Elite Hockey Experience

As of earlier today, all unrestricted free agents are now available to receive contract offers! For this portion of free agency, please refer to the list provided on the website, NOT anything shown on the sim client.

Please watch our old UFA tutorial video for instructions of how to use the UFA calculation spreadsheet. The dynamics of this calculator create more fair grounds to sign players instead of always resolving to submit a maximum 4-year term in order to sign a player. If you experience an issue where you are unable to edit the spreadsheet, please contact me immediately. You must use this spreadsheet to determine with calculated contract value to use when submitting your offer!

All UFAs require that you pay a minimum yearly amount equal to or greater than the Fair Market Value salary, though similar to Entry-Level Contracts, you may use a signing bonus to lower a player's yearly base salary to be lower than FMV. For more information regarding the maximum signing bonus you may give, please refer to the CBA.

After the end of each day (9:59 PM PDT, excluding Saturdays), the highest offers for any player will be reviewed and then posted to our website. If the same high offer is on the board for two consecutive days (excluding Saturdays), the player will be signed. Additionally, there will be a random 5% chance that a player will accept the highest offer given to them immediately at the end of that day. If you wish to submit a raise on the highest posted offer, the calculated contract value must increase at least 10% for the new offer to be valid.

When you are ready to submit your contract offers, please submit them through the E-MAIL listed in the UFA video. The subject line MUST include the player name and calculated contract value for an offer to be valid! The message inside must include the term, salary, signing bonus, and whether a one-way or two-way contract. If it is not in this exact format, your offer will be considered as voided and ignored!

Any corrections you need to make must be done on the same processing day or your offer will be considered as-is. If you need to make a correction, please send an additional e-mail in the same format you would for any other offer, with ***CORRECTION*** at the END of your subject line.

Once a UFA has ACCEPTED your offer, please use the sim client to sign him to the new contract.


Reminders:
*You may not trade a recently-signed unrestricted free agent until after your 20th regular season game has been completed!
*You may not submit an NHL or two-way contract offer if you have the maximum 51 total active players on your roster at any time.
*You may not submit an NHL or two-way contract offer to a UFA goaltender if you already have 6 or more goalies on your active roster, with the exception of signing one goalie to an AHL contract.


The first processing night will be Friday night. Expect that results will be post very, very late, since there will be a lot to go through.


PLEASE ASK ANY QUESTIONS in this thread!

Soooooo.... Just got done running the 5% chance of a signing. There were four maximum offers for Alex Ovechkin today. In the event of any tie, each of teams involved gets an opportunity at the 5% lottery, in order of when they were submitted. Had none of the teams hit 5%, there would have been an additional closed bidding process for the teams involved. However...

Stars did not hit.
Blackhawks did not hit.
Capitals did not hit.
Golden Knights..... 4.

Needless to say, those of us in the Discord voice channel were floored by this! The biggest name is off the market.

In total, there were 6 players who hit the 5% for Day 1. You can view the information about all leading and winning offers by clicking the link on the UFA page.

For those of you who signed players on Day 0 or Day 1, please send in the deals through the sim client if you can.

The next processing will be on Sunday night, since Saturdays are normally not a processing day.

So, are we just ignoring the CBA now?

I have planned my strategy for my team with Ovechkin, Burns and Josi hitting Unrestricted Free Agency this offseason for over a year now based on how the CBA is written regarding Free Agency in general and Day 0 offers specifically. This is why I chose to franchise Josi and protect Ovechkin in the expansion draft even though he was a pending UFA.

These two snippets I took directly from the CBA are the key points:

Image #1


Image #2


Now the only thing mentioned in the CBA references TCV. Total Contract Value. My offer to Ovechkin was 4 years at $10,500,000 per with a $12,600,000 signing bonus. A true max offer with a TCV of $54,600,000. The other offers received for him were for 3 years and a TCV of $40,950,000. The CCV for both these offers would be an identical match due to Day 0 calculations.

I have been told that because I can give a max offer with Day 0 rights, that a 3 year would be considered a match as far as TCV. Technically any of these teams could have offered a 4 year max TCV offer, but they all chose to offer 3 year contracts to maximize CCV. It would seem based on the CBA, that they should have not worried about CCV for a max offer and focused on TCV if they wanted the best offer.

So even if I give the benefit of the doubt and proceed with the thought that the CBA should read CCV instead of TCV, then the other 3 offers matched my offer. Based on Image #1 from the CBA, it states in the event that multiple teams make an offer of equal TCV, then the player will be awarded to their previous team. Based on Image #2 specific to Day 0 bids, if there is no valid offer with a HIGHER TCV, then he will accept the original offer. By definition a tying or matching offer is not HIGHER.

Now, I understand if the language in the CBA related to a scenario such as this one needs to be updated for future instances. However, all we as GMs can go by is what is written in the CBA as is. We cannot be expected to know the “intent” or “meaning” behind every rule. We have asked for literally years for parts of the CBA to be clarified and worded better to avoid possible issues.

I hereby officially petition the Commissioner and Directors of the EHE to review this case and based on the information I have provided, award Alex Ovechkin to the Dallas Stars based on how the CBA is written.

I'd like to address Dan's second point first and then come back to the first one.

You guys asked for accommodations to be made for teams to have a shot at being able to re-sign your own free agents outside of using franchise tags. That's why Day 0 offers became a reality, for example. The point of you guys being given the opportunity to sign a player to a fourth year at the CCV value of a three-year contract was to mimic NHL teams' ability to sign their own UFAs to 8-year contract extensions when the open market caps at 7 years.

There's no argument with Dan about how the rules currently state what they state. However, this is too much. It's literally trap-dooring your way into a third franchise tag, without any controls for it. The point of open-market free agency is that it's the open market. Any team has and should have the ability to sign any unowned player. Those rights are taken away the moment someone comes in and throws out a maximum offer to his former player that no one else has the ability to match because that 4th year allows him to spend $1 more in signing bonus. It doesn't work like that and I'm not allowing it. That was never the intention of this concept.

I don't consider it malicious what Dan intended to do. He opted to exercise the language of the CBA. However, I informed Dan earlier in the week (as well as Doug and Eric) that for a maximum offer, the additional signing bonus allowed if a team has the ability to offer a four-year term will not be accounted for. The highest CCV allowed for Alex Ovechkin is $11,576,250, based off the maximum three-year salary and signing bonus. The idea was that these same terms would carry into a fourth year, with no additional monetary increase. So this is why Dan's offer was considered as equal to the offers made by other teams and Dan did properly submit the offer as $11,576,250.



Now to focus on the first point about what it says in the beginning of the Free Agency section of the CBA:

In the event that multiple teams make an offer to a player of equal TCV, he will be awarded to the player's previous team (if applicable), with the next tie-breaker favoring the team of lowest point standing in the prior season.

Let's review the process of how UFAs sign contracts in EHE. If a player receives an offer and then the next day, does not receive a higher one, that player will sign. In the event of multiple offers with a matching CCV, both of those offers are considered as leading on that day. Only if no other higher valid offers are received on the next day, then it goes to a tie-breaker scenario as you described, where the previous team would win the first tie-breaker. (Second tie-breaker has been random selection since 2016. That needs to be corrected.)

In Ovechkin's matter, there were four tying offers, as described earlier. Under typical circumstances, we would wait another day to see if anyone makes a higher offer. In this case, it could not be possible! Therefore because this is an extraordinary circumstance, we make an exception to the maximum salary rule and allow bidding to continue only for those four teams involved. Just because the offers hit the maximum doesn't outright end the bidding. This precedence has been set in 2018 with Drew Doughty and Patrice Bergeron.

Most of that last paragraph doesn't matter though because of what occurred last night. Remember that at the end of each day, there is a 5% chance that the player will automatically sign the lead offer they have received before the next day begins. When there are multiple lead offers for the player, all of the offers have the opportunity to hit this 5%, which starts in priority of which they were received. (You could argue that the previous owning team should get the priority but either way, that was Dallas.) Regardless of whether Ovechkin would have been in typical or extraordinary circumstances, his offers still had to go through the 5% lottery.

Dallas had the first opportunity at this and missed. Chicago submitted their offer second and had the second opportunity and missed. Washington was third and missed. The last tying offer sent in was by Vegas and it shockingly hit. Had this missed, these four teams would have moved into the "exceptional" bidding round described earlier.

I’ll be short and sweet on my response. You underline the word equal. The CBA uses the word higher. By definition equal is not higher.

Then this transitions into my area of concern regarding the 5% roll - as that was not done in the case of Doughty/Bergeron, or was not mentioned if it had been done (I've double-checked the forum, emails, and Discord and did not find any mention of 5% rolls for either).

The last precedence was the Doughty/Bergeron situation which states clearly here that things go straight to exceptional:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=28&p=10976&hilit=doughty#p10976

BlackhawksGM wrote: ↑

Sat. Dec. 04, 2021 5:34 pm

(I've double-checked the forum, emails, and Discord and did not find any mention of 5% rolls for either).

Why would there be? They didn't hit 5%. I'm not wasting my time writing out results of who didn't hit 5%.

DallasDan wrote: ↑

Sat. Dec. 04, 2021 5:32 pm

You underline the word equal. The CBA uses the word higher. By definition equal is not higher.

There literally cannot be a higher offer than the maximum on the standard open market. I already explained that.


***************************************************

Now then, one correction has been made to the UFA list. Alec Martinez is off the board and signed with the Chicago Blackhawks because he did not receive an higher offer from another team when it was still possible for someone to do so. This is not the same as Ovechkin, which as I've repeatedly said, could not receive any higher offer than the maximum.

Kevin wrote: ↑

Sat. Dec. 04, 2021 6:19 pm

BlackhawksGM wrote: ↑

Sat. Dec. 04, 2021 5:34 pm

(I've double-checked the forum, emails, and Discord and did not find any mention of 5% rolls for either).

Why would there be? They didn't hit 5%. I'm not wasting my time writing out results of who didn't hit 5%.

There was never a mention there were any 5% rolls on either Doughty or Bergeron - we went straight into 'exceptional' status, at least on Doughty.

I didn't ask for a listing of all rolls - more or less, was Doughty given the 5% roll? Because if he was, that was never mentioned anywhere.

That’s literally my whole point. He couldn’t receive HIGHER. And that is the term used in the CBA.

And what about my point that technically any of these teams could have offered 4 year max to max out TCV, but they all chose to max out CCV by offering 3 years. The CBA is clear that TCV is what matters in this scenario.

Why is the CBA not being followed?!?

This just once again shows the CBA must be updated. We need one central point of truth here. There are so many league processes that are not in there, and expecting people to go back and refer to old forum posts to understand how a crucial activity will work is unacceptable. At the very least, we should have all been informed how the process for Ovechkin would work through a forum post before free agency even started, because we all knew he would receive multiple max offers. Kevin, you said you had a conversation with Dan, Eric, and Doug about this process, but that still leaves a lot of GMs in the dark, especially new ones that weren’t around for similar situations.

As for Thomas’ point, if there were indeed 5% rolls for Doughty and Bergeron then that case is closed as far as I’m concerned, other than again updating the CBA to revels t how the process works so everyone knows ahead of time.

I’m not trying to pile on here. I simply love this league and hate seeing arguments take place and people get upset over things that could have been solved simply by properly communicating league processes to GMs. And I’m not the only one that feels this way Kevin. I have received many complaints about the lack of communication that takes place here. This isn’t meant to be taken with any disrespect. I think we can all agree that this is the best sim league around. And that’s why I bring up these concerns, because I care about this league and want to see it thrive.