to me. I say that to my team. I say that to the league as a whole. Now that a particularly volatile period of free agency is over, perhaps we should put some things into perspective. Finances First, finances. There are (at least) three teams who are playing roulette with their finances, according to an email Paul sent out earlier this week. These teams are defined as those having payrolls which exceed the amount of RHL16 revenue they can expect to take-in plus their bank balance. There had been some talk during the off-season of capping the amount a team could bid in auction, bringing in some FHL rules to help make sure people aren't gratuitously overspending. But I think we should just take a step back and give teams the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps teams plan on cutting players, or maybe they're confident in their ability to trade away payroll. Regardless, part of the point of this league is to see who's better at managing the constraints that payrolls and revenue place on a franchise. Take away some of the means by which to fail and you're taking away one of the means by which owners distinguish themselves. If people have differing strategies for managing this, so be it. We should embrace the diversity, because this would be a very boring league if the rules forced us all to act too similarly. With the bankruptcy rules in place, teams should have a sufficient deterrent to overspending. If those rules are applied correctly, nobody can get away with overspending for too long. I spoke of giving teams room to fail, and you can reverse that and see the view as giving teams the ability to better themselves relative to other teams. After all, if one team is allowed to fail then there has to be one (or more) relative beneficiaries. I would caution against this kind of logical reversal, as I am against people purposely exploiting other owners. Out-draft somebody? Fine. Pick the right free agent? Cool. Use an owner as a well of assets for your team? Not so cool. But let's not think about this. I'd rather we all just take a step back and give these teams the benefit of the doubt. For now. Bidding Secondly, bidding. I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to reading too much into what people's bids in free agency. I'm sure subscribers to this blog can recall me picking out Brad, though he wasn't the only person with those bidding patterns. I need to admit that no matter how much I tried to qualify the behaviors I described, they still came off as me calling Brad out. But let's take a step back for a minute. Rather than point out (again) that Brad has done nothing either unethical or illegal, let's approach this from a different tact - a tact which I fully embrace (at this moment): In lieu of any firm evidence to the contrary, shouldn't we give owners the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're acting in good faith? It makes for a much easier RHL life if we can stop thinking about people ninja'ing players. When I brought up Brad's name in the eight rules article, it started as a joke. When I pointed out his Sanderson bid, the joke was coupled with evidence, but it was still delivered with some flippancy. But when I brought some of those emotions into the article of this weekend (summarizing San Diego's second week of free agency), I failed to sufficiently delineate between isues. Those failures created an undercurrent of acrimony that I'm not happy with. For that, I apologize to Brad and the readers of this blog. Taking a step back, my intentions fell victim to my zealousness. This overzealousness became apparent this weekend, as Brad and Andy started to get closer to a deal. Ultimately, the problem between to two sides seemed to be one of perception. San Diego's perception was that Brad was focused on Cole. His perception seemed to be that we were focused on Walz, who he didn't want. Once Cole was out of the way and the conversation shifted from Walz, the discussions were (relatively) painless. So my article this weekend was not only laced with an unhealthy disregard for the fact that Brad was losing a valued player, but it was also written in the middle of a mutual miscommunication. Had I taken a step back and given Brad the benefit of the doubt, the malice that seeps through that article could have been left out. But in the wake of that article and some criticism derived from it, let me reiterate something: I find it hurtful, the insinuation that San Diego bids on players to drive up prices. The Aviators have a long (and unfortunately) notorious history of bidding on restricted free agents, so long that it seems less price fixing and more a continued strategy of roster building. In light of this, I find it a stretch to read the article I wrote this weekend and conclude San Diego was attempted to merely drive the price on a player. Just because we were surprised that Brad elected not to match does not mean that we never wanted Drury to begin with. I honestly don't even know how to get to that conclusion from the article that was posted. I say this already having emailed Daniel personally on the matter. I recommend you read his articles, but I also feel the need to say my piece. Again. People who have been in other simulation leagues with me might know that Chris Drury is somewhat of a personal hero of mine. He is one year older than me, and when I was eleven years old and about to start my final year of Little League baseball, he was leading a team from Trumbull, Conencticut to a win over a Chinese Taipei team that had won the Little League World Series title every season of my memory and was notorious for stacking their team with overage, out-of-region players. For a kid whose life was baseball, Chris Drury was part of my folklore long before he was winning Bean Pots or Stanley Cups. That we bid on him in restricted free agency was not influenced by this childhood memory, but this childhood memory pretty much precludes any possibility that I would be anything but ecstatic to put " Drury " in my line form. He's the fourth restricted free agent I've ever gotten (Primeau, LaFlamme, Weekes) but the most cherished. Restricted Free Agency And that brings us to the third issue of the night: Restricted free agency. After our experience with the Drury negotiations and what Daniel wrote about the Langkow bid I placed five seasons ago, I started thinking that restricted free agency needs to be eliminated from the league. The conclusion was derived from the apparent inability of owners to deal with my bidding on restricted free agents. Daniel didn't talk to me for a year, and the Mountie negotiations were difficult. Wasn't this evidence enough that the system's negatives were excessive? Not nearly, and after thinking about it, I've again become an advocate of the defined compensation model, previously discussed. Looking at the Langkow and Drury situations finds the problems with owners, rather than the system. With Langkow, there appears to be some feeling of entitlement to not only have the rights to the player but to also to the rights to have the player cheaply. And I shouldn't single out Langkow and the Bees in this critique. It's my opinion that most owners view restricted free agency as a formality, rather than a stage in the negotiation of a contract. The idea of restricted free agency as a formality engenders the view of the player to a team cheaply. But if this is the point of restricted free agency, why have it at all? Clearly, this is not the point. Restricted free agency isn't the problem. Our attitudes towards it are. Daniel's critique brings up the idea that bidding on a restricted free agent requires the bidding team to consider the personal expense - a potential severed relationship. How has any owner gotten to the point where they take restricted free agency so personally? We need to take a step back. Restricted free agency has been in the rule book, in this same form, for a long time. Nowhere in that ruleset is there anything defining a particular entitlement on the part of the owning team that would give them just cause to feel personally slighted by a restricted free agency bid. And if this would be the motivation for scrapping the system, it's a faulty motivation based on an emotion that should not exist. This is why in the last two days I've shifted from an abolitionist to an advocate. Restricted free agency should stay in place for realism's sake (NHL has it, as do most leagues in some form) and as a means to add depth to our financial model. The only problem I see with restricted free agency is the nebulous nature of the current compensation model. When somebody can look at Erik Cole and Chris Drury and think the former is fair compensation for the latter, it shows a willingness to wrong the owner of Cole. Cole's contract is such that his value, as a commodity, is much more than Drury's. Again, I don't blame Brad for asking for Cole or trying to steer the negotiations in this direction. But if an arbitrator awarded Cole to Kitchener for Drury, that arbitrator would be dismissing a fundamental fact of the league: Cheap contracts are the lifeblood of a team. They enable you to do things like overpay for Chris Pronger and Shane Doan. Without cheap contracts, you end up in a state of constant financial crisis which leagues to having to blow up the whole operation. The Reapers are going down this road right now. Recognizing the value of these contracts, it would be impossible to award Erik Cole for Chris Drury, given how similar their output would be. Cole is clearly the superior commodity. Alas, San Diego recognized that some owners would not agree with this view and traded Cole. This has been called a "panic" move, but trading Cole to Mark was always part of the plan. Even before bidding on Drury, there was a conscious "and if this happens, we start talks with Mark" line of reasoning. Given the return we got for Cole, it's hard to see the deal as a dump of Erik; rather, we traded present for future. We need to take a step back, look at restricted free agency, and address this compensation problem, because no team deserves to be wronged in arbitration. The specter of being wronged by an ill-defined arbitration process is restricting bids on free agents (which in turn affect our demand system). Once we define a firm compensation schedule (like the NHL has), teams will be able to factor this in to their demand decisions, their decisions to match bids, and the decisions to let players go. The compensation paradigm shifts from a nebulous "fair", arbitration paradigm to a firm target around which people can plan with some sense of objectivity. What's more, we can start to move away from the idea of restricted free agents being specially entitled to teams, as with a firm schedule of compensation bids should come with less of a "and he's trying to give me this" quality to them. This One's For Me The fourth issue we need to "step back" on has nothing to do with you (the reader, the RHL community). As with most things I think about, this issue is all about me. I need to take a step back from taking myself so seriously. An embodiment of this was my reaction to Daniel's blog posts. I've provided somewhat of a rebuttal here, but why do I feel the need to do this? Can't his words and my words speak for themselves without me having to directly reference them? For example, I told Daniel I had an issue with the way he used a quote in this piece. While I firmly disagree with that representation, why can't I just rely on readers to discern these problems on their own? We all know Daniel to be a good, sensible man. Why can't I let his words be merely a point-in-time statement of feeling? I need to take a step back and realize that Daniel's views are fine. They're just content in our RHL universe. At first, I was like "Oh man, Daniel's really ripping me." But so what if he is? Within our RHL universe, what's wrong with some criticism? This is clearly something I need to grasp, and I need to improve upon not taking myself so seriously. Else, I open myself up to the criticize of hypocrisy, in light of the typical Aviator News content. To that end, I'd like to suggest a contest, for all those in our blog community. I challenge each of you to provide on article on your blog which either parodies or criticizes the Aviators or me (please, leave Andy out of it). I will announce the winner at this time next week. Your goal is to be as merciless as possible. As a prize, I will feature the article in a permanent link on this blog and (as graciously as possible) post a note to the main list advertising your work. Clearly, I need to be taken down a few notches, and I can't think of a better way to take a step back and do that. Find the Fun The final point I'd like to make, keeping with the theme of taking a step back, is a plea for fun. Free agency is not the most enjoyable time of the RHL season. It is necessarily filled with highs and lows, expectations and implicit denunciations. Now that we're through that point in the process, I want to encourage all of us to take a step back and identify the fun parts of the league, actively embrace those things, and move on from free agency. For me, the fun parts of the league are working with Andy, competing with the Aviators, forming relationships with you all, writing these blogs, and developing my special RHL projects. Trading isn't on that list, so I don't do that anymore. Maybe next year I'll let Andy handle free agency, too. But for now, let's all take a step back and have some fun. With that, I'm off to work on the RMHL rating set!

Week 2 of Aviator Free Agency: The Storm After the Calm

2006-08-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning in La Jolla is a beautiful thing. The signature grey shoreline skies give you a timelessness, a placelessness that's the perfect tonic to the five day work week's passed. When the marine layer breaks two hours from now and the postcard clear skies bring me back to the world, I'll start looking forward to tomorrow morning when I can be back here, without place and time: the La Jolla morning I can never believe exists. Today I'll use my morning to reflect on the week that was for the Aviators, the second week of free agency. If you've followed the transactions and signings you've seen Week 2 of the Aviator free agent period was as active and exciting and the first week was mundane and pedestrian. More on that below. First, the typical quick hits.

The response to the RMHL starting has been more than I anticipated. Half of the league's general manager positions are already filled:

Team	Conference	General Manager
Atlanta Dogwoods	Southeast	Mark Benvenga
Charlotte Coastal Cats	Southeast	Howard Wong
Colorado Springs Cadets	Mountain	Jun Kokaji
Henderson Dammers	Mountain	Chris Bourdeau
Las Vegas Pilots	Mountain	Richard Farley
Tampa Bay Manatees	Southeast	Steve Stringer

For more RMHL-related content, I highly recommend the following:

Rovers Announce Affiliation Agreement - this team is loaded.
Eagles roll dice on new minor league team - The Mountain conference favorites.
Rocky Mountain High - the benefits of training at altitude?
Baby Penetrators Head to Charlotte - Goalies and D-men OK ... Forwards? Not so much.

General managers interested in running other teams should let me know. I would also encourage co-GM relationships where two owners want to run a shared affiliate (unlikely). In conjunction with a project I'm working on for Andy's main league, I'll be completing a lot of the core analysis today. The next two-three weeks will be spent augmenting the results of this analysis. My goal isn't a perfect rating set. My goal is to get something in place so we can start having fun.

I brought this up in a Rover Report comment, but I wanted to draw attention to it: it would be interesting to establish a continuous dialogue regarding potential Francis and Blake award winners. Often these awards are based on a retrospective analysis that can overlook early season moves when the votes are cast at season's end. Let's not forget the good work that Chris Bourdeau and Steve Stringer have done thus far. Also, I would like to point out the value free agent signings Jun Kokaji made. Look at the ratings of Steve Thomas and Brett Hull and tell me those weren't great signings, given the Spartans' financial constraints and place in their success cycle.
In my last post, I wasted some space talking about the blog community that's been created. This week may have been the most active week I've experienced with this informal community - the group of owners who read the blogs but do not a,) have blogs, or b.) post in the comments. These people are starting to email me more often, which is great. I'm having longer, more informative conversations with a wider array of owners. In particular, the draft analysis article generated a lot of traffic. I learned a lot about how people approach prospect evaluation and was able to identify a number of ways I can improve how I look at things. Without this implicit community (which seems to be growing stronger and stronger), I wouldn't be getting this level of feedback.

But before we become bogged-down by these bullet points, let's get to today's (destined to be lengthy) article.

Introduction: The Week that Was I. Mathieu Schneider: Making the Commitment II. Shane Doan: Because Some Players Just Fit III. Geoff Sanderson: So Much Trouble, So Little Reward IV. Chris Drury: The Price, and then The Cost Conclusion: Where San Diego Sits, RHL16 Introduction: The Week that Was My summary of San Diego's Week 1 foray into RHL16 Free Agency was characterized by missed opportunities, regret, and befuddlement. After aggressively courting Wade Redden, Shane Doan, and Geoff Sanderson, the Aviators were left with a couple of nice signings (Bryan Smolinski and Brent Sopel) and big bag of "Sorry, maybe next year." As the first days of Week 2 unfolded, the same tone persisted, and Aviator management started embracing the idea of a long RHL16 of low payroll and low talent. That's an attitude which is far too meek for the Aviators, a team taht - for better or worse - has always acted decisively. After the forward market in unrestricted free agency shifted and San Diego signed former Mountie restricted free agent Chris Drury to an offer sheet, the whole tone of the the free agent season changed. Decisive action, back on the table, shifted the whole karmatic alignment of the team's aura. Things started falling into place, and the Aviator team which leaves the second week of free agent has an entirely different look than that of the two weeks prior. As this week played out, the Aviators were able to get a version of The Big Three as well as add Drury. There was a cost to the moves, though. Erik Cole, the player outsiders felt to be the cornerstone of the franchise, was traded to Indianapolis. By themselves, the moves were compelling; however, the back-story on each, played out like the RHL-version of a bad spy novel. Back room dealings, sabotage, and high-level diplomacy hung over each acquisition, makes this week the most dramatic in franchise history. In the wake of Week 2, the San Diego Aviators have been reborn a new organization, though it came with a price. Adding the Drury saga to our update on The Big Three, here's a recap of the week that was in Aviator free agency. Mathieu Schneider: Making the Commitment On Monday night, Wade Redden make it official. He's returning to Saskatoon for RHL16, possibly longer. The length of the contract has not been officially disclosed (the league's rosters nor the Saskatoon blog give us a hint). Scott Niedermayer and his representation await the decision. With this other key player of the Funboy lineup due for a contract extension at season's end, the Redden signing could be a seen as a choice: Redden over Niedermayer. If the reigning Eddie Shore Award winner garners the contract he is expected to request, it will be difficult for Martin Baldwin to allocate $9 million to two defensemen. In the interim, the Funboy decision shifted San Diego's focus to Mathieu Schneider. Thought headed to Edmonton to sign with the Eagles, the former Thundercat rearguard was hesitant to rejoin an Aviator team which had dealt him to Washington prior to the RHL6 season. His short stay in San Diego left a player who'd hoped to lay roots in California hesitant to trust that the Aviator intended to retain his services for longer than a few months. An initial offer from San Diego of three seasons, $8.4 million would be bettered by Edmonton, Schneider's agent was told. When the Aviators came back with an offer of three seasons, $9.8 million - a contract that would be very difficult to trade - Schneider started warming to the idea of joining San Diego. This is not to say that the defenseman did not give Edmonton the chance to offer a better deal. Last season, the Eagles were the better of the two teams, and though the Aviators have been competitive as recently as RHL14 (finishing sixth overall in the league), most experts predict a better RHL16 for Edmonton when compared to San Diego. Schneider would get to return to a U.S. team with the Aviators, but he might be sacrificing team success. Furthermore, San Diego has been practically Calgarian of late as it concerns player loyalty. Is a contract with Richard Farley worth the recycled paper it's printed on? Ultimately, these issues were inconsequential, as the Eagles notified Schneider's representation that they would be unwilling to improve on their previous offer, a contract with a $2.8 million seasonal average. When Schneider made his decision on Friday night, the Aviators had signed Shane Doan, Geoff Sanderson and Chris Drury in addition to the previous week's signings of Smolinski and Sopel. Though they weren't the Eagles, they were making a commitment to winning - enough of a commitment to rationalize accepting the last Aviator offer. Schneider's representation notified San Diego just after midnight eastern time that Mathieu would sign with the Aviators. Though they had made a series of other signings throughout the week, the Schneider was arguably the most important, solidifying an Aviator team which lacked a key defenseman for both the present and future. With a series of young blueliners coming through the system, the Aviators were faced with an RHL17 where, after Brian Leetch's contract expires, nobody would be in the fold to groom and augment Bruno Gervais, James Wisniewski, and Kurtis Foster. With Schneider in the fold, the team can concentrate on the continued development of Shaonne Morrisonn and Bryan Allen while only having to break in one of the younger rearguards (most likely Foster). The other two can continue to develop in Las Vegas while Mathieu Schneider shapes in the next generation of Aviator defensemen. Now with the flexibility to trade their other high-priced defenseman, it's unclear how long the top pair of Leetch and Schneider will be together. But for San Diego, it's been a while since the team had options. Shane Doan: Because Some Players Just Fit The secret within the Aviator front office, one to which nobody will admit to on record, is that they overpaid for Doan. At least, that's what they feel. What's more, in giving him a four year contract, Richard Farley concedes to locking himself in to a what he calls a "net-loss": a contract that loses money when compared to performance. For a team that is has become renown for a spreadsheet mentality, this represents a huge departure from recent policy. Why, in the case of Doan, did the Aviators revert back to a previous, extravagant model of spending? As the second week of free agency progressed, two facts which would define Aviator spending had surfaced. First, the forward market shifted, drastically. The range of players getting elite player prices had expanded farther than San Diego had anticipated. Second, the idea of going into the season trying to patch-together a first line became unacceptable. These facts led to a new policy being developed in the wake of the failed, original version of The Big Three. The Aviators would be willing to overpay for one forward - the idea being that they would offer a lucrative one year contract and then try to negotiate a more sensible deal before RHL17. If that deal had to wait until after RHl16 to be negotiated, so be it. The Aviators would not go through RHL16 with the same uncompetitive group that closed out RHL15. The new policy enacted, San Diego considered the options available on the market, knowing that the Edmonton Eagles were committed to keeping Doan. With the market shifting on players like Brian Rolston and Mats Sundin (options two and three on San Diego's board), the Aviators nonetheless decided to give Doan one more offer, hoping to get the player they wanted all along. On Tuesday, Richard Farley informed Shane's representation that they would be willing to offer a base of over $3.3 million dollars. It was their best and most likely last offer, and they needed a response before other players signed with teams. In the interim, the Eagles and Aviators realized that they were in a two player bidding war. It's unclear which team contacted the other first, but Edmonton and San Diego started talking at midweek in an attempt to size each other up. The idea of splitting the players - where each team would agree discontinue negotiating with one player - was broached. Additionally, one team offered to sent a draft pick to sell a draft pick to the other if that team would just disappear from the bidding. But as talks progressed it became clear that the Aviators has placed a high value on both Schneider and Doan, a probable effect of their first week disappointments. For an Eagle team whose prime commitment is the continued development of their youthful core, the expenditures on Doan and Schneider were becoming more difficult to justify. By Wednesday night, when it became clear that no deal was possible with an Aviator team that seemed intent on getting both Doan and Schneider, the Eagles adjusted their plans. Their RHL16 campaign would be waged without either Shane Doan, their former captain, or Mathieu Schneider. On Thursday, Shane Doan informed the Aviators he intended to sign with them and had instructed his agent to negotiate a contract for whatever contract length the team desired (given the agreement the sides had reached on the annual salary). To the surprise of Doan, his agent, and to a certain extent the Aviators, Doan was offered a maximum-length contract (4 seasons) worth $15.4 million dollars. It will be another contract that will be hard to trade, should the Aviators ever decide to try. For now, it appears as if the Aviators see Shane Doan as a cornerstone for the franchise's future. What started out as overpaying for one forward ended up as a building block for the next four seasons. "Shane just seems right," Richard Farley said. "I wish I could explain it in a more detailed, analytical way. But this is a deal that I can only explain in terms of emotion. When I got a copy of the contract Shane had signed and I looked at the signatures, I immediately felt better about this whole team. Shane is a player I trust to be there for us. I think that's all I need to say." Geoff Sanderson: So Much Trouble, So Little Reward "I suspect that Kitchener was never serious about signing Geoff," was what Sanderson's representation said as the winger inked a two season, $2.4 million deal with San Diego. "It's an interesting way of negotiating [Kitchener] has. We had a ten minute phone conversation and then a fax. When we tried to call them back after talking to the Aviators, they didn't even return our phone call." It's difficult to be excited about signing a player under such circumstances. Sanderson, almost begrudgingly, signs with San Diego after a brief period of flirtation with the Mounties. As with affairs which never were, the knowledge of the love that will never be stains the love you already had. It's irrational, but it's true. Having jumped between three teams in RHL15, Sanderson should be happy with the contract he has. The circumstances of signing it, however, engender a bit of bitterness. "I can't say I'll never negotiate with [Mountie GM] Brad [Schott] again," expanded the agent, "because it's better for my client if I do. I would prefer they either change how they deal with people or not contact me at all. But when they call, I'm obligated to pick up the phone." Likewise, the signing was without excitement for the Aviators. Having made a final offer to Geoff sometime over the weekend, San Diego was sure that Sanderson would go to Kitchener. When, on Wednesday, the Aviators were informed that the veteran winger would like to sign in San Diego, the reward was anti-climatic. "It just seems like a lot of trouble," said Richard Farley. "You sign a player, you should be happy. And our team is much better with Geoff. He's a quality person, a quality player, and we are glad he decided to join us. But the whole process was almost poisoned. Yes, I do feel a little bitter now." Asked during a Saturday press conference if his feelings were still consistent with the luke-warm defense of Brad Schott posted last week to the team's web site, Farley dodged the question. "I feel Brad is one of the best owners and coaches in this league - destined for the Hall of Fame. We are in negotiations with the Mounties regarding compensation for Chris Drury. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on anything else at this point." But as that press conference - scheduled to announce the arrival of Chris Drury - wore on, Farley would jump back-and-forth across the line of what was, by his definition, appropriate and inappropriate. Chris Drury: The Price, and then The Cost Faced with the rising costs of forwards in the unrestricted free agent market, the Aviators signed Mountie center Chris Drury to an offer sheet, providing him with a four season, $10.2 million dollar contract which the Mounties had the right to match. Anticipating that Kitchener would match the deal, the Aviators prepared to bid on a second restricted free agent. But then, on Thursday, San Diego's wildest dreams came true, and a counter to the argument of Schneider as the more important Aviator signee could be made. Early Thursday morning Pacific time, the commissioner's office notified the Aviators that the Mounties would not be matching the offer sheet signed by Chris Drury. Chris Drury would be an Aviator, a result that stunned even the player. "Honestly, I was shocked," said the Connecticut-born center. "I wanted to stay with the Mounties, but I guess they didn't see me as part of their future. It was baffling. I suppose I'm happy to be in a place where I am really wanted. I would be lying if I didn't concede that I'm still somewhat of a Mountie, in my head." It soon became clear that the Mounties were trying to "game" the arbitration system, as the Aviators found out once Assistant General Manager Andy Bartalone attempted to agree on compensation with Kitchener. Schott made it apparent to the Aviators early on that he had no interest in negotiating compensation for Drury; rather, he was more concerned with how Drury could be used to compensate San Diego for Erik Cole. In an RHL world were getting players on premium contracts is the ultimate value, you can't blame Schott for asking about the availability of Cole. However, the Mounties' inability (unwillingness) to even discuss other options portended to a long, unsuccessful negotiation. Schott told San Diego that Cole was the only Aviator he saw fitting his team, an interesting idea of compensation. Whereas restricted free agency should be viewed as requiring a team to "compensate" another for a player lost, Brad Schott was willing to take the negotiations to arbitration as a means of acquiring a more valuable commodity than the player he was giving up. In short, Schott was trying to work the system to his favor, approaching the deal as he would a trade negotiation rather than a discussion about compensation. In three cases in their history, the Aviators (who have been the most active team in restricted free agent markets) have been involved in a restricted free agenct process that came to the point of compensation. In RHL5, compensation was worked out in one day for Keith Primeau from the Anteaters. In RHL7, the same happened for Christian LaFlamme from the Indianapolis 500s. In RHL8, and acrimonious negotiation with the Roadkill, who had bid on Sebastien Bordeleau, led to the only arbitration case in the league's history - a casse which San Diego lost. "I feel terrible thinking about that negotiation," said Farley when asked about his previous experience with arbitration. "I didn't like the Roadkill roster because it was loaded with bad contracts, but I had a totally distorted view of what compensation should be. Ultimately, I lost the case. I'm not sure that the offer I submitted to the panel was unfair, but I think the offer Craig submitted was fair. Unless the offering team is failing to compensate fairly, I think the owning team has little recourse. They have to ability to match the contract, but restricted free agency isn't about the owner who's losing the player. It's about the player getting a fair deal, in my opinion. I was making that arbitration case too much about the Aviators, not enough about merely compensating me for losing Bordeleau. "One day, a while ago, I apologized to Craig for the way I'd acted. I still don't think I've made it clear to Craig how bad I feel about that negotiation." Now in their first negotiation since the Bordeleau case (for whom the Aviators were awarded Josef Beranek and a third round draft pick by an arbitration panel), the roles have been reversed. With the Aviators offering various ways to augment Wes Walz's short contract in compensation for the unmatched Drury, Schott has refused to look at the process at compensation as much as a trade negotiation. "The first email Andy [Bartlone] sent to Brad after we were informed that we were willing to throw in anything reasonable with Walz," Farley said. "We didn't even need to base the deal around Walz, necessarily. The only person we couldn't include was Cole." It became clear that no negotiation, let alone a deal on compensation, would be worked out unless Cole was part of the equation. Thus, reviving talks that had been going back-and-forth between San Diego and Indianapolis about both Cole and Scott Hartnell, Andy Bartalone pulled the trigger on a deal that the two teams had slowly and implicitly worked out over the course of two months. The Aviators would take on some salary to get three prime prospects for Erik Cole. One of the prospects is actually Indianapolis's first round draft pick, hopefully putting the Aviators in position to an elite player in the next entry draft. What the Cole deal was really intended to do was make the acquisition of Chris Drury as positive as possible. Blessed with the surprise decision of the Mounties to not match the very reasonable contract Drury signed, the Aviators do not want to have yet another acquisition spoiled by Mountie tactics which seem derived from a view that the RHL exists to serve the Kitchener organization. While the Aviators can see the value of being condescended to every now and then (we certainly deserve to have our arrogance checked regularly), one email's worth is sufficient. The Aviators respect the Mounties' right to explore whether we're willing to redefine the purpose of compensation (so that they can get Cole), but it is not incumbent on us to oblige the request before being able to discuss compensation. The process is about Drury and compensating Kitchener. It is not about spinning the situation so the Mounties can profit off a decision not to match a reasonable contract offer. "One part of me wants to hold back as much as possible at this point," Farley said in the news conference. "I think we can all empathize with the position Andy's being put in here. It's not news that this negotiation is difficult. It's hard to lose a player like Chris. We obviously value him highly, so to a certain extent I see what Brad might be feeling. But thankfully, Andy is much better at these kinds of things than I am, and I hope he can get a deal done which avoids arbitration." When asked if he felt Andy Bartalone will get that deal done, Farley said "he will get a deal done if Brad wants to deal. I see no evidence that's the case. Brad has clearly been willing to go to arbitration since he decided not to match Chris's offer sheet. It's the only logical reason why the offer sheet was not signed. "But I hope a deal can get done. I know [Commissioner] Paul [Myers] wants nothing less than another arbitration. I almost felt bad bidding on Drury for that reason. Knowing who owned Drury, I didn't think the negotiation would be easy. But Drury was the best option out there, and I wasn't about to pull punches and cost my team an opportunity. I mean, look how much better off the Aviators are now than we were last week? "I don't think Paul wants an environment where people are scared to bid on restricted free agents. "Will we avoid arbitration? From what other owners have told me, we've already offered two or three fair compensation deals. With that in mind, knowing those offers haven't worked, I'm skeptical. Let me put it like this: If San Diego was intent on going to arbitration, we'd be going to arbitration. However, I'm intent on letting everybody know that we are going to try our absolute hardest to get a deal done. Unfortunately, either party in the negotiation can decide that arbitration is what they want." With the difficulty of negotiations and the trade of Erik Cole, the question has to be asked: Is Chris Drury worth the price? In that same press conference, Farley summed up his feelings on the cost: "Not since we acquired Roberto Luongo, who I still hold the highest respect for as a player, has our franchise been as excited about a single acquisition. This player represents the rare combination of talent, professionalism, and an overall player who you are proud to build your franchise around. He is a player whose brings a respectability to an organization that goes beyond contract. His acquisition has been complicated, but in introducing him to the Aviator fans I know they will feel the same excitement I have when I say: I am proud to introduce the newest Aviator, and co-captain for the RHL16 campaign, Mr. Chris Drury." Conclusion: Where San Diego Sits, RHL16 In introducing Chris Drury, Farley let it be known that for the first time in franchise history there would be a shared captaincy for the season. Inaugurating the idea of a new direction for the franchise, three captains, all recently acquired, will lead the team into the next era of Aviator hockey. Chris Drury will serve along side Shane Doan and Mathieu Schneider as the teams' leaders. Though it did not unfold exactly as the team had predicted, The Big Three (a different big three) did come home, all of whom will be captains this year. Their additions have led to a drastic makeover of what was a lacking team. Last week at this time, the Aviator top forward line was Wes Walz, Erik Cole and Bryan Smolinski: two second line centers and a forward whose best days were still at least 66 games away. Today, the Aviators have a top line of Shane Doan, Chris Drury and (because his linemates should promote a great season from his skillset) Pierre Dagenais. Last week at this time, the Aviator top defensive pairing was Brian Leetch and Brent Sopel. Today, Leetch is accompanied by Mathieu Schneider, allowing Sopel to slide down. "We are still rebuilding, despite these acquisitions" explained Richard Farley. "We're going to make moves throughout the season which will continue to solidify this franchise. But what we've achieved in bringing in these three players goes beyond wins and losses. I feel that a franchise in danger of falling into irrelevance now has a direction. "And that direction is forward."

Auction Reform; Demand Reform; ______ Reform

2006-08-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

A few quick hits before getting to tonight's main content: 1. Blogger supports emailing blog articles and comments as they get posted. I have the emails coming to my Gmail account, which then bounces them to my UCSD account. If anybody wants the Aviator News posts in their InBox, I can have Gmail forward those blog posts to your mailbox. Please drop me a line and let me know. 2. Don't ask how this came up, but one RHL'er asked me a question to which my response was, "None. In fact, I'm relatively stimulant free, too." The question should be easy to figure out. I thought it was funny. 3. If anybody wants to coach one of the minor league teams (preferably your own) or serve as general manager (decide the roster, sign free agents), speak up. The ratings will be done over the next month (good amount of Python code to write there). In general, you're going to want to focus on current (as opposed to potential) value when choosing a team. Even though somebody like (the much discussed) Luc Bourdon is an A-/B+ prospect, he's still going to get rated like a 19 year old defenseman who had an average year in the QMJHL. And now, your Feature Presentation ...

With some distance between us and the end of RHL15, these are the distinct stories from last season which stand out in my mind: 1. The Sockeyes broke through and won the title. The other distinctive championships during my tenure have been Steve's and Martin's (as both were somewhat surprises in those years) as well as Daniel's (to see him break through). 2. The last season of the two league alignment. Does anybody miss it? I didn't think so. I'm waiting for Wade Redden and HC Saskatoon to come to town for the first time in two seasons. 3. Mass exodus of owners. Thankfully, the league has already forgotten that less than one calendar year ago there was an unprecedented level of uncertainty surrounding this league's future. Many thought we were in the last days of the RHL. Now, the league seems as healthy as it has been in at least ten seasons. This could be an article on its own. 4. The Blog Explosion. The blogs have redefined the way many of us interact with the RHL. Before, I would interact through lines, trade offers, and the auction. With the blogs, I have a heightened sense of interest in the nine other teams who make up the blog community. And it really is a community. For better or worse, this community's presence can be seen in the way the Aviators do business. When fellow blogger Chris Boudreau upped the last bid I made on Mathieu Schneider, I quickly rebid, partly in deference for the Eagles. I knew I had every intention of rebidding on Mathieu, and I didn't want to do the two round stall to a team for which I've established such empathy. That empathy is a result of the blogs. The idea of community has been entrenched. Though this community was one of the goals we had in starting the blog-o-verse, none of us thought one season would see growth from two or three blogs to ten. The amount of team-related content being produced by the league has never been higher, and I'm convinced that the readership covers a majority of the league. The explosion of blogs has been a mini-revolution. It's reshaped how teams communicate with the league and redefined the identity of some teams. I doubt it will make it onto a ballot so soon (let alone get voted in), but I kind of want to bring up Blogger as a potential Hall of Fame nominee (Google's technology makes is very easy to keep these blogs going). Of the four storylines at the top of this article, this one will have the most lasting impact on the league. Eventually (ten seasons from now) the blogs will die out, but only once an better technology comes along to replace it and all of us migrate to that new format. But the community is here to stay. This past week, my mailbox has seen some of ancillary benefits of the community as behind the two "independent" projects pick up steam. The project with the most momentum will address some of the issues people have with the free agent auction. The second project, my RHL Demands Project, seems to be leaching off of the momentum of the free agent auction changes, as nobody much wants to think about demands when the auction is at the forefront of our minds. Tonight, I want to give you an update on what I know about each project, hopefully raise awareness of each movement (and encourage you to contribute ideas), and share how I see free agency and demands intersecting. Free Agent Auction Whether he likes it or not, Martin Baldwin has been the leader of this movement. The SAT analogy for this one is Richard is to Demands what Martin is to Free Agency. The thoughts he's shared with me are as ambitious and more detailed than my recent diatribe on RHL demands, converting me into the unofficial cheerleader for his cause (No, I am not getting an HC Saskatoon tattoo. My fanboy-ism goes only so far.) During the last week, there have been two email threads featuring Martin and I where the idea of auction reform was discussed, and the tenor of the conversations leads me to believe something will happen before the next auction. It's not so much that Paul has said or hinted that changes will definitely happen. He hasn't. But between the people on these emails and posts like Howard made to his blog last week, I think we've reached the Gladwellian tipping point regarding the auction. People want this to happen. There is already a basic agreement on the obvious changes (forcing people to declare a contract length at the time of bidding), and other more complex ideas (like reforming player loyalty) has been greeted with tons of positive energy. That positive energy is also turning into an actual willingness to put forth work. Not only have these brainstorming email threads (and blog posts) started to solidify ideas, but we have people who are willing to do the work to get some of these changes implemented. After so many seasons in the league, we know finding time to do work is not trivial. Often times good ideas die on the alter of our regular lives. Few people have time to tackle a web application's overhaul. In the case of the auction, I think four people have previously contributed code to the project, and any programmer knows that your willingness to be involved in a rewrite should be inversely proportional to how many sets of fingerprints you're going to find on that code. Regardless, one person has already volunteered to contribute to a rewrite, and this should open the door to changes. The contract length issue is one that Paul has committed to in the past. It's an idea that has been successfully implemented in the FHL auction and has been left out of the RHL's auction only because of time constraints. Next season, instead of bidding bases, we should be bidding lengths, bases, and having to match and improve offers based on the player's real salary, length adjustment included. The other ideas which have been discussed have not reached enough consensus where I feel confident talking about them. I don't want to leading people to believe something will happen when it probably will not. I can only tell you my ideas and warn you that I have no clue as to whether these things will actually happen. One thing I'd like to see is less information on previous bids made available to owners. A lot of problems (like ninja'ing) are caused by knowing the round number of the previous bid, though that round number doesn't seem germane to an owners' assessment of player worth. Likewise, knowing which team holds the high bid seems to have no benefits, though it could cause problems. In less need of being hidden, I don't think showing the current high bid is necessary. I would just prefer people go to auction and offer a player a value they feel the player is worth. "Your bid has been rejected," will be the feedback when your bid is not good enough. Still, withholding the high bid becomes problematic because owners will probably start low, incrementally raise a bid until they find the lowest value acceptable, hitting the auction tens of times just to find that lowest number. In this light, withholding high bid is just a waste of time. So I'm not sold on the benefits of withholding the high bid, but I do think the auction would improve if the other two pieces of information were kept secret. That's one of many ideas that have been floating around. If you have ideas regarding potential improvements to the auction, now is the time to put them into the public domain. We're on that other side of the auction tipping point. RHL Demands Project But the RHL Demands Project? Not so much. There were only a couple of emails in response to my call-to-arms for a demands reform project, and none of them volunteered to take part. I have to admit that was the expected result, and as I was writing my demands post of weeks ago, I felt a little like a low-grade William Wallace attempting to rouse troops on the battle field. Though it's true that I tend to wear the war paint when I write my blog posts, nothing else in my emotions justified war cries or pleas. I knew that the project would probably have to be centered on this blog. While that is the way the RHL Demands Project will move forward (periodic postings to this forum as a means of getting feedback as ideas evolve), the free agent discussions have started the ball rolling on ideas which I had been saving for demand reform. Through those discussions, it seems clear to me that the idea of a player profile governing behavior would make for a better financial model. What do I mean by a player profile? In real-life, I have a concept of player's decisions on teams and contracts as being the result of a set of dispositions. For example, most players are disposed to accept the most money, but not all players are willing to forgo a reasonable offer from their hometown team for a small pay increase. Likewise, players often value how competitive a team is. Some may value this highly while others may not, and this type of valuation might change for a player as he ages. Players also have different ways of developing loyalty (some may never be loyal, period). But the most important disposition is the idea of self-worth: how good a player thinks he is. In the RHL, we call this demand. All of these factors (and more) determine a player's disposition towards looking upon offers favorably. A player with a high self-worth wants big contracts and is less likely to settle quickly for small offers. A player with high self-worth and a disposition toward elite teams will not settle quickly and certainly not settle quickly for a contract from a team that has not been competitive recently. These two players represent different profiles: one greed in a balanced way, the other greedy and biased towards elite teams. It's a level of nuance in demand generation which our current system does not try to implement, but it's something which may add a lot of value to the league. This nuance is the player profile: a set of dispositions which influence demands and auction behaviors. Coming Together: A Hypothetical Let's walk through the hypothetical of Wade Redden to construct a profile. 1. Redden has spent his whole career with Saskatoon, so he is highly loyal. 2. At the same time, he is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent for the first time. 3. Since he's a relatively young free agent, the specter of moving to a bad team doesn't bother him as much as it would somebody at the end of a longer career (he'll have other contracts to sign with winners). If we consider these three traits, we get somebody who wants top dollar but would ideally like to get that money from Saskatoon; else, he's not scared to move to another team. His demand would probably come in at the top of the defenseman list but not hugely over it. We're talking Lidstrom, not Pronger. In addition to affecting the right-to-keep/in-season demands, this more intelligent way of forming demands can be used the define auction behavior. Redden's $3.8 million demand (random dollar figure) is his idea of self-worth, an idea that doesn't go away once he heads out into free agency. He's going to be looking for teams who are willing to pay him what he feels he's worth. As such, if Redden goes two rounds with a bid of $2.0 million, he would be unlikely to sign on Day 3. It takes more than a week for a player to change how he feels about his value. On the other hand, if somebody offered Redden $4.5 million on Day 1 he might call Martin Baldwin and say "I've got this great offer and you need to match by tomorrow or else I'm signing it." He might sign at the end of Day 2. He might sign between Day 1 and Day 2 - in between rounds. Player profiles would allow for this more varied set of outcomes. This is where I see the demand system and free agency coming together. The player profile model would allow for a more nuanced way of creating demands (which will hopefully be more accurate, too, as it considers more information) and give a more logical model of player behaviors at auction. We can move away from the Ebay auction to one that has more dynamism, ultimately producing results more like the free agency periods we seen in the sports worlds. Both the auction and the demand generation script have been spectacular successes for the league - technology that's lasted in its near-original form for over ten seasons. But ten seasons of using the systems have shown us some issues that we'd like to address. Now is our time to do this. The momentum is picking up for each project. The auction is on the table now, but within months the issues of the demand system will again draw our attention. Let's get the ideas on the table now. Let's run with them. RHL17 is not that far away. Think of the excitement of having a new, up-to-date auction with the player profile idea built in. An exciting, brave new world.

Realistic Minor Hockey League: Consummation Day

2006-08-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, August 12, the details of the Realistic Minor Hockey League (RMHL) and its first season were established during a day-long meeting of governors in San Diego. The group kept a public blog of the decisions. Here is how the meeting transpired:

Sunday, 2:15pm - Board finalized business by establishing a timeline to have the first RMHL games played by RHL16, Day 30. Until that day, RMHL will ask the minor league teams to work with the parent organizations to identify coaches for the teams. RMHL teams without coaching options from parent organizations will receiving coaching staffs appointed by the RMHL league offices. RMHL established procedure for changing minor league team affiliations and partnership deals, to be considered come RHL17. Board establishes current cities and alignment on as an on-trial basis to be evaluated at season's end.

Sunday 2:10pmRMHL board identifies interim presidents for each organization and conference, establishes budgets for each team, and sets timelines for each team to have secured basic infrastructure (arena agreements, office space, etc.). Team presidents will be responsible for working with parent clubs should personnel fro those organizations be assigned to govern minor league teams.

Sunday, 2:09pm - Four teams from each conference will make the playoffs, establishing an eight-team, three round posstseason. The first two rounds will be intra-conference, with teams seeded 1-to-4 by order of finish meeting in best-of-five series, 1 versus 4 and 2 versus 3, following a 2-2-1 format. The winner of these series play each other in the subsequent playoff round, the the winners in that round playing in the championship series. The championship series will be Best-of-7 and follow a 2-3-2 format (potentially reducing travel costs).

Sunday, 2:06pm - Teams will be limited to 25 players on their roster, with roster changes possible after each 10-day period. roster changes may also happen before the playoffs, though not between series. The 25 player roster can be composed of any players identified as prospects by the parent team(s).
Sunday, 1:58pm - Final league alignment and team names codified:

Mountain Conference	Southeast Conference
Colorado Springs Cadets	Atlanta Dogwoods
Denver Bricklayers	Charlotte Coastal Cats
Henderson Verdin	Columbia River Jockeys
Las Vegas Pilots	Jacksonville Timucua
Phoenix Scorpions	Richmond Jeffersonians
Tucson Sonorans	Tampa Bay Manatees

Sunday, 1:38pm - Atlanta requests to change nickname from Peaches (identified on a preliminary application) to Dogwoods, the name which has always been intended for the team.

Sunday, 1:30pm - U.S. Texas group, having lost out on their bid for the second RMHL conference, notifies the Board that they intend to continue developing their group's proposal with the hope that growing prospect resources in RHL teams will allow for a third conference in the near future. Board recommends to the U.S. Texas group that their back-up sites need to be improved to ensure the long-term viability of the region for the RMHL.

Sunday, 1:27pm - Team associations are assigned to the Mountain conferences minor league teams:

U.S. Mountain Conference
Colorado Springs - South Edmonton (25), South Calgary (11) 
Denver - Calgary (36) 
Henderson - Edmonton (24), Waterloo Roadkill (12)
Las Vegas - San Diego (22), Guelph Reapers (16) 
Phoenix - Airdrie (20), Waterloo Thundercats (18)
Tucson - Grand Prairie (21), Albany (11), Victoria (6)

Taking a break from the updates, we have received our first question of the day. Hopefully it will clear up some confusion: Q: What's with all the back-up teams? I detect cynicism. Can't we have a little positivity? Do you know how much vitriol this blog usually spews? Each group submitted six main cities and a series of back-ups. Without these fallbacks, the RMHL Board would not consider a group's application. Some groups had a number of backups, while others had very few. That the back-ups are being evoked by both the Southeast and Mountain groups should not serve as a reflection on the strength of that group's bid. In most cases, there was a very thin line between being a main and back-up city. All back-up cities are fully capable hosts.

Sunday, 1:17pm - Jacksonville representatives inform RMHL that the team will be nicknamed the Timucua, honoring the region's Native American heritage.

Sunday, 1:00pm - Further evidence that food is a stimulant for negotiation, two decisions are surprisingly made over lunch. First, the U.S. Mountain group looks to have been awarded the second RMHL conference after pitching a twin-cities model. The model would have three pairs of cities form the six-team conference, with each pair of teams playing each other 12 times, playing each remaining team in the league 7 times. As a regional accommodation for the twin cities model, two back-up cities have replaced Salt Lake City and Albuquerque amongst the six cities forming the conference. Henderson will serve as Las Vegas's twin, and Colorado Springs will be Denver's twin. Phoenix and Tucson remain and will twin with each other. Second, the Southeast group has replaced Miami amongst their six cities with Jacksonville, electing not to wait for the Miami group's response.

Sunday, 12:35pm - Board breaks for lunch.

Sunday, 12:32pm - U.S. Southeast conference and RHL affiliations descided:

U.S. Southeast Conference
Atlanta - Indianapolis (29), Lethbridge (6) 
Charlotte - Yellowknife (27), Guelph Spectres (10) 
Columbia - Kitchener (20), Chicago Gargoyles (11), Seattle (7) 
Miami or Jacksonville - Chicago Capones (27), Kansas City (5), Winnipeg (4) 
Richmond - Washington (21), Saskatoon (14) 
Tampa - Baffin Isle (29), Cleveland (6)

The remaining associations will be placed in the other conference. Specific alignment will be determined once the group (Mountain or Texas) is selected.

Sunday, 12:20pm - Board quickly agrees to the following associations between RHL teams as it concerns their minor league teams:

Team A - Calgary (36) 
Team B - Indianapolis (29), Lethbridge (6) 
Team C - Baffin Isle (29), Cleveland (6) 
Team D - Chicago Capones (27), Kansas City (5), Winnipeg (4) 
Team E - Yellowknife (27), Guelph Spectres (10) 
Team F - South Edmonton (25), South Calgary (11) 
Team G - Edmonton (24), Waterloo Roadkill (12) 
Team H - San Diego (22), Guelph Reapers (16) 
Team I - Washington (21), Saskatoon (14) 
Team J - Grand Prairie (21), Albany (11), Victoria (6) 
Team K - Kitchener (20), Chicago Gargoyles (11), Seattle (7) 
Team L - Airdrie (20), Waterloo Thundercats (18)

Numbers in parentheses are the number of prospects a organization will contribute to the minor league team's player pool. Teams were matched-up based on this number, with no teams from the same RHL division being associated with each other. The Board shifts to allocating these teams to the two conferences, with the city-assignments to be decided for the Southeast conference.

Sunday, 12:06pm - Board decides (as a practical manner) against reviewing the list of 439 prospects to eliminate potential ineligibles. Instead, the Board decides to associate RHL teams with RMHL teams in such as way that each RMHL team has access to a number of players sufficient to account for irregularities. RMHL teams will also be able to sign free agents, RHL or otherwise, though all free agent acquisitions are subject to league approval and must be made from players who have been eligible for at least one prior RHL Entry Draft.

Sunday, 12:00pm - Board reviews prospect lists submitted by teams to help determine potential players for RMHL16. The following summarizes the number of prospects available from each RHL team's system:

36 Calgary
29 Indianapolis
29 Baffin Isle
27 Yellowknife
27 Chicago Capones
25 South Edmonton
24 Edmonton
22 San Diego
21 Washington
21 Grand Prairie
21 Airdrie
20 Kitchener
18 Waterloo Thundercats
16 Guelph Reapers
14 Saskatoon
12 Waterloo Raodkill
11 Chicago Gargoyles
11 South Calgary
11 Albany
10 Guelph Spectres
 7 Seattle
 6 Lethbridge
 6 Cleveland
 6 Victoria
 5 Kansas City
 4 Winnipeg

Sunday, 11:53am - Board tables discussion of Miami and Jacksonville to give the Miami coalition time to gather information. The board shifts to discussion of player distribution, player eligibility, and roster construction.

Sunday, 11:45am - The Board takes a five minute break and will informally consider the Miami situation.

Sunday, 11:41am - Board is informed that the coalition representing the prospective Miami team reports they may not be able to negotiate a lease with the city for the facility proposed in the league assessment plan. The City of Miami is now unwilling to provide rent-free facilities to the RMHL. The plan's first alternative site, Jacksonville, has already responded affirmatively to the prospect of replacing Miami's entry into the RMHL. The Miami group told the Board that they will have more information on Monday regarding the lease situation. The next back-up location in the U.S. Southeast plan is Birmingham, Alabama.

Sunday, 11:37am - Board quickly accepts a proposal which will have the two leagues, RMHL16A and RMHL16B, joining into one (RMHL16), where each group of six teams will be organized as conferences with no inner-conference play in the regular season. Each team will play a forty game schedule, with four home and away games against each other their five conference opponents. Playoff format is to be decided, but a seven game championship series amongst the top two teams will be the goal. The details of determining the top two teams are being discussed.

Sunday 11:27am - Board decides to pursue two league model and to discuss the details, including whether the league will support 6 or 12 teams, whether players can cross-over in a 12 team model, whether the leagues will play simultaneously, and whether there will be a championship round. The U.S. Mountain and U.S. Texas groups are notified that each group's proposals will be heard in the afternoon, with the goal of deciding before the day's session ends.

RHL16A Teams
Atlanta Peaches
Charlotte Coastal Cats
Columbia River Jockeys
Miami Viajeros
Richmond Jeffersonians
Tampa Bay Manatees

Sunday, 11:08am - RMHL Board finishes a thirty-minute conference call with Richard Farley, league owner and chief executive. Farley advises against voting and asked the group to seek consensus. He endorses both the U.S. Southeast group and the two-season structure. Farley also offers that the two league structure should have twleve independent teams, if possible, with the winners of the two leagues playing in a championship series at leagues end. The call ended with the RMHL board awarding one league to the U.S. Southeast group.

Sunday, 10:21am - Discussions during break put the vote on hold. RMHL board is now informally discussing the idea of splitting the first season into two, smaller seasons. The first season would take place over the first 60 RHL days and be located in the U.S. Southeast. The second season would take place over the second 60 RHL days and be located in one of the two remaining groups. The goal of this would not only be compromise amongst the different factions supporting various groups. The split would also serve to promote the league in different regions, make assessments as to the lnoger term viability of each area, and potentailly bring mroe players involved. Each season would be separate: RMHL16A and RMHL16B. There would be two sets of champions. Other details, such as whether teams woulc remaining in tact across different locations or whether coaching staffs would follow teams, have been brought up but not discussed.

Sunday, 10:12am - Group to take fifteen minute break and take preliminary vote on location once they return. Fifty percent rule decided - if no group gets fifty percent, top two groups will run off in a second vote.

Sunday, 10:08am - Concerns over readiness of sites in the U.S. Mountain group bring a previous eliminated group back into consideration. The U.S. Texas group would consist of teams in Oklahoma City, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and New Orleans.

Sunday, 9:55 am - RMHL Board, having decided to locate the league's six teams in a geographical region underrepresented by RHL teams, have narrowed the choices to two. The U.S. Southeast group of sites would consist of teams in Miami, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond and Columbia. The U.S. Mountain group would have teams in Denver, Tuscon, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Albequerque. Board will consider individual city growth factors in determining which group will host RMHL16.

Sunday, 9:30 am - RMHL Board convenes session, decides to get coffee. First order of business will be evaluating where to locate the six teams which will be participating in RMHL16.

Flying Through Free Agency - First Week at a Glance

2006-08-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

The Aviator's first week in free agency has been defined by two rules, both slight changes in the latest rule set:

the 23 man roster limit, and
the $21 million minimum payroll.

Having got back more players than we'd hoped in expansion (mostly do to a clerical error on the part of the team's owner), the Aviators had 20 roster spots filled going into free agency. This left the team in need of three players to meet the league's new 23-man minimum roster. Looking at the distribution of positions amongst signed players, we decided to go after one forward and two defensemen as primary targets. We would bid on more than just these three players, but only those who could be had for far under (what we perceived as) market value would be signed beyond these three, needed players. Those three players would get substantial bids, as the Aviators, entering the market with around $15,000,000 in allocated salaries, were six million dollars below the league's salary floor and $12.5 million below RHL16's revenue guarantee. With no notion of competing for a title in RHL16 - only wishing to avoid the fiasco that was last year's campaign - San Diego still needs to spend wisely. Thus, the strategy we adopted was to bid a.) aggressively on the three "core" players who would bring the roster to 23 players, and b.) search out values across the rest of the market. The Big Three Around Aviator head quarters, the three players who would fill out the roster came to be known as The Big Three. Needing to spend money to meet payroll requirements, these were players on whom the Aviators would be willing to overspend. But to make sure this overspending was done as wisely as possible (oxymoron), there were a series of requirements the team imposed on potential big ticket acquisitions. First, positional needs must be met: one defenseman, two forwards. Second, the players had to have long-term value. Future performance potential (RHLs 17 and 18) was an integral factor. Finally, the player could not be injury prone. San Diego had more than enough "talent" in that department. After weeks of research and intenal debate, The Big Three and their understudies were pegged. Wade Redden would be the focal point of the team's strategy, representing the best player on the board (by Aviator evaluations). Needing a top forward, Shane Doan was pegged as the second cog in The Big Three. Anticipating the salaries of Redden and Doan to be high, the Aviators identified Geoff Sanderson as the final member of the trio, expecting him to be more affordable than the higher profile forwards on the market. One week later, with a flurry of signings having taken place, none of The Big Three have signed, with the Aviators or elsewhere. What's gone wrong? Redden: Home Matters Wade Redden's first taste of unrestricted free agency is turning out to be very profitable. Having played throughout his RHL career with the Funboys, Redden became a free agent after he and the Funboys were unable to agree on a deal prior last season's signing deadline. Immediately after free agency opened, the Aviators contacted Redden's representation and offered the star defenseman a four year contract worth around $14 million. Immediately, Redden was informed that the Funboys had made an offer which was as good. Informed of the biding war they had on their hands, San Diego counter offered: three years, $13.5 million, raising the per-season value by almost one million dollars. It was an offer that made Martin Baldwin and Saskatoon pause. Over the next week, the Funboys negotiated with various free agent options, trying to find an adequate replacement for Redden should he depart. Baldwin targeted former Aviator Ed Jovanovski, offering the physical rearguard a contract worth $2.2 million annually. Jovanovski quickly accepted, becoming what most thought would be Wade Redden's replacement as Scott Niedermayer's partner. But as is the case where emotional attachments (like those between Saskatoon and Redden) are involved, the story did not play out so neatly. Informed by Redden's representation that Wade intended to accept the Aviators offer should a matching contract not be offered soon, Martin Baldwin apparently came to a realization: He did not have a vision for the Funboys that did not include Wade Redden. Though it would stretch their payroll in a manner which had not been budgeted, the Funboys notified Redden on Thursday that they would be willing to match the annual rate offered by the Aviators. Though no deal was agreed to between Redden and the team, Wade's representation informed the Aviators that he would be staying with the Funboys, given the current offers. After receiving the news on Redden, San Diego moved to replace him in The Big Three. Mathieu Schneider was almost guaranteed to move on from the Thundercats, given Waterloo's financial situation. However, since the free agent bargaining period had opened, Schneider had looked destined for the Edmonton Eagles. When Mathieu's agent heard from the Aviators, the bidding on the defenseman went to another level. It is been reported amongst RHL teams that Schneider is shopping San Diego's contract latest offer, which has a base annual salary in the neighborhood of $2.8 million. To this point, Edmonton has been unwilling to match. Whether San Diego gets back into the Wade Redden bidding will depend on what happens with Schneider, but Wade, the main cog of the original Big Three, looks unlikely to be skating in San Diego next season (expect when the Funboys come to town, which will be frequently, as the two teams share a division in the new alignment). What went wrong in the Redden negotiations? If you're a fan of loyalty and of seeing players stay with their teams, then nothing went wrong. To the contrary, everything went right. Wade Redden explored free agency, established a market value, and Saskatoon matched. It's a story that's much simpler than the preceding six paragraphs would imply. Doan: Market Forces With Daniel Alfredsson, Mats Sundin, Peter Forsberg and Sergei Fedorov all unrestricted free agents, the pegging of Shane Doan as part of this Big Three may seem a reach to even the most ardent Shane Doan fan. If the point of The Big Three is to add to a core while conceding the team needed to overpay to reach a minimum payroll, Alfredsson would seem the better choice. While Doan is acknowledged to be a talent player, a solid first line right wing, he is not in the elite group forwards - forwards who can be the best player on an elite-level team. Alfredsson is that kind of forward. But as with the Sanderson pick, money was a factor. The contract San Diego wanted to offer Wade Redden forced some acquiescence when choosing the first line forward they wished to pursue. Given the need and the market, San Diego felt Doan was their best choice. If he was signed, he would form a first line with Wes Walz and Erik Cole which the Aviators would hope to guide them into the RHL16 playoffs. In the long term, Shane Doan was young enough to serve as a cornerstone for the team until at least RHL20. After some preliminary negotiations, Doan was offered a 4 year, $14 million contract by the Aviators, the maximum length allowed by the RHL-RHLPA collective bargaining agreement. As Redden did, Doan shopped the offer back to his original team. Like Saskatoon, Doan could be signed by the Edmonton Eagles, but their payroll would be stretched out for the upcoming season. Other free agent signings would have to been forsaken. For one week, Eagle general manager Chris Bourdeau considered his options, one of which was allocating money to Schneider. When the Aviators also contacted on Schneider (after Redden informed San Diego of his intentions), Edmonton moved back to Doan, informing him that they would be willing to match that offer. Doan, preferring to stay in Canada if possible, now eyes a return to Edmonton, though he continues to test the market. Searching for places where the Doan negotiation went wrong, it would be easy to identify the Aviator offer to Mathieu Schneider as the key misstep. Many in the Aviators organization and the RHL media felt the Schneider offer was the determining step in Bourdeau's leaning toward Doan. But Aviator owner Richard Farley felt differently: "Ultimately, if Chris didn't feel the offer to Doan was a fair one, he wouldn't have matched the contract. And if he felt the offer was fair, then he probably decided well before Thursday that he would match Shane's offer. I feel the events [Doan and Schneider] weren't completely isolated. The Schneider offer may have exhibited some weakness from us in our commitment to Shane. That wasn't the case, though. I just think Chris was always going to find a way to match our contract offer to Shane." With Doan off the board, the Aviators cycled through a series of replacements in The Big Three. Brian Rolston's Aviator contract offer was rejected by his representation, as the agent quickly found other teams willing to pay more than $11.2 million over four years. Mats Sundin was contacted, but he quickly informed San Diego that he did not feel he could leave Kitchener again unless, as when he left for Indianapolis, he received an overwhelming offer. The Aviators were unwilling to go beyond $8 million for three seasons. Each of these offers were substantial, yet the Aviators were unable to get a even a basic level of dialogue going with an alternative forward. Something in the RHL universe had changed. A market shift had happened with this season's free agent fowards. Whereas past auctions had seen the top-tier of forwards (Iginla, Alfredsson, Jagr, Naslund, Sundin) demand elite contracts, those auctions also saw second-level forwards fall into the low $2 million range (as Cory Stillman did this season). But this season's market shifted, identifying a "proto-elite" class who are bridging the gap between elite and second-level. In that class Rolston, Fedorov, Sundin, and Teemu Selanne have fallen. Alfredsson and Forsberg have surfaced as elites. Had there not been this proto-elite class, it would have been difficult for Bourdeau to justify matching the Doan offer. The contract would not have seemed as fair. As is, it became clear the the Aviators were paying only a little above market value. The contract was destined to be matched. And because of the cost of this new class of forward, no replacement was found for Doan amongst The Big Three. Other names such as Danius Zubrus, Cory Stillman, Anson Carter, Tomas Holmstrom, and Martin Straka have been considered. Though some of those names have heard from Farley, receiving contract offers of one sort or another, none have received the level of offer than Doan had considered. This could be seen as an additional failure of the Aviator Big Three strategy: the inability to identify what course the forward market would take. Establishing the Doan-level player as a $3 million per year player, the Aviators created the market shift that established the proto-elite class. Had they analyzed the dynamics correctly, they would have gone after Alfredsson at the negotiating period's onset, also foregoing Redden for Schneider on Day 1. Now Alfredsson and the other forwards are out of reach, and the Aviators are left scrambling. The result of this scrambling is an offer sheet to Mountie Chris Drury, a restricted free agent. San Diego has offered Drury a 4 season, $10.2 million dollar offer sheet - a sheet the Mounties seem likely to match. Having to give up compensation to get him, San Diego seems unwilling to pay full market value, which would dictate a $2.8 to $3 million contract. At $2.2 million per season, even having to give up compensation, Drury represents the best forward deal on the market. The rumored compensation, a Wes Walz-based deal, is unlikely to keep Kitchener from matching. But the fact that the Aviators bid at all is a result of the increasingly expensive unrestricted free agent market for forwards. Sanderson: The Ninja Strikes The highlight of this season's particularly vicious auction has been Adam Ardis. I have not been paying attention to Adam's bids (nothing he is doing seems to conflict with my plans), but I did read the email he sent to the list on Thursday night, an email in which he coined the term "ninja" (as a verb!) to describe the late second bidding on players who are minutes away from signing. Seconds after Adam coined this term in an apology to this list for ninja'ing a few players, the Aviators had an unsuspected player ninja'd from the predictable source. If you read last week's rules to the auction, all you need to be reminded of are Rules 1 and 2 and know that the player was Geoff Sanderson to be able to figure out what has happened. While the Aviators offered Sanderson another deal almost immediately and hope to sign him soon, I consider Thursday's Mountie bid on him as a perfect example of what I described in those two rules. I want to try not to unduly dwell on this one bid, but it was frustrating to be within minutes (literally, a few minutes) of signing Sanderson, especially in light of this email I received last week:

Richard
 
I was really surprised that my free agent actions 
were considered annoying by you.
 
I don't go out of my way to make late bids.
 
The main reason I would make a late bid is if I just 
lost the player I had and another player now becomes 
a better deal. I usually wind up bouncing between 3 or 
4 player who I want one of them and I wind up bidding 
on all of them at one time.
 
I son't stay up late. I may put bids before I got to 
bed a 11 PM EST if I lost somebody.
 
So if I bid on AVI players it not in retirbution for 
you scathing article:)
 
Brad

I'm certainly willing to take Brad at his word and merely note a.) the evidence is piling up, and b.) Brad has never done anything unethical to the Aviators. And I want to emphasize that I phrased "b" in the unqualified present tense. I just get frustrated, particularly seeing that I have no clue where Sanderson fits in on his team, the bid came suspiciously close to our bid on Sundin, and despite being active in auction through the first week, Kitchener had not bid on Sanderson to that point. The phrase which stands out from this email (above) is ". . . if I just lost the player I had and another player now becomes a better deal." This suggest a "replacement" paradigm seems inconsistent with jumping from Mats Sundin (first line center, defensive value) to Geoff Sanderson (second/third line forward, one dimensional). Sanderson was also the only potential-Aviator set to sign at the time Brad bid. In light of these events, the relationship between the Drury and Sanderson bids needs to be explained. I make this explanation because I feel the need to highlight one thing: the Aviators would never bid on a player if they did not actually want a player. This goes for both restricted and unrestricted free agency. We will not bid to drive up prices. Ever. The bid on Drury came over one day (24 hour day, not auction day) after Kitchener ninja'd Sanderson. Drury's bid also came after a cascade of bids which saw Rolston, Sundin, and Doan (amongst other forwards) have their offers increased. Were any of those three players at a price that was saw was affordable, it is unlikely we would have bid on Drury. I wanted to be as forthright as possible, given last week's article on the auction in which I used Brad as an example. Let me just summarize:

While I am (again) frustrated by Kitchener,
Brad has done nothing unethical at all,
Let alone illegal. Let my frustration be a me issue, not a Brad issue.
The Drury bid needs to be isolated from the Sanderson situation.
San Diego would loveto add Chris Drury.

The RHL16 Aviators? Through this mess, the Aviators have added two players. On Day 4, Bryan Smolinski has agree to a four year deal worth approximately $2.9 million. Right now, he is the team's first line left wing, though San Diego (obviously) hopes that situation improves. In addition, the team signed Brett Sopel to a one year, $1.265 million deal. As it stands, Sopel rounds out the defense corps, slated to be Brian Leetch's partner in the first pair. Given the two depth chart assignments of the newest Aviators, things are still in dire straits for San Diego. As RHL16 approaches, the team now needs only one more player to be at the minimum roster. This may lead to a "eggs in one basket" strategy that could bring Redden, Doan and maybe Alfredsson into the picture. Given the team's utter lack of talent, this could also mean a series of smaller signings which, while not adding to the "core" of the team (as The Big Three strategy had hoped would happen), would help the RHL16 Aviators could become something other than a spectacle. Regardless, respectability still seems a pipe dream.

Draft Recap Mailbag

2006-08-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

Note: The article was edited on Wednesday, 8:19am PDT, roughly twelve hours after its original posting. After giving the world a couple of days to digest Aviator News' RHL draft analysis, it's time to dive into the feedback article. While there weren't a ton of direct questions which came from the piece, there were some general issues (discussed during and after that draft) which carry enough interest to deserve a few paragraphs. Perhaps addressing these topics will lead to further discussion. Taking a cue from ESPN.com's Bill Simmons, I'm going to format this as a mailbag article. Whereas Bill's customary introductory line is "As always, these are actual questions from actual readers," I'll note these are not actual questions. Instead, they're resets on comments the article received. Q: You listed an incorrect position for one of my players! You may be long-winded, but you're also an idiot. -- Danielle, Vancouver, BC Thanks for your support, Danielle! By the way, you should try to avoid using "but" as a conjunction unless the independent clauses conflict. I am both long-winded and an idiot. A better conjunction would have been and: "You may be long-winded, and you're also an idiot." In fact, you can just lose the "may" and say that I am long-winded. Throughout the draft shakedown, I made mistake after mistake. I spent the better part of a day researching and writing the piece. I didn't want to do a disservice to anybody's picks, since I was potentially criticizing time they'd invested into their team. At some point, the task of writing, editing, formatting the article became overwhelming, so I just let it go. Don't take that paragraph as bemoaning the effort the article took. I will be doing this again next season. Though I don't think I saw this effort through, that just motivates me to do a better job on the next article. Write earlier, write more often. You might see nightly updates next year, so I don't have to dedicate a large block of time to the job. Of course, the Aviators will probably have draft picks next year. Grading out the draft was easy this season because we had no picks. When we are picking, how do I select a player who I feel is less than a *****? We might need an impartial reviewer for that one. Q: And are you sure you don't want to expand that entry about the Aviators picks? It's awfully thin in the current version. -- Daniel, Victoria, BC OK, this was an actual question from an actual reader. It was inappropriate to do so in the draft review, but reviewing the trade which took us out of the RHL16 Entry Draft needs to be done: to VAM: FRE1/SOC3 to AVI: Turco/Dawes It's easy to break this down as Turco for the first and Dawes for the third. So, let's do that. Since none of Crosby, Brule, or Johnson were available at FRE1, I'm very happy with this trade. But if Marty Turco were available in this year's draft and taken with FRE1, I'd have given it a ***. He's cheap, rated now, has a good track record, but he's ultimately a goalie - and not a young one. The ceiling for Turco is currently lower than that of a Devin Setoguchi. On the other hand, if somebody took Nigel Dawes with SOC3, I would have given it at least a ****, probably a ****1/2. In keeping with the Bill Simmons theme, we can bring Hubie Brown into the evaluation on Dawes: "Here's a forward who as performed at every level. He has the offensive skills, the mentality to play in the NHL, and in today's NHL his size is no longer minus. He gives you fifteen, twenty goals a year right now, and he's got significant upside. And this is a third round pick." Overall, the trade looks like a good one, to me. We all love drafting. Drafting is fun. It's a way to throw your manhood onto the table and proclaim yourself the alpha GM. But there are other ways to do that. For example, you can write scathing reviews about others' drafts. Q: Why are you apologizing for going this? You're such a wuss. It's only for entertainment purposes. Passive-aggressive-estrogen-laden-babble is not why I read your stuff! -- Marty, Bloomington, IN OK. I promise to stop the implicit disclaimers if you promise to stop the quadruple hyphenates. Just decide on a word. As for me, I'll try to stop being so passive. No! I will be less passive! Q: So would the 500's still rank on top if you added my last pick in round 3, Alexander Edler? :-) -- Mark, Carmel, IN I always feel strange allowing smiley faces in the Mailbag. I picture somebody who sips herbal tea while writing the email. I already added the Edler pick to the evaluation, so you can see how I rated that pick. The rating didn't hurt the 500s draft. In fact, it improved it, if that was even possible. They moved out of a tie for third in overall value, now holding the place by themselves. I admit to being surprised that the 500s graded out above everybody else. When I was tabulating the cumulative results, I kept expecting another draft to usurp their position. I had assumed Grand Prairie, with all those good picks, would take the top spot. But that didn't happen. You could point toward the methodology I developed as undervaluing the Stringer picks, but two days removed and with a settled mind, I'm starting to like the methodology a little more. Sure, it could use a tweak to solve the Selects problem, but the whole goal is to recognize that quality and quantity each have their place. Ultimately, the methodology does a decent job of answering this question: Who did the most with their picks? When you look at the roster of new prospects and where they were selected, I think Mark makes the best case for being the answer to that question. I was so intrigued by the results that I chatted-up Mark up how he approaches the draft. No surprise, he said he puts an emphasis on getting people closer to the NHL. That doesn't sound too hard. After all, the closer people are to the NHL, the more information we tend to have about their skill-set. So why don't the rest of us adopt a similar outlook? The problem seems to be that drafting an AHL'er or somebody like Freddy Meyer - potential to be decent, though never an all-star - isn't as fun or glamourous as sifting through scouting reports or finding diamonds in the rough. All of us like doing these things. Finding a player who is young, investing in them - these things have rewards. Intellectual rewards. Are those intellectual rewards necessarily consistent with building the best team possible? If you're consistently drafting in the top 8, sure they do. Mark conceded that when he has a prime pick, he'll go with the youthful prospect - gamble on the upside. But when your picks fall into a more uncertain area, what's the upside in speculating on a never-will-be as opposed to an almost-there? Reviewing of draft's past finds diamonds-in-the-rough, but more often the "hits" of the third round aren't stars. They're people who became decent players, though their pick came with many more risks. They had those risks of complete failure, but they also had the upside of "hitting." Those upsides are the intellectual rewards of drafting the longer-term prospects. When I hit on Marc-Andre Bergeron and Matthew Stajan, I felt vindicated in my picks. What about Mathieu Brunelle or Nicklas Korovkin? Each year, I try to improve my methodologies to eliminate what I see are mistakes in analysis (in those cases, overvaluing stats beyond the 18-year-old season in juniors), and I'll continue to try and improve how I draft. But I'm always going to wonder if I shouldn't just adopt the Mark and Paul school of drafting. Ultimiately, one doesn't seem a lot better than the other. It's just that one (mine) assumes more risk. Q: Just out of curiosity who would you have taken at the 12th spot? Setoguchi? -- Howard, Yellowknife, NT This was the big question, covering Luc Bourdon, Devin Setoguchi, how the top-half of the draft went, and ultimately Gilbert Brule. I'll start with Bourdon, since deciding his value is necessary to determining whether the twelfth pick is the right slot for him. I originally gave Luc Bourdon a * but upgraded it to a ** after I realized the query I ran on a local stats database only gave me half of his 2005-2006 QMJHL numbers. For reference, here is how Bourdon's profile looks, from the Internet Hockey Database:

Luc Bourdon Defense Born Feb 16 1987 -- Shippagan, NB Height 6.02 -- Weight 199 -- Shoots L Selected by Vancouver Canucks round 1 #10 overall 2005 NHL Entry Draft --- Regular Season --- ---- Playoffs ---- Season Team Lge GP G A Pts PIM GP G A Pts PIM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2003-04 Val-d'Or Foreurs QMJHL 64 2 6 8 58 7 1 0 1 4 2004-05 Val-d'Or Foreurs QMJHL 70 13 19 32 117 -- -- -- -- -- 2005-06 Val-d'Or Foreurs QMJHL 20 2 18 20 54 2005-06 Moncton Wildcats QMJHL 10 1 7 8 8 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scouting reports look at Luc as an offensive defenseman who has the ability to be a top pair guy. Some people felt he as the second best blueliner in the 2005 draft. All felt that he had defensive deficiencies with the physical ability to improve upon them. Overall, the scouts seemed semi-enamoured, as evidenced by going tenth in the NHL draft. While I may not have strongly disagreed with that assessment at draft time 2005, what a difference a year makes. Bourdon did not have a good year, particularly when his offense is supposed to be a prime asset. Prorating numbers to seventy games (his highest total), his last two seasons look like this:

Season  Games Goals Assists Pts PIM
2004-05 70    13    19      32  117
2005-06 70     7    58      65  145

That's a lot more helpful to look at ,since we combine the two 2006 lines and then prorate to 70 games. Bourdon's pro-rated point total actually doubled in 2006 from 2005. So what's the problem? Whereas his point total improved, the components of those points switched from goals to assists. His goals went down by half whereas his assists, inherently a more team dependent number, went up over two hundred percent. Not all of that improvement can be attributed from moving from a bad team (Val-d'Or) to a good one (Moncton). Looking at it from that view, you could object that he play most of his games at Val d'Or and still showed improvements in his assist rate from 2004-05. But he Val team of 2006 scored 224 goals, whereas the 2005 team scored 189. There was a huge increase in overall environment and team production. Bourdon's assist numbers would have improved regardless of his underlying ability. If that's the case, how do we tell if 2005-06 represented a procession from 2004-05? The less team-dependent number, the goals, shows that 2004-05 may have been a little above his head. And, of course, 2004-05 is the year on which he's made his name, to this point. The team dependency of assists (and league) is showing up in that 58 total, though there is probably some actual performance increase. But the goals went down, sharply. You never want to see numbers go down in the age 19 season. At the twelfth pick in the draft, that's a mark against a player I'd try to avoid. Bourdon's numbers look even worse when you start considering the league context. The QMJHL, even to a casual observer, seems like a high-goal scoring environment. But just how much higher is the goal scoring than, say, the OHL and WHL? In 2006, it was 11.8% easier to score a goal in the QMJHL than in the OHL. The average player in the OHL averaged 15.03 goals per 82 games; a QMJHL player averaged 16.81 games per 82. How about compared to the WHL? The average WHL player scored only 12.57 goals per 82 games. It was 33.7% easier to score a goal in the QMJHL than in the WHL. That data includes both forwards and defensemen. If you isolate the blueliners, the difference if more pronounced. The average QMJHL blueliner scored 8.01 goals per 82 games in 2005-2006. In the OHL, the number was 5.2. In the WHL, the number was 4.68. The table below show the ratio of goals by defenseman when comparing one league (vertical, Y) to the other (horizontal, Z). I multiply by 100 for readability, then add 100 to bow to convention:

League	OHL	QMJHL	WHL
OHL		65.7	112.4
QMJHL	152.2		171.2
WHL	88.8	58.3

How to used these numbers? You can say something like "The QMJHL's goal rate for defensemen in 2005-2006 was 71.2 percent higher than that of the WHL." Clearly, the toughest scoring league for defensemen was the WHL, almost twice as hard as that of that of the QMJHL. See why I almost gave Alexander Edler a ****1/2? What does this mean for Bourdon? It means that a naturally offensive league is even more offensively-oriented for defenseman, making his numbers less valuable. The ratios I published above change from year-to-year, and 2005-2006 was a particularly good your for defensemen. If I also use the 2004-2005 ratios to adjust both Bourdon's 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 season, we can get this kind of evaluation on his as a WHL'er:

Season  Games Goals Assists Pts
2004-05 70    12    18      30
2005-06 70     4    43      47

Not only do the ratios change between seasons, but their different between assists, goals, and penalty minutes. I left PIMs off this latest "chart" because I don't have those numbers handy. As you can see, the drop off for 2004-05 is not as dramatic: the leagues played much more even then. Still, you would have expected Bourdon to score much more last year, given the easy environment. You're still left with a player that looks like a good prospect. But a year removed from a draft that saw him go at number ten, the drop from twelve to four goals is not encouraging. There is a sample-size issue with Bourdon's lack of games played in 2005-06. I haven't done any analysis on when the sample would be big enough to trust these rate numbers. I suspect that 70 games isn't even enough, and our use of the data will come down to how comfortable an individual feels using the numbers. It's safest to refrain from the specific, keeping statements to general, qualified "Bourdon's thirty 2005-06 games represent a decrease in adjusted goal scoring production from adjusted 2004-05 rates." As qualified as that statement is, I still think it gives us information on Bourdon. Luc still looks like a good-to-decent player, especially if you add in the scouting report raves. I would have certainly considered him near the bottom of the first. Picking at twelve, you don't want to ignore the scouting reports entirely. Ideally, you'd find somebody who has great performance who is also liked by scouts. The player who best fits that description at 12 would be Setoguchi. He was drafted higher and by an organization that does a good job of developing forwards. He played (and performed great in) the WHL, and he has a very consistent track record. Setoguchi graded out at number 4 on the Aviator draft board and would have been our pick had we not traded for Marty Turco. In lieu of Bourdon, I would have advised (from the other first round picks) taking Setoguchi, Nicklas Bergfors, or T.J. Oshie. I used the WHL (above) because it ties into Setoguchi and Gilbert Brule. The ratio goal ratios you see above show an environment that was much tougher in the WHL for 2005-06. While the OHL and QMJHL environments became much more offensive in last season, the WHL retained a 2004-05-level of scouring. Brule's already best-in-minors numbers (when prorated) become much more impressive than Rob Schrempf's when adjusted for league. Incidentally, the player who came out best amongst prospects last season, when using this type of analysis, was Ryan Potulny. And guess who has him? Damn you, Bourdeau. Now my reasons for preferring Gilbert Brule to Jack Johnson might seem a little more clear. It's not just that Brule is a good prospect - he clearly is. Brule was the best performer in major juniors last year. The problem with him was injuries, but his NHL test plus the nature of the injuries (not chronic, more one-time injuries) should offset those concerns. Somebody brought up style-of-play as an injury inducement. That may be true, and that along with Columbus itself might be reason to take Johnson. But after looking at the environments in which Brule has performed, I think he would have been a good pick for either Chris or Daniel at two and three. By the numbers, he was clearly one of the three jewels in the draft. Even add in the scouting report factor, and he still grades up top three (as opposed to top two without the scouting influence). But how much should we buy into these numbers? Is there any reason to believe that Brule's acumen in the WHL should have any baring on his NHL performance? Clearly, yes. People who don't score in juniors are less likely to score in the NHL. How we transcend this divide and identify who is best suited to bridge the major juniors and the pros is where scouting plays its part. For me, scouting is far too subjective, with individual experts unable to agree on what a player is or is not. One person in Atlanta though Braydon Coburn was a better prospect than Dion Phaneuf. Clearly, there is a high fallibility there. This is not to say scouting should not be trusted. You need to consider what scouts say in order to get the full picture on a guy like Bourdon. Scouting primacy, however - or statistical primacy - fails to paint a clear, complete picture. The major junior numbers, and the games I play with them here, only matter in so far as you think scouting is lacking. If you honestly trust the scouts, the Bourdon was a good pick. If you only trust numbers, Alexander Edler might have been a better pick. I don't know (or care) where the truth on this issue lies. I'll just sit in between and lean towards the tangible. Of course, neither Bourdon nor Edler would be as good a pick as Setoguchi. And guess who has him? Damn you, Bourdeau.

RHL16 Draft Review and Evaluation

2006-08-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

While taking on the task of writing the RHL's first large-scale draft analysis, I came to look at the article as a no-win situation. Everybody likes the players they draft, else they wouldn't have been on a draft list. So almost anybody who reads this article is doing to disagree with its content. That's a lovely start. Additionally, I'm in no position to be doing draft analysis. What do I know? Why am I holding myself up above everybody else, passing judgement on what's just happened? If you look at AVI's draft history, it's far from distinguished. It's not bad, either. But there certainly is not cause of grandiosity in my picks. Trust me: I don't see myself as being above anybody. Those drafts I gave the worst grades to, I still acknowledge that I will be wrong on many of my evaluations. I'm just a guy wit an unhealthy amount of time to express his opinions. It doesn't mean those opinion are good ones. Don't trust me. Any ex-girlfriend of mine will tell you that. Regardless, I wanted to do this for my own informational value, for fun, and because whether a player works out, there's still the moment-in-time evaluation, one which matters when you're trying to sift through this mountain of information. If a random player "hits" in two seasons, that doesn't all-of-a-sudden make the draft pick a good choice. It makes the owner lucky despite what may have been a poor decision at the time. That's what this article is really about: gauging decision making processes, ultimately comparing them to what I would have done in a similar situation. As such, the evaluations you see below are not entirely "this player is good!" It's more about "did this owner make a good decision given the draft pick's slot." If I give Carey Price a "*1/2", it's not because he's not a good prospect. He would be AVI's #1 prospect. The score is more about Price going above Brule (and others). To measure the hundreds of decisions, I developed a * to ***** scale, with ***** being the best. I gave a score to each draft pick based on the value the owner got for the pick. Since players taken later have profiles which are harder to measure, there's a natural tendency to award higher scores at the top of the draft. I totally ignored trades, so even though Jean got value for CRY2, there's no consideration of this in CRY's draft analysis. I use the * ratings by assigning a value between 0 to 100 (unevenly) for each level and scoring how a team performed per-pick (SOC had the highest score here) and in totality (no surprise, VAM wins this). The final rankings are a combination of these two performances. On what basis did I evaluate players? If you read the comments, you'll figure it out real quick. There are many references to average and replacement level players. If you used a draft pick on a player who is unlikely to ever give you more than what's available for cheap in each season's auction, that pick is likely to get a "*". This is in addition to my normal biases. Immediately, I see a couple of problems with my methodology. The biggest can be seen in the ranking of SEL at 13. They made a very good pick in the third round, but I should have weighted good picks in earlier rounds higher when creating the "Overall" rankings. Because I didn't, SEL ranked higher in overall than they perhaps should have. I didn't change this before posting the results because it would take too much time. Intuitively, I think SEL should probably be around 16-18. Overall, I'm very happy with the results. The rankings aren't what I would have guessed at the start of the process, but I find the I want to do a follow-up article next week where I answer questions and respond to criticisms, so fill up the comment thread. Please! In the interim, I'm taking the rest of the day off. This article took a long, long time. So, without further ado, here is the overall report card, with teams listed alphabetically by city name afterwards.

Rank	Team	Picks	Average	Overall	Combined
1st	500 - Indianapolis 500s	5	85.8 (3rd)	515 (3rd)	6
2nd	GPS - Grand Prairie Stingers	9	74.4 (8th)	670 (2nd)	10
3rd	EAG - Edmonton Eagles	4	75 (t5th)	300 (7th)	12
4th	SOC - South Edmonton Sockeyes	2	95 (1st)	190 (12th)	13
5th	VAM - Calgary Vampyres	21	50.7 (12th)	1,065 (1st)	13
6th	CAP - Chicago Capones	2	93.5 (2nd)	187 (13th)	15
7th	SPA - St. Alberts Spartans	3	75 (t5th)	225 (10th)	15
8th	COU - Victoria Cougars	6	55.8 (11th)	335 (4th)	15
9th	ROV - Baffin Isle Rovers	5	61.4 (10th)	307 (6th)	16
10th	DEF - Washington Defiance	4	73.8 (9th)	295 (8th)	17
11th	FUN - Saskatoon Funboys	2	75 (t5th)	150 (14)	19
12th	MOU - Kitchener Mounties	7	45.7 (15th)	320 (5th)	20
13th	SEL - Lethbridge Selects	1	85 (4th)	85 (t19th)	24
14th	FAL - Cleveland Falcons	4	50 (13th)	200 (11th)	24
15th	YDP - Yellowknife Dangerous Penetrators	7	40.8(18th)	285 (9th)	27
16th	TME - Airdrie T-Men	3	48.3 (14th)	145 (15th)	29
17th	STR - Albany StrapHangers	3	42 (17th)	125 (t16th)	33
18th	REA - Guelph Reapers	2	45 (16th)	90 (18th)	34
19th	MON - Kansas City Monarchs	4	28.8 (19th)	125 (t16th)	35
20th	CRY - Seattle Crystals	5	17 (21st)	85 (t19th)	40
21st	THU - Waterloo Thundercats	2	25 (20th)	50 (21st)	41
22nd, tie	GAR - Chicago Gargoyles	0	0 (t22nd)	0 (t22nd)	44
22nd, tie	SPE - Guelph Spectres	0	0 (t22nd)	0 (t22nd)	44
22nd, tie	AVI - San Diego Aviators	0	0 (t22nd)	0 (t22nd)	44
22nd, tie	ROA - Waterloo Roadkill	0	0 (t22nd)	0 (t22nd)	44
22nd, tie	FRE - Winnipeg Freeze	0	0 (t22nd)	0 (t22nd)	44

Airdrie T-Men

Trevor, like a few others, was out of town. He got the bad end of the stick in a couple of places. Auto-drafting from the NHL Entry Draft results, he ended up with one of the mistakes of the first round.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	6	Bobby Ryan, F, Anaheim	* 1/2
2	6	Ondrej Pavelec, G, Atlanta	****
3	6	Taylor Chorney, D, Edmonton	***

I like Pavelec as much as it's possible for me to like a goalie. Getting him in the second round seems like good value. The other two picks are uninspiring. Chorney's path to the NHL and RHL may be long, and Bobby Ryan, while a nice prospect, profile at the middle or end of the first round, NHL draft position not withstanding.

Average: 48.3
Overall: 145

Albany Straphangers

A year of near-burn-out from playing games left Adam with his three picks, having made few trades during the year. Taking a couple of Islanders amongst his three picks, Adam stayed cose-to-home, with his favorite team.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	16	Ryan O'Marra, F, NY Islanders	**
2	16	Dustin John, D, NY Islanders	**
3	16	Philipp Gogulla, F, Buffalo	***

Gogulla is good value for a third round pick - the kind of chance I like to see amongst what can be uninspiring third round picks. On the other hand, the O'Marra and John picks left me wanting more, given their positions. Particularly, O'Marra seems like a pedestrian first round pick.

Average: 42
Overall: 125

Baffin Isle Rovers

Steve Stringer's general management skills are well-rounded. In season trades, free agency and the draft: he tends to be equally adept in all areas. While there were a couple of picks I disagreed with, including his first (Bergfors is a world better), Baffin Isle again drafted well.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	22	Ryan Parent, D, Nashville	*1/2
2	24	Marc-Edouard Vlasic, D, San Jose	****1/2
2	26	Daniel Ryder, F, Calgary	****
3	24	Pekka Rinne, G, Nashville	**
3	26	Colby Genoway, F, NY Rangers	***1/2

Perhaps the best second round of the draft following a first round pick that I hate. I wanted to give Parent a * and Vlasic a *****, but I decided to bow to convention a bit. Rinne has a future as something you can get in each unrestricted free agent market. I like the Genoway pick, though his track record at UND portends a drop off from his 77-26-35 performance for this year's wolfpack.

Average: 61.4
Overall: 307

Calgary Vampyres

This may take a while.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	20	Dustin Penner, F, Anaheim	****
1	25	Tim Thomas, G, Boston	****
1	26	Ryan Craig, F, Tampa Bay	***1/2
1	26	Matt Niskanen	*
2	1	Michael Blunden, F, Chicago	**1/2
2	7	Alexei Yemelin, D, Montreal	****
1	7	T.J. Hensick, F, Colorado	***1/2
2	13	Nolan Schaefer, G, San Jose	**1/2
2	15	Blake Comeau, F, NY Islanders	*1/2
2	19	Andrej Sekera, LW, Buffalo	*
2	21	Brett Lebda, D, Detroit	***1/2
2	23	Vladimir Mihalik, D, Tampa Bay	*1/2
2	25	Brendan Mikkelson, D, Anaheim	*
2	26	Michael Sauer, D, NY Rangers	***
3	1	Karri Ramo, G, Tampa Bay	***1/2
3	7	Niklas Backstrom, G, Minnesota	***
3	19	Bjorn Melin, F, Anaheim	***
3	21	Jonathan Ericsson, D, Detroit	*
3	23	Martin Richter, D, NY Rangers	***
3	25	Michal Macho, F, San Jose	*
3	26	Vitaly Kolesnik, G, Colorado	**1/2

When you have this many picks, it's going to be a mixed bag. I think Vlad is doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing with this many picks. He should be tirage-ing high-risk, high-return guys, letting people go in 2-3 seasons if they don't hit. Instead, he's targetting a bunch of replacement level players. How many back-up goalies can you draft? If these older European imports hit, you might have a second liner, but odds are your have a third or forth liner. Hello fungibility!

Average: 50.7
Overall: 1,065

Chicago Capones

Consistently having one of the best prospect lists in the league, Walt added two gems in the RHL16 draft. His draft was short on quantity, having only those two picks, but but he made the most of his slots.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	15	Duncan Keith, D, Chicago	****
1	23	TJ Oshie, F, St. Louis	****1/2

I really should give each of these guys *****, but something's holding me back. I wish I could describe it. Maybe it's the consideration of the ceiling on each player. But for value, these are great picks. Duncan Keith was one of the handful of to-be-rated defensemen who will provide immediate dividends. Oshie's freshman year at UND should have moved him higher. He ended up going about where he went in his NHL draft when his NCAA performance justified a bump.

Average: 93.5
Overall: 187

Chicago Gargoyles

I get the feeling that I missed a pick somewhere. Didn't Ted have a lower round choice? Oh well. I'm tired.

Cleveland Falcons

Doug Deutsch wasn't much of a drafter in his first stay in the RHL, toward the end ritualistically trading his draft picks. But when you have the first pick overall in a special draft, it's easy to get into the pick.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	1	Sidney Crosby, F, Pittsburgh	*****
1	31	Kenndal McArdel, F, Florida	****
2	31	Tyler Plante, G, Florida	*1/2
3	31	Chris Durand, F, Colorado	*

The Crosby pick is a no-brain winner. McArdel is good value at 31, though his record is a bit inconsistent. I liked him more at this time last year. Tyler Plante, though, lacks the track record of a goalie that is guaranteed to excel at the next level(s), and Chris Durand has not performed as a prospect should in the NHL.

Average: 50
Overall: 200

Edmonton Eagles

Chris jumped to the league in GM of the Year rankings with his draft maneuvers. He landed two great picks through astute pre-draft dealing and then cashed in his chips.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	2	Jack Johnson, D, Carolina	*****
1	12	Devin Setoguchi, F, San Jose	*****
1	13	Guillaume Latendresse, F, Montreal	****
3	12	Scott Jackson, D, St. Louis	*1/2

Johnson was one of the three jewels. To get Setoguchi at twelve was great value. Latendrasse was an inspired pick, if a bit early. Jackson, however, was a little too by-the-book. My prediction for Jackson's EAG future: Chris saying "I could throw in Jackson ..."

Average: 75
Overall: 300

Grand Prairie Stingers

Pulled off the coup of the first round by trading for MON1, getting Gilbert Brule when the Cougars took Carey Price ahead of them. For what they gave up, it was a great deal.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	4	Gilbert Brule, F, Columbus	*****
1	5	Anze Kopitar, F, Los Angeles	***1/2
1	7	Marc Staal, D, NY Rangers	***
1	17	Niklas Bergfors, F, New Jersey	****
1	27	Justin Pogge, G, Calgary	****
2	4	Petr Kalus, F, Boston Bruins	****
2	5	Perttu Lindgren, F, Dallas	***1/2
2	27	Barry Tallackson, F, New Jersey	**1/2
3	27	Grant Lewis, D, Atlanta	*1/2

I'm in awe over the first seven guys, though I disagree with who they took where. Staal could have been Setoguchi. Kopitar could hit, but has more questions than others that could have gone there. But they got Bergfors in a good place, picked one of the three jewels (at four), and the difference between Pogge and Price is not 26 picks. This is a great group. The last two picks are a little safe, but this was a very impressive draft. Why isn't anybody talking about GPS in the same vein as VAM? Where they lacked quantity, they got quality.

Average: 74.4
Overall: 670

Guelph Reapers

The Reapers mortgaged much of their draft stock to win the Premier League in RHL15. As a result, only two picks, both third rounders.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
3	2	Patrick Davis, F, New Jersey	*
3	17	Keith Yardle, D, Phoenix	****

Two diametrically opposed picks. Davis underperformed at all ages in the OHL. There's nothing to say he will be an average AHLer, let along a good NHLer. On the other hand, Yardle dominating in his only QMJHL season, though defensemen performance in The Q is a funny thing.

Average: 45
Overall: 90

Guelph Spectres

I always thought this team would be better named "The Guelph Spectre!". The punctuation there is important.

Indianapolis 500s

Leaning towards a more pragmatic draft approach, Mark had a good crop of pull from this season, getting Meyer at eighteen.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	18	Freddy Meyer, D, Philadelphia	****
2	18	Bill Thomas, F, Phoenix	***1/2
2	20	Ryan Shannon, F, Anaheim	****
2	22	Marc-Andre Gragnani, D, Buffalo	***1/2
3	9	Sergei Kostitsyn, F, Montreal	***
3	X	Alexander Edler, D, Vancouver	****

Each of these picks was on the verge of being a knotch higher, so I actually like Mark's draft more than the scores will indicate. Shannon's got a logjam in front of him, but he had a great AHL postseason. Likewise, Kostitsyn augmented otherwise pedestrian numbers with a good playoff season. No bad picks here. A draft that will fly under the radar, but on a for-slot basis, one of the best.

Average: 85.8
Overall: 515

Kansas City Monarchs

They made him make picks! It's going to be strange to see prospects on Ward's roster. I wonder how long they'll stay there?

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	28	Sasha Pokulok, D, Washington	*
2	28	Joe Finley, D, Washington	*
3	4	James Neal, F, Dallas	**
3	28	Chad Denny, D, Atlanta	****

Denny's good value at the end of the draft and gets four stars. The rest are bad picks. I originally had Neal even lower, but he showed improvement as the year went on. I would hate to be a Capitals fan with those two first round picks. There were much better defensemen available in each position - NHL and RHL drafts.

Average: 28.8
Overall: 115

Kitchener Mounties

Kitchener's prospect lists are traditionally a mix between high-round prospects and overly conservative, to-be-rated (badly) players. This is how you can get Marion Gaborik and Jiri Bicek on the same prospect list. Here, the two worlds came together, with the Mountie getting conservative with some prospects.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	9	Jack Skille, F, Chicago	*1/2
1	19	Brian Lee, D, Ottawa	**1/2
1	24	Tuukka Rask, G, Toronto	****
2	26	Jeff Frazee, G, New Jersey	*1/2
3	15	Randy Jones, D, Philadelphia	****
3	20	Matt Jones, F, Phoenix	*
3	26	Nathan Oystrick, D, Atlanta	***

I hate to be negative toward Brad (considering the Free Agency article), but why take Skille when you could have had O'Shie? Skille's numbers compare well to Jack Johnson's (too bad there's the positional difference). I'm not as down on Lee, but there were better picks available. Brad looks like he just went by the NHL draft, so he should be lucky he didn't have the second overall pick, to be left with Bobby Ryan. Rask is a good recovery, performing excellently in Finland this season. Good value pick with Jones as a third. Well, the first Jones. What, realistically, is Matt Jones's upside?

Average: 45.7
Overall: 320

Lethbridge Selects

Only one pick for Ryan. Coming off a finals appearance, I'm not sure he should care that much. Ride that high, man.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
3	13	Justin Abdelkader, F, Detroit	***1/2

I'm mixed on Abdelkader. For a third round pick, I think it's good value. I also think it's possible he underperformed in his first NCAA season, and his regression plus improvement may surprise some people. All the same, I've having trouble visualizing what this kid will be. Hence, even though I like picking him up in the third, he gets the lower grade.

Average: 85
Overall: 85

San Diego Aviators

Frickin' losers.

Saskatoon Funboys

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	21	Andrew Cogliano, F, Edmonton	***
3	22	Tomas Popisil, F, Atlanta	***

I feel like I should be harder on Cogliano, but Michigan as a freshman ain't easy and Edmonton's got a good history when it comes to scouting and development. Same thing with Popisil. My first reaction as ** or **1/2, but I gave him a *** as a nod to the North American adjustment.

Average: 75
Overall: 150

South Edmonton Sockeyes

Paul has always been the ultimate pragmatist in drafting, but design met function when Francois Beauchemin went at number seven. With Walt grabbing Keith at fifteen, it's clear that Paul's prize would not have gotten to SOC1. Good trade to move up and get the man he wanted.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	7	Francois Beauchemin, D, Anaheim	*****
2	9	Lee Stempniak, F, St. Louis	****

South Edmonton usually has an array of picks, but most of those were traded off in securing the RHL15 title. Still, despite having only two picks, Paul made good in the RHL16 draft. I'm not sure how good Stempniak's going to be - we might be seeing all he has. Even if that's the case, it's still a good second round pick.

Average: 95
Overall: 190

Seattle Crystals

Jean's big move was trading out of the second spot, electing to stock the Crystals with Eagle depth rather than take Johnson or Brule. I don't see it as a bad move, since neither had spotless resumes. We'll have to see if the return he got measures up.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	30	Paul Stastny, F, Colorado	***1/2
2	2	Adam McQuaid, D, Columbus	*
2	12	Nathan Hagemo, D, Carolina	*
2	30	Shea Guthrie, F, NY Islanders	*
3	30	Ben Bishop, G, St. Louis	*

I think I'm starting to get tired, because I feel like I was harder on Jean than I should have been. Or, at least, harder on these than I was on other people's picks (feedback, please). I like Stastny, but I have trouble seeing McQuaid being anything but fungible. Hagemo's going to be in college a while with that redshirt, and he seems very fragile. Guthrie and Bishop are both young and could improve, but they're bot accomplishing much at the NCAA level (by prospect standards).

Average: 17
Overall: 85

St. Albert's Spartans

Like Adam, Jun came into the draft with his picks and only his picks. There's something pleasantly organic about that.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	10	Marek Zagrapan, F, Buffalo	***
2	10	Ryan Stoa, F, Colorado	***
1	10	Mathieu Aubin, F, Montreal	***

Very good draft by Jun. Nothing spectacular, but solid all the way down. Zagrapan has the exact kind of profile you'd expect at 10 in a weak draft. Stoa was good as a freshmen at UM. Aubin burst our this year in The Q. Expect some regression next year.

Average: 75
Overall: 225

Victoria Cougars

Daniel Robitaille has always highly valued goalies. Keeping with a theme established in the disperal draft, we saw this fetish exhibited. The Cougars passed on a couple of gems but nabbed the future torch-bearer towards Martin Brodeur's thrown.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	3	Carey Price, G, Montreal	*1/2
1	29	Martin Hanzal, F, Phoenix	*
2	3	Matt Lashoff, D, Boston	***1/2
2	29	Fredrik Norrena, G, Tampa Bay	***
3	3	Ville Koistinen, D, Nashville	****
3	29	Joel Lundqvist, C, Dallas	***

Price is a very good player, but we disagree with the use of the pick. Hanzal's USHL numbers are poor for a center. Lashoff was good value in the second, and Norrena could be a find (a *** only because of age). Daniel's always had a knack for drafting the European imports, and Ville Koistinen could be a valuable addition with his third round pick. Joel Lundqvist has decent numbers in the Eliteserean.

Average: 55.8
Overall: 335

Washington Defiance

With so much salary room below the $21M league minimum, Washington fans had been looking forward to free agency and who the Defiance can retain (Alfredsson?). Hopefully, the fans noticed a pretty nice acquisition in Alex Bourret.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	14	Alex Bourret, F, Atlanta	***
2	14	Radek Smolenak, F, Tampa Bay	***1/2
3	7	Kristoper Letang, D, Pittsburgh	****
3	14	Slava Trukhno, F, Edmonton	**1/2

Following up on Bourret, Huy gets great value in this next two picks. Trukhno did not show the increased goal scoring I would have expected. It will be interesting to see how he progresses.

Average: 73.8
Overall: 295

Waterloo Roadkill

Again, I think I'm missing something

Waterloo Thundercats

Left with two picks while on vacation, Jason will come back to find two players who fell from their NHL slots. Of course, there was a reason for that.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	8	Benoit Pouliot, F, Minnesota	**
2	8	Matt Pelech, D, Calgary	**

It's difficult to be too hard on these picks since he's getting them "under slot," but neither of these players progressed in 2005-2006 after being drafted in 2005. You don't have to look far down the draft list to see players who would have been better selections in the draft.

Average: 25
Overall: 50

Winnipeg Freeze

Also, no picks. Ironic that FRE, after sweeping AVI, is left with no picks? Not really.

Yellowknife Dangerous Predators

Finally! I'm to the last team. I'd like to thank my fingers, my sanity, my internet connection ... oh, something about the Penetrators? OK. Howard's used his first seasons in the league to build a deep prospect list, though his choices tend to be a little "by-the-book" for our tastes. "By-the-book" sometimes gets you a pylon with the eleventh pick.

Round	Pick	Player	Rating
1	11	Luc Bourdon, D, Vancouver	**
1	26	Jakub Kindl, D, Detroit	***
2	11	Steve Downie, F, Philadelphia	*
2	17	Dan Bertram, F, Chicago	*1/2
3	8	Tom Fritsche, F, Colorado	**
3	8	Brad Richardson, F, Colorado	***
3	11	Jean-francois Jacques, F, Edmonton	***

This is where the same person who evaluated Jean's draft resurfaces ... but again, we have to ask about upside. What is Bourdon's? If everything works out for him, he'll be .. a very replaceable player. In other words, not what you imagine when thinking about a high first round pick. Howard almost ended up with him and Parent. Same question with Downie, though as a second round pick the context where he's drafted is a little better. Bertram has 19 goals in 75 career NCAA games. That's worse than Fritsche's total, though Tom was a third round pick.

Average: 40.8
Overall: 285

The RHL Demands Project

2006-08-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you something would come up. The auction kind of opens. The draft goes semi-live. There are a bunch of draft pick trades, including one about which I would like to write a complete article about. The one guy who the Aviators really, really wanting in the draft (Brule) goes to Grand Prairie in a deal which saw Michael Peca, Sergei Brylin, John Erskine and Roman Wick head to Kansas City. Without comment, I'd like to note that Paul Myers paid Calgary a first, second, and Andrew Brunette for a single pick, three spots lower. I'm already feeling an excess of vitriol after writing that paragraph, so it's time to shift to something more positive: the real purpose of today's article.

Last week I listed the three projects I'd like to take on for RHL16: "revitalizing the RHL Convention idea ...; RHL Minor League; pushing live Entry Draft rules through Paul/rules committee." With apologies to myself, I left off a pressing issue in which I have a much more urgent interest. Moving to the front of the list, RHL16 will be the season where the demand system will be tackled. By the end of the season, I want to have a new set of rules, software, and tools to have over to the league and say "This is what we came up with. Use it if you want. We've designed and tested it and feel it is a hugh step forward from what's being used now." Implicit in those statements are a series of assumptions which need to be discussed as part of the demands issue. The first assumption is that there is a problem with the current way of regenerating demands. Even if that is the case, I'm already assuming that the current means of developing rules can not handle this problem. I'm also proposing that a new way of adopting rules be used: Come up with the rules, test them, then submit for approval. It may be foolish to assume any rule can take this course. Additionally, I'm using the pronoun "we," not "I", assuming that there is a community of owners who would be willing to lend their talents and views. And finally - perhaps the biggest assumption of all - I'm still living under the illusion that demands can work, are a good thing, and represent a practical solution/tool for the league. Sounds like I have a lot of issues to address before getting to my proposal. Better get started. First one ground rule: I don't really want to talk about why something's not working. Not only will it take the article off on a tangent, but the why and how or the problem (and solution) aren't the problem itself. For now, I want to just identify the problem and a way of approaching a solution. Assumption #1: The Current Demands Do Not Work To assess whether demands work, we first have to determine the purpose that demands are attempting to serve. That purpose is debatable, so I'm going to come up with a very broad definition upon which I hope we can agree: Demands attempt to assign a value to a player which is in proportion to his league value. The definition does not include how the value is determined, what league value is, or what is done with demands. The definition doesn't I just want to concentrate on the demand itself, and I think that definition is sufficiently broad to encompass our ideas of what a demand's purpose is. If you take this definition and look at some of the examples I discussed last week, it's difficult to argue that demands are working. Are these demands in proportion to any valid conception of league value:

Spezza         1  550  72  3 1   0.85   467.50  Y (CAP, 4P/16, $233,750)
R.Nash         1  692  99  9 0   1.14   790.79  Y (GPS, 4P/16)
Nagy           1  472 109 10 1   1.23   676.78  Y (MOU, 1P/16, $169,195)
Gaborik        1  497  92 10 1   0.85   517.05  Y (MOU, 1P/16, $64,631)
Gionta         1  425  85 10 1   0.85   395.38  Y (MOU, 4P/16, $197,690)
Horcoff        1  373  78 16 1   1.17   695.36  Y (SOC - 4P/16, $347,680)
Martin         2  272  69 21 0   1.01   558.68  Y (TME, 4P/16)

I don't want to spend too much time on this point, though. We all have a relatively high level of exposure to the demands. Either you've come to think these numbers valid or not. I feel these demands are acceptable, as our league is better for having them than it would be should demands not exist. But I see so much room for improvement that I can not consider them valid. They're viable, but they're not valid. Assumption #2: The Rules List is not the Place For This Issue Demands are a very intricate issue, and not just because everybody has a different idea of what they should be. Discussions regarding demands tend to transcend the NHL into economics, labor, and (to actually generate the demands) technology. All of that is on top of the RHL's unique environment in which there are practical considerations which restrain developing anything that's too complicated. While the rules list has its moments in providing Paul and the group feedback on fully developed ideas or new, narrowly-scoped rules, I don't think the rules list is the best place for brainstorming ideas. You can have Martin and Jean going back and forth on an issue, then Ted fires of eighteen emails, the conversation explodes into a tree of off-topic sub-topics, and you end up with a collective "OK, where are we?" This demands task is going to need more direction. There are going to be a series of avenues which need to be pursued: methodologically, technologically, and with the rules. This is going to require more cohesion and organization than the rules list is used to. Ideally, the rules list would get involved in this project once somebody has developed the ideas. The rules list can comment on them, and Paul can use that information as he sees fit. Before that, though, the ideas need to be developed. Assumption #3: Submitting a Batch Proposal Will Work If a group was founded to address the demands issue and came up with a whole package, submitted it to the league and said "Look at the results! These numbers are much better. This is how we did it ..." who is to say the league will accept that? There are so many caveats built into the demands process (like peers, age-sensitivity) that changing those without reaching a consensus on whether people agree to the change could shipwreck the whole project. Why take this chance? Two reasons. First, I've had recent success with this method of rule/suggestion development. The "M" contract idea was submitted in this fashion, as were a couple of preceding suggestions. I prefer suggesting changes in this way because it helps convey to potential readers the amount of time you've put into the suggestion. It gives the impression that the implication of the suggestion are being addressed. Whatsmore, I find it tends to raise the level of dialogue. It's very difficult to respond with merely "I don't like this" when somebody submits a full-blown idea. The full-blown idea usually compels the respondent to say "I don't like this idea because ..." Second, the demands project is going to be determined by the results, not the details. If the new suggestion can be demonstrated to generate more intuitive, consistent, accurate demands, there will be less to say about the details. Those details will be more akin to configuration files for a software application rather than points for debate. Ultimately, people care about what the demands say. We've always approached this problem by worrying about how to get to the end (to get the demands), but if Paul and the rules list received a final product with demand results, the results will become the topic rather than the methodology. Assumption #4: "We," not "I" Despite my skepticism of the rules list's ability to handle this problem, there are a lot of good ideas in the public domain regarding how to deal with this issue. I alluded to a conversation I had (semi-) recently with Martin Baldwin, but I've talked to others about this issue, and there are a lot of creative solutions amongst us. In the conversation I had with Martin, as series of ideas came as responses to my thoughts, ideas which I had never imagined as solutions to demands and other issues with free agency. At that point, I realized that the new demands idea would have to be more than one person. Whatsmore, I don't think this will be a short-term project. I think there's going to have to be a lot of discussions, maybe even some research. It's much easier to stay motivated in developing projects when you have other people along for the ride. If this project were an "I," I think I'd lose too much momentum between school and relocating. I need a "we" not only for the betterment of the project's quality, but also for the project's livelihood. Assumption #5: Demands Are Good. Demands Work. To my knowledge, there are a surprisingly high number of owners who have no regard for demands. They think the league would be better without them. Just let everybody go to free agent auction, let the bidding lead where it might. To be honest, I don't have a good argument to convince somebody otherwise. If you have no problem with players just going to auction as the default, then you're probably of the mindset that having the option to keep players on your team isn't that high of a value. Because ultimately, demands are about favorite players and continuity. If it weren't for people wanting the options to keep certain players - franchise defining players - then players would just drift to auction. Demands aren't about hoping Zdeno Chara comes in cheap or that some player gets a low random number multiplier. Demands are about Nicklas Lidstrom. They're about owners being about to keep players should they be willing to tailor their franchise around this goal. To me, it isn't about whether demands work as much as it's about whether the idea of continuity works for the RHL. As Jeff Berliner left the RHL and Martin Brodeur shifted teams, I saw that there was. Sure, that scenario is rare, where a player stays with one team. But the option is there, and I think there's something to it.

I couldn't address all the assumptions sufficiently, but I think I've got enough reasoning there to justify the RHL Demands Project. Uh oh. Bold. Yes, bold. Bold for the title of the project which I would like to start today. What I'm looking to go is bring together a group of people who will develop the demand generation-system which can take the RHL through the next ten seasons. I want to start from scratch, pursue new options, and come up with something that is comprehensive: from rules, to scripts/software, to methodology, to implementation. What is a demand? How do NHL players go about creating them? How does this differ from other sports? What modes can we use for the RHL? How do we create those models? How should they be implemented? What are the results and implications: short and long-term? I want to be able to submit a packet to Paul which has the software he'll use, a series of tests the project implemented to show certain stimuli (player ratings?) will generate certain results. And, of course, I want those results to work for the RHL. I want the team to be proud enough of the project to reach out to the league and explain why this effort was needed and why the league will be a better place for it. I want to address this issue once and for all. After an initial adjustment period, I don't want demands to be an issue until there's another major shift in the league. I want the project to be comprehensive, covering all angles and addressing all issues: goalies, young players, freaks, older players on the verge of retirement, franchise loyalty, potentially differing dispositions. I want the project to be creative: designing software, looking for other work which can serve as influences, paying attention to media, researching recent free agent histories in sports. I want to result the speak for itself. I want to start a mailing list/working group immediately and get a dialogue going. The goal will be to have something available by the end of RHL16 (so there would still be one more season of the current system, even if we get this job done). I'm hoping for four to six people, all of who will be committed to the cause. With luck, the group will be in place by the end of next week. Without luck ... I'll probably try to establish a group informally, where I do a little work here-and-there, emailing my thoughts to people who can give me feedback. That would be the group: a cluster around whatever action I do. But that structure has problems, and it is ultimate just Richard doing his own things. As I said, I want a "we" for this one. If you are interested, please let me know. We need people who will develop ideas. You don't need to be a programmer, and you won't have to do research. But you will have to be thoughtful and come up with ideas, respond to email and be willing to find consensus with the group. If interested, you know who to call.

A Beginner's Guide to RHL Free Agency (Well, not really)

2006-07-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

Everybody read the new rules? You should. I should (I haven't, yet). Even if you're not one of those types who likes to be aware of all the causes, it would be good to read through it quickly and see if you have any questions. You don't want to be one of the snarky ones who complains about rulings sixth months too late. Again, good job on Paul's part for getting these out before RHL16 starts. He's having a great off-season. Today, I have two things I really want to write about. I want to write about one of these topics much more than the other, but the timing of the RHL world compels me to address what I otherwise would put off for another day. So I may need your help, as I want to write about the RHL Demands Project, but I'm afraid that there will be another time-sensitive project tomorrow. Such is the nature of the preseason. One day it's the draft, the next day Free Agency. There are stories and energies to spare. I'm sure that on Wednesday there'll be yet another time-sensitive topic that needs to be written about, else its significance will be lost. And I'll never get to talk about My Precious demand reform. These kinds of story-choices give me a glimpse at what newspaper columnists have to deal with. Though I've always been interested in writing, newspaper columnist is an occupation to which I have never been drawn. having to write something that I can't get excited about merely to meet a deadline sounds like homework. The idea brings back that feeling of semi-nausia I felt in the fourth grade, when my primary school teacher finally threw me into the world of schooling-outside-of-school. Ms. Spencer started giving me homework. All I wanted to do was play basketball. I imagine newspaper writers across the world writing 300 columns each year, sitting at their computers, trying to write while thinking of all the basketball games they could be playing. To me, it's an abhorrent thought - the reason why this blog will go through periods of both high-activity and low-activity. Sometimes, I just want to play basketball. But today is the other side of that coin. I get to choose between writing projects (as opposed to forcing one out). Today, I've chosen to write my guide to the RHL free agent auction, seeing as the bidding could open at any time. If I didn't write this article today, it would be passé by the time I got around to it. At the same time, I really want to get some ideas about RHL demands into the public domain; but, I'm going to try and put that off for one day. EXACTLY ONE DAY (HELP!). Alas, I'm reminded of an article idea from three months ago, inspired by a topic Mark alluded to in a comment, where I would discuss the idea of not replacing teams when owners left the league. It would be an RHL where there is no set number of teams - where we would only fill vacancies when good owners presented themselves, leaving "slots" in the RHL fabric when current owners left. But that article was always getting pushed back, was never really topical, and it's now just a figment of my over-active imagination. I hope the same fate doesn't await my ideas about RHL demands, because the topic is very important. If you caught my comments from a couple of weeks ago about this seasons' free agent signings (the demands that where met), I hope you see that the league has taken a step backwards in demand generation. I've had detailed discussions with Martin Baldwin about free agency and demands, and I think there is a lot of good energy amongst the owners, enough which would allow us to tackle to problem head-on and find a lasting solution. What's preventing this happening immediately, in my opinion, is a lack of organization. The rules list just isn't going to cut it for this one. We need a project structure more in line with that which you'd find on an engineering project. That's what tomorrow's article should be about. One more topic, before I get to the main article. On the rules list, Paul just went public with an idea that I had shared (either with him privately or on this blog) a few months ago: fixed compensation, in proportion to the size of the bid, for restricted free agent bids. It's something I encourage interested parties to consider, as it will bring meaning back to being a restricted free agent auction that currently serves no practical purpose. This is an idea that the Aviator News editors hope to champion throughout the season. Now, on to today's article.

The RHL free agent auction is one of the distinct features of the RHL - one of the first things to be inducted into the leagues pseudo-Hall of Fame. When first introduced by Jeff Berliner, it represented cutting-edge technology (as far as internet sports leagues were concerned). Now the technology can be found within other leagues, making the tool a little less avant-garde. But that aspect of the auction's distinctness wore off on us long ago. What currently makes the auction a unique RHL experience is the pomp, circumstance, and opportunity free agency represents. It's the RHL's bazaar - pun-intended. With most teams set to rely on the auction to fill some roster holes, I felt obligated to share eight rules every owner must know in order to survive the auction. With all humility I say that I have no idea how any of you survived without me giving you these rules sooner. So rather than risk a mass-exodus from the league when only Andy and I have access to this valuable, VALUABLE information, I'm posting this on the blog - and not behind the subscription-only curtain. No, no. It's my pleasure. Here are my Eight Rules for Surviving an RHL Auction. 1. Yes, Brad Schott's bidding is annoying, 2. But no, it's not personal. I was a little gun shy about this first rule. Maybe it was because I think Brad reads this every once in a while, and I don't mean any offense by evoking him as an example. Maybe I was gun shy because I think I'm being a cry baby by bringing this up. But if I can't write what I want in my blog, what the hell is the blog for? Besides, what I'm about to describe isn't limited to Brad, and the frustration with the practice isn't limit to me. Even though I think using Brad as an example guarantees a bunch of "MOU" bids on top of AVI's offers, I care more about this article than signing free agents. That's just how I roll. What do I mean by calling Brad's bids annoying? Just think back to last season's (or any season's) auction and those moments when you thought you had a player locked up ... The hours right before an auction period ends, right before you're about to sign a player, should be a time of caution. We've all felt the twinge of a last-second bid snatching a player out of our hands, keeping him on the market for at least two more periods. Despite knowing that this last-second bidding happens all the time, we're all human. We construct visions of that guy being on our team - in the line form. Delusions of grandeur enter our being. As two periods pass without action, the idea of landing that player starts to cement itself. It's only natural to get your hopes up. But then you have the action vultures who (as a point of strategy) bid on those players who are about to sign. Maybe because it's easier to only look at the players who are about to go off the table (scouting triage, of sorts). Maybe it's just to try an frustrate the opposing owners. I am not sure why some owners become auction vultures - waiting for the bidding on a player to die down before swooping in to pick at the carcas - but there definitely are auction vultures. To me, the prototypical one is Brad Schott. I can't remember how many times over the last few seasons I've gone to bed thinking that a player was probably mine only to find an outbid notice in my morning's InBox and a "MOU" next to the player's name on the auction server. Being on the West Coast, there is usually only an hour or two between my last log-off and the period's closing time (yet another aspect of the auction that allows me to get my hopes up). But after almost ten years in the league, I should know: Brad goes to bed at 5pm Kitchener time, sets his alarm to go off 30 minutes before the auction period ends, then wakes up, logs on, does a find on "AVI" on the auction server's page, and proceeds to bid. This is the only scenario that explains what has been happening. Of course, this scenario is also ludicrous, and so is my singling-out of Brad. For one, his bidding patterns aren't this bad (actually, they are - I'm just trying to sound even-handed). Secondly, his bidding patterns are perfectly within the rules. Third, this issue is more about my inability to adjust than it is about Brad's behaviors. But, finally, it's important to realize that it's not personal. At least, I don't think it's personal. As I alluded, I wasn't going to bring this up, but I've heard from other owners who've noticed that vultures also seem to circle their players. To us, the people who get worked up at the morning's disappointment, I say this now: Let's declare RHL16 as the year of the Auction Chill-Out. 3. "Ethos" is a four letter word. While the behavior of the vultures is legal (within the rules), I wouldn't exactly call it neighborly. It doesn't seem consistent with the Golden Rule, and I would go as far as to call it a unethical (if only slightly so). I would also caution that I'm completely off-base in saying that. My mistake is trying to ascribe ethics to the free agent auction. The auction is the Wild West of the RHL. It's a place where a password and a budget are the only regulations which matter. Who to bid on, how much to bid, when to bid - there are no rules for these things. Anything goes. Your definition is as good as mine. All the same, I would caution against creating any definitions. They only get you into trouble. So while I certainly would not make a practice to last-second bidding, who am I to be creating those definitions? Let along forcing them upon other people? I know, as a fellow owner, I appreciate more normalized bidding patterns. But again, that's me trying to force my definition of normal on other owners. All this gets so murky. It's better to not bother defining anything that so readily defies definition. Just go to the auction and bid. Worry about your team, but try not to worry about anything else (like who you're bidding against). 4. Unrestricted players don't belong to anybody. Whereas bidders will display an amorality in regards to their bidding patterns, they'll become ethicians when it comes to their players. There's an obvious irony in that (beyond ethics not being applicable to the auction), an irony that's augmented by the precarious definition of who their player is. The easy definition: A player is mine if my team owns the loyalty/matching rights. This is a misguided rule seeing as free agency and possession (owning) are practically antonyms. But there are even more convoluted rules of auction possession than this easy, non-sensical one. What about the implicit rule I mention above? The "I almost signed him, he was mine, and you bid on him at the last minute, you chromosome-deficient bastard" rule. Or the "I sent an email to the list saying he was 'Mine, mine, mine!'" rule that was popular a couple of years back. Or how about the now-outlawed "Technically, he's mine, but I'll use my matching rights and trade him to you" rule? All of these rules fall into a broad category I like to call "No." These aren't rules, no matter who sends the traditional passive-aggressive, Round 8 complaint this season:

I wasn't going to say anything... but I get really
tired of people ..who wait to the very last second
to bit.  On players.  It's just really frustrating; 
That's all.

Again, UFA Auction = Wild West. 5. See those players at the top - under Restricted Free Agents? Ignore them. I blame myself for this. It was something like five seasons ago that, in the context of a trade discussion with Mark Benvenga, I was told that he would agree to our trade only if I also agreed not to bid on Mike York, an impending restricted free agent. Not that I can blame Mark for asking for that. I was the guy who came into the league, immediately used my crappy expansion roster as an excuse to bid on restricted free agents, and then advocated that each succeeding expansion team do the same thing. Not exactly neighborly. The public debates that went along with this "policy" created an a stigma around the restricted free agent auction. I made it into the contentious place where you battle in hand-to-hand (email-to-email) combat, where only one owner could be victorious. I made it into Thunderdome. Two men enter, one man leaves! As exciting as that might be (I need to see that movie again), nobody goes to Bordertown unless they have to. With the depth of unrestricted free agency nowadays, there's no reason to resort to unrestricted free agency. If having to give compensation wasn't bad enough, you might end up in a post-Apocalyptic wasteland with Tina Turner. And ... that reference is dead. 6. No, I don't think he really wants all 27 players. When Vlad (or another owner) opens the auction by bidding on 27 players, don't even waste the electrons thinking about the whys and what-fors. That owner's just bored. True, bidding on that many players is a strategy that has no justification (besides at-the-office entertainment), but he's not going to get Daniel Alfredsson for $351,000. Just remember: RHL16 is the season of the Auction Chill-Out. Be the Buddha. Center yourself around those players who fit into your universe. Let the bad karma flow towards the owner blindly bidding on every player. If it makes you feel better, that bad karma will probably have him stub his toe on the tub tomorrow morning. But that wouldn't make the Buddha feel better. 7. It's not the end of the world. If you don't get the players you want, that one player you wanted, or any decent players, don't worry. Missing out on players in free agency is not the end of the world. If you don't believe me, look at last year's Champions' League results. The top teams in the league were (by standings) Kitchener, Chicago, Baffin Isle, South Edmonton, and Saskatoon. Let's add Lethbridge to this list, based on their postseason performance. Amongst those teams, only Baffin Isle has been a big player in free agency of late. Kitchener tends to rely on trades to acquire its top talent. Chicago has a deep farm system and hasn't spent big on free agents since signing Adam Foote. South Edmonton lost Jarome Iginla last year on their way to the title. Saskatoon tends to use free agency to augment it's core. Lethbridge did use unrestricted free agency to get Trevor Linden and Sheldon Souray, but they had to trade Souray (and Joe Sakic) because of financial problems. There's no question that free agency can help your team, but if you don't get Alfredsson or Forsberg, remember these examples. There is more than one way to build your team. 8. There's always next year. Take a quick look at the rosters and you'll see that unrestricted free agency just keeps getting deeper and deeper. If you don't get the big name guy this year, there'll be another available next year: Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer are both due for new contracts after RHL16. So save all the high-falutin' bidding for RHL17. RHL16 is the season of the Auction Chill-Out.

Aviator Awards: RHL15

2006-07-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Though it flew under the radar, the Aviators held their post-season award banquet on Friday. Seasonally held to acknowledge those players who contributed to the preceding RHL season, the RHL15 banquet was different from previous seasons because of the amount of turnover the team undertook during the season. This would also be the last time this group would gather as a team, as the RHL's Expansion Draft started that same night. While the team used the opportunity to welcome Shaonne Morrison and Taylor Pyatt, acquired in the dispersal draft held earlier in the week, the focus of the evening was on the past season. Derek Armstrong, as expected, won the Aviator Ward as the season's best player. In a lineup constantly in turmoil, Armstrong was the rock. His injury right before the playoffs and the Aviators' disappointing results that followed highlighted his value. Coming over in the preseason from the Guelph Reapers, Armstrong finished with 11 goals and 26 assists in 53 games, rating out at +5, one of the Aviators' few plus players. In return, Armstrong received the organization's highest award. The most storied award, the Owner's Award, went to Jeff Cowan. Given to the player who best represents the organization, the ward had only been given to four different players in the preceding ten seasons. Cowan joins Tom Fitzgerald (three time winner), Ian Laperriere (one), Kirk Maltby (five), and Trevor Linden (one) as winners. The positional awards went to Erik Cole (forwards, 65-20-14-34-70) and Brian Leetch (defensemen, 65-11-21-32-20). For the first time in team history, no award was given to goaltenders. Pierre Dagenais (52-19-12-32-28) was named Best Newcome, while goaltender Mikael Tellqvist (15-8-6-0-3.62-.882) was names Best Young Player.

Season	Aviator Award: Season's Best Player	Owner's Award: Player Who Best Represents the Organization	Forward of the Year	Defenseman of the Year	Goaltender of the Year	Best Newcomer	Best Young Player
15	Derek Armstrong	Jeff Cowan	Erik Cole	Brian Leetch	not awarded	Pierre Dagenais	Mikael Tellqvist
14	Jere Lehtinen	Trevor Linden	Craig Conroy	Zdeno Chara	Sean Burke	Erik Cole	Alex Auld
13	Keith Tkachuk	Kirk Maltby	Alexei Kovalev	Scott Stevens	Roberto Luongo	Jeff O'Neill	Daniel Snyder
12	Keith Tkachuk	Kirk Maltby	Alexei Kovalev	Zdeno Chara	Roberto Luongo	Dan Boyle	Mike Comrie
11	Radek Dvorak	Kirk Maltby	Ron Francis	Scott Stevens	Roberto Luongo	Richard Matvichuk	Mike Comrie
10	Scott Walker	Kirk Maltby	Keith Primeau	Bryan Marchment	Roberto Luongo	Trevor Linden	Zdeno Chara
9	Brian Savage	Kirk Maltby	Mike York	Marty McSorley	Scott Fankhouser	Martin Lapointe	Vitali Vishnevski
8	Brian Savage	Ian Laperriere	Joe Nieuwendyk	Patrice Brisebois	Scott Fankhouser	Mike York	Vitali Vishnevski
7	Jaromir Jagr	Tom Fitzgerald	Joe Nieuwendyk	Jason Woolley	Guy Hebert	Marty McInnis	Sebastien Bordeleau
6	Jaromir Jagr	Tom Fitzgerald	Michael Peca	Jason Woolley	Robbie Tallas	Ron Francis	Brad Werenka
5	Michael Peca	Tom Fitzgerald	Sergei Nemchinov	Scott Lachance	Darren Puppa	not awarded	James Black

The Rebirth of Joe

2006-07-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

The preseason provides a wealth of subject matter for the blog, and I'm a little morose that I don't have time to write about everything. I'm trying to pace myself and only write one piece per day, but I know as soon as a dry spell comes (read: life gets in the way) a lot of interesting topics are going to fall through the cracks. As a way to avoid that, I want to throw out a blurb about some of the things which are on my mind before moving on to today's topic of choice, the new divisional alignment:

The RHL is peaking. One season after the low point in RHL history (the exodus of four teams and some very popular owners) the league finds itself fully recovered, restructured (rules-wise) to carry us into the next era of RHL play, the ownership population at an all-time high in terms of energy-level and stability. This blog spends a lot of time trying to raise awareness of potential problems, but allow me to augment those critiques with this prediction: We are entering the second golden age of the RHL, the first since the original burst of energy that gave birth to the league.
Paul Myers deserves a huge amount of credit for the state of the league, and I hope all members appreciate the work he's putting in to make this event-filled preseason move as smoothly as possible. His willingness to put in this time is one of the major contributing factors in the peak of the league's energy level.
Has anybody looked at the depth of unrestricted free agency? I want to league to reconsider the six year contract. These free agent classes are unrealistically deep. After coming up with a list for RHL17, it doesn't get any better next year.
The Aviators lost Jeff Cowan in the later rounds of the expansion draft. I wasn't surprised to see Jean pick him up, as Cowan has good shooting ratings. At the same time, it's hard to loose Jeff. He scored 14 goals in RHL15 and was the longest tenured Aviator. He was also relatively inexpensive. Hopefully Jeff will enjoy the Pacific Northwest.
Just as the Hall of Fame, game playing and the blog were projects for AVI in RHL15, I'm going to try to set out on a few initiatives for RHL16. This will be its own article, but the ideas I'm throwing around: revitalizing the RHL Convention idea (that died with "going back to school"); RHL Minor League; pushing live Entry Draft rules through Paul/rules committee.

For today, I wanted to stay a little Aviator-centric and talk about the division alignments that Paul announced last night - or what I've come to call The Rebirth of Joe. For those who didn't see the email, here are the new conferences and divisions, as yet unnamed:

RHL16 Conferences and Divisions
Conference 1		Conference 2
Division 1	Division 2	Division 1	Division 2
500 CAP GAR DEF FAL STR	MOU ROA THU SPE MON REA VAM	SOC COU ROV AVI FUN TME	EAG SPA FRE YDP GPS SEL CRY

My first reaction, as Andy told me about the slotting during a phone call last night, was the great job done in creating a balance between divisions, conferences, level-of-competition, and team preferences. This is another area where Paul deserves credit for a job well done. Having not given any preferences to Paul as to where the Aviators preferred to be aligned, I had kind of expected to end up in a hodge-podge division with the other teams who may not have strong ties to other owners. To my surprise and immediate happiness, my team ended up in a division much like the one which predated the split. We're used to playing in the same group as Paul and Daniel. And Steve, with those insanely long plane rides ... to an airport from which we had to dogsled to the arena. Having these owners back on the schedule will give the regular season games an extra level of interest. But those names, with their familiarity and relative camaraderie, come as a double edged sword. No offense intended to either myself, Andy, or Trevor, but the other GMs in this division are all probably in the Top 10 amongst the league's owners, all having won Kings Cups. I don't think any other division can say they have more talent in the front offices than our division. Beyond the immediate reaction of happiness at being with familiar names, I felt intimidation at the level of competition within this division. If that wasn't enough, I feel the that conference's other division could make similar claims as to its primacy. I would not agree with those claims (relative to the division the Aviators are in), but I would say that Conference 2's Division 2 is the second division I would least like to be in if I'm concerned about the year-to-year quality of management. While ten teams will make the playoffs thanks to an expanded playoff structure, I can't see those playoff spots handed out without a year-in, year-old dogfight. Don't take these observations as regret at being slotting into this division and conference. I love the luck the team got. I'm very happy Paul put the Aviators where he did. I would have it no other way, as continuously facing off against Paul, Steve, Daniel, and Martin is going to make the division a great place to be. The old Joe Malone division used to be the most competitive division in the RHL, but it also prided itself on having the most intricate rivalries, with each team having a reason beyond mere winning to defeat its divisional foes. In putting much of the old Malone Division in C2D1, Paul has set the ball rolling to recreate that feeling. I already feel the tension. The division has four bloggers! We're going to be in each other's faces, constantly. And if I had to bet money, I'd wager that this new division again becomes the tightest, most hotly contested group in the RHL. I couldn't be more excited. RHL16 is only one month away. I can't wait to see the schedule!

Mixed Mesages in Turco, Rathje Transactions

2006-07-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

While I usually write these posts with the RHL community as the target audience, but today, after the news that Mike Rathje, Ruslan Salei and Andrew Cassels have been selected in the expansion draft, I wanted to write to the Aviator fans who visit this blog. While you might joke that, with that as my target audience, I need not write at all, Aviators fans have been silent but loyal through this last season of rebuilding, organizational instability, and rumors of relocation. With all the mixed messages these stories have sent, there may be further confusion in recent news: The acquisition of a new goaltender; Exposing some of our best players in expansion. The acquisition of Marty Turco has been met with mixed reviews. The most intriguing feedback criticized the organization for reverting to a practice the was previously condemned: Trading draft picks to Calgary, thereby feeding into potential inequalities of the RHL universe. Though the answer to this concerns lends itself to a full post, I can detail three broad reasons why this concern never came to mind with the impending trade: First, trading is now Andy Bartalone's department; Second, sources and rewards of draft pick exploitation have dwindled; Third, the inconsistencies of the Vampyre organization make it uncertain that the advantages Vlad has created are actually paying off. A more widely-held concern questioned Turco's quality and concluded that the Aviators under-valued the seventh draft pick. To the former, Turco will be an above-average goaltender in RHL16 and, if his track record is to be trusted, an above-average goaltender in RHL19 - the first and last years of his deal. In between, he will be average, though he augments this value with his ability to play all games, thus obfuscating the need to invest in other goaltenders. If RHL17 goes slow, Turco might be above-average in RHL18, but that's unlikely. What's probable is a goaltender who will be above-average in two seasons, average in two others while being paid less than an average player. In other words, he's a plus player for the time he's guaranteed to be an Aviator. The question is whether he's plus-enough to justify the seventh pick. Here's the logic that led the Aviators to that conclusion: While it's true that some people taken with the seventh (or later) pick have yielded a greater return on investment, this year's draft doesn't not present many options with which you can have that kind of confidence. A player like Devin Setoguchi has a very good track record in the WHL, but he does not have a track record that says he is certain to put up two above-average seasons and two average seasons before he hits RHL unrestricted free agency. Setoguchi falls into the grey area into which most prospects fall: he may pan out, he may not. I believe all of Crosby, Brule, and Johnson do exhibit a track record more certain to pan out, but most other potential picks with them a higher degree of uncertainty. Even if they do pan out, being an above-average player is a high standard (a standard which, by definition, less than half of rated players achieve in a given year). Ee felt the uncertainty of the prospects likely to be available at seven was of ufficiently high to justify dealing for Turco, a player with whom there is no uncertainty. In addition, we felt getting Nigel Dawes for a third round pick was a very good deal for us. Again, we are trading uncertainty for certainy here, though Dawes carries with him more questions than Turco. But Dawes has a better track record than Setoguchi (when comparing age-to-age accomplishments). If we felt that Turco was too little for the seventh pick, the Dawes-SOC3 swap assuaged our concerns. But even if you're an Aviator fan who supported the deal, you have to be concerned that Mike Rathje will be back in Victoria next year, not in San Diego paired with Brian Leetch. If you did not support the Turco deal, you may still be confused by the contradiction in acquiring a "now" player (Turco) while letting another "now" player (Rathje) go. The obvious answer to this is salaries: Rathje makes just under $3 million. Turco makes just under $1 million. The difference is the key to the argument for acquiring one "now" player while letting another go. To fans, this becoming a hard argument to make since the team has shed so much payroll since the beginning of last season. Whereas we started RHL15 with around $28,000,000 in salaries, the final rounds of the expansion draft will likely leave the Aviators with less than $15,000,000 in salaries. With a minimum salary commitment of $21,000,000 required by the collective bargaining agreement, why couldn't the team keep Mike Rathje? We could have kept Mike. We just didn't want to. While his salary and contract were determining factors in the decision to expose him, the underlying impetus behind not protecting Mike was a difference of opinion within the organization as to him value to the team. Assistant General Manager Andy Bartalone felt Rathje not only should be kept through expansion, but the Aviators should either put money aside for a signing bonus or prepare to utilize matching rights in the RHL17 free agent bidding period. Were it not for this opinion, there would have been no consideration for protecting Mike. I, acting as General Manager, felt that Mike not only failed to justify his salary, but he actually contributed less to the Aviators than less heralded defenseman like Jiri Slegr and Anders Eriksson. Ultimately, though there had been thoughts about protecting Ed Jovanovski's matching rights from expansion teams, Eriksson got the fifth defenseman spot on the protection list, not Rathje. Because of the team's financial situation (alluded to, above), this was a tough decision. We would not be hurt by keeping Mike, and while his contribution to the RHL15 Aviators was questioned, everybody on staff anticipated him being more valuable in RHL16. The deciding factor was the answer to this question, an answer was not favorable for Mike's Aviator fate: Is Mike a good use of $3,000,000 for the Aviators? For a rebuilding team that also has financial problems, the answer is clearly no, though the common refrain in the hours leading towards protection list-submission was "there is no way to know the answer to that question." In the end, Mike returns to Victoria, a place with which he's familiar. Having spent only a few months in San Diego, I can't help but think he is happy to return to an area where he had one of his better RHL seasons. He is familiar with Daniel Robitaille and should be comfortable on a team that is becoming an interesting mix of veterans and emerging players. Were he to stay with the Aviators, Mike would be on the trading block all season, with the organization trying to get something for a good defenseman who would free up some salary if dealt. Without a leadership role like Brian Leetch and Wes Walz have, Mike may have felt frustration with another year of constant change. For both parties, Mike being selected was a good thing. But to draw any new conclusions about RHL16 from Rathje leaving or Turco arriving would be inappropriate and lead to the confusion that some fans are feeling. The Aviators continue to rebuild, trying to stabilize ourselves financially and in player talent. And we are still a long way from being secure in either area. Our bank balance is amongst the thinnest in the league, while our forward depth has fallen far behind our defense and goalie stocks. We lack elite talent in forwards, defensemen, and prospects. We have a lot of work to do, and we continue to look toward the future with our goals in tact.

Another Luongo Replacement: Aviators to Acquire Goaltender

2006-07-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

Two seasons ago, the Aviators were at the end of their rope with Roberto Luongo, their goaltender at the time. Since acquiring him from the Pittsburgh Snow Dogs four seasons before, San Diego had grown frustrated with the inconsistent performances of a player the staff had considered the best player in the world. Finally, after a slow start to the RHL14 season, Luongo was traded to the Victoria Bees in a deal which sent Erik Cole to the Aviators. Since that time, the Aviators have been searching for a number one goaltender. In the Luongo trade, RHL veteran Sean Burke and goaltender prospect Alex Auld came to San Diego. Burke's tenure in Southern California was short lived, as he left via free agency before the RHL15 season. To compensate for the loss, San Diego dealt to-be-fragile defenseman Scott Stevens for Guelph for Nikolai Khabibulin. But after Khabibulin showed himself too inconsistent to hold down the starting job, the Aviators adopted a revolving door policy between the pipes: Khabibulin, Christobel Huet, Patrick Lalime, Auld, Fred Brathwaite and Mikael Tellqvist all started at least one game during the RHL15 season. At campaign's end, Brathwaite and Tellqvist were holding down the fort, calling to reinforcements. Last week, San Diego finalized an agreement-in-principle with the Calgary Vampyres which would bring Marty Turco to the Aviators. Along with Turco, prospect Nigel Dawes will be coming to San Diego. In return, Calgary will receive the seventh pick in the RHL16 Entry Draft, a third round pick (previously belonging to the South Edmonton Sockeyes), and cash considerations ($50,000). With the trade, Calgary received some coveted lottery tickets, and San Diego got another candidate for their franchise goaltender position. This trade would not have happened before the recent ruling that the RHL16 draft would be going by special rules, excluding the youngest (and often, most promising) prospects from being selected. Instead, the draft is being restricted to the NHL 2005 class. From that class, San Diego had three players who they were have been happy with at the seventh pick, none of whom were likely to fall. Sidney Crosby, one of the players, is a given to go to Cleveland at number one. Gilbert Brule, another of the NHL 2005 class to make make an NHL appearance, went sixth in his NHL draft and is unlikely to fall one spot in the NHL draft. The third player on the Aviator board, defenseman Jack John would have to fall four places from his NHL draft position, an unlikely development considering his impressive freshman year at the University of Michigan. Because these players were unlikely to be available, the Aviators opted to trade out of the draft. After holding out from Calgary last season, Marty Turco has signed a four year deal worth $3.4 million. Though the Aviator shaman predicts a downturn in performance over RHLs 17 and 18, Turco is expected to be a solid goaltender for RHL16 and has a track record of good performance to augment the shaman's concerns. Turco can also play regular under the league's new goaltender restrictions, a facet which makes his modest salary an even better deal if you anticipate an upturn in the salaries of regular goaltenders. With the acquisition, the Aviators are set between the pipes for the next two RHL seasons, after which Mikael Tellqvist will need to be protected in any possible expansion drafts. Along with having six defenseman protected in expansion with neither Mike Rathje nor Ruslan Salei selected (as of yet) in the Expansion Draft, the Aviators may also have all their defensemen slots filled (though this is not necessarily a good thing, when you look at the personnel). With a payroll of less than $20,000,000 committed, San Diego will have four forward slots to fill in free agency. The team's executive board is expected to meet during the week to determine a strategy for the signing period, though with a bank balance of only around one million dollars, expect San Diego to sign inexpensive players and continue the rebuilding process.

Dispersal to Expansion

2006-07-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

For the Aviators, the dispersal draft went as we had hoped. With our first pick (ninth overall), we selected Shaonne Morrisonn, defenseman, previously of the St. Pete's Wicked Ale. Morrison can step in immediately and play on a third pair, and Aviator Tarot experts predict a slight uptick in performance next season. And the Tarot experts are never wrong when it comes to the cards. Shaonne's inexpensive and doesn't have to be protected in expansion, and along with Bryan Allen, Andreas Lilja, Kurtis Foster, Bruno Gervias, and James Wisniewski forms a core of cheap, young, low year number defensemen, giving us some flexibility moving forward. Our second Dispersal Draft pick saw the return of one of our original draftees. Taylor Pyatt returns to the team that drafted him eleven seasons ago. Hopefully, he'll actually adorn the Aviator sweater this time around. If protected, resigned, and not traded, Taylor should be part of the interchangable forward posse, a strategy employed by the Aviators in RHL15, characterized by an accumulation of fungible forwards to play on third and fourth lines. Though most are vulnerable in expansion, Pyatt's fellow Interchangables! (coming to a theater near you) include Brad Isbister, Jeff Cowan, Andrew Cassels, Turner Stevenson, Derek Armstrong, Brian Willisie, Jason Botterill, and Chris Taylor. If you were following the Dispersal and found the Aviators selections a bit boring, you did not have to look too far to find some interesting stories which surfaced in the wake of the draft:

The big story had to be the Cougars, who saw Steve Yzerman fall to them with their second pick. Daniel Robitaille will start his team with Martin Brodeur and Steve Yzerman, two players who might be on his Top 10 non-Robitaille players list. Congratulations to him and the Victoria fans, though the Cougars now have over $6 million tied up in their first two players. If that sounds like a lot, don't worry: they have only ... $6 million in total salary, as of now.
Part of the Cougar story was Dany Heatley dropping to the second pick. Jean-Henri Duteau and the Seattle Crystals were the beneficiaries of this twist, a twist I was shocked to see unfold. If Daniel had his heart set on Brodeur, perhaps he could have tried to negotiate a trade with Jean or Ward (since Jean was no threat to take Martin) and gotten somebody to pay to trade up. A straight selection of Brodeur over Heatley had to be made with a lot of heart. I don't see much justification for it in terms of on-ice performance. Daniel cited Heatley's RHL16 injury concerns, but injuries are a fickle animal in the RHL. In addition, RHL16 is not going to be the Year of the Cougars. Ultimately, this ended up being about more than on-ice performance. And, to me, that makes it a fine (if surprising) pick.
The Falcons went young. Real young. With some ill-luck, Doug Deutsch ended up with the fourth pick in dispersal - also known as "out of the money." In my opinion, he made the right choice and took Ryan Getzalf, and in the second round he stayed young, taking young Russian winger Konstantin Glazachev. On the opposite spectrum from Robitaille, Doug has almost no money allocated. He only has Getzlaf and Glazachev's M contract costs, which will be somewhere south of $140,000 combined.
I was a litle surprised, given the financial troubles they enountered at the end of RHL15, to see FRE take Hal Gill, a player who will need a signing bonus.
I can't help but think the Stumpf brothers should switch drinks. These are both teams which performed better than AVI last year, but I do not see how THU adding Turgeon and Stumpel, ROA adding McKee and Zhitnik doesn't play into the same problems which have plagued those teams in the past: Overpriced talent; inefficient contracts. These contracts aren't terrible, in isolation, but I don't think they are the ideal contracts for teams like THU and ROA to be taking on. Editor's Note: Jason Stumpf is on a summer vacation. It seems likely brother Craig ran his draft, given the similarity in picks. Yet, it's hard to tell.
Now, a team like TME, there's a team that could have taken some of the contracts that THU and ROA picked up. And they certainly did take on salaries with their picks: Martin Straka and Peter Bondra. How Straka and Bondra differ from the four players who are going to Waterloo is in their contract status: both are free agents who have to have their demand met. And, like all RHL players, they are demanding signing bonuses. I think Trevor could have used this money better.
And finally, the players I'm surprised to have seen fall as far as they did: Derian Hatcher, #10, SPA - thought FAL, TME, FRE, or THU would take him; Jean Sebastian Aubin, #22, FUN - good save percentage on a cheap contract, low PT makes him a prototypical Martin goalie; Eric Belanger, #26, MOU - this guy was in our top 10 with his combination of ratings, contract, year number. Always nice to see Brad get a break (see Chara).

With dispersal done, we look to expansion. Having not looked through rosters, I can't speak as to how valuable this draft will be for the expansion teams, though I suspect that there won't be a great yield, based merely on the ratio of expansion teams to pre-existing teams. Since I can't comment beyond that, I wanted to give everybody a preview of the Aviator protection list:

Exempt Players: Shaonne Morrisonn, Matt Pettinger, Mikael Tellqvist
Protected Forwards: Wes Walz, Derek Armstrong, Micheal Nylander, Brian Willise, Erik Cole, Taylor Pyatt (RFA), Turner Stevenson, Pierre Dagenais, Darcy Tucker (UFA)
Protected Defensemen: Brian Leetch, Jiri Slegr, Andreas Lilja, Bryan Allen (RFA), Ed Jovanovski (UFA)
Protected Goalies: None
Unprotected Players: Andrew Cassels (C), Chris Taylor (C), Brad Isbister (LW), Jeff Cowan (LW), Chad Kilger (LW), Jason Botterill (LW), Mike Rathje (D), Anders Eriksson (D), Ruslan Salei (D), Fred Brathwaite (G).

Trying to predict who will and won't be selected has been a preoccupation of mine and Andy's since the trading deadline. My feeling is that the glut of expansion teams will make any cheap roster filler ripe for the pickings. To that end, I expect to lose Cassels, Isbister, Cowan, Kilger, Botterill, and Eriksson, possibly Taylor. Perhaps that's just me overvaluing my own players. We decided to roll the dice a bit on Rathje and Salei, hoping they're too expensive to get selected. However, seeing that FAL took nobody in the expansion draft who has a salary, I'm a bit worried. So, Andy and I will be looking for somebody who will be willing to give us something for Rathje, enough to justify protecting him and potentially losing Jovanovski's loyalty.

Quick Stop: Recent RHL Happenings

2006-07-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Possibly picking up where This Week in Blogs left off, I wanted to do a quick wrap up of new RHL-related content to hit the 'Net in the last week. Focusing on ... Blogs In addition to this site's busy week (which has been fun, for me), five other blogs have been active.

Daniel Robitaille gave us a preview to the first dispersal draft pick before formally Martin Brodeur on his site, RHL Cougars News. I hope to write more about this topic during the upcoming week. I'm happy Daniel has a player who he can be excited about, some the Aviators have not had since we traded away our favorite player.
Likewise, Jean Duteau and the Crystals let us know what his dispersal draft list would look like before landing Dany Heatley, to his "sort-of-surprise." Given Jean's inclination to build an offensive team, the draft could not have worked better for him.
Jun Kokaji has kept us abreast of the Spartan relocation to Calgary. In the process, he has cleaned house, announcing a new coaching staff to match his blog's new look. Of course, he didn't have to remind me how little money first round losers get from their playoff butt-kickings. The sweep still hurts.
The Talon returned with an excellend review of the Eagles' RHL15 campaign. There is a lot to be excited about in Edmonton, as evidenced by all the young, core players who graded out with B's or better by Bourdeau's report. With so many of those players officially resigned this week, Eagles fans won't have to worry about the core not having time to come together.
Perhaps RHL17 can be to the 500s what RHL15 was for the Eagles. At least, that's what Mark hopes, claiming "The Future Looks Bright" in his recent 500's News & Notes post. Looks like the former Francis Award winner has done a good job to turning his star-studded RHL15 squad into a force for the future.

League News A series of emails from Commissioner Paul Myers got the RHL16 preseason underway. Here is a breakdown:

Playoff money was announced and distributed. Bank balances were updated.
The season's awards were handed out, with the major awards going to Kovalchuk, Niedermayer, Kiprusoff, Schott, and Gandour.
Expansion Draft order was announced, with Kansas City getting the first pick.
The timeline for RHL16's preseason was released. We could be playing games that matter within five weeks!
The tally from signing bonuses was released, with fifteen teams paying out about $18.1 million.
New rosters were released with updated year numbers and bank balances.
I specific players who resigned was announced.
Dispersal Draft Order was set, and the draft got underway.
A note was sent reminding teams that the RHL16 Draft pool will not contain players from the 2006 NHL Draft.

More News

The Victoria Cougars announced their franchise information.
Doug Deutsch finalized his return to the league, detailing the Cleveland Falcons.
Ward Bahner followed suit introducing the Kansas City Monarchs.

I Demand To Be Treated Unfairly!

2006-07-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I don't want to dwell on this too much lest things become too repetitive and negative, but I wanted to briefly comment on the email Paul sent last night (RHL Draft Reminder, 12 Jul 2006) clarifying that the RHL16 Entry Draft will hold 2006 NHL draftees to be ineligible. This is a decision we (this blog's community) had been expecting for a while, but that the announcement was called a "reminder" is of note. I honestly do not remember this news being previously published, and some time searching the rhl list archives could not find any announcements to this end. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, but to my knowledge this news had not been made public before. I do think that's part of the issue with this ruling. Regardless, it's time to move on and give the benefit of the doubt and intentions. Contact extensions were announced on Tuesday (RHL 15 Resignings, 10 Jul 2006), with 55 players being resigned by their teams, 33 of those players garnering signing bonuses. When this list is released each season, my reaction is usually "he signed him to that?" While there are some of those in this season's bunch, this was the first season where my modal reaction was "he demanded that?" Perhaps I should have taken notice of these demands when they were sent out to the list mid-season. But the recent release is a lot readier to read (because of the format), and whether I noticed them now as opposed to then doesn't make these demands any less strange. For example, consider this group of off-and-coming young players:

Spezza         1  550  72  3 1   0.85   467.50  Y (CAP, 4P/16, $233,750)
R.Nash         1  692  99  9 0   1.14   790.79  Y (GPS, 4P/16)
Nagy           1  472 109 10 1   1.23   676.78  Y (MOU, 1P/16, $169,195)
Gaborik        1  497  92 10 1   0.85   517.05  Y (MOU, 1P/16, $64,631)
Gionta         1  425  85 10 1   0.85   395.38  Y (MOU, 4P/16, $197,690)
Horcoff        1  373  78 16 1   1.17   695.36  Y (SOC - 4P/16, $347,680)
Martin         2  272  69 21 0   1.01   558.68  Y (TME, 4P/16)

Not all of these demands are unfair, but many of them raise eyebrows. These are all players performing at the league-average (or better) in a league where the average player makes over $1,000,000. Only one of these players are demanding that much. While most professional sports financial systems don't give second or third year players top-dollar, very few treat them as below-average players when it's time to negotiate their first contract. Whatsmore, a system based on peers shouldn't lead to this result. We're clearly overemphasizing the year number. To illustrate this, look at Rick Nash's peers:

R.Nash         1  692  99  9 0   1.14   790.79
Frolov        Kotalik       Bell          M.Chouinard   Dagenais      Boguniecki    Havlat

When you think Rick Nash, you think Chouinard and Dagenais! Here is Rick Nash's RHL15 profile:

R.Nash          LW   3P/13  692 13  99 02000 17:45 30/9  85/9/1/4    443 3430 1000 14  2 20 N   $762,930

The RHL demand system hypothesized written the following as the conversation Rick Nash and his agent has when coming up with his demand: AGENT: OK, Rick. Your contract's up and the Stingers want to negotiate now. Here's how I see it: You're one of the best young wingers in the league, already an elite scorer. That puts you in the same category as the Alex Frolovs of the world! Sure, sure, people will say there's a lot of Pierre Dagenais in you, but don't believe it kid. You don't listen to them! Now, my philosophy is that they're gonna have to give you a little something to keep you off the free agent market, so let's aim high, kid. Really high! NASH: Sounds great. Last offseason, the top talents were going for over $3 [million]. AGENT: You ain't gonna get that, kid. NASH: Oh, I know. I'm still young and, well, maybe something close to that. We can at least start the talks there, right? AGENT: I hear ya kid. I hear ya. Let me throw a number a you and see how you like it. What would you say to 4 years ..." NASH: Yeah! AGENT: For $3.2 million! NASH: Per?!? That's what I was thinking. We're on the same page! AGENT: (embarrassed) Uh, no. I was thinking total. With Nash, I'm not picking an outlying scenario or the more outrageous example. How does Brian Gionta view himself as a minimum salaried player? How can any players on that list possibly see themselves as worth that contract? Alas, that is what the system spit out. These issues did not exist before the adjustment to similarity scores which started emphasizing the year number. This has led to unrealistic peers and these contracts. And it's not just the very young guys were are getting the undervalued contracts. Consider these more established players:

Kalinin        2  750  94  3 1   0.94  1017.92  Y (CAP, 4P/16, $1,017,920)
Ohlund         2 1127 111  8 2   0.86  1244.79  Y (GAR, 4P/16, $622,395)
Chara          2 1048 127 10 2   1.19  1886.10  Y (MOU, 4P/16, $1,886,100)
Kubina         2 1092  81 12 1   0.90   984.89  Y (REA, 2P/16, $246,223)
D.Markov       2 1125  90 14 2   0.99  1346.29  Y (ROV, 1P/16, $168,286)
Mrn.Hossa      1 1200 120 15 1   0.98  1614.26  Y (SEL - 4P/16, $807,130)
Fernandez      3      107    1   1.05   938.56  Y (SPE, 4P/16, $938,560)
Turco          3      152    1   0.94   845.60  Y (VAM, 4P/16, $422,800)

The most egregious examples here are Marion Hossa and Zdeno Chara Hossa would make over $3,000,000 at auction, whereas Chara could get Pronger money. As I'm writing this, I'm becoming more and more discouraged, wishing I'd never started this article. I wish I would have just looked the other way. This is yet another place where our league is moving backwards, away from a system that previously had it right. We moved away from the financial model to our current system, and many of us now long for the good ol' days of variable income. While you could argue that flat income has a parallel in modern revenue sharing models, these contracts have no contemporary corollary. These contracts are unrealistic. I'm particularly bitter about Chara, who I traded under the assumption he'd get a realistic demand. The first version of demands that was later rescinded had Chara's demand as:

Chara          2 1048 127  2 1   1.04  5136.79
Ohlund        Redden        Niinimaa      D.Markov      Phillips      Kubina        Hannan

To me, this looked realistic, especially considering what Pronger had gone for in auction. If I had done the leg work and seen the salaries of those peers, I would have disregarded this demand (as I should have). Still, Chara come in under $3,000,000 would have been beyond my imagination. A 5-rated defenseman who plays twenty-four minutes per, scores goals and stays healthy. With no bank balance to speak of, I had to deal Chara. But as you saw above, Chara's demand changed drastically. I have nobody to blame but myself for not researching those peers. Regardless, that demand is too low. Chara's getting a list of players close to his year number, which is a lot higher than those players you'd expect to see on Chara's peer list: Pronger, Lidstrom, Niedermayer, Foote. At least the list got Redden right, but do you think any Senators fans see Chara and Chris Phillips as being in the same boat. The programatic demands are never going to be perfect, but this season's demands are undoubtedly a firm step back, away from realism and more towards owner control of players, a model of franchise management that is extinct in every sport. It's fine that we tried the year number emphasis for one season, but it failed. Let's go back to the way we had it and try to think out some news solutions. Else, we might want to think about scrapping demands all together. If people had problems with the previous system and the solutions created bigger problems, perhaps the system is the problem. And I used to like the demands so much.

Missed It By That Much: Roy and the RHL15 Ballot

2006-07-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

The last RHL news cycle featured two items I want to write about: The resigning of free agents (before they hit auction) and the shocking news from Victoria with the selection of Martin Broduer over Dany Heatley. If you have not read them yet, Daniel posted two interesting pieces on his blog. Today, I wanted to talk about the first Hall of Fame (HoF) class and the results of the HoF ballot, released last Friday. Please forgive me if you find my harping on the HoF to be a bit much. Currently, it is one of the (many) things about the RHL which has had me excited. Last Friday’s voting results added no inductees to the four which were selected by the Board of Regents (BoR): Jean Duteau, Ray Bourque, Al MacInnis and RHLAuction. This was a surprise to me, as I would have predicted Patrick Roy and Brad Schott would get in. Those nominees finished as the top two non-contribution vote getters, with Roy coming up one vote short of induction. This result may have stemmed from a conscious desire on the part of the voters to limit inductees – create a Jean class as the HoF’s first. If that was the case, how do the BoR selections fit into this more widespread desire? And how much of a widespread desire could there be when 25 percent of ballots were not returned, making the 75 percent threshold near impossible to meet? Though they are nuanced, all of these issues tell us something about the direction in which the HoF has been cast. Prevailing Attitudes One of the indicators that this (RHL15-RHL16) is the right time for the Hall is the number of opinions people have as to what the Hall should be. Though they have yet to develop a public discourse, the voter’s comments made it clear that everybody had ideas as to what the first ballot should represent. For many members, their votes told this story, but for others their feelings were more explicit. Some voters commented that they wanted the first class to be the Jean class, to set him apart. Others felt non-players had no place in the Hall. Others felt it should only be players. But everybody had a good idea of what they thought a Hall should be. Though these views failed to converge on specific issues, they came together with the tough 75 percent standard to form a very high bar of induction. Patrick Roy might have gotten eleven votes because there were only eleven people willing to induct players. Brad Schott may have only gotten seven votes for similar reasons. In its totality, these attitudes make for a Hall of Fame that is going to be hard to get into until some very strong candidates break through, thereby setting a clear standard. For defensemen, with MacInnis and Bourque in the Hall via BoR votes, that standard has been set. It will be interesting to see how the Voting Members react the first time a defenseman appears on the ballot. Will they adhere to precedent or to their previous policies? My feeling is that the voters will use Bourque and MacInnis as barometers, regardless of how they felt this time. The Voting Membership That the induction bar was so high was a function of the Voting Membership being exclusive. Not all RHL’ers had a vote. In fact, if a minority of active members had a vote, with a significant minority of the sixteen voters for the RHL15 class being non-owners. The lack of voters meant that there needed to be near unanimity within the membership to induct a candidate, something which seemed to come into play with the Roy result. My opinion is that more public discussion of ballots – something I think will happen in the future during voting stages – will alleviate this problem. As the viability of candidates becomes part of public discourse, we’ll see more universal opinions established, and the voting will reflect this. There will be a group conception of what a Hall of Famer should be, and differentiation in voting will come down to how you feel a candidate fits that perception. But right now, there is no public conception, and the 75 percent mark is very hard to achieve. The other option would be to increase the size of the voting membership, something I hope to do as the seasons go on. This issue at my doorstep, as I’m the one who decides who gets an invite to be a Voting Member. The only requirements I had were a.) some tenure in the league, as well as b.) me having confidence that that ballot would be given its due diligence. There were a few more than sixteen people invited to be voters, but some people did not return the invite, and the population was trimmed a little more than I wanted. But it is possible that we will have sixteen voters again next year. Some additional owners will be invited to vote, but some who did not return ballots may not get invitations. As more seasons pass, more people come into (and go out of) the RHL, the number of possible voters will increase. Until then, we may have to get used to the more exclusive body. What the implications of this are, in the long run, I don’t know. I don’t see any reason having sixteen voters is inherently bad. I don’t think there’s a misrepresentation of the league as a whole, nor do I think it necessarily leads to unintended results. But only time and iterations will tell. The Unfortunate Mr. Roy At the center of these mini-storms was Patrick Roy, a name many people may have expected to be inducted with Bourque and MacInnis. For those people, Patrick not getting in via the larger vote may have also been a surprise, particularly since he missed getting the call by one vote. With four ballots not being returned, that left one person who both returned a ballot and failed to vote for Patrick Roy. But, the ballots are submitted anonymously, so we may never know who was the lone holdout. Lucky for you, Joe Reader, I was the one who did not vote for Patrick Roy, and I’m willing to out myself. That Roy’s candidacy came down to one vote was something I was hoping to avoid. But after a lot of research in the BoR, I decided to vote against him there, and nothing that came out during the voting process swayed my opinion. That opinion was based on Patrick’s RHL results, which I found generally unimpressive. He never led the league in any major statistical category. His legacy as the league’s all-tie wins leader might be short-lived, and I wasn’t ready to induct him immediately. Unlike Ray Bourque, who played a short time in the RHL but was dominant during that time, Roy’s RHL career might not end up matching his NHL stature. I wanted to wait to see how his legacy stood the test of time, and (unfortunately) it looks like that view, through the wonders of the political process, carried the day. Whether Roy will be on the ballot next year is unclear. You would have to think so, though that’s for the next BoR to decide. Counting Unreturned Ballots A big part of my Roy vote becoming so significant was the four unreturned ballots, thereby requiring all returned ballots to agree on a nominee for induction to happen. This can be viewed as shifting the standard from 75 percent to 100 percent, a view with which I would disagree. While counting the unreturned ballots as no votes does make the standard higher (since some of those ballots might have returned an affirming vote), it also creates a possibility worse than somebody not getting into the Hall: a candidate getting in through voter neglect. In the case of the former, you can nominate the candidate again the following year. In the latter case, it’s very hard to get undeserving candidates out of the Hall. The only way re-nomination works is if problems which led to unreturned ballots get addressed prior to the next vote. That falls on my feet. It’s my responsibility to make sure those people who are Voting Members are going to take the vote seriously. Not returning a ballot is looked at as a sign that you may not want to vote the following season. But each case, each voter, is handled individually. Rethinking BoR Inductions What we were left with for the first HoF Class were four BoR inductions. Would these four have gotten in were there not this strange provision in the rules which allows a subset of voters to directly induct a candidate, bypassing the ballot? To that, I have two responses. First, I do not care about that as much as I probably should. My view is that, for that HoF cycle, those six BoR members are the most knowledgable people when it comes to assessing a candidate. If all six of those people agree on a candidate, what strangeness would have to happen in the general voting to invalidate the conclusion they derived from their research and discussion? To me, this is the more interesting question, one to which I haven’t been able to think of a decent response. And as a result, I’m inclined to keep the 6-0 inductions, where a nominee receiving unanimous support from the BoR gets the extra honor of being directly inducted. Secondly, and more directly, I think most of the inductees would have gotten in even if there had not been direct inductions. Those nominees would have been on the ballot, where Jean would have been put in unanimously. Given how the vote for Roy went, I suspect both Bourque and MacInnis would have been approved. RHLAuction, however, would not have been approved, as support for the contributions was light. But a large part of this would have been the unreturned ballots. RHLCentral received nine votes, and given BoR favor, the same or more could have been expected for Auction. Again, the four unreturned ballots mean that a few votes could make the difference between something getting in and something being left out. To say that RHLAuction wouldn’t have been supported may not be entirely true. In this scenario, perhaps the BoR induction rules serve as a means by which deemed-deserving candidates avoid the possibility of having to be reconsidered in a subsequent cycle merely due to unreturned ballots. That’s a little two-fisted of me, considering the argument of the previous section, but I wanted to give the BoR a means by which to correct or avoid wrongs. I wouldn’t call the potential Voter rejection of RHLAnalysis as a wrong, but I would say that, in the light of a unanimous board recommendation being left out based mostly on voter apathy, the arguments for a 6-0 induction can be seen and supported. Future HoF Discourse The full HoF silly season is still at least four months away, and that assumes the league keeps up a good rate of game playing and the league will be in a mood to discuss things once the RHL16 ballot is released. Hopefully, as the process moves forward, there will be that desire within the RHL community, because the issues which lie in the wake of the first HoF ballot would be resolved with more discussion of the issues. And the Hall of Fame, in general.

Doc Brown, His Dog, and the RHL5 Draft

2006-07-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

Since drafts are on all of our minds, I thought I’d stay on theme, though get away from the controversies of this year’s draft and hopefully lighten the mood. I want to go into the RHL time machine, back ten seasons to when a neophyte owner made the first draft picks in his franchise’s history. Let’s fire up the flux capacitor and go back to RHL5 and review the then California Aviators’ first RHL Draft. Come on, Einstein! Backdrop RHL5 was in the middle of the Wild West days of the RHL Draft, when there was no restriction on eligibility and teams would draft for five rounds. In these days, the league was easily maintaining it’s 1.5-RHL:1-NHL season ratio (actually, it was a little high than that). As a result, RHL’s draft pool was starting to run dry by RHL5. Having apprenticed under Pittsburgh Snow Dog owner John Santore, who had selected sixteen year olds Sergei Samsonov, Patrick Marleau, Janne Niinimaa, and Olli Jokinen in the RHL2 and RHL3 drafts, I’d been taught to do my homework and be creative. When I saw that there was a sixteen year old center breaking Mark Messier’s records in the Alberta Junior Hockey League, I moved him near the top of my list. Those were the days. The insane RHL draft of old. Ah, memories. For me, this review is informative because I have, long ago, abandoned the kind of scouting I did for this draft. The approach back then was based in anecdotes, crystal balls, and shock-and-awe. Since then, I’ve honed my Tarot technique and gotten better flipping coins. I’m in a much better place. Now. Picks 3rd overall: Mike Comrie The first pick was going to be David Legwand. That was preordained. After that, it got interesting. Putting Brad Stuart (who was eventually taken second) on my list behind Legwand seemed like too low-ceiling of a move for that early in the draft. So when I sent Jean my list of three, Stuart was omitted. However, Comrie was not the second man on my list. Behind Legwand, I slotted Denis Shvidki, who I had read good reports on in The Hockey News. When the draft results were released and I ended up with my third choice and Shvidki had not been taken, I asked Jean what was up. Shvidki had been listed on a roster as “Denis Shivki,” yet another interesting facet of the Wild West-esque early RHL drafts. Jean had found this and given me Comrie instead. Overall, Comrie ended up being a fine pick, even though it does look like I wishcasting at the time. As Daniel noted at the time, the guy was listed at 5’9”, 160, and had committed to go to Michigan. Besides that, I could have gotten him in the fifth round, as he was not on anybody’s radar. Looking back at that draft (first ten picks listed below) the pick looks surprisingly sane: ROUND 1 1 STU David Legwand 2 THU Brad Stuart 3 AVI Mike Comrie 4 DEF Alex Tanguay 5 SEL Michael Henrich 6 SEL(ANT) Matthieu Chouinard 7 500 Peter Skudra 8 VAM(SCH) Tom Poti 9 FRE Dmitri Kalinin 10 STR Ramzi Abid Comrie was with the Aviators until two seasons ago, when he was sent back to Alberta in one of various deals with the Eagles. Overall, he was a plus draft pick for the Aviators, making me wish I had been as creative with the picks that followed. Almost exclusively, the remaining picks were blindlymake by referencing The Hockey News’s team prospect reports and the previous draft classes. 30th overall: Charlie Stephens Charlie was one of those huge talent, low performance guys you read about while wondering why his numbers don’t reflect the glowing reports. He was always named to junior all-star teams and was selected high in his OHL draft. But in his NHL draft year with the Guelph Storm, Charlie only scored 17 goals in 62 games. He would not sign as a second round pick with the Capitals and was selected two seasons later (in 2001) in the sixth round by the Avalanche. Though he would never put on an Aviator uniform, he would play eight NHL games. Last season, he had 67 points in 80 games for Binghamton of the AHL. 42nd overall: Kiril Safranov Kiril was described as a skilled Russian defenseman who had top four potential. But that potential was never really realized, and he remained more of a scouts favorite than an actual performer. Coming over from Russia as a nineteen year old, Kiril made his North American debut with 11 goals in 55 QMJHL games during the 1999-2000 season. Graduating to the AHL for the next season and the bulk of his North American career, Kiril has career AHL highs of six goals and 19 assists, having played only 35 NHL games. He’s been playing in Russia for the last two years. Like Stephens, this pick did not turn out well. 56th overall: Taylor Pyatt More like the Comrie pick than the Stephens pick, Pyatt was selected underage (pre-NHL drafted), and though he has never lived up to the promise of an eighth overall pick, Pyatt has had a solid NHL career, to-date. Pyatt also never saw action for the Aviators, being dealt in one of the deals which would build the RHL7 Aviators. This pick looks good in hindsight, if unglamourous. Taylor was good enough and with enough shine on him to have decent trade value, more than more prospects can say. 83rd overall: Justin Papineau Papineau had just been drafted by the Kings in the 1998 NHL Entry Draft and was putting up huge numbers for the Belleville Bulls of the OHL. During his NHL draft year, he scored 46 goals in 76 games, a performance which he’d practically replicate in each of his next two OHL seasons. But Papineau never signed with the team that originally drafted him (Kings) and went back into the 2000 draft, where he was selected in the third round by the Blues. Since then, Justin has moved on to the Islanders where he is a fringe player. In 82 NHL games, he has 11 goals, but his inability to develop a more rounded game has him playing his winters in Bridgeport rather than on a third or fourth line for the Islanders. I still wonder how this kid would have turned out his he had signed rather than gone back into the draft. Now twenty-six, there’s still a chance for him to develop into a contributor, though without a change of mindset, this pick will look good only in the context of the now non-existent fourth round. 95th overall: Jomar Cruz Jomar, a goaltender, was a second round pick of the Capitals in the 1998 draft. Looking back on this pick, I have no idea why (at this point) I decided to just follow the NHL draft list. This guy should have been a pink flag. Cruz may have been on a Capitals Top 10 Prospects list somewhere, but there is little evidence in the playing record to suggest this guy would be able to stop pucks in the AHL, let alone the NHL. As is, he would never play in either, moving from the WHL to Canadian college, to the Southern Profoessional Hockey League, where he remains active. This pick was bad on so many levels and remains the name that jumps into my mind whenever I think of doing shortcuts in my research. Conclusions This draft ended up being a learning experience, though overall it wasn’t terrible. Only one of the picks never saw the NHL, and one of the players ended up being a pseudo-first-line center for a couple of seasons. In the slim-pickings days of these drafts, perhaps this is a pirate’s booty of talent. Even if that is the case, the lack of imagination in the non-Comrie selections - particularly at the end of the draft - left me with a low-ceiling group. The best-case scenario for those players would have had Pyatt become a consistent 20 goal scorer … with Cruz still watching from the stands. Ah, Jomar. I miss seeing your name on the list. Since RHL5, Aviator scouting has gone in a different direction, one in which we’ve drafted a lot more Cruzs but also a lot more NHL’ers with potential. Of course, that doesn’t matter much since I’ve traded all of those guys away to Chris. Damn you, Bourdeau.

Rules, From the Gut

2006-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

The idea of weekends without internet access takes some getting used to. Without the ability to check email, log on with my instant messanging client, communicate with most of the people with whom I regularly talk, I tend to have these Monday morning surprises – little items in my email which raise my eyebrows and, not having thought about my internet-world for 63 hours, serve as a cold water wakeup to my “normal life.” Usually, these surprises come in the form of an “issue” that happened at work at some point on Friday evening, after I had left, forcing me to ask why walking along the beach communities of San Diego (as I usually do on the weekends) can’t be my “normal life.” I suppose I’m still waiting for that winning lottery ticket to land on my doorstep. Today, along with a couple of work-related surprises in my InBox, I received comments to my draft article from both Daniel Robitaille and Martin Baldwin, each correcting premises of the article. Knowing that I’m misinterpreting the rules is always a cold water moment for me. Both Daniel and Martin informed me that the 2006 crop of NHL draftees will be ineligible for the RHL16 Entry Draft. Martin posits that expansion teams with select potential free agents will not have to pay their signing bonuses, though Howard opines in opposition. Putting the implications of these pieces of news aside, all of these comments speak to one of our main concerns of the last season, a concern which deserves another mention today, as there are some implications of a lax-rule book which have not been previously discussed. The rule book is going to be updated, which we agree is overdue, but I am starting to become worried that an update is not enough. I’ve noticed a culture of informal rules within the league, when owners not only expect rules to be superceded by commissioner ruling, but they also find this acceptable. The best example of this is the impending ruling regarding draft eligibility, where players who are eligible per the rules (the 2006 NHL draft class) will be deemed ineligible, a pesky conclusion considering section 6A of the rulebook: “… to be draftable a player must have been drafted or signed to an NHL contract as an FA by an NHL team.” Clearly, I’m not a fan of this type of ruling, but I’ve made that clear in previous posts. What also concerns me, though, is the fact that some members of the league accept this or want this to happen. Their intuitive idea about what this year’s draft should be is giving legitimacy to this ruling. So I can’t sit here and say the ruling which will happen will be wrong. If the rules say one thing but the league strongly wants another, I almost admire a commissioner who is willing to do that. It’s not the way I would do it if I were commissioner, but it’s a perfectly acceptable solution. However, I find it ironic that the league finds circumventing the rule book a desired course of action. More than desired, this circumvention was expected. Is it any wonder that we have an outdated rule book when the league exhibits a disregard for it? But again, if the league as a whole wants to view the rule book as merely a guide, not a true rule book, the practice of ignoring it becomes legitimate. I do, however, hope to convince some people that letting ad hoc rulings become a standard is not a fiar way to run a league. The first problem with this kind of approach is in knowing how to define a sufficient level of acceptance, amongst league members, for informal ruling. I am one person who disagrees with the practice as well as the particular ruling. But I feel that a majority of owners, particularly ones who read this bored, support circumventing the rules in this instance (for the RHL16 Entry Draft). To me, this begs the question: what’s the appropriate level of league-wide agreement to justify ignoring the rules? In a league of 26 members, do you need 14 (fifty percent plus one)? That seems so low as to make having any rules seem silly. Do you need seventy-five percent? If so, how do you measure this? Without making the league a pure democracy, you can’t measure it. Ultimately, you end up with one person trying to gauge the league’s feelings, a practice that leads to discussions like the one we’re having now, like the ones we’ve had over the last six months. In rare situations where there are no applicable rules, you need an executive to step in and lay down a law, if only a temporary one. But if a commissioner does the same thing when there are rules in place, what is the difference? This is a difficult topic to discuss in philosophical terms because Paul has not made a bad ruling here. Excluding the 2006 draft class is not an egregious problem in broad terms. But circumventing the rules, or relying on this informal rule book, creates a second problem: The capriciousness of this kind of system creates situations where people who have been following the letter of the law get hosed. In this case, if you had changed your strategy at some point during RHL15 (once you concluded it was most likely that both the 2005 and 2006 draft classes would be included in the RHL16 Entry Draft) you are going to be frustrated when Paul’s ruling comes down and the plans that you made – plans derived from a faith that the rules matter – are now compromised. To me, this sounds inherently unfair. It gives the commissioner, who knows what he is most likely to rule, an advantage over ever other owner. In the time between first thought and official announcement, slight changes to behaviors can be made. it also gives owners who are either close to the commissioner or who seek out his counsel (something you shouldn’t have to do to compete on an even playing field with other teams) a more advantageous seating than Joe Team Owner just doing his own thing. It also gives the impression that at any time, those rules which we are running our teams by can be rendered moot. This puts Paul, or any commissioner, in an unfair situation, one in which there is no way of avoiding a bias. Because he is also an owner and he has no choice but to be privy to his thoughts, he is going to know before anybody else that the RHL16 draft will be limited in scope. Does he act on that? And if he doesn’t, does that make everything fair, and OK? It doesn’t matter. The mere fact that the potential is there is something we should avoid. What about people who know Paul better than us, their ability to make judgments leading from “Based on what I know about Paul, …”? Again, this seems unfair. Keeping aside the need to have a clear rulebook – something which can affect this discussion, but I don’t want to go into – the willingness to override clearly written rules makes the league a worse place. When this type of situation comes up again but the timelines are a little different, with the RHL draft being two months after the NHL draft instead of one month, what will the ruling be? Are you sure? Do you think everybody in the league would come to the same conclusion? I like the rule that’s in place. It creates situations where teams have to be more creative in how they research or have to make more guesses about potential timelines, but the rules are clear and the playing field is the same for everybody. Maybe there are better rules we can make regarding the draft. Perhaps we should move away from a per-season draft to a per-annum draft. But whatever we do, if we have it clearly stated in the rule book, I don’t want ad hoc decisions. It makes it much more difficult to decide, at the trading deadline, when I should be worried about a random ruling changing the value of a pick. It’s important to note that have a similar rule in place governing playing disks. The rule says that we will always use the most recent disk, but I get the feeling that if we were ever in a situation to use a disk for three RHL seasons (as we almost the case this time, or still might be the case if the disk team royally blows it), people would like an implicit ruling. Three seasons for a disc just doesn’t seem right, just like two NHL drafts for one RHL entry draft just doesn’t seem right. Sounds like a line of reasoning you’d hear on the Colbert Report: I don’t need rules to know what feels right in my gut. But remember, problem here isn’t as much that the commissioner is making these rulings. We’re lucky to have a good commissioner. The problem is that we seem to expect him to override the rules, putting him in a situation where one bad ruling makes all the difference.

One Season of Our Hall of Fame

2006-07-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Readers of Aviator News get treats every once in while: access to original research, no-longer-public rants on league issues, sometimes even breaking news. Today, I wanted to put my Hall of Fame coordinator’s hat on to give readers a preview of tomorrow’s announcements as well as my thoughts on the first season of the RHL Hall of Fame. First, the voting results. I’m not going to give any actual results (that would be a little too overt); rather, I wanted to share some insights I’ve garnered from the board discussions and voting members, insights which I’ve found informative while tabulating the results. And to some people, those results may be a little surprising. There seems to be a great diversity of opinion on what an RHL Hall of Fame should be. Should it induct players? There isn’t a uniformity of opinion on this. Nor is there unanimity regarding owners, technologies – anything which can be inducted into the Hall. As a league body, we seem to be all over the map on this issue, to be expected when there still has not been much discussion about the Hall of Fame on the main list. Only a handful of people – the RHL15 Board of Regents – have spent significant time discussing the Hall of Fame. On the whole, very few people have developed opinions about the project. This makes the whole project very exciting, as we’re not only seeing an institution develop, but we are also seeing the foundation being laid. Most of us were not privy to the initial discussions between Jean and the Gang when the RHL was being formed, but all of us have direct access to the Hall of Fame. Perhaps, fifteen seasons from now, we’ll look back on this period with a giddy nostalgia, reflecting on the principles which have been accepted as ideas which had yet to come to the league’s mind. We’ll have a collection of anecdotes to use in those future, more idiosyncratic discussions, anecdotes which will start with “You know, when the Hall of Fame started, there wasn’t even …” In November, when I first started rethinking the Hall of Fame idea, concepts of the Hall as something which would exist in fifteen years were far from my mind. From experience, I expected the Hall to fail, through no fault of my own. Odds are, when you try these things, the timing is off, and the people you are targeting (trying to serve) aren’t ready for the idea. Well, the idea may also just be a bad one, but I doubted that the RHL didn’t want to have a Hall of Fame, eventually. It was more a matter of whether RHL15 was the right timing. Amongst the older members, specifically those who have played an integral role in the league’s history, there has been more ambivalence than I had thought would exist. I suspect a large part of this is modesty, but I still had hoped that the core-original members would jump on board and start advocating the issues they supported. While that didn’t happy, I was happy to see newer owners leap on bored with the Hall movement. I’ve found those new members to be much more excited about the web site’s resources, RHL Analysis – those artifacts of the league’s history. Perhaps because the original owners were there while history was unfolded their view on those events is less “history” and more “personal experience.” The Hall of Fame, no matter how much I’d like to make it a document repository of our personal experiences, will be unavoidably historical. This may be why newer owners, looking at what’s being inducted and discussed on the current ballot through their historical prisms, can be more excited. This may be why it took a non-original owner to start the project. The energy that the fans of the project have brought to the process has been very encouraging. My naïve assessment as the Hall closes its first season: the Hall’s acceptance level (something I’ve been concerned about since the project’s onset) is about where I’d have wanted it to be by the end of RHL17. I expected RHL16 to be a wishy-washy year of apathy, whereas the ability to stick through a second year would have been the tipping point. By RHL18, I was hoping for full acceptance, with RHL19 being the point where enough players had retired, enough legacies cemented, and enough votes having happened to bring the Hall of Fame firmly into the nomenclature of the league. If you look at each of these years as a period, we’re one period ahead of this schedule. Still, I would caution against being optimistic, thinking the timetable is going to shift, as I would suspect the second period, to end in RHL17, to last longer than expected rather than having the RHL18 period move forward. I still think the project is a ways away. Timelines and perceptions aside, I always seen the cornerstone of this Hall as its Board of Regents (BoR). This was the one aspect of the Hall that is distinct from other election-based Hall of Fame models, yet it was the one part of the project I felt was most necessary. This became the issue which I saw as the make-or-break part of the Hall. If the Board was able to produce a legitimate ballot – a ballot that was accepted by the voters and the league as something that reflected their intuitive notion of what a Hall of Fame should be, the project would have leapt its greatest hurdle. Without this acceptance, the project would have to be blow up and rebuilt. Thankfully, the ballot was a success, a reflection of the great job done by the five other members of the RHL15 BoR. Between those inductees who went into the Hall without a vote and the ballot itself, it was clear that the BoR had combed through the top layers of the league history. The only issue people had with the ballot was one which was corrected in the rules: the confusion cause by withholding the names of the auto-inductees (“Where’s Jean on this ballot!??!”). One of the artifacts of the project which would help its acceptance level is web content, something that I have been lax in creating. I have set aside time tonight to address the issue, but I don’t expect I’ll be able to get it done, and we’ll have text files as our artifacts until the web site can be adequately addressed. While there is a melancholy community (in which I include myself) in the virtual world who harkens back to text-driven web content as the glory days of web browsing, I don’t know that this is a long-term viability for this project. The original goals of maintaining documents as text files will have to be sufficient until I can put something together which will serve the project into the future. The key piece of information in this first documentation set will be the RHL15 voting results. Tomorrow, the first class of inductees will be finalized. Beyond the news value of that release, it will be a watershed moment for the Hall of Fame: to have gone through a full season’s process and produced the desired result. Web content aside, I feel the heavy lifting is done, and the project is moving downhill. If nothing gets in the way, the Hall of Fame should be able to accomplish its long-term goals: to become an accepted league institution. With that, it’s also worth nothing that the RHL16 Hall of Fame Board of Regents has been selected and seated. Anybody who has topics which they would like considered for the RHL16 ballot should email rhlhalloffame - gmail – com and let us know who or what should be considered. Only one year into the process, there does not seem to be a need to change anything in the charter (yet), so we’re ready to go, full steam ahead, towards the next induction class.

With the First Selection, of the First Draft ...

2006-07-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

July 17th is just around the corner. If you look at a typically formatted calendar and think of its weeks as roads, you only have to make two week-ending turns to get to the second Tuesday from today. And you don’t have to get the car out of second gear to make it to the end of this week’s street. July 17th, of course, is the unofficial start of RHL16, when Paul has said that the preseason activities will begin. Presumably, this means the dispersal draft, which will be preceded by the drawing to decide which team gets the choice of first pick in the dispersal, expansion, or entry drafts. Given the potential first picks in the respective drafts, you can expect the winner of that drawing to select the entry draft, with the next choice being dispersal, which means it would take a major malfunction for Sidney Crosby and Dany Heatley to end up as linemates after the drafts. Oh, to be a single expansion team for the RHL16 season. Between those two pieces and a nice free agent crop, you may have been looking at a playoff team. As is, there are four expansion teams, a record for single season, giving the dispersal and expansion drafts a new dimension. And with the glut of prospects who will be available for the impending entry drafts, each of the offseason drafts will have a unique feel: Dispersal Whereas the dispersal draft usually guaranteed the expansion team(s) a chance at the best player from the team which was leaving the league, this year’s expansion features four new teams for the two being dispersed, a consequence of the league using this opportunity to build back to a twenty-six team circuit. This means that at least two teams will be selecting from the second best players from a preexisting team, and it’s not inconceivable that all four teams select players off of one of the dispersing team’s rosters, giving one of the new squads the fourth player on a depth chart to start their franchise. You need only take a quick look at the Ale and Purge remnants to see that somebody is going to end up short-sticked. Dany Heatley will go first. I hope I’m not ruining that for anybody. After that, there are a number of players for whom you can make a case. The name that jumps out is Martin Brodeur, who has shown in both the NHL and RHL that he can anchor a team. But as the Devils and Purge have found, when you pay an average goalie based on reputation and not performance, you need to have a pretty good team around him to make up the difference. If you’re inclined to think Brodeur overpriced – or even a fiscal wash when gauging performance versus price – then you’re probably looking to maintain financial flexibility. This is where Ryan Getzlaf comes into play. Because the best non-Heatley rated players (Brodeur, Norstrom, Yzerman) are expensive and into their UFA years, you could see a team thinking long-term, selected Ryan Getzalf as a (relatively) low-ceiling, low-cost pick. In earlier attempts at mock dispersal drafts the Aviators had been hoping that Getzalf would fall, but I see no chance of him getting past five. It’s a remarkable comment on the expansion draft that a young player who, while talented, would normally last past the teams looking to add a solid, rated player will be going in the top five of the draft. And Getzlaf only gets to five if teams either select the Norstroms and Brodeurs – thinking that a cornerstone-esque rated player at market price is more consistent with how they see their team – or somebody like Derian Hatcher jumps into the top four. I mention Hatcher because he is and is going to be rated well (if currently flawed), and his contract undervalues him for at last part of this four-season cycle. He’s kind of the compromise between Getzalf’s longer term projection and Norstrom’s immediate-but-pricey profile. Who goes and in what order will depend on who ends up with that second pick. Heatley goes first, but at number two you could see Brodeur because of his reputation, Norstrom because of his ratings and length of contract, or Getzlaf if that expansion owner decided to punt RHL16. Jean Duteau has already hinted that he will not select Brodeur and seems likely to go Getzlaf. My feeling is that Daniel Robitaille is going to try and keep as many options open as possible, including financial options, and would select Getzlaf if he doesn’t get Heatley. On the other hand, I see both Doug and Ward selecting Brodeur. Expansion This is where it gets ugly. The expansion rules were not written with a four team expansion draft in mind, and it will show. Whereas a two team expansion draft might get a team five or six players who could contribute (in play or trade value) to the franchise’s first competitive team, this one may give two or three, with the remaining rounds of the draft spent selecting any useful players whose salary isn’t prohibitive. As uninteresting as that sentence makes the impending expansion draft sound, I actually think it glorifies the draft. It’s going to be painful for everybody involved. One of the major contributing problems to the expansion draft’s lack of use is the free agency and contract system. First, the free agent classes are too big in the RHL. I’ve mentioned this before, but as it concerns the expansion draft, our four new teams are going to be selecting from availability lists which will be littered with impending free agents, the selection of whom would require a signing bonus to secure their services. And the signing bonus is already an inherently unfair measure, taking a player demand that is designed to be inhibitingly high and added another inhibition on top. For this reason, franchises like the Aviators and Funboys will only meet a demand if it is the result of some lucky random number or a bug in the demand generation. But for the expansion teams, this strangely excessive rule will seriously inhibit their ability to build via the expansion draft. The recourse for expansion teams will be to build the unrestricted free agent auction. Remember, there is a salary floor of $21 million, so the days of just saving your money are gone, and expansion teams now have an incentive to blow some of their money. Twill drive up the price on free agents, particularly the high-end free agents who an expansion owner can justify adding, whereas it’s difficult to justify paying for role players who are neither fun nor likely to contribute in the franchise’s long term. Part of me thinks this will bring the anarchists back out of the hills. Granted, there may be no way to keep the presence of four virgin payrolls from affecting free agency, nor should limiting this effect change our views on expansion, but based on trying to help the expansion teams, I would favor a one-time ruling which would have the league cover the cost of signing bonuses for players selected by the four new teams in the expansion or dispersal drafts, making their acquisitions hit-free on the bankrolls. Entry Again, there is no mystery as to who will be the first selected, as one of the expansion teams will get Sydney Crosby, making it easier to stomach taking Derian Hatcher with the fourth pick of dispersal (or possibly justifying the selection of Martin Brodeur by knowing you’ll have a cheap Sydney once he’s rated for RHL17). But with the time it took to play RHL15, the most interesting facet of the RHL16 entry draft shifted from it being The Crosby Draft to it being the deepest draft in RHL history, containing both the 2005 and 2006 crops of NHL selectees. At some point, there was noise from owners who wanted Paul to take the 2006 draftees out of the RHL16 draft, something I don’t favor, seeing as it contradicts the rules. Instead, we’re left with an interesting draft where the RHL second round (and early third round) selections will have the chance at taking players who were first round picks in the NHL as recently as one year ago. Add in the draftable players who played in the NHL during the 2005-2006 season as well as those players who have raised their prospect profiles after being selected before 2005 and you could see only a few second round picks from the 2005 and 2006 NHL drafts make their way into the RHL16 draft. I suppose what I’m getting at, in a round about way, is this observation: those who think the RHL17 draft is going to suffer are mistaken. As RHL16 is played and those second (and later) round NHL picks show themselves to have been undervalued by the scouts, the draft people were trading out of will look strong by historical standards. Indeed, if the speed of games keeps up and we’re able to moved from a 1.5RHL-to-1NHL ratio something closer to 1.8RHL-to-1NHL, then the RHL18 draft will be the weak sister. And as much as the expansion draft will be a disappointment for the expansion teams, the deep RHL16 and RHL17 drafts will be a boon, with teams who do even a decent job of drafting with their extra draft picks being allowed an unprecedentedly deep prospect pool to serve as their foundation for future seasons. You could argue that this should offset the need to give them a pass on signing bonuses in the expansion and dispersal drafts, but I see them as unrelated issues. The draft pick stockpile is for the long-term health of these teams, and their fortuitousness in that regard shouldn’t allow us to be content with allowing them a potentially miserable first season.

Half-a-season of game playing

2006-07-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

The RHL15 season is in the books, providing no shortage of topics to write about. I’m going to focus on something Richard-centric, but only after noting where the league started RHL15 compared to how it’s ending. At the season’s onset, we had our greatest exodus of owners in league history, taking us from twenty-eight teams to twenty-three. More than the sure number of owners who would be leaving the league, the names had owners gasping: Daniel, Jean, Doug, Ward, and John were all original owners, many of whom had brought other owners into the league. It’s easy to forget that there was a great deal of apprehension about RHL15, particularly given an unprecedentedly long offseason. When the twenty-four team league started our most recent offseason, there seemed to be more of a “let’s give it a try” approach than the usual offseason positioning. Had that attitude prevailed through the season, we’d be doing a post-operative evaluation on the season. But with almost two days having passed since the Sockeyes won their first championship, I haven’t gotten that feeling from the owners I’ve talked to. The owners who pushed through the season to vie for the title are taking a breath, reflecting on what went wrong, or in the case of Paul and Steve savoring their great season. For teams like the Aviators, the end of the season was the starting pistol for RHL16, an attitude that seems shared amongst those other teams for whom RHL15 was a restructuring process. Though that’s a quick and dirty way of looking at the state-of-the-league, I think it’s closer to the truth than anything you could come up with as counterpoint. I don’t think the league’s history will see RHL15 as the black sheep that the offseason’s departures for the league’s re-restructuring could have rendered it. Rather, I think RHL15 will be seen as solidifying a league that hit a temporary bump. One of the ways in which the league has solidified itself is by getting a second owner involved in game playing, creating a model which disperses some of the dependencies from only one owner. It’s a model which needs to continue, as it’s much easier to keep a league moving in a positive direction when games are being played on a regular basis. After three months of playing games, I’m more convinced of this need than ever. I had a great time playing them games and look forward to contributing in a similar way in subsequent seasons, but it is a bit taxing to have that daily deed to do. If you miss a day, it’s very discouraging, because you know what it’s like to be an owner who, after checking email, is slightly disappointed at not getting to see how their team did. And the way in which I missed game days, unintentional neglect and realizing right before I went to sleep that I forgot to do that nebulous “something” before going to meet friends, was a bit scary. How could I just forget, for no reason? Thankfully, the league was very understanding, making the fears I mentioned seem more like paranoia that legitimate concerns. I certainly could do a whole season of games, though in only half that time I developed a great appreciation for what Jean and Adam have given the league. Adam’s going to get my Hall of Fame vote based on game playing alone, not that he wouldn’t have gotten it before. Still, I don’t look to have the same long tenure as game coordinator that either Adam or Jean have, and I hope that the days of one man and one machine will go by the wayside. Given the amount of relief I felt yesterday when Paul won the title, I would say that three to four months of game playing is enough before a coordinator takes a break. The plan has always been for Adam and I to share the responsibilities next season, just as it was the plan for me to finish out last season. We’ll see how that holds up in the coming weeks, but with all the changes which have been going on in my life of late, we’re going to need to have a backup plan to Richard playing the games. Today, I start classes again, and all the other projects I’ve been working on seem to be on the verge of popping. My nights are spent plugging away on this keyboard, trying to follow through on those reasons why I’m ejecting from this job and potentially relocating. The RHL is a great way to have some real, non-pressured fun mixed in with that work. Thankfully, Andy makes it much easier to run the Aviators, and as long as I can get some Bartalonian help in game playing, I’m more than willing to stay on.

A Minor League Consequence of Hiatus

2006-06-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

“where” That was the subject line of an email I received early this week. The implication: Where have you been? Not offering apologies for my absence (it will happen again), I’ve been a bit distracted over the last week. In additional to wrapping up this move than seemed to take a whole month to execute (my own doing for complicating the process), I’ve been devoting more time to other projects. Aviator News has been the bit loser in this realignment of time. No small part of the problem has been Blogger.com’s performance. I wonder if other people have been experiencing similar problems, but getting the Blogger user interfaces to load at a reasonable rate has been impossible over the last three days. The actual blogs at Blogspot.com have also been noticeably, almost debilitating, slow. The few times I have been motivated to write over the last week, Blogger.com has not cooperated. It better shape up soon – it doesn’t take so much effort to get my own basic content management system going. Blogger ceases to be cool when it stops being easy. But I haven’t been anywhere special, as evidenced by the game playing. Most of you who read this blog have had private email threads with me in the last seven days. I’m sure I wasn’t missed. Though I did miss writing the articles. I want to spend some time writing my thoughts on a comment Mark make a few weeks ago. The comment got me thinking about the implications of having fewer owners in the league (i.e., not immediately replacing owners as they left the league). In light of this year’s thinned out expansion (and other factors), I think the idea deserves from thought. Hopefully, I can get that write-up done soon. And you can allocate the two days it will take to read my lengthy spiel. Today, I wanted to get my Champions quarterfinal predictions in the blog, for posterity’s sake. Clearly, they’re late, but I want to be able to search for them in the future. So, I’m devoting a sort article to them. I also devote a couple of paragraphs to the MRHL (my new name for the minor hockey league) in which some owner might be have interest. Within the next couple of days, I’m hoping to return to format and resuming my self-indulgent novellas, but for today I’ll cut the post short. The Big Consequence Because of the timing of my unplanned hiatus, I was not able to get my second round picks written up. It’s too bad, because I am very interested in the final eight. I’ll give the picks now, and you’ll just have to trust me that they are the same now, after the third game of the second round, as they were before the series started. That should be clear enough be how off I am on one of the picks: Kitchener over Waterloo in 5 I liked Brad to win this series easily, but I thought Waterloo had enough firepower to win a couple of games. Because of the format for home ice, I though that these teams would split in Waterloo with the Mounties holding home ice the remainder of the time. I was leaning more towards predicting a six game series than the sweep that the matchup is looking to be. Chicago over Lethbridge in 4 With the Capones’ firepower and how they ended the season, I thought Chicago would tear through a thin-but-talented Select team. In fact, after thinking about this series and the remainder of the playoffs, I started to like the pick of Chicago to win the Kings Cup. Of course, once I started to become happy with that selection, the Capones dropped two of the first three games to Lethbridge and face a must-win Game 4 in Lethbridge. Baffin Isle over Calgary in 7 Given the much-publicized troubles (if overblown) Baffin Isle had with the Vampyres during the regular season, this series has seven games written all over it. I had originally picked this one for six games, but something told me that the Calgary’s regular season performance was significant, and they would be able to push the better team to a decisive seventh. If I was allowed to change this pick now, with the Rovers up 2-to-1, I’d go with the six game prediction. Saskatoon over South Edmonton in 6 The only upset I’ve picked so far, this is the point where you think I’m making these predictions up. But anybody who know about my closet Funboy fandom wouldn’t be surprised at this pick. I just think they’re the better team. In a way, this is a great conflict of general managers. Paul’s got great personnel, especially when you look at the big ratings: defense, minutes, shooting. But I think Martin does a good job of evaluating the player’s full rating set, especially the detailed shooting numbers. Sum up all the Funboy parts, I think they’re the better team. One thing to add to that last prediction: when I made it, I totally forgot about the Clemmensen factor. Had I remembered, I would have picked Sockeyes in six, with Paul using his goalie as it because clear he needs to empty the barrels to get to the next round. Minor Realistic Hockey League Once game playing duties pause and the inevitably slow pace of the off-season sets in, I am going to start producing the minor league disk. In case you are unfamiliar where all this is coming from, let me get you up to speed: I would like to play around with a minor league for the RHL. The teams would be made up from players from the prospect lists. I would derive the ratings for the players. The games would be played with less frequency but with more games played in batch. Of course, the league would be optional (a non-league activity), and teams might have to pool players together to make valid rosters. Before that can even take place, I would like to run a test league for a season or two. What I am looking for are five volunteers to manage teams in the league. This will involve submitting lines and providing feedback. I may also involve a draft – either of players or of whole prospect pools from teams. As I want to fool around with some other ideas in this league, this may also involve some other decisions (ticket prices, franchise location), though those decisions probably will not be required until test season number two. Test season number one will probably just involve AHL, ECHL, CHL, and NCAA players. I’m playing with the idea of telling you how I came up with the ratings but not actually distributing the ratings – that might be fun for some. If you would be interested, please email me privately. I’d like to start this process within the next two weeks.

And the Winner Is! Aviator News's Guide to the RHL15 Awards

2006-05-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Aviators have made a tradition of breaking down the RHL Awards. Thanks to the two-league format, the job is much easier: Half the field, the Premiership, is unlikely to garner serious consideration. Next season, the job will be tougher. Again. But for now, Aviator News will relish the more limited task while hoping for the development of some more advanced metrics to aid in next season’s evaluation. Let’s get started! Jean Beliveau RHL Forward of the Year There isn’t a candidate about whom you can get too excited. Aviator News’s pick, Ilya Kovalchuk, plays on the league’s best line (his linemates finished second and third in the league in scoring). When I see that, I want to look if another candidate, possibly one with less firepower skating with him, presents a viable case. This season, there is no such candidate. If there had been, it’d still be difficult to take this award away from a forward that led the league in goals, plus-minus, and forward minutes. His nine game winning goals also lead the league, testifying to the timing of his tallies. And he led the league in even strength goals, so he wasn’t taking undue advantage of a potent power play. What’s more, he’s become the most feared player in the league (and will remain so until Alexander the Great makes his debut). Winner: Ilya Kovalchuk, Chicago Nominees: Marian Hossa (SEL), Keith Tkachuk (ROA), Peter Forsberg (REA), Daniel Alfredsson (DEF) I had trouble coming up with a full complement of forwards from the Champions League. I don’t favor nominating two players from the same team, as you’re usually nominating a forward who was demonstrably inferior. I also lean towards goals as being the most important stat, though the other numbers are very informative (particularly minutes played and team-sensitive plus-minus). By these standards, there were very few forwards who stood out enough to say “that person has a case.” Eddie Shore RHL Defenseman of the Year This was the most competitive award of the season, as two players stepped up early in the season and raced for the hardware. A handful of other blue-liners put up great seasons, making it a great season for defensemen. There was no dearth of candidates here. Despite that depth, Funboy Scott Niedermayer and Rover Kim Johnsson were ahead of this class. As of a couple of weeks ago, I was intent on voting for Johnsson. At midseason, it was Niedermayer. But before writing this article, I wasn’t sure. I decided by going through every argument I could imagine for one and then asking if that argument held true for the other - the logic being that there are certain qualities you look for in an award winner. This method identifies those and isolates them amongst the candidates. When I did this, every argument I came up with for Johnsson worked for Niedermayer except “contributes to the better team.” This quality was mitigated by those I found in Niedermayer that weren’t present in Johnsson: “more valuable to team,” “plays more critical role within team’s strategy,” “the player I’d most like to have on my team, based on this season’s performance.” Niedermayer and Johnsson but up very similar seasons. Johnsson did it under slightly easier circumstances, having better teammates and not having to play Baffin Isle 6 times per year. Winner: Scott Niedermayer, Saskatoon Nominees: Kim Johnsson (ROV), Adam Foote (CAP), Brian Berard (ROA), Sergei Gonchar (MOU) Jacques Plante RHL Goalie of the Year This one has been in the bag for a while, and though he came back to the pack in the second part of the season, Mikka Kiprusoff was the leader of the best team in the league, putting up one of the best four or five goaltending seasons in RHL history. He led the league in almost every major goaltending category, giving wins over to Dwayne Roloson (who had a spectacular but ill-timed year) as the Mountie offense was not as adept at avoiding ties as Walt’s squad. A save percentage of .932. A goals against average of 1.84. Sixty games played out of a possible 66. The best player on his team. Goalie of the Year. Excuse me if I don’t waste time on this one. Winner: Mikka Kipprusoff, Kitchener Nominees: Dwayne Roloson (CAP), Vesa Toskala (VAM), Martin Gerber (ROV), Jamie McLennan (SPE) Peter Stastny RHL Rookie of the Year I turned to RHL Analysis to get the names of players who’d debuted in RHL15. Here is a list of players who saw significant ice-time: Bergeron, Marc-Andre (EAG) Hamhuis, Dan (MOU) Lombardi, Matthew (TME) Malone, Ryan (SEL) Martin, Paul (TME) Mason, Chris (ROV) Morrisonn, Shaone (WIC) Orpik, Brooks (TME) Ouellet, Maxim (GAR) Pitkanen, Joni (CAP) Roy, Derek (FRE) Ruutu, Tuomo (FRE) Ryder, Michael (FUN) Stajan, Matthew (EAG) Stoll, Jarrett (SEL) Tellqvist, Mikael (AVI) Wallin, Rickard (MOU) Zherdev, Nikolai (VAM) Zidlicky, Marek (VAM) Seems like a good enough class, though nobody really stands out. The best forward seems to be Michael Ryder, the only player to touch the twenty-goal mark – no small achievement in this year’s Champions league. The best defenseman is Marek Zidlicky, who put up very nice numbers for a good Vampyre team (though you may favor Pitkanen). Amongst netminders, Chris Mason makes a good case based on his role with the Rovers. Again, I gave preference to Champions players. These resumes are similar, in the context of their positions. Your choice will come down to personal preference. I scratch Mason off the list because he was somewhat of a backup. Since I don’t think twenty goals is anything to sneeze at, I’m going with Ryder, but I encourage you to take a close look at all of the candidates listed below. Winner: Michael Ryder, Saskatoon Nominees: Marek Zidlicky (VAM), Joni Pitkanen (CAP), Chris Mason (ROV), Shaone Morrisonn (WIC) Dave “Tiger” Williams RHL Goon of the Year Award This is the one award where I have no problem treating the Champions and Premier on equal footing. This is supposed to be the fun award, not necessarily correlating to wins and losses. What’s more, because of the typical makeup of a Champions team, the goons gravitate towards the Premier. The competition amongst pugilists is stiffer in the second league. Hell, I should be giving preference to that league! While this award typically concentrates on quantity of penalty minutes and fights, I want to encourage you to look at quality this season. The reason: There is a goon that has been a little more intimidating than others, and if you look at his numbers you can see the effect. He doesn’t have the most penalty minutes or fights, but he tied for the lead in fight wins, going undefeated in his nine brawls. Goons seem to be shying away. He finished sixth in the league in penalty minutes, showing an uncommonly high concentration of penalty minutes devoted to fights. This wasn’t somebody that was racking up numbers with minors and misconducts. He was taking care of business. Aviators News endorses Donald Brashear, as much as we can endorse fighting. Winner: Donald Brashear, Waterloo Nominees: Matthew Barnaby (TME), Chris Simon (FRE), Eric Cairns (FRE), Stephane Quintal (FRE) Toe Blake RHL Coach of the Year The blogs are going to help us with this award, as they have allowed for an archive of preseason conversation and predictions. This helps in evaluating which coaches were able to lift their teams beyond expectations, a mark of a good coach. That view needs to be used in conjunction with other measures. Just because Kitchener and Baffin Isle were predicted to finish at the top of their league doesn’t mean Brad Schott and Steve Stringer do not deserve consideration for this award. In fact, I consider them to be amongst the top five coaches this season. There are two coaches amongst my nominees who will not appear on anybody else’s radar. Jun Kokaji did an amazing job with the Spartans. Under financial strain, he was unable to put together a roster with the same quality he has had in season’s past. As a result, Predictador forecast disaster for the Spartans, picking them last in the Premier. After looking at the Spartans, I agreed with the system. Despite the naysaying, Jun lifted his team to sixth in the league and threatened .500. In bringing the Spartans back from a start that was consistent with Predictador’s prognostications, Jun outworked the league and won home ice in the first round of the playoffs. This coaching effort deserves mention. The other surprise nomination is Daniel Robitaille. St. Pete’s didn’t exceed expectations, but if you at the Ale lines on a regular basis, you see the effort that went into coaching this team. Daniel used St. Pete’s to experiment with some strategies, and in doing so he put as much (if not more) time into his lines as anybody in the league. When you look about the league, at the owners and the regular-season-drift-factor, Daniel’s participation level is noteworthy. He gets a nomination from me. Aviator News’s Coach of the Year has a story similar to Jun’s. Predictador did not like his team, picking it to finish .500, in the middle of the Champions pack. When the season started, his team performed to this level, but then he adjusted. He got his struggling stars to start performing along side his star winger. He solidified his defense. Come the second half, he had line combinations that made his team the best in the league. When the dust settled, Walt Pohribnij had taken his Capones to second place, leading the league in goals (by a wide margin). Winner: Walt Pohribnij, Chicago Nominees: Jun Kokaji (SPA), Brad Schott (MOU), Steve Stringer (ROV), Daniel Robitaille (WIC) Emile Francis RHL GM of the Year This is the year I decide to take a completely different approach to this award. You see, this award normally goes to the owner who acquired the right pieces to form a winning team. I think that’s a great criterion, but it’s only part of the picture. Not all teams are in a place to win in a given season, and sometimes the best GM work is done by recognizing the situation and adjusting accordingly. The moves that Brad Schott made have to be judged differently than the moves Steve Gandour made, though they were similar in substance. Amongst my five nominees, I have some context-based picks and some go-for-it picks. For the context picks, I’m going to get the self-congratulations out of the way and nominate myself for restructuring the Aviators after the mistakes of season’s past. Likewise, I’m nominating Vlad, who did a good job of restructuring an (incredibly) expensive roster to scale down, get younger, but maintain enough talent to finish as the sixth best team in the league. The remainder of my picks are of the traditional ilk. Paul Myers was the early favorite for this award after acquiring Martin St. Louis from Indianapolis. Other Sockeye acquisitions include Kenny Jonsson and Phillipe Boucher. Paul did this while balancing payroll considerations with a team coming to the end of its success cycle. It was one of Paul’s most industrious jobs yet. It’s easy to forget that he lost his best forward to free agency. Steve Stringer responded later in the season with smaller, more creative moves to bolster his roster. Steve has been in a tight place financially all season. As Paul and other competitors made moves, he had to find money to acquire something to keep up. He found Mark Recchi, Corey Stillman and Dany Markov, taking his payroll to the limit but also recognizing that his team will be rebuilding for RHL16. In a way, this is a good example of a GM making context-based moves. That money would have been less useful during his (relative) youth movement. But for all the introductory hedging about voting with old ideals, I’m going with the old reasoning in picking my winner: acquiring the best players to make the best team. When you acquire Mats Sundin, Markus Naslund, and Zdeno Chara, you have your G.M. of the Year resume. You only hope that your coach can make the talent work. But GM’ing is about talent, and Brad Schott got it in RHL15. So much for the completely different approach. Winner: Brad Schott, Kitchener Nominees: Steve Stringer (ROV), Paul Myers (SOC), Richard Farley (AVI), Vlad Zhivov (VAM)

The Team That Never Was: San Diego Aviators' RHL15, In-Review

2006-05-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

Down two games to none in the first round of the playoffs, this seems like an appropriate time to do a post-op on the Aviators season. As an owner, I’ve done all I can do, and I’m just waiting for acceptance or rejection from the simulator. You may note that the season is not over, and looking back at this point may seem a bit pessimistic. But think back on how San Diego has conducted itself throughout this season. It should be clear that RHL15 playoff performance has not been a goal for the team. Though winning a playoff series and getting the extra playoff money would be very beneficial, all the major events of RHL15 for the Aviators now lie in the rearview mirror. We have extracted enough benefits from RHL15 to make the extra $500,000 seem like small potatoes. In retrospect, the concepts prevalent in RHL15 stand out more than the on-ice performance. Promotion, eventually being rendered irrelevant; Co-ownership, shaping the beginning and end of RHL15, as well as the team’s future; Transactions, the constant trades, signings, releases; Injuries, the bane of the current Aviator existence; Redefinition, a change of the Aviator role in the league. These are the five ideas which define my RHL15. No matter how I look at the season, no matter how I approach an issue, thoughts always lead me back to one of those concepts. Promotion After the debacle that was the RHL14 playoffs, the Aviators entered the season with one goal in mind: Promotion. I had always felt that the two-league system was unfair to some great RHL franchises (Eagles, Defiance, Spartans, Crusaders, to name a few), and the idea of being stuck in the competitive purgatory in which these great teams spent their RHL14 was untenable. I was so dedicated to this goal that I brought Daniel Robitaille into the organization. Ostensibly brought in the handle drafting duties, Daniel played a critical role in forming the strategy for RHL15. Having lead the Victoria Bees to a third place finish in the Premier during RHL14, Daniel lent his advise to the construction of San Diego’s RHL15 roster. One of his views as that stabilizing the blue line with minutes-eating defensemen would go a long way to finishing atop the league’s table. So, we pushed our meager budget to the limit to get an elite defensemen corps: Zdeno Chara, Brian Leetch, Phillipe Boucher, and Daryl Sydor – a foursome that would make a Champions contender proud. Thin in forwards, the team was set to rely on Jaromir Jagr, a preseason acquisition from the financially disabled Reapers, to lead a line centered by Brian Rolston. Pierre Dagenais, an unproven winger who Aviator scouts held high hopes for, was set to be on the off-wing, while a steady-if-unspectacular second line of Erik Cole, Derek Armstrong, and Antii Laaksonen would be expected to hold down the fort. These were two steady lines, and with a good corps of role players populating the other forward spots, the team appeared to be in good shape. Alex Auld would looked to for big performances in net on those nights where Nikolai Khabibulin, acquired from Guelph for the expiring contract of brittle defenseman Scott Stevens, would not be up to the task. It was a pedestrian team by Aviator standards, but that was a different standard for a different league. That was a standard which helped the franchise tie for fifth in the Champions during RHL14. RHL15 needed to be a rebuilding year, but the team was rebuilding with an eye toward competing in the Champions during RHL16. In the two-league world, you could have your Premiership cake and eat it, too. But all of these plans ended up being a little short sighted. When the dust on the offseason settled, San Diego crunched the numbers and found that their internal barometer had them as the second best team in the league, and a dead-heat with two teams below them, well back of the league’s most talented team. How did this happened? There were two things Aviator management failed to take into account. Spending level amongst Premier teams would decrease the talent-gap between first and second league teams. Whereas RHL14 represented a definitive divide between top-12 and bottom-14 teams, RHL15 saw the Guelph Reapers, Washington Defiance, and Yellowknife Penetrators bring in talent. Almost all of that talent came from Champions teams. Even the Winnipeg Freeze (Iginla, from South Edmonton) and Grand Prairie (Peca, from San Diego) were acquiring talent that had been in the Champions. In addition, those teams relegated from the Champions were not the worst from the league. Chicago and San Diego were the fifth and sixth best teams of the upper-league during the regular season. Their relegation represented a significant talent shift into the Premier. Whereas Aviator numbers saw the RHL14 gap between Champions and Premier being worth around .094 points in winning percentage, the dust settled on a 0.60 number for RHL15. The Aviator estimate of roster construction had gone wrong. It undershot the mark. While their thin forward, deep defense team might have been a favorite for promotion in RHL14, the same roster for RHL15 put them into an unordered mix with Yellowknife, Washington, Edmonton and Chicago for the position behind the Guelph Reapers, who had spent their way to the league’s pole position. This was the first aspect of RHL15 that San Diego had failed to take into account. The second aspect was the league structure itself. Though San Diego competed at the top of the Premier through the first third of the season, it became clear that all of the planning and competing for the two promotion spots would be ultimately irrelevant. The league’s attitude toward the tiered, promotion/relegation model was changing. Brought into the RHL to give the league a shot of adrenaline, a boost of excitement, owners had not seen any benefits to the tiered-model. This, after 1.3 seasons of play. In fact, the effect was turning out to be quite the opposite. A bit of the league’s history had been lost, and inequities between “top” and “bottom” teams, how teams were promoted and relegated, the seemingly arbitrary organization of leagues as free agency and finances were considered, had owners looking at the RHL14 and RHL15 alignment as more unfortunate than beneficial. As league members began weighing in on the views of some outspoken owners’, reactions feel into two groups: Opposition to the current system, and apathy. Support for the current alignment was almost non-existent. It was clear, early in the season, that the league would be going back to the one-league system. Whether that would be for RHL16 or RHL17 was, early in the discussions, unclear. Sometimes these movements take a season or two to find a foothold in the league. Regardless, the effect on strategy for a team in the Premier was clear: The benefits to fighting it out for those two promotions spots would be limited. At some point in the near future, the whole Premiership would be promoted. For an organization short on money, prospects, and draft picks, the Aviators had an easy decision when it came to a change in organizational direction. Instead of gambling on getting a promotion spot, San Diego would now gamble that the rumored rule changes would take effect for RHL15. With the groundswell of support for the change, it seemed like the better bet. The reconstruction of a team that had been built to make a run in RHLs 12 through 14 would start. The trading frenzy was on. Seeing the Need for a General Manager Once the decision to rebuild had been made, I had to face a tough fact about my enjoyment-level of the RHL: I could not be in a worse mindset for swapping players around the league, seeking to maximize value on each trade. It was a gambit that I was no longer inclined towards. The Aviators needed somebody who would allow the team to maximize value in trade markets. We needed an in-house broker, and I was not that guy. There was a moment of clarity within the season when this need became manifest. I had traded Dave Andreychuk, acquired in free agency but failing to perform for the Aviators, for Brad Isbister, who had good shooting numbers though poor defense and playing time attributes. On that same day, Baffin Isle swapped Dave Andreychuk to New York for the Purge’s final draft pick – a third rounder in RHL17. I won’t mince words on this one: It was clear that Steve Stringer, the Rover general manager, had a very good idea of how to pry that draft pick from Jeff Berliner. He had targeted Jeff, who was apt to trade his picks. Steve was undoubted not alone in a desire for that draft pick. I just found the whole thing a little sickening. This wasn’t the first time trades from this mindset had happened. Many of us remember exchanges like “To VAM: BLZ1/BLZ2/BLZ3 / To BLZ: Jamie Langenbrunner” being confirmed. This was a minor version of that. A very minor version. But it was a reminder that not only was there a whole culture of trade vultures in the RHL, but that opportunism had become a viable strategy for team building. Though it’s a little cut-throat, there’s no reason to resent Vlad Zhivov and Steve for these tactics. It’s difficult to say “Maybe I should throw something else in” or “Maybe I shouldn’t be contributing to this problem” when you know many other owners do not agree with that stance. And those owners will make that trade, and then you have to compete with an owner who has just taken advantage of an opportunity you passed up. This is the reason why Vlad can make bad trades from time-to-time: he’ll make up the difference in the future. It’s the reason why Steve can build a winner in three seasons: He is the best at taking advantage of this market. Just as diverse owner populations will always test the limits of finances and bankruptcy, diverse ownership and owner strategies will always create these margins (in this case, trade margins) where active owners can profit in the same way that active stock brokers can make money. The stock broker who pauses to think about whether they should or should not contribute to Phillip Morris’s stock price increases is a stockbroker that just lost money for a client. It’s a premise of the game you elect to get into when joining the RHL: Competing at the highest level might mean engaging in some social Darwinism. I had to decide whether I saw this kind of activity as part of the Aviators’ future. And I did. It’s the best strategy, and it’s the only way to keep the door open to competing at that highest level of the league. I just didn’t want to be the person canvassing owners, finding the loopholes, determining the inefficiencies of other teams, pulling the trigger on (or even offering) the trades. I didn’t have the stomach for it. This whole attitude of mine – I’m not happy with it. It represents an unhealthy level of cynicism. Thankfully, Andy Bartalone is not as cynical. Making a List With Daniel Robitaille leaving the Aviators to start his own franchise, I had position open within the team. I wanted to get back into scouting, something I had given to Daniel, so a shift from the day-to-day GM activities to a coach/draft/plan role made sense. And I wanted a keep second brain in the process. My brain is not that trustworthy anymore. I made a list of all the people who I felt could contribute to the Aviators. The main qualification was the ability to bring intellectual capital to the team. I wanted ideas bouncing around. I didn’t want a top-down model. I had five people on this list, one of whom was eliminated immediately as being generally disinterested. Another is running a separate league, and that would always be a bit of a time drain. This left me with a list of three, two of whom had the personal skills I was looking for in a general manager. At that time, I did not have Andy’s current email address, so the job was offered to Patrick Shea, another owner from the Strat-O-Matic league I’d founded. Shortly after extending the offer to Pat, it became apparent that his activity level was going to be too low to manage these markets. Coincidentally, this is when I found Andy’s new email address. In conversations, Andy may be the most outgoing person I’ve ever known. He is what Malcolm Gladwell describes as a connector. He is better than most people at managing personal relationships – not just keeping up with a lot of people, but using the relationships he maintains as a conduits for information. But he doesn’t manage people in terms of information. He likes interacting with people. He makes himself good at it. He’s efficient. He’s a hub, and the one characteristic of people-hubs that make them distinct from agnostic, network machinery: he likes being a hub. As is the case with most connectors, Andy’s a pretty good judge of people. He knows who likes talking, when they like to talk, and what they like to talk about. He has a good ability to not only see the other person’s point of view but to know when that view is inflexible and must become one of the conditions of the conversation. In trades, this ability is incredibly valuable. On a level far more efficient than mine, he is able to see why the other person would accept a trade offer. Often, it’s an offer I would have never extended in the first place. Putting Andy in the place of the general manager, allowing him to be removed from game playing and the biases that individual game performances engender, turned into a recipe for getting trades done. Not just a few trades. Lots of trades. Since the Aviators had almost no draft picks, only a couple of decent prospects, and the financial reserves of Russia circa 1994, we needed to make a large number of incremental trades in order to stabilize the organization. There was no way one team, in one deal was going to give us all the pieces we needed. We didn’t have that much firepower to offer in exchange (nor were we proficient in the email-based Jedi mind trick). Incremental improvements. This was Andy’s mandate. The result was the most active transaction season in Aviator history. Transactions, the Implications of I was going to count up the number of trades the Aviators made in RHL15, but what would be the point? Anybody who has followed the RHL in the last six months knows that the Aviators have been the most active team in the league. As the trade deadline approached, we’d make-over our roster on a daily basis. There was a certain amorality to it all, an unrealistic treatment of players as commodities – trying to play the markets. With the possible exception of RHL5-RHL6, where the team acquired the pieces that would create a very good RHL7 squad, it was the most successful period of trading in the franchise’s history. Andy was able to find homes for almost all of the large Aviator contracts, including Nikolai Khabibulin. If he did nothing but remove the albatross from the team’s contract ledger, he would have done a great job. But in ridding the team of its expensive long-term commitments, he also strengthened the draft pick pool. The team now has the seventh pick in the upcoming draft and seven picks in the RHL17 draft. We had only two picks in RHL17 when he came on board. The prospect base moved from thinned out (all shipped to Edmonton) to relatively deep, if lacking in prime prospects. The payroll was reduced to the point where, at the end of the playoffs, the team will be over $1,000,000 in bank balance for the first time since early in RHL14. Andy deserves credit for making all this happen, executing the shift in direction. I knew that we needed to make huge changes. Alleviating the focus on promotion was the first step, but an even bigger second step was removing the inhibitions toward treating players as commodities. The margins on each of the transactions Andy was able to make leaves the Aviators with financial flexibility for RHL16, draft resources, and a contributing prospect base. For these reasons and despite the on-ice volatility, RHL15 must be viewed as an organizational success. Releasing Players I doubt any RHL team has bought out the number of contracts which the Aviators did during RHL15. I am surprised more teams don’t do it (and more often), particularly in the era of fixed revenue. Whereas my last rebuilding campaign came in RHL8 (during the era of variable revenue where you had to juggle the benefits of short-term saving against effects to attendance revenues and next seasons’ season ticket base), there are currently no long-term negatives to buying out contracts when a team elects to cease viewing winning as a priority. I was surprised we did not see every Premier league team dumping players after the one-league model was confirmed. Howard (Wong) and Steve (Gandour) and Huy (Nguyen) clearly have a sense of competition for RHL15 that I do not share, and I admire them for that. But the other members of the conference – Airdrie and Grand Prairie and Winnipeg, to name some – should have been cutting big contracts and, if at the minimum, replacing them with small. You might miss out on some playoff revenue, true. But the odds on one player being the determining factor in a series are slim. As trades happened, we would sign and cut people to get to 25 rostered players. Given how many trades we were making, the signings and releases came quickly. It got to the point where Paul was having some trouble keeping up with them. Understandably so. In an earlier piece regarding the ramifications of allowing post-trading deadline releases, Aviator News looked at each team and the number of players who could be released in a pure-cost-cutting model. The Aviators employed this model in managing their roster, but nobody else did. It’s just not in the nature of RHL owners to look at players as being so expendable. Certain teams (Waterloo, Airdrie) habitually keep over thirty rated players. Given these tendencies, I don’t know why I’d assumed that Premier teams would cut players lose. For most RHL teams, that approach is antithetical. This is probably why most teams were surprised to see two, three releases from San Diego per week. All that roster movement, bidding on free agents – seems like a lot of trouble, to most owners. For us, it was another of those incremental steps which needed to be taken. Taken towards recovery. On-Ice Performance, Viewed from the Training Room One incremental step that the team should have made was hiring a new training staff. Looking at the attributes of Aviator players, no clairvoyance was needed to predict injury problems. But when most owners think of injury problems, they think three or four concurrent injuries, those injuries preventing the team from ever being able to field an ideal lineup. The Aviator injury problems have been so bad as to make the concept of an ideal lineup as foreign as a Sanskrit novel. Over the last fifteen games and into the playoffs, the main concern has been being able to skate a complete lineup: three lines, three pairs. For Game 2 of the playoffs, we were able to skate three full forward lines, with ten forwards being able to dress for the game. It was a watershed moment for the team: adequately filling out a line form. Being able to skate a somewhat complete team, we can shift to bemoaning the quality of players who are still injured: our best rated forward (Wes Walz), our best rated defenceman (Ed Jovanovski), our top performer throughout the season (Derek Armstrong). I’ve been relatively quiet throughout the season as these injuries piled up. I view accepting players with relevant injury ratings as an acceptance of risk. If you trade for Jovanovski, be aware: Being injured is a non-negligible part of his profile. But I do regret the timing of the injuries: the fact that they all came at once. For a team trying to scrape by in the playoffs, get the extra $500,000 for a second round appearance, it was the perfect storm. It was the perfect storm followed by a stiff recession, followed by an invasion from a foreign power. It gives us a great story for future seasons. “My team is hurt!” says naïve owner. I can start working my rocking chair, saying “I remember when …” Some people walk five miles in the snow to get to school. The Aviators did it barefoot. Off-Ice, a Storm of a Different Kind I’m walking down a SoMa street in San Francisco with Mark Benvenga. We’ve just met, five minutes ago. Our entire history consists of a by-the-book discussion on where we should eat, each of us trying to be both non-opinionated and definitive. We just want to go somewhere. Eventually. we decide on a bar a couple of blocks to the east. “How was your trip?” “How are you feeling?” “Who else have you met?” “How long will you be here?” We’re talking as we walk. The questions don’t matter much. It’s just better than walking down the streets in silence. Until we can sit down, it’s all banter. No sense in sparking up a real conversation only to be interrupted by a hostess. Or traffic. We make it there, sit down, and after putting in our drink orders, Mark blurts it out, the question he seems to have wanted to ask since we started talking in front of the convention center. There’s this triumphant smile on his face, having asked a question which should unlock some quandary he has about the now not-so-electronic Richard. He’s just took his step toward getting an explanation. “What happened?!?” I don’t know what the hell he means. Who could? That’s the question behind this smile? This could be a very deep question, about my childhood or some relationship’s past. Or, this could be a mundane question, about my walk downtown from North Beach. I have to ask for some context, and when I do, his smile fades. I was supposed to get it, the question. It was something which should have been obvious. “You used to be so out of it. Then all of a sudden, this year, you’re so active.” I hadn’t realized. But, of course, he’s right. It’s something obvious. You can’t look at the Aviator role in RHL15 without noticing a stark contrast to the participation levels of RHLs 13 and 14. San Diego has never been lax in ownership, but in recent years there was a certain apathetic negativity about the owner’s attitude, including stretches where he was apt to aloofly allude to himself in the third person on the team blog. “What happened?” He asked about my activity level. I wonder what the answer is. Aviator News. Team transaction activity. RHL Hall of Fame. Game coordinating. In a way, everything happened. I thing I’ve undergone a change in how I look at the league. I used to view the league as something of great potential where relatively little happens. Now, I’ve come to look at the league as something of great potential. Where relatively little happens. The distinction goes beyond how you punctuate the phrase. I’ve gone from looking at the league as a place where your efforts reap few, small rewards; where you expect more in return for your efforts (this expectation based on the potential of the league’s membership, concept and rules). I now look at the league’s potential in terms of the opportunities provided. Within the RHL I can do an long-winded and hyperactive blog, since the league provides so many angles to cover in my posts. I can also create a Hall of Fame, because the league has a subset of owners that are historically oriented. Both of these are opportunities provided by the league itself, as they would not be germane to many leagues (or, at the very least, would be overkill). I stopped judging these tasks in terms of their effect on the league and started looking at the tasks as having their own ends. This concept was especially evident in discussions on the Hall of Fame, where my attitude was along the lines of “This is how I want to do it, so that’s how it’s going to happen. “I hope the league ends up appreciating it.” This view led to liberation. I wasn’t devoting a disproportionate amount of time to the league-wide success of the blog. I was posting and moving on. Moving on to the Hall of Fame. And the same attitude prevailed with the Hall. People are going to have to accept it for its merits. I don’t feel as if convincing owners of those merits is an efficient use of my time. “Here are the rules. I’ll keep you informed on how it goes.” With the blog chugging along and the Hall of Fame moving, I still had some resources to devote to game playing. It’s all fallen into place. In a way, I became a more active member in the league through further detachment. True, I still have a lot of opinions about things. That’s never going to change. But now, I don’t feel as if I have to make those opinions matter. I have my handful of things I like to do, and that’s it. Rules list used to be one of them. Trading used to be one of them. But neither of those things fit into my RHL world anymore. The product of limiting my RHL-world view, of caring enough to do things the way I want (but not take the next step, and worry about how it’s embraced) is being able to get more things done. “What happened?!?” That happened. How They’ll Be Remembered How will the RHL15 Aviators be remembered? They won’t. The RHL15 Aviators will not be remembered in the annals of RHL history. I hope that RHL15 becomes known as the season that independent team content (blogs, for now) became a staple of the league, and I hope that RHL16 will be seen as the year that the Hall of Fame becomes an accepted, relied-upon part of the league. But the RHL15 San Diego Aviators will slip into the league ether, unremembered. And that’s probably appropriate, as teams with middling records are generally of the unremarkable bent. Still, within Aviator history, each team is memorable. It’s just a matter of determining for what reasons the crew will be recalled. The RHL15 Aviators will be remembered for never being able to perform on the level it may have. Transactions kept the locker room door swinging on its hinges. This created continuity issues, which tend to breed game-to-game uncertainty. The transactions also created tangible tactical problems. Keeping lines updated with the right player names and avoiding the “N/A” is more problematic with a two-owner, high activity paradigm. The Aviators cost themselves at lot by being ill-prepared come game time. Coupled with the injuries, the Aviators were never really a team. The teams that they were on Night 48 and Night 49 were never given the chance to play as a team and develop on the previous nights’ work. Who knows what the Night 48 team could have been. Work out the line combinations. Find the right strategy. It could have been good! Right? We’ll never know. We’ll never be able to answer the question “How good were the RHL15 Aviators?” I have no clue. Which team are you talking about? Three, four seasons from now, when I look back on RHL15, it will seem like a seedling towards a better team. Future seasons will be brighter than the one just passed. But will I remember the Aviators as a bad team, in the same way I remember the RHL8 team as a bad team? Probably not. I’ll remember this as a lost season – a collection of guys, different on every night, who had to play a hockey game. At times, we had a good team, and we played the game well. At times we had a bad team, and we stunk it up. But there’s no real way to remember this team. It’s like the team that never was.

The Passion of the Bankruptcy

2006-05-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

It rose like a phoenix, came to a boil, then rested on the back burner for five days. Then the ruling came down. Last weekend, Paul announced what will happen to the Lethbridge Selects, bankrupt for the last three games of the RHL15 season, and has made it clear that this issue will be further dealt with before RHL16. The rules will be rewritten, brought up-to-date with the new financial structure of the league. Ever the Yossarian, I am not sold on the way we are going about the bankruptcy problem. Let me tick-tock you through my way of thinking on the issue: The fact that there is perceived to be a problem needs to be reexamined. If it is decided there is a problem, we must determine if that problem is behavioral (bad decisions by the actors) or structural (inadequate regulation from the rules). If it is determined that the problem is behavioral, we should address the issues as a function of that owners’ behavior; otherwise, we should look at the rules. The rules could probably use some tweaking anyway. After all, we have implemented a lot of changes in the last few seasons. However, we need to be concerned about being excessive with whatever changes are implemented. Playing it close to the financial line can be a viable, if risky, strategy. We need to have a system that allows flexibility in assessing owner history and intent. The Problem is Not the Problem The problem is not bankruptcy. Well, bankruptcy is A problem, and it always will be. We don’t want people going bankrupt or feeling as if they are free to toy with financial insolvency. If there is cornerstone in the rules that this league is built upon, it’s the finances: the fiscal constraints preventing people doing whatever, whenever. We never think about it, but a stable financial system is more important than realism, playability, or two-leagues versus one. Still, in a league where finances are so prominent, individual teams’ will always push the limits of financial solvency. That extra free agent will be signed, or that last number will not be crunched. No matter the framework, a diverse owner population will seek out the limits, all the way to a negative bank balance. This phenomenon, pushing towards a negative balance, is unavoidable. Competitive drive alone will have owners push the envelope. With this in mind, it’s futile to draft league rules which exhibit paranoia in avoiding negative balances: merely moving the de facto bankruptcy point from $0 to something higher, putting in rules which try to prevent a continued decrease in funds. If we stop them at $100,000 from spending further, we can avoid teams hitting $0. To me, restrictions at $0 are tantamount to restrictions at a higher point, and in that sense a clear-cut standard is appropriate: either you’re bankrupt, or you’re not. Let’s forget about impending bankruptcy or pseudo bankruptcy and just talk about real, don’t have enough funds to pay players, bankruptcy. A Problem of Perception – The Current Rules For some of you, what I just said was a given: Bankruptcy means bankruptcy, not almost bankruptcy. But it’s important to get these nuances declared, because the situation we just went through with Lethbridge’s bankruptcy, the pause in game play, the need for a ruling – these are all a function of the same of nuance. What nuance? Whether you think the pre-existing rules, in body or spirit, dealt with the Selects’ situation. There was a view that the rules are outmoded - that the current rule book fails to address the league’s new financial model. The current rules were written to fit the old, variable revenue model of seasons’ past. It does not adequately regulate for the current, more straight-forward model. In response to this inadequacy, the league needed to stop and assess the situation. There were immediate implications of the bankruptcy. Games couldn’t continue. Then there was the divergent view that the games could have gone on – that the rules worked fine. Though we have changed our financial system, teams still make money the same way: game day revenue. The rules present in the rule book were written with this paradigm in mind. Per those rules, a team has a certain amount of time (10 days) to correct their financial problem, else they are considered bankrupt. In my view, this works for RHL15’s system as well as it did for RHL7’s. The complicating factor in this instance was the timing of Lethbridge’s insolvency. Because Ryan was asleep at the wheel, his financial collapse came during a time when no transactions would allow him to correct the problem. His team would be bankrupt into the playoffs, playing games with no means of resolving his negative balance. Intuitively, this didn’t seem fair. This brought up the issue of playoff revenue, which has customarily been dispensed at the end of the playoffs. But just because it is dispensed at the end of the season, does that mean that’s when it’s accrued. A make may salary at the first of every month whether I access that money in my checking account of not. As Daniel Robitaille pointed out, a consequence of the interpretation that playoff money is not accrued until the conclusion of the postseason would be the Selects’s days-to-atone being ticked away while the team was still active in the playoffs. While the amount of money needed to repay players would not grow (since players are paid out of a Magical Mystery Fund in the playoffs), the lack of revenue would still have the Selects delinquent in repaying salaries. This puts Ryan Slozka in a situation where being swept out of the playoffs and stopping the days-to-atone would be preferable to advancing in the playoffs – provided the playoff days sans Selects didn’t also count against his team. Sure, the Selects could try to win the Kings Cup, but they’d be declared insolvent or bankrupt before then and lose their membership in the league. Asking an owner to decide between the two is not a good situation for the league. The owner might make the wrong choice. Though the league disperses money at the end of the postseason, the commissioner could have taken the view that credit for this money is accrued on a game-by-game or series-by-series basis. In this scenario, Ryan would be able to attain solvency rather quickly, as revenue would be coming in but expenditures would be non-existent. But this scenario can be viewed as wacky as there is nothing in the rule book that mentions the denominations at which the playoff money is to be distributed. There is a per-series rule as to revenue, but it doesn’t mention dispersal. A ruling more consistent with the rule book would have been the scenario at which Daniel hinted. But with both scenarios, the Selects’ bankruptcy did not represent something beyond the existing rules. The spirit of the rules seems clear. Once a team is unable to meet their commitments, players sit and the team has a certain amount of time to rectify the situation. Denis should have sat for the Selects’ Day 133 game, an “unpaid salaries” tab should have accumulated and carried over into next season, if necessary. Odds are Lethbridge’s playoff money would covered the bill, whether that involved being electively swept or otherwise. What’s unclear whether this would have been the appropriate route. Paul’s ruling, which is not a strict interpretation of the rule book, tells us that the rules were inadequate. This inadequacy, not the actual bankruptcy, ends up being the real problem identified by the Select and Freeze bankruptcies: The need for an ad hoc decision. Where From Art Thou, Problem There were two causes of this problem, one stemming for the other: Outdated rules, and the perception that the rules dealing with bankruptcy were inadequate. Outdated rules has been covered so much that I feel the need to stick up for the rules we have. Given what came up in the thread on bankruptcy, the rule book could use a good once-over. No denying that. But the general concepts are all there and clear. For example, the playoff format for this season’s Premier League is not defined in the rules. But did any owner doubt what format will be employed? Four teams will get first round byes, which we can discern this is by looking at what the rules define for the twelve-team Champions League. But you can’t go through this process of discernment for each issue that’s not explicitly addressed in the rules. So, for what issues do you use this kind of discernment? For what issues is a new ruling needed? When the rule book is vague, it’s hard to tell when you should side with the rule’s intent or seek a new ruling. This creates the perception that the rules are inadequate. The rules may be intuitive to some owners, but they lack definition for others. In these situations the rules, meant to provide clear standards for all owners, no longer for no owners. The outdated rules plus the perception of inadequacy led us away from using Section 8 (Team Bankuptcy Policy) as the guideline, towards a new, definitive decision. Though not wholly consistent with the letter of the law, electing to make a ruling may have been the best thing for Paul Myers to do. As we have seen in the week since his ruling, order was restored. I am not sure we would have had such clarity were it not for a distict ruling. But had there not been the perception that the rules were inadequate, there would have been no disorder to address. The perception, for whatever its cause, fed into our problems. Judging Behavior While thinking about this issue (during and after the email explosion that led to the league’s ruling), I noted that my feelings on the Selects bankruptcy held more passion than the means the rule book defined for dealing with the problem. My feelings were disproportionately strong to the ramifications outlined in the rules. And I think my feelings were shared by others who, posting to the RHL rules mailing list, offered improvements to the bankruptcy rules which would ascribe stricter sanctions for going into the negative on a bank balance. In a league where we know exactly how much money we will make, it makes sense to havea less lenient model for dealing with financial indiscretions. We should tighten the rules, but I still felt like there was more to this issue than just tightening the rules. If an owner consciously pushes the envelope, as Jean did seasons ago, that seems like a viable strategy, and I don’t feel comfortable enforcing draconian standards on Jean (or Vlad, who has had very high payrolls before) just for taking a chance. Perhaps the owner reasoned, at the beginning of the year, that having a player sit for the final couple of games of the season was worth overpaying in free agency, securing his services for the season, having that player on the team for most of the playoffs. Jean’s push for a Cup came during variable revenue, but the point is still the same: Sometimes, going for it is a function of planning. Good planning, from a certain point of view. Sometimes, good owners take risks. That’s when I started to realize that what makes this bankruptcy controversial is not the negative bank balance; rather, we are in a situation where the method matters more, and Ryan’s method of going bankruptcy lacked the hallmarks of viable strateg. Jean had those hallmarks: thoughtfulness, good application, consciousness of the consequences, awareness of the likelihood of success and failure. Ryan’s bankruptcy was derived from ignorance - not knowing how much money teams make. There was an aloofness with him in letting his team get in that situation; a recalcitrance in bidding on free agents as he did in the RHL15 auction; an arrogance in not bothering to worry about bankruptcy the same way that many of us would have. This bankruptcy was flagrant as much for the way it was handled as the fact that it happened. I, also, have had financial problems. In RHL12 I had to buyout Richard Matvichuk early in the season or risk going bankrupt. This season, my financial problems have been well publicized, but not once did I consider a “oh, well” strategy. Financial restrictions on RHL15’s Aviators were present back in the Robitaille-era (the whole six months ago). Never once did I adopt a strategy which would have led to a negative balance. That’s why the Select bankruptcy stirred up such passions with me. Ultimately those passions have subsided, led to a different view on my approach. Though it seemed fair, when looking at the bigger picture of owner-intent, to judge Ryan differently than I had Jean, judging Ryan differently in the light of the rules seemed unfair. While Ryan’s actions may not be, they are within the rules, and their ramifications are defined. Perhaps we could put something into the rules allowing the commissioner to take an owner’s behavior, activity level, cognizance into account. I’d support that. But in terms of the current rules, I was being unfair and harsh. I think the league’s general feeling was closer to my gut-reaction, the impassioned one, and with good reason. It seems very strange that a team could go bankrupt under out current structure without some level of negligence being involved. And we look down on negligence, rightfully so. Two owners, over the last two years, have been excused from the league for gross-negligence. Is there any negligence more flagrant than neglecting finances? At least teams that don’t turn in lines refrain from spending in ways that compromise free agency, player dispersal. They don’t interfere with others, which is why the Selects might illicit a “They overspent on Sakic …” or the Freeze might have somebody saying “And they signed Iginla!” But there is a danger of taking those feelings, possibly unfairly interjecting them into the discussion. The reconsideration in light of the rules needs to happen. I admit that, having dealt with financial issues, I have certain feelings about teams not biting the bullet and cutting players. We need to be careful that the issue is not being shaped by such views. We need to reconcile the disappointment that this has happened with the fact that the current rules allow for this kind of chance-taking. Tweaking the Rules Perhaps we can add rules allowing Paul to judge a well-intentioned bankruptcy (Jean’s potential one) and a misguided bankruptcy (Ryan’s, potentially mine) in different lights. Though there have been comments to the contrary, there seems to be some discomfort with the Select bankruptcy in the light of simplified finances. Likewise, the Westlock potential-bankruptcy, addressed at the onset of that season, seemed less egregious. It may seem ironic that I’m advocating commissioner discretion in this when, a couple of hundred words before, I was calling for more definition in the rule book. It is not ideal to allow for judgment calls like these, but if we lay out the criterion for the judgment in the rule book (“this judgment will be based on …”), we can walk this line. In addition, with simplified rules the ten-day reconciliation period is too long. You should not go bankrupt, let alone stay bankrupt for ten days. What’s more, the long period might discourage teams from avoiding bankruptcy, saying that they’ll deal with it if it happens, and when it happens they’ll have plenty of time to do so. I would like to see this time period shortened to five days. But the most important change I want to advocate is allowing the signing and releasing of players after the trade deadline. And not just for the financially troubled teams. Both the Eagles and Aviators could have used players, after the trading deadline, to make it to the end of the season. To do this, we need to make a distinction between playoff roster and regular season roster. Only players on your team at the trading deadline would be eligible for the playoff roster. While any signings you make after that point can help you make the playoffs (as much as a free agent can), they won’t help you win a playoff series. If the fear is that good players will get released and lead to post-deadline bidding wars, that player would have to make it through waivers first. If they lead to bidding wars, all the more reason for teams to keep money in their bank account to account for the scenario. Without this change, a team which suddenly realizes they have financial problems will not be able to swap big contracts for little contracts, the only way to address their problem once trading is prohibited. For the Future Though the rules list and the commissioner need to take a more detailed look at the problems and their implications, there are a few feelings we can take from the Select and Freeze situations to help frame where we go from here. First, neglecting finances is less tolerable now than in the variable revenue days. The league was somewhat outspoken about this. To go bankrupt because your attendance fell during an unexpectedly bad year is regrettable. To go bankrupt with guaranteed revenue is unacceptable. Second, bankruptcy will always be an issue, if not a viable strategy. We need rules in place that treat it as unavoidable, but we shouldn’t waste time trying to inhibit bankruptcy with rules. Owners will push the envelope as a function on competition. Third, not all bankruptcies are created the same. You have your cognizant bankruptcies and your bankruptcies of the unwilling. There should be mechanisms to distinguish between the two, and rules should be tailored around this distinction. While a merky distinction, it’s a real difference: a strategic move versus negligence. Finally, the rules need to be tweaked - not just to bring them up to date with the current policies, but also to address deficiencies in the 10-day rule and the lack of transaction flexibility beyond the trading deadline. In updating these rules, the perception of inadequacy will go away, and a lot of the passions which arose during this event will be soothed before the next bankruptcy. Which might be mine. Postscript This is the longest post I’ve ever made, and the writing for it took place over four days. There was always another issue which came up: Jeff’s resigning; the playoffs. Editing this (today), I found the whole thing to be very difficult to get through. Faced with a total rewrite and nothing to post or this disclaimer, and apology, and never having to deal with this again, I chose to set this bird free. I hope you got something from it. I got my life back.

Champions Conference Playoff Preview

2006-05-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

Augmenting Jun Kokaji’s well-written preview of the Premier’s first round, let’s take advantage of post-season fever and cover the four match-ups in the Champions’ League: #5 Saskatoon Funboys versus #12 St. Pete’s Wicked Ale Saskatoon emerged from a three-team dog fight for fifth place, holding off the Vampyres by virtue of a tiebreaker, the Spectres by virtue of time. Before unduly congratulating themselves, the Funboys should remember that last year’s number twelve seed, a Albany StrapHanger team that had traded away assets in a reconciliation towards demotion, upset the Chicago Gargoyles in the first round. Lest Martin Baldwin think there are similarities between then and now, Chicago won its fifth seed via a tiebreaker on its road to relegation. This season’s twelfth seed, the gamely-coached Wicked Ale, are over one hundred percentage points worse than last season’s StrapHanger team (which would have finished ahead of this year’s StrapHanger team in the standings). They are averaging less than two goals per game, whereas RHL14’s Albany squad averaged two and a half. This is a team that’s ill-equipped to take advantage of the Funboys’ chief weakness, allowing too many goals. Had Saskatoon’s 182 goals allowed finished in sixth and been matched-up with Albany, a team that scored 157 goals on the year, this first round series would have been a little more problematic. Saskatoon is a team that has underachieved all year. If you believe the underlying talent is that of a .550 team, the Funboys would not be in much danger of losing to the StrapHangers or the Wicked Ale. But what evidence do we have to believe that team is there? You can look to recent back-to-back, 1 goal-allowed performances against the Rovers (Day 127) and Sockeyes (Day 129) and see the potential of a team that Predictador saw to be amongst the league’s best. But the Funboys also closed the season with loses to the Mounties (4-1, Day 132) and Lethbridge (3-2, Day 133). As a not-so-closet Funboys follower, I’d like to see a sweep, with the team giving up around 0.75 goals per game, to validate that preseason evaluation. Prediction: Funboys in 5 #6 Calgary Vampyres versus #11 Albany StrapHangers Adam and Vlad. Together again. It’s really one of the great duos and recent world history. Like Martin and Lewis. Norm and Cliff. LaVerne and Shirley. George Bush and Tony Blair. Beavis and Butthead! Though I know not which of Adam and Vlad get the honor of being … eh, honor’s not the right word. It’s been a while since those times when Vlad and Adam would alternate strategies on a season-by-season basis, one rebuilding while the other made a run at the Cup. During those seasons, we would see a slow migration of players from one roster to the other, prospects and picks going back the other direction. They had their own little co-op. Then Adam starting getting involved in game playing, and this tradition faded away. It’s only now that I realize that I kind of miss it. Those transactions drifting away – it’s like the break-up of one of the great duos. With that in mind, perhaps a better comparison for Adam and Vlad might be Brad and Jen. Or Bennifer. Incidentally, did you ever read internet legend about Beavis being a Raymond Babbitt-esque savant who, when caffeinated, saw his brilliance surface? Really creative stuff, though the only thing which surfaces from Adam when he’s caffeinated is an amazing ability to leave money on the craps table. On the ice, this is a Vampyre team that has been steady, hovering around .500 while playing at a level slightly above break-even. But if their league-leading fourteen ties are testament to anything, it’s their ability to keep games close. Against a StrapHanger team that, like last year’s team, has a little punch, this could be dangerous. Vlad could really use some snipers capable of putting games out of reach, because while he’s not hurting for offense, his two-way forwards might have the wrong talent distribution to eliminate the possibility of an upset. But if you think I’m going to predict that upset, you’re crazy. I’m just saying … Prediction: Vampyres in 6 #7 Guelph Spectres versus #10 Waterloo Roadkill Separated by one hundred percentage points in the standings, these are very similar teams in terms of talent level and results. Both teams have similar goal differentials. Both differentials are poor. Since mid-season, these teams have been going in opposite directions. The Spectres spent the better part of the season near the bottom of the standings before Kyle Pinkerton found the right combinations to lift the team to within one game of .500 and two points of fifth place. It was quite the second-half . On the other hand, the Roadkill had spent the early part of the season surprising the league, kicking around .500, before fading badly in the second half. They have been unable to right a ship that’s sunk them below .400, into tenth on the table. The two teams have converged in this playoff series, carrying their similar goal differentials, but at no point in the season have they been playing similarly. The upswing of the Spectres along with Kyle’s playoff experience (beating the Gargoyles in a tough series last season to avoid relegation) has all the evidence mounting on Guelph’s side. But if you need reason to think Waterloo can win, just look at their roster. There are some dangerous pieces there. However, I’m taking the higher seed. Prediction: Spectres in 6 #8 Lethbridge Selects versus #9 Indianapolis 500s For all their financial problems, the Selects have put together a respectable first (and last) season in the Champions. They finished with a .470 winning percentage, home-ice advantage in a playoff series, and a respectable -7 goal differential. As a reward, they face-off against an Indianapolis team that took a wrecking ball to its roster at mid-season, clearing away the remnants of their Naslund, St. Louis-led juggernaut, planting some seedlings that are scheduled to grow for RHL17. Complicating matters for the Selects is Tommy Salo. Rather, the retirement-minded shell that used to be the good goaltender, Tommy Salo. Salo will be filling in for regular goaltender Mark Denis until the Select financial problems have been reconciled. In a 8/9 series, that’s usually enough to sway a prediction (if not a result). But this isn’t the normal #9 team that Ryan Slozka’s crew will be facing. While Mark has his 500s playing reasonably well, I doubt Indy will be able to find enough firepower to take advantage of the Selects. Besides, a 13-0 swatting on Day 134 might be hard to recover from. Prediction Selects in 7 Kitchener, Chicago, Baffin Isle, South Edmonton The Mounties has three forwards (Niedermayer, Nieuwendyk, Wallin) who, injured at season’s end, will all be recovered for Round 2. Thank the Maker for byes. While no other team had significant injury problems, the first round bye will allow Rover Kris Draper to return healthy for a secod round series (provided Claude Lemieux does not show up at the Baffin Isle training facility). These four owners will be able to sit back and enjoy the playoffs, as there does not appear to be a significant advantage to be derived from any potential upsets. While Paul Myers might like to see Daniel Robitialle guide the Ale to a victory over Saskatoon, the benefit is likely insignificant unless Calgary and Guelph also lose. After a regular season spent jockeying for position, the cards have been dealt. Time to go out and play.

Jeff Berliner, New York Purge, Leave RHL

2006-05-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed a slight change in the content of Aviator News posts. I have been trying to format my posts as essays, as opposed to notes or blurbs. One consequence of this is longer and more involved posts. I hope you’re enjoying them, though I know they require a higher level of commitment than is always available. Another consequence is decreased post frequency. Rather than fire-off a quick note to the blog, I’ve been more apt to save those thoughts for another day. At that future point, I’ll be able to devote more time to the ideas, expand my thoughts, and possibly incorporate the views that have since been contributed to the RHL public domain. Such is the case with Paul’s ruling regarding Lethbridge’s bankruptcy. Some views had coalesced around the commissioner’s decision, and having let the topic rest for two or three days, I was able to write a little more thoughtfully about the topic. With half the article written on Sunday morning, life got busy, and I decided to leave the remainder for Monday. Per forma, things became busy, pushing my writing off until lunch. As that procrastination took place, the RHL world was changing, and it became apparent that my bankruptcy article would have to wait. Departure of an Owner Paul Myers, on Sunday night, notified the league that an owner would be leaving, his team disbanding at the end of the season. Being exposed to teams’ line submission frequency, I had a good idea who would be leaving. However, I wasn’t certain that New York would be disbanding. From what other owners had been speculating, I’d started to think that another team might be leaving. Shortly after Paul’s announcement that second, then unnamed, team would be leaving, this is how I arbitraged the information for Andy:

On May 22, 2006, at 2:37 PM, Andy Bartalone wrote: >[Do you know] who the other disbanding owner is?? no. it may not be PUR, though. speculation from some owners is that the second disbanding team could be SEL if Paul decides that their bankruptcy has been flagrant enough. i don’t think that’s been decided, for sure. that leads me to believe that PUR will be back.

For a while, Andy and I had been working under the assumption the New York would join St. Pete’s. In one trade negotiation, this assumption came into play as we tried to shy away from a PUR-RHL17 draft pick. So, when I say “it may not be PUR, though,” I’m implying that our previous speculations may have been wrong. Though Paul’s announcement did not come as a surprise, it gives pause when an owner leaves the league, whether they are being replaced are resigning. Stability is a key characteristic of my ideal RHL, and while it is better for an owner to leave rather than put a team on N/Autopilot, the resignation of an owner like Jeff Berliner creates an acute melancholy. The assumptions Andy and I had been making about the Purge now seem disrespectful, like speculating negatively on a friend’s future. Jeff and I are not particularly close, but I have a good deal of respect for him. Andy and I hedging on his team’s future seemed too much like treating him as a commodity. Newer members of the league may not have a concept of the consistently good Purge teams of RHL3 through RHL7, when they never finished below .500 and won playoff series in both RHL4 and RHL5. As recently as RHL14, the team had a winning record, going 32-27-7 in the first season of the Premier League. From RHL3, when they relocated to The Big Apple from upstate New York, through RHL11, New York only missed the playoffs once. Figurehead Players More than the on-ice results, New York is known for a relationship with its flagship players. While Nicklas Lidstrom may come to mind as the exemplar for franchise figureheads (because of the Sockeyes’ relative success), Martin Brodeur is the true standard when it comes to a player representing an organization. Brodeur, like Lidstrom, is an All-Star player who has never played for another RHL team. Unlike Lidstrom, who has been a key member on teams which have always featured other star players, Martin dictated the whole imagine of his franchise. With Brodeur, the Purge built around goaltending, typically acquiring defensively-responsible players to skate in front of their star. This gave New York the best chance to steal games behind Marty’s pads. No other netminder has played more than twenty Purge games in the team’s fifteen seasons. Glen Healy, with the team for five seasons, averaged four games per year, finishing with five career victories for New York. Martin Brodeur has been credited with 368 of the Purge’s 382 wins, an unmatched, unrivaled dominance of a team’s goaltending history. While Brodeur has become synonymous with the Purge, it wasn’t so long ago that a second player shared the team’s figurehead position. Retiring after the RHL14 season, Adam Graves played all of his 884 career games with the Purge. He only missed 36 Purge games in fourteen seasons. Graves is the franchise leader in almost every offensive category. His total of 269 career goals is 162 goals ahead of the next player (John MacLean). Larry Murphy’s 503 career games played trails Graves by 381 games amongst skaters. Graves exemplifies those defensively-responsible players who, with Brodeur, made match-ups difficult for teams who didn’t carry sufficient firepower. In RHL4 and RHL5, the Purge used those match-ups to post the only two playoff-series victories in their franchise history. RHL4 and RHL5: Playoff Success In the opening round of the RHL4 playoffs, the Purge beat a Chicago Gargoyle team that had gone 47-16-3. New York, 29-29-8 on the year, took advantage of the Gargoyles dependence on penalty-prone players (three of top four scorers had over 100 PIMs), clamping down at even strength and waiting for Chicago to go a man down. They only outscored Chicago 16 to 13 in the series, squeaking out a 4-2 series win as Gargoyles Owen Nolan (third leading regular season scorer, 30 PIMs in the series) and Chris Gratton (fourth, 20 PIMs) shot their team in the foot. In RHL5, New York ousted the third seeded Pittsburgh Snow Dogs, a team which traditionally eschewed offense in favor of building around Dominik Hasek, in six games. Where the Snow Dogs deviated from the Purge was in the make-up of their forwards. Pittsburgh would traditionally form one offense-centric line and try to maximize value in matching-up with their opponents. In RHL5, the offensive line was offensive, costing Pittsburgh the series as each of Stu Barnes, Dave Andreychuk and Eric Daze posted a -3 rating. Each player had one goal, but New York shut down the rest of the team, with only two other Snow Dogs lighting the lamp. For the second consecutive year, Berliner led his team to a first round upset, this time knocking-off a team that would make the conference finals in RHL4 and RHL6. There are few owners who have this quality on their coaching resume. Many owners who were around for longer than a snapshot have failed to accumulate a playoff string like Jeff’s, and the quantity of those owners in the league for only a cup of coffee only help us in realizing what Jeff has contributed. If he did nothing else in the RHL, Jeff would be remembered as a valuable coach and a great competitor. As is, coaching the Purge will not be the first thing we remember about his RHL tenure. Contributions In this first year of an RHL Hall of Fame, Jeff’s legacy can be seen on the last distribution of the HoF Ballot. One of his contributions, RHL Auction, was automatically inducted. To put that in perspective, RHL Analysis, which many consider the best IT contribution ever made to the league, is up for a vote – not auto-inducted. The other IT contribution on the ballot (besides Auction and Analysis) also has roots at Jeff’s fingertips. Jeff took RHL Central, put it on its own machine, and enabled tools like Auction, Analysis, and document archives to be distributed in one, central place. While it’s clear that Jean Duteau, auto-elected to the Hall of Fame, will dominate memories of this ballot, in time this HoF vote will affirm Jeff’s legacy. Legacy Jeff’s retirement signifies more than the New York Purge’s departure from the league. Martin Brodeur will move on and the league’s most consistent franchise will close the book on its tenure, but the RHL is losing more than a good player story and a steady franchise. It is not hyperbole to suggest that with Jeff Berliner leaving, the RHL is losing a future Hall of Famer. Aviator News hopes that, like current Hall of Famer Jean Duteau and future Hall of Famers Doug Deutsch and Daniel Robitaille, Jeff will take some time to reload and we will see the New York Purge resurface.

The Average Average Team

2006-05-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

A team with an average roster will almost always finish with an average record. What a loaded statement. We can’t even address it until we have a shared definition of “average roster” (is it a single level of player quality or a description for a range of player quality levels) and of “average record”. Thankfully, we all have similar ideas of what average means on the team level. The nomenclature “.500 record” attests to this. So, we can skip over what the statement means and ask if we feel the statement is accurate. Random things happen during the course of a game, and sometimes those random events accumulate on one side of the break-even point. An average team which is lucky in its coin-flips could finish a season above .500. An unlucky team will get the other end of the stick. And for the most part, we’re comfortable with the fact that a team which has a .508 or a .492 winning percentage may, in fact, be equivalent to a .500 team. A win or two here or there … Hopefully, this is not too controversial. If you believe that average team will, without doubt, finish at .500 (that the result should define the characteristics, rather than the other was around), you can stop reading now. I’m afraid the rest of this article will sound, to you, as antithetical as the previous paragraph. Still here? Good. Because I want to talk about the results of a simulation I designed to test the extent to which, based on luck alone, an average team can deviate from the expected .500 record. Thanks to Python, Mac OS X, my (now antiquated) PowerBook G4, Google, and a pseudo-random number generator, we can test. I created a team (Team A) that averages 2.5 goals scored per game and performs against an identical team. Defense for each of these teams neither adds value nor takes away value from the opponent. This should be an average team playing average competition. Using 2.5 goals / 3600 seconds as the per second goal probability, I went through each second of the game, for both teams, and used the random number generator to determine whether the team scored a goal. If the random number returned was less than 2.5 / 3600, I notched a goal for the team. After doing this for both teams for 3600 seconds, I compared the goal totals and gave Team A a win, a loss, or a tie. I don’t care about Team B’s result – they’re merely the opponent. I did this 66 times for an RHL season’s worth of results, and then I played 1000 seasons to create an overkill sample. I used seconds as the base unit (as opposed to minutes or periods) because of its extensibility onto other frameworks and the quantity of random numbers the method allows me to use. It avoids one, low random number unduly influencing the result of that game. This is nothing fancy. The whole goal of the process is a format for assigning a win or a loss (or a tie) based on the framework of a hockey game. This format will allow me to (relatively) quickly generate a large amount of data, with which we can test our hypotheses. The first of these hypotheses, the null hypothesis, is that average teams will perform in average ways. Teams with 2.5 expected goals and defense values of +0 will not, when playing against identical teams, significantly deviate from a .500 record, or 66 points in an RHL season. The second of these hypotheses is that average teams can significantly deviate from a .500 record within a 66 game season. Though I reference record and point total, I am mostly concerned with points (wins * 2 + ties) in the context of this simulation. That’s the easiest value to test. Ties pose a problem for analyzing wins and losses when you’re not designing your simulation around those values. Here, we’re worried about the effect of the luck-factor in a team’s seasonal performance, so while I tracked wins and losses and ties for fun (and quality control), I’ll be doing the extra analysis steps with points. Here are the results for the first 1000 season simulation:

category    n  max  min mode  med mean   sdev
points   1000   86   45   67   66   66 7.2111

For points, over 1000-66 game seasons, the range of outputs was 86 points (a .651 winning percentage) to 45 points (.341). With the standard deviation of the sample, any winning percentage above .609 or below .391 should be considered outlying or anomalous. Anything in between, though, is within the expected range of reasonable outcomes for an average team based on the distribution or outcomes. This result showed significance at the 0.10 level. We can discard the idea that average teams will perform in average ways. In reality, average teams can appear very good or very bad based on luck alone. Sixty-six games only gives us a hint. Teams that perform above a .609 level are almost certainly above-average teams. On the other end, a team performing below .391 is almost certainly below-average. But a team that has a .600 win percentage, a rate we would all consider to be very good, might be an average team getting good breaks. Here are the simulation results in terms of wins, losses, and ties:

category    n  max  min mode  med mean   sdev
wins     1000   40   16   25   27   27 3.7417
losses   1000   40   16   28   27   26 3.8730
ties     1000   23    3   13   12   12 2.8284

The median team went 27-27-12. The maximum values for wins (40) and losses (40) show just how wide the range of possibilities is for an average team. I also ran two simple variations of this model: a 82 game season; a season where 3.0 goals was the scoring rate. Do the extra sixteen games played in an eighty-two game season provide enough of an opportunity to regress towards the mean and eliminate some of the chance? We would expect that to be the case, where the range of performance for the average NHL team would be smaller than that for an RHL team. Here are those results:

category    n  max  min mode  med mean   sdev
points   1000  104   55   85   82   82 7.6158

This result was also significant at the 0.10 level. While the standard deviation increased slightly, it did not increase as much as you would expect if the sixteen game increase in season length had produced an equivalent increase in points. Still the winning percentage range for this simulation was .407 to .592, in decrease in range of 33 points in winning percentage. This begs the question: How many games-in-length does a season half to be in order to eliminate (or reduce, as much as possible) the luck-factor? There may be an efficient way to find this out, so I will consult with some real statisticians. In terms of the simulation being able to answer this question in a more methodical manner, see Limits of Hardware, below. The median record for this test was 34-33-15. What is interesting in terms of our next test is the ties. They stayed pretty-much in proportion to the results in the 66 game sample. With an increase in goal scoring rate, the presence of ties should decrease as the effective range of potential goal values will be larger. At least, that’s the theory. With a decrease in ties, might we also see an effect in the winning percentage range for the average team? When I tested the 3.0 goals scenario, I reduced the games back to 66 (from 82). Here is the yield of that simulation:

category    n  max  min mode  med mean   sdev
points   1000   93   44   69   67   66 7.2801

Again, this result was significant at the 0.10 level. There is a slight increase in the standard deviation when compared to our previous 66-game sample. Since the simulation was not designed to measure the significance of this result, we can’t ignore the fact that this might just be randomness, noise in the data set. Setting that aside, the winning percentage range for 3.0 goal expected increased by 18 points: .390 to .610. There may be something there. Future of this Simulation Time and resource concerns will have to stop us here, but there is one question I want to explore at a later time. Will the winning percentage range change if you increase the range of opponent goal expectations from 0 goals to, say, 1.5 goals? In other words, if we added a component to this simulation which had Team A playing a variety of teams (as opposed to always playing an average team), will the increase in variance of opponent yield a change in variance of outcome? Limits of Hardware Powerbook G4s are great machines. I don’t have the system specifications on me, nor am I am expert in the field. I’m not going to be called as an expert witness at a trial, so my opinion carries with it no Willows Beach-miracle effects. But my experience with the system has been pretty good. That said, running these simulations locally turned out to be a bad choice. One thousand seasons at 66 or 82 games each takes a while to run. It didn’t take hours. We’re still in the minutes range, but it’s long enough that I had to multitask, lest I fall asleep. Not that I should be shunning sleep at this point. In addition to learning a bit about what to expect from an average hockey team, I learned some of the constraints of my hardware. As good as it is, the next set of simulations may need to be outsourced. Fun With Python I’m not using Perl much outside of work. This may be because the projects I’m working on lend themselves to Python, and one day I’ll resume my affair with Perl. Those projects have touched on more data management than applications development, and I find Python’s API for more useful than Perl’s. One thing I found a little frustrating while undertaking this process was the inaccessibility of statistical tools for Python. I’m very sure that this is not a universal problem; rather, it was probably a one-time issue I was experiencing. Still, as I searched for information on a stats module, I found it was more time consuming than merely designing the few functions I needed. Those functions were taking a list and producing some values: mean, mode, maximum, minimum, medium, standard deviation, sum, z-test, significance level. Thankfully, Python’s object oriented paradigm makes it easy to extent the use of these new tools. I just wish the stats module or NumPy had been a little easier to wrap my head around.

The Method Matters More Than the Choice

2006-05-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

People feel I am too dogmatic. As a reader of my own material, I tend to agree. Still, I think that, with enough exposure, you start to see that there is room for discussion in my arguments. But without that prolonged exposure, the tone seems moralistic, as through the solutions I advocate are more than rational imperatives – as of they’re moral mandates: If you do not accept my view, you are a bad person; an ignorant person. Since I’m unwilling to overhaul how I write or what I write about, I want to throw out a disclaimer: Writing with conviction is not meant to convey a sense of moral or intellectual superiority, because – particularly amongst those who I’m thankful to have read this site – I do not feed either of these things. In fact, I feel some inferiority. I still possess well-woven fibers of the youthful mistakes I made as I came into this league as an 18-year-old. I feel, in a moral sense, I have a lot I can learn. And intellectually, I think we all bring something to the table. Expect me to repeat some form of this disclaimer every four months. I wish such disclaimers were unnecessary, but to people who might not be regulars to Aviator News, the reminder helps. I want to encourage people to disagree with me, to further develop ideas, because without that feedback this process becomes (to reuse a phrase I threw at Andy, while on the phone, about an email I was going to send to another league member) “a self-administered ego-[expletive], which I could do without hitting ‘Send.’” Some things, I can do in private. Since I want to address some feedback to yesterday’s post, all this becomes germane. After mentioning Daniel Robitaille’s advocacy of flat-revenue, he kindly commented, providing some insight into his rationale. You can find that comment here. Let me provide a summary, for this article’s sake: It is impossible to agree or disagree with Daniel’s rationale, since it is founded in his experience with variable revenue. His view is “I didn’t feel the complexity of a variable revenu (sic) system brought anything to my enjoyment of the league.” I’m a fan of variable revenue, so my experience is counter to Daniel’s. That’s about as close as I can come to agreeing or disagreeing: I agree with him that variable revenue did not add to his experience (I’m trusting him on that one), but I disagree that it doesn’t add to the league (a broad, general assertion he never makes). But, agreeing or disagreeing with somebody's personal experience is probably a poor way of looking at that kind of information. Semantic considerations aside, we are left with a situation where two rational people have differing opinions. We could leave it like that, have the knowledge of each other’s views to better our outlook, and move on, but we would be ignoring the most important part of Daniel’s response: the method. While you could infer a more visceral rationale behind Daniel’s view – a “I just don’t like it” factor – that inference would ignore his process for developing his decision, a process which he outlines in his response. In short, Daniel tells us that he has little preference for revenue schemes either way, and in such situations he sides with the solution that is simpler. That which is has less complexity is less prone to errors, including errors of confusion. The revenue schemes do not impact the main part of his teams’ operations: trying to win games. Thus, his main concern is fairness in the financial system; creating a level-playing field. What’s important here is his methodology - four qualities, specifically: the presence of a method, its application, its quality, and the ability to outline it. Many people (RHL-world, or otherwise) don’t stop to think about those things on which they opine. There are too many opinions I give which are formulated before investing the proper amount of thought. And when I do have some thoughts on a topic, preconceptions or ad hoc views, they are often unorganized and applied inappropriately. Scarier, sometimes I don’t have strong feelings on a topic or I’m dealing in a topic beyond my expertise, yet I still provide feedback and try to portray a false erudition. I do this unconsciously, and it embarrasses me in hindsight. But I do it nonetheless. Then there are the times when I’m just firing off opinions with no regard to the big picture, so if you were to ask me about the consequences of an opinion given half-way through a discussion on something I said at the beginning of the conversation, I would draw a blank. I probably would not remember what I said that few minutes before, let alone be able to speak intelligently about it. What ends up happening when I find myself in those situations? I provide more opinions, all of dubious quality. No way I’m developing a method or line-of-thought at that point. I’ve come too far! In writing this article, I started thinking of those four qualities of methods as bases. Maybe that’s because there are four of them. Maybe it’s because, with each of the bases, I have this inclination to stop, think about the method in terms of that base's purpose, and then move on – as if I were running the bases, station-to-station, on a baseball diamond. If you have a good method in forming opinions, you should score a run, having hit all the bases safely. This is why I liked Daniel’s response: it covered all the methodological bases. Still, I don’t want to dwell on Daniel too much. His response is serving as a great exemplar for this article, but it is one response about one issue. I suspect Daniel, like the rest of us, is subject to points of error, presumption and assumption. Maybe he isn’t as suspect to these faults as I am, but I suspect he doesn’t walk on water, either. So, rather than continuing to erect his pedestal, I’d rather to dwell on some consequences of his response, the method, and the bases. I started thinking back to some of the my recent conversations (inside and outside the RHL) and some past debates which have proven to be the most memorable. I found that it has been far easier for me to agree with a differing viewpoint (as Daniel’s is concerning variable revenue) when I respect the process that was undertaken to form that view. Those conversations have been much more structured, far more informative. They don’t necessarily lead to resolutions, but they have interesting externalities: enhancing your respect for the other person; the sharing of knowledge. But it’s not just the process. Process alone means little, and if a counterpart has a process that is lacking, the externalities never appear. So you can’t just have a process. It needs to be a good process. And a good process is defined by the bases: how it’s applied, its quality, the ability to explain the process. I’ve found it impossible not to respect great base running. Martin Baldwin (implicitly) runs the bases well, perhaps one of the reasons why you infrequently see me responding to (or not reading) Martin’s emails. When it comes to people choosing different views and options, the choice turns out to be of less importance than the process a person undertakes in forming their view. If I respect the process, I’m less likely to care about the consequence. But for some issues, like a meal choice, where the effects of the choice are limited (probably inconsequential), I’m not going to care about the antecedents or the consequences. If I take my girlfriend to dinner and she chooses the $40 porterhouse, I’m not going to care about why she made that choice (though I might care about the meat-eating and the health consequences). But when it comes to deciding where we may live or why she wants me to meet her parents, I care deeply about that process. Any issue where there’s either permanence of effects or a large commitment in forming an opinion, I will care about the process. And that’s probably why I tend to be interested in the league’s rules. But, when I think about it, my interest lies not so much in where opinions lie and what the rules are; rather, I’m much more concerned about the path people take to get to their views. User Feedback This whole article came about from a piece of reader feedback. Thanks, Daniel. And thank you also to Mark, whose comment in the same thread will serve as the impetus to an upcoming article. As referenced above, feedback is important. It’s important to cultivating ideas, and it’s important as a characteristic. It’s the only thing I can think of which distinguishes this forum from my journals. And I don’t particularly like my journals. Site Revitalization It’s been a while since I thought about how content was presented on this site, and having posted some more time-consuming pieces in the last two days, I’ve become concerned with the user experience. I’ve already increased the font-size of articles, and I’ll be playing with other aspects of the stylesheet. Some content is going to be moved off this site. One of my major issues with the reports (in not doing them lately) is that the medium in which they are being presented does not suit their content. The reports will be moved somewhere which better suits them, and once that’s done I’ll be able to automate them so their content will be refreshed daily. This type of functionality is suboptimal on Blogger. Once I’ve finished moving and resolving other computing issues (I’m having to give back most of my machines over the next three months, as I leave the job), I will come up with a solution. Additionally, the Hall of Fame, which will have it’s first voting period open in the next week (sometime, depending on game playing) will have to have a dedicated space – a non-Blogger space. I am a little concerned about the Hall of Fame. I think I need to throw some time to it in order for this vote and the first induction class to solidify its place in the league. Only time (voting iterations) will make the Hall of Fame a true part of the league, but I am concerned that the project risks descending to a level of relevance analogous to the HoFs I’ve seen in similar leagues. The way the rules are set up, I don’t know that the HoF will ever be a populous success. I would, however, like it to be a critical success.

User Driven Models

2006-05-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

Beyond a general sector of work , I’m not sure everybody knows what I do for a living. You may know that I work in information technology, a label so broad stroke as to barely be informative. As there’s never been a prior need, I’ve ever talked about the job. But, as it’s pertinent to what I’d like to write today, let me give you some details about what I do. What I Do I work as a web applications developer for UCSD’s Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. Our division serves a variety of projects, mostly clinical trials, by supplying data systems, project management and statistical analysis. The way we acquire business is word-of-mouth: our faculty network within academia to expose our systems to new projects. Everybody who comes to us recounts some version of “We saw your system, and we’re interested.” This modality leads our collaborators to the inevitable attempt to have us modify our systems. They want our product tailored to the needs of their project. This forces a constatnt struggle between two principles: customer service and product integrity. In an ideal world, these two principles would never conflict. Projects would have perfect knowledge of our intentions, and by electing to use our services, they are coming on board with those goals. Implicitly, this acceptance is what happens when you purchase off-the-shelf software. You do not buy Microsoft Office then proceed to email Bill Gates regarding a change you need to Excel. And if you do, you certainly do not expect to get that change implemented (and if you do, you might want to stop reading now and return to your pink-skied world). The luxury of non-responsiveness is something that, being in academia (and not industry), my division does not have. It is often impractical to tell a Ph.D. with a multi-million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health that our system cannot be tailored to the project’s needs. Making this type of stance all the more difficult, we know that the system can be tailored – easily tailored. Sometimes, I bemoan the flexibility of web technologies, scripting languages, and relational databases. It would be nice to be able to, more often, tell projects, “I’m sorry. HTML does not allow for that.” More often than not, HTML does. But since we can rarely plead “can’t do,” we frequently find ourselves diving into customer service. One principle that we’ve been trying to live by, as we reconcile this role of being both developers and customer service providers for an array of projects, is avoiding User Driven Models. Trying to Maintain Your Models You can imagine what I mean by User Driven Model, but let me make one distinction up-front. A model that accepts user definition at the onset can work. And can work very well. If you approach a project with a goal and want user input on how best to achieve that goal, you can create very good models and products. In the my world, however, that’s not possible. It’s impractical to ask a Ph.D. with what configuration Apache should be installed on their project web server. For all technical aspects, the information needs to flow from us to the collaborators. That’s our role. But the control we want to maintain of our systems’ development cannot end where information technology begins. Developing a product for a range of users, product integrity is our number one goal. Our feeling is this: In developing a product with a high degree of integrity, the concerns of the customers will take care of themselves. Or, at least, we will be able to provide services to help users use with a great product in a way that best fits the project’s needs. But if we accept a model driven by one (or a small set of) users, our product becomes less-usable by other collaborators. The system’s integrity is diminished. User Models and the RHL The RHL, over the best seven seasons, has evolved into a User Driven Model, and I think this is a common feature of fantasy hockey leagues. Almost all of them are organized such that the rules reflect what the users want from the league. This development is intuitive (it’s natural to respond to requests, feedback from peers) and makes common sense. There are, however, two aspects of this development which concerns me. Because of these concerns, I don’t think the level to which we have accepted a User Driven Model is healthy for the RHL. Concern: Unwilling Owners The first concern I have is giving too much consideration to unwilling owners: owners who don’t pay attention, are not active, or complain a lot. We have been significantly simplifying the league to deal with this faction. Revenue variation went away. We took away two rounds of the draft. We simplified contracts. And, more influentially, the specter of owner confusion hangs over all rules discussions, most recently evidenced in discussion of the new M contracts. Some of the changes I listed (or omitted) above were good ones. For some of the changes, very good owners fell on the side of the simplification. For example, Daniel Robitaille ended up being an advocate of flat-revenue. So just because you support one (or all) of these changes doesn’t make you an unwilling owner. Unwilling owners are characterized by how they react to the rules that are in place, whatever those rules be. I do not think that Daniel’s involvement in the league is tied to flat-revenue or variable revenue. He adjusts, either way. Likewise, I don’t think Mike Santore or Rob Shore’s involvement was a influenced by any of the rules. They failed to adjust, either way. While these are extreme examples of unwilling owners, there are plenty of current owners who have similar characteristics to Santore and Shore. Those characteristics are consistent with my definition of an unwilling owner. You can see why I might be a little perplexed when unwilling owners get such consideration in rules discussions. These owners would seem as likely to fall out of the league (or be negligent within the league) if we became ambitious with our rules. Even with more complex rules like variable revenue and five round drafts, owners who elected to run their team in a simple way (as unwilling owners seem to do) could do so. The life of the unwilling didn’t change, much. (note: not all owners who run franchises simply are unwilling owners, but all unwilling owners do seem to run franchises simply) Eliminating the complex rules did not benefit the unwilling, but it took some functionality out of the league for the core owners. You have to take your shoes and socks off to count the number of owners who would like a longer draft. People like drafting. Despite this, drafting was curtailed. Likewise, there is a sense that variable revenue added value to the league, though that community is smaller. Feel free to put your socks and shoes back on. Still, the fact that both the drafting and variable revenue communities (membership not exclusive – I’m bringing bagels to the next meeting) are being slighted is at the heart of my second league development concern. Since this concern is a common refrain on this blog, I’ll only spend one paragraph on it. Concern: Integrity of the Model The second concern I have compromising of the integrity of our league’s model. Like the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at UCSD, the RHL has a model, and that model requires a certain level of integrity. As our league continues to give undo consideration to the unwilling owner, we undermine our model, compromising its integrity. You can think of the league as being like an elementary school, trying to get as many students as possible to pass, doing so by changing the curriculum. The thinking is that lower standards will lead to a higher success rate (children passing), but in the process, the goals of the model become circumvented. A better strategy for both the classroom and the league would be to adhere to the model, develop targeted ways of dealing with people who are having trouble (tutoring, league mentoring), and adopt a willingness to move laggards out of the model. For classrooms, if you are unwilling to have a student repeat the grade should they fail, you are going to compromise the education of those around the student. Or you may move that child to a level (the next grade) for which he or she is not prepared. For our league, if we are unwilling to leave owners behind, we will continue to have a watered down league membership - a world of ins and outs. The outs should probably be out. We should not be tailoring our system in consideration of the outs. Solution: Developer Driven Models We need to move back to a developer driven model as a way to reestablish some of the original principles of the league. In this case, the developers are those who are contributing intellectual capital to the league and the active owners who implicitly trust the judgment of that group. This move would not necessitate return to complexity and realism. Not all owners contributing to the league are of like mind on how to move forward. And that’s fine. To me, realism and complexity and the levels we are looking for are issues separate from our development methods. I’m concerned about the model. In terms of the model, we need to start responding to the wants and needs of the league’s core. The consideration we give to the unwilling should be through aid in bringing them into the fold, not adjusting the rest of the league to their tendencies. While this might not make one hundred percent of the league happy, it may make the league a better place for one hundred percent of owners who are a part of its future and development.

A Move to the Northwest

2006-05-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

With the rumored expansion of the RHL into Seattle, there now appear to be two logical stable-mate for San Diego in a Pacific division: the Victoria Cougars and the Seattle Crystals. With Crystal management claiming that they are exploring membership in other league in lieu of a committment to the RHL, it may be too early to forecast RHL16's realignment. But if there are two teams in the Pacific Northwest, San Diego will almost certainly be aligned with them. The remaining members of the division would likely come from the league's Alberta contingent, making a psuedo resurrection of the old Joe Malone Division a possibility. Calgary with Vlad Zhivov and South Edmonton with Paul Myers could join fellow Malone stable owners Duteau (Crystals), Farley (Aviators), and Robitaille (Cougars) in the rebirthed division. If that is the case, you may see Richard Farley finally execute the rumoured relocation of the Aviators, to either the California Bay Area or, as has been whispered privately, to Portland, Oregon. If a team moving into Seattle, Farley might choose to completely revitalize and emerging U.S. Northwest market. Farley could also use the relocation as a sauve for his team's financial problems. Low and cash reserves, the Aviators have had to play modest with the paychecks, trading their best player (Zdeno Chara) this season to avoid giving him an offseason raise. With San Diego's city budget created to avoid bankruptcy, there is no public support on the horizon in San Diego for the Aviators. These questions will all be settled as expanion teams are finalized, locations are announced, and Farley's whims Crystal-ize. For now, possibilities abound.

Email List Explosions Lead to Productive Dialogue

2006-05-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

Pretty the owner who's job keeps him offline during the day. When that man came home and checked him email list night, he found an email explosion. Mark Benvenga's morning posting, The Burning Question, led to a 52-message thread which saw responses from eleven different league members. From this electronic maelstrom, three themes stood out: The Selects Are In Trouble Ryan Slozka's been inadvertently targeting bankruptcy for some time, the stores from conservative spending in his franchise's early seasons being spent as his young, Senator-laden team roster made its way through player contract cycles. Rather than augmenting the escalating salaries the Marian Hossas (team favorites) with bargain-basement players, the Select have spent their money on Joe Sakic, Trevor Linden, and Sheldon Souray while keeping the inflating contracts of Richard Zednik and Milan Hedjuk were not moved. This was a bankruptcy by choice, even if that coice was passive. This isn't Ryan's first salvo towards insolvency. At the beginning of RHL12, Jean Duteau posted this blurp in regards to a Select season-opening loss to the Wicked Ale: "With Giguere out, Essensa becomes the backstop for the Selects. Yikes. Of more fun to watch than Selects scores will be the Selects bankruptcy numbers. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten those yet!" And after those numbers came, the Selects survived. Merely a flesh wound. The Selects are not the first franchise to choose bankruptcy. They have just been the most flagrant and most successful. Possibly the most publicize attack on the solvency line was by Duteau himself who, in an effort to revitalize his own interest in the league, blew out the Westlock Wildcat coffers in unrestricted free agency for RHL9. Towards the end of the year a post season awards preview summarized Duteau's approach: "The Westlock Wildcats rebounded from missing the playoffs last year to have one of the best records in the league this year thanks to their general manager's acquisitions, but that same general manager might have bankrupt the team." And for Duteau, this was the whole point. There is a vital difference between what Duteau elected to do and what Slozka has acquiesced to have happen. Jean-Henri Duteau, fully cognizant of the rules, made an assessment and determined that pushing the Wildcat financial envelope was a viable strategy for his team. Furthermore, he was prepared and aware of the consequences, saying that if he had miscalcuated the the Wildcats went bankrupt, he was prepared to start over per the league rules. But it's clear that Ryan does not know what the implications bankruptcy. Two comments from his statement to the league yesterday underscore preceived possible scenarios which are beyond the rules. Ryan's resigned to his fate, saying " Either way, I accept whatever decision the league issues." There isn't much of a decision, and you would hope a bankrupt team would be conscious of the rules regarding his team's potential dissolution. But even more curious: "At this point, besides Hossa, I would rather start over from scratch, field a useless team, build up 10 million plus surpluses and then actively build a winning team." As if being able to keep Hossa would be his perrogative. And if he wasn't trying to "actively build a winning team" since RHL5, what was he doing? Do You Know Your Rules? While the rulebook seems more cryptic everyday (see this, below), there are some basic tenants about the league which elude some owners. When do we get our money? When do we get charged the luxury tax? What's bankruptcy? It's tempting to say if you're an owner, you should know the rules, but yesterday's dialogue shows how easy it is to blind, not notice one small (undocumented) change, and have the effect on your understanding snowball. A lot of yesterday's dialogue was devoted to clearing up misunderstandings stemming from game-by-game revenue (implemented this preseason) and up-front revenue (the previous season's model, still reflected in the rules). Unless you're team is in financial trouble, this distinction might not matter to you: "I have $4,000,000 in the bank, am going to carry a $26,000,000 payroll, so I don't need to check. I'll be fine." Yesterday's email explosion allowed the league to use it's knowledge-base to address some of these misunderstandings. The Next New Rule Book Version The rule book needs to be updated, and we need to develop some standardized procedures for maintaining the document. Yesterday's discussion brought up five places where the rule book is not up-to-date. With an dispersal, expansion, realignment, redefinition coming this offseason along with the rules overhaul announced two months about, a new rule book will be crutial. But a new rule book won't solve the problem that got us into this situation. Somewhere, the rule book because outdated. When people try to us it, it's value is diminished by the out-of-date information. Even more concerning, some people (as evidenced by Ryan) seem unconscious of the information that's there. We need to develop procedures for maintain the rulebook. I would suggest requiring all new rules to be announced in the context of rule book versioning. This might slow down rule implementations. If so, we need to identify a custodian of the rule book who can dedicate some time to the task. Once those measures are in place, we should start expecting some owners to have a basic level of knowledge regarding the rules. Specifically, not knowing the consequences of bankruptcy is unacceptable for a team prone to overspending. Also, not knowing how much revenue your team earns each year - I don't know how you can properly run a team like that. It shouldn't be too much to expect people to know the league's basic rules. Ultimately, it's was a greata positive for the league to devote the time it did to the discussion. It's valuable to know where the league sits with regard to owner knowledge of the rules. Additionally, raising the profile of bankruptcy during a time where more teams are running low on cash reserves is a good discussion to engage. But most important of the issues is the rule book. Without an updated rule book, it will be more difficult to expect owners to be cognizant of the issues.

Great Effort

2006-05-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

A great effort tonight from the Aviators in Guelph. Eight forward kept it close the whole game, losing a 5-3 decision to the Reapers. It's a little frustrating to have so few games but still come close in these games. You'd almost want to get blown out. But, I think the guys put up a score they can be proud of. And ... we move forward.

In Case You Were Wondering ..

2006-05-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

Yes! Another Aviator forward DID get hurt tonight:

Dagenais 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -1 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 2 2 0 *** Injured for 7 days ***

Rated Goalies

2006-05-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

I still like my idea. Shocked? Neither am I.

Rules list had a 4 message spurt regarding Orange Cone. If we're going to make-up ratings and assign them or Orange Cone, I think we should revisit the idea of creating ratings for all goaltenders who appeared in the AHL for the same season.

I'll need to dig up the numbers, but there is a positive correlation between AHL save percentage and NHL save percentage. But really, that's not even the issue. If we're willing to make up numbers for Orange Cone, why aren't we willing to do the same for real players? Players who are on prospect lists? Players who have evidence of a level of play?

The answer I got to this when I brought it up (around RHL8, I think) was something like "I don't feel comfortable making up/messing with the ratings."

Yet we were able to reconcile Orange Cone?

-rf

Re: Yes!

2006-05-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

> I think so. I don't think we've had an injury-free game in the last > five. IIRC, one of those games was a three injury (the "now every > line's broken" game against TME) and another was a two injury game.

Lovely.

> For some reason, this has a Monty Python feel to it. I imagine a man > walking into a store, getting kicked in the shins. He leaves, comes > back to get kicked in the shins and punched in the gut. And this just > continues, and the man just keeps coming back.

Yes...yes it does.

> > On 5/11/06, Andy Bartalone wrote: >> Are we working on an average of more than one injury per game for the >> last 2 weeks. >> >> >> On Thu, 11 May 2006, Richard Farley wrote: >> >> > Walz 20 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 -1 0 7 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 > 6 >> > 4 >> > *** Injured for 25 days *** >

Every normal man must be tempted, at times to spit on his hands, hoist the skull and crossbones, and begin slitting throats"

- H.L.Menken

Re: Yes!

2006-05-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

I think so. I don't think we've had an injury-free game in the last five. IIRC, one of those games was a three injury (the "now every line's broken" game against TME) and another was a two injury game.

For some reason, this has a Monty Python feel to it. I imagine a man walking into a store, getting kicked in the shins. He leaves, comes back to get kicked in the shins and punched in the gut. And this just continues, and the man just keeps coming back.

On 5/11/06, Andy Bartalone wrote: > Are we working on an average of more than one injury per game for the > last 2 weeks. > > > On Thu, 11 May 2006, Richard Farley wrote: > > > Walz 20 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 -1 0 7 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 6 > > 4 > > *** Injured for 25 days ***

Re: Yes!

2006-05-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

Are we working on an average of more than one injury per game for the last 2 weeks.

On Thu, 11 May 2006, Richard Farley wrote:

> Walz 20 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 -1 0 7 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 6 > 4 > *** Injured for 25 days *** >

Every normal man must be tempted, at times to spit on his hands, hoist the skull and crossbones, and begin slitting throats"

- H.L.Menken

Trainer Fired, Encouraged to Pursue Opportunity with Cougars

2006-05-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

San Diego, CA - The San Diego Aviators have fired their training staff in reaction to an array of recent injuries which have left the Aviators incapable of fielding a full team. After Wes Walz because the eighth injured Aviator, seventh forward, the team let Stanley Bo Tauge and staff know that their services were no longer desired.

The staff of four have been encouraged to purse jobs with the Victoria Cougars, an expansion team for RHL16 which will likely be in the same division as the Aviators.

Yes!

2006-05-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

Walz 20 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 -1 0 7 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 6 4 *** Injured for 25 days ***

Tellqvist To Be Dusted Off

2006-05-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since the Aviators' played back-to-back games, so Freddy Brathwaite, signed last month, has been the Aviators' exclusive netminder. Mikael Tellqvist, acquired from the Waterloo Thundercats at the trade deadline, has played two games, despite his 8-3-2 record on the season. Tonight, with the Aviators hosting the Yellowknife Penetrators, the teams' goalie of the future will get the start, trying to keep a hungry Penetrator crew descending away from a first round bye.

Reports that Brathwaite will be needed as a wing are incorrect. He will be the backup goalie, despite Jeff Cowan, who the Aviators were hoping to have back tonight, still being out of the lineup. With Ed Jovanovski joining the MASH crew, the Aviators will be without seven regulars.

With a win, San Diego will be three up on St. Alberts for the sixth spot, with only three games to play.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

2006-05-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

In a few minutes, you'll see that AVI was able to win tonight despite having only eight heatlhy forwards (four of whom play center exclusively). Jason Botterill scored two goals, San Diego won 3-2, we jumped the Spartans in the standings and are within one game of .500.

But Jovanovski's gone for the year.

Aviator News

I confess!

Moving? Blame (Credit) Daniel!

Sneak Peak: RMHL Ratings; AHL

New Venue: RHL Forums

Aviator Prospect Report

Let's Take a Step Back

Week 2 of Aviator Free Agency: The Storm After the Calm

Auction Reform; Demand Reform; ______ Reform

Realistic Minor Hockey League: Consummation Day

Flying Through Free Agency - First Week at a Glance

Draft Recap Mailbag

RHL16 Draft Review and Evaluation

The RHL Demands Project

A Beginner's Guide to RHL Free Agency (Well, not really)

Aviator Awards: RHL15

The Rebirth of Joe

Mixed Mesages in Turco, Rathje Transactions

Another Luongo Replacement: Aviators to Acquire Goaltender

Dispersal to Expansion

Quick Stop: Recent RHL Happenings

I Demand To Be Treated Unfairly!

Missed It By That Much: Roy and the RHL15 Ballot

Doc Brown, His Dog, and the RHL5 Draft

Rules, From the Gut

One Season of Our Hall of Fame

With the First Selection, of the First Draft ...

Half-a-season of game playing

A Minor League Consequence of Hiatus

And the Winner Is! Aviator News's Guide to the RHL15 Awards

The Team That Never Was: San Diego Aviators' RHL15, In-Review

The Passion of the Bankruptcy

Champions Conference Playoff Preview

Jeff Berliner, New York Purge, Leave RHL

The Average Average Team

The Method Matters More Than the Choice

User Driven Models

A Move to the Northwest

Email List Explosions Lead to Productive Dialogue

Great Effort

In Case You Were Wondering ..

Rated Goalies

Re: Yes!

Re: Yes!

Re: Yes!

Trainer Fired, Encouraged to Pursue Opportunity with Cougars

Yes!

Tellqvist To Be Dusted Off

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

Recommended Reading