Official New EHEC Financial Policy

[Virtual Jarmo]

This is effective immediately, however the contract freeze will remain in play until I return. It's easier that way. So, contracts will be able to be offered beginning February 10.

The Committee of Eastside's Hockey Elite Collide reserve the right to alter, edit, amend, and otherwise change any or all of this financial policy.

I'll be amending the Rulebook once I can copy/paste everything from this thread in to it and get the links working right and all of that other stuff. But, for now, this thread will be stickied, there will be no further discussion on the boards, and all issues with the policy will be brought to the Committee in private. No public postings will be responded to and will be immediately deleted upon being seen by one of us.

Here we go.

Overall Contract Policies
Players can be signed for a maximum of 4 years, 3 years plus an option year. No contracts may be longer than that (with the exception of the Franchise Tag players to be explained further down this post. This does not include free agent offers. With the bidding process, several 4-year bids would lead to plenty of ties and highly-inflated salaries. Free agent offers come with a six-year maximum.

Drafted Player Contracts
Salaries will be done based on draft slot. No options other than a two-way will be included with these contracts. Contracts will be limited to three years, as most ELCs are. All POT booster draftee contracts will include a mandatory $250,000 increase above their slot pay.

The following are the slot bonuses:
1st round: 1-10 = 2.5M; 11-20 = 2M; 21-30 = 1.75M
2nd round: 31-40 = 1.5M; 41-50 = 1.25M; 51-60 = 1M
3rd round: 61-75 = 900k; 76-90 = 850k
4th round: 91-105 = 800k, 106-120 = 750k
5th-7th rounds = 600k

Exhibit 5 Bonuses and Affected Players
Any player who was signed in EHEC at the age of 25 or under will be subject to receiving Exhibit 5 bonuses. This includes the 2010 draft class. The Exhibit 5 bonuses can be found at this link: http://www.nhlscap.com/Exhibit5.htm and unlike the real-life NHL, each bonus will be worth $250,000.

For the 2010 draft class, the bonuses will be capped once the player reaches their draft slot bonus. For the other players, the bonuses will cap at $1,500,000. So a player making $900,000 would have his salary capped at $2,400,000, aka, six bonuses.

Players 27 & Under
Players 27 years of age and under will be subject to a raise based on a percentage scale. The reason for this is two-fold. One, it will help to erase the really cheap contracts that we began with in EHEC and two, to make sure that prospects and young players are getting fair and even market value. The formula will be determined by taking (OF + DF) / 2 to determine an average.

The following are the brackets:

85+ OF/DF average: 25% 5M+; 50% 4M+; 100% 3M-4M; 200% of current contract if under 3M; 300% if under 2M, 500% if under 1M

80-84 OF/DF average: 25% 5M+; 50% 4M+; 100% 3M+; 200% of current contract if under 3M; 250% if under 2M, 400% if under 1M

77-79 bracket: 25% 4M+; 50% 3-4M+; 75% of current contract if under 3M; 150% if under 2M, 300% if under 1M

75-76 bracket: decrease 10% 5M+, decrease 5% 4M+, 25% current contract under 4M; 50% current contract under 3M; 100% under 2M, 250% if under 1M

72-74: decrease 20% 4M+; decrease 10% 3-4M; 25% current contract under 3M; 75% under 2M; 125% under 1M

70-71: decrease 20% 4M+; decrease 20% 3-4M; 30% decrease current contract under 3M; 50% under 2M; 100% under 1M

<70 with one 73+ OF/DF: decrease 40% 4M+; decrease 25% 3-4M; 25% increase 2-3M; 50% under 2M; 100% under 1M

<70: decrease 40% 3M+; decrease 25% 2-3M, less than 2M 0% increase/decrease, less than 1M 25% increase

Players under 60 will receive what they want in-game.

Attribute Bonuses
Specialist Bonus: A specialist bonus is given to a player whose OF or DF are 10 or more points higher than the other category. For example, a 80 OF 65 DF player is considered an "offensive" specialist. Similarly, a 65 OF 80 DF player is considered a "defensive" specialist. These players will receive a $350,000 bonus based off the percentage bracket that they fall in to.
The 80-85+ Scale Bonus
Players whose supplemental attributes (skating, faceoffs, endurance, etc) are 80 or above will also receive a bonus. Players whose attributes fall between 80-84 will receive $100,000 for each attribute. Players whose attributes are 85 or above will receive a $200,000 bonus for each attribute. Players with a consistency above 80 will receive a $250,000 bonus.
The Less-than-65 Devaluation
For each attribute below 65, the player will receive a $100,000 deduction from their base salary.

Players aged 28-31
Players up for contract between the ages of 28-31 will have their salary determined by a board of arbitrators to be chaired by me. I will select two GMs from each conference to handle the process and the one who I determine to be the most impartial will handle the case. Teams will submit a formal request to me via PM to have their player looked at in arbitration. Arbitration proceedings will take place after the season except for special cases involving the salary cap.

The arbitration board, to be contacted privately, will examine similar contracts, production, and other variables to determine a number for a given player. Other variables may include the player's status/importance to the team.

This will be a somewhat objective process, but it mirrors the element of an agent's influence. The idea here is that we can re-regulate some of the contracts that become inflated via the percentage system.

In this case, teams can make a qualifying offer of at least 90% (eg: if an arbitrator decides the player is worth $4,000,000 and the team is willing to offer $3,600,000) and make their player a restricted free agent. If no bids are received in the bidding process that overcome the qualifying offer, the team can accept the RFA Compensation result or sign the player for the qualifying offer amount. If an offer is made above the qualifying offer, the GM will have the option to match the offer or accept the compensation.

If no attempt is made, the player will be a UFA and subject to the bidding process.

Players 32 & over
Players 32 & over will be unrestricted free agents. With the exception being that the team who previously had the player can win the bidding if their total contract offer is no more than 10% cheaper than the winning bid. In other words, if Player X becomes a free agent and the winning bid is 4 years/12M and Team A, his former team, bids 4 years/11M, Team A gets to retain their player. Another example being that Team B offers Player Z a one-year contract worth 2M. Team C offers Player Z a two-year contract worth 1.8M.

For all other instances, players 32 & over are unrestricted and subject to the league's bidding process, including the two bids per team rule and the 12 hour time limit.

Franchise Tag
Players of any age can fall in to the Franchise Tag rule. The Franchise Tag will allow a 25% discount per year for what the player should be receiving. The contract also comes with a no-trade clause that will need to be formally appealed to the league to be removed. If a GM wishes to remove the NTC, they also remove the Franchise Tag. In the event that the player is traded, his salary will be re-adjusted to what it should be, unless he is tagged by the team that just traded for him. The team receiving the player can remove the Franchise Tag from their current player at a 10% salary increase instead of the 25%.

An example being that Player X is 85 OF 80 DF for a 82.5 average. He currently makes $1,500,000 at age 21. Without taking in to account the attribute bonuses, his base salary would need to be $4,500,000. Under the franchise tag, he would be required to have a base salary of $3,375,000. Then the applicable bonuses would be added.

Franchise tag contracts can be anywhere from 6-10 years in length.

Goaltender Contracts
For goaltenders, for the time being, we will use an arbitrator to decide goaltenders. I will look to improve the system. In the short term, I think this is the best solution. I'll be trying to get something better in place when I return in 10 days.

Farm salaries and an AHL Salary Cap
Obviously, with the new pay scale, some guys who belong in the AHL will make above 1.2M. In some instances, a two-way contract would pay them under 1.2M on the farm, so that's fine.

Players on Entry Level Contracts can make whatever and be in the AHL. For other players, the AHL will have a hard salary cap of $12,000,000 excluding the three underagers and be limited to 23 players. This is an average of $600,000 per player. Keep in mind that two-ways lower the base price of the contract. The underaged, over-salaried players will not count against the cap.

NHL Salary Cap
The salary cap for the 2011-2012 season will be announced in April, after we see what happens with these salary raises. Extensions, unlike in the past, will now only be assessed at the start of the next season. So they will not affect the cap for the year that you sign the player.

I'll be creating a FAQ thread now that I have this typed up. If I missed something, just PM it to me. I'll amend the Rulebook after it seems like this post is completely in order.