Rules
OVERVIEW
The CLH is a very realistic, hockey "keeper" league. There are currently ten teams in the league; and the top four teams will make the playoffs with 4th place playing 1st place team and 2nd vs 3rd places will also be playing each other in the semi finals. The pool format is head to head in the regular season and in the playoffs. The regular season will be an 81 game schedule much like the nhl (in 2012-2013 it will be a shortened season due to the lock-out). The playoffs are a best of seven series. The winner of a game is the team whose starting players accumulated the most combined points for that game day. Every year the regular season schedule will be posted on the site and for the playoff game days check the 'Playoff Schedule' link.
GAME PLAY AND SCORING
REGULAR SEASON STANDINGS
If standings are tied up between teams at the end of the CLH season the following will determine the tiebreak:
Total Wins in the standings (team with most wins)
Head to head points
Head to head best GF and GA
Team goals (adding up all the goals from the current starters on the two teams)
Defence points (adding up all the defence points from the current starters on the two teams)
Defence goals (adding up all the defence goals from the current starters on the two teams)
REGULAR SEASON AND PLAYOFFS
Game Tie Breaking Procedure
If a game goes to a tie, the following, in order are the tie break procedures:
Team goals
Defence points
Defence goals
Least number of players playing in the CLH game (not including goalies)
Most number of defensemen playing
If a team loses a regular season game by one point or less. They got one point in the standings for an OTL.
If a game is still tied after the tie breakers, both teams are awarded two points.
Game Result Disputes
You have 24 hours to dispute any games score, after 24 hours the score is final.
GAME SCORING
Point allocations:
Goals = 1
Assist = 1
Goalie Win = 1.5
Shutout = +1.5
So if Team A's players get 8 points in total for that game day and Team B's players get 7, then Team A gets 2 points in the standings for the win while Team B gets 1 point in the standings for an OTL.
SCHEDULE
Season
Each year, the schedule will be written and announced by the CLH Executives and Commissioners. It is determined based on the release of the upcoming NHL season schedule.
Win = 2 points, L = 0 points, OTL = 1 point
Playoffs
Approximately the last six weeks of the NHL regular season.
TEAM/PLAYERS; CONTRACTS/SIGNING
This league is unique in that players can be kept from season to season just like in the NHL however, when a player's contract ends, you will need to give them a raise to keep him (refer to 'Salaries and Cap Structure' section).
YOUR TEAM
Your CLH team requires 20 players on its active roster.
12 forwards
6 defensemen
2 goalies
THE FARM TEAM
You have the option of stock piling more players as there is also a farm team where you can call up players in case of injuries or poor performance.
Defensemen can be called up to replace forwards, but not vica-versa. For example, if you have 12 forwards on your team only, you may call up a seventh defenseman to replace an injured forward, just to fill the roster spot. If you have only six defensemen and one gets injured, you have no option but to leave the roster spot vacant or acquire a defenseman. Furthermore, same rules apply for having only two goaltenders.
There is no player limit for the farm team but the full salaries of players are to be paid while they are on the farm, unless a special circumstance (player out for the season or are not playing in North America).
You may bring up your farm team players to the pro-team at any time, however, if you're over the limit of 20 players then you must send down a player which may require a player to be placed on waivers.
If your pro-team is not at its 20 man limit, the farm player may move into an empty spot, or replace someone else.
PLAYER CONTRACTS/SALARIES AND INACTIVE LISTS
Inactive player can be made Frozen
In other words, players who are considered inactive can be placed on the Frozen List (FL) and their salaries do not count towards the salary cap.
Players eligible for 'FL' include:
Players signed but playing in the European Leagues (SEL/KHL/etc.)
Players injured for the season according to a credited source such as TSN
Considered 'inactive' in hockey (suspensions do not apply)
Players in the WHL/OHL/QMHL and leagues lower
Retired players are defined by the National Hockey League. Retired players automatically come off your roster and thus the salary for the player do not count towards your cap.
AHL players are paid full CLH salaries and count toward the salary cap at a full rate.
When placed on FL, that player cannot play on any CLH team for the remainder of that same season.
SALARIES
Salaries for the CLH drafted players are real-life NHL salaries (Base Salary) as listed on the www.nhlnumbers.com or http://capgeek.com websites. The CLH contract will be the same as the player’s contract for the upcoming nhl season. If the player does not have an NHL contract (being restricted or unrestricted free agents), their CLH contract will be their nhl season salary last year. If they had no nhl salary last season either (ie: Morozov) then they will get a 1 million dollar salary.
For example, if Jeff Tambellini just signed a contract worth 900K in his first year, 900K in his second year, and 810K in his third year. His CLH contract salary is then, $900,000 (his first year salary) for the next however many years (drafted players are always 2 yrs).
Rookie players who never had any previous NHL contracts are paid according to their original CLH draft round:
1st round - $850,000
2nd round - $750,000
3rd round - $650,000
4th round - $550,000
Free Agent signed salaries are decided by the bidding process.
Contract Length
A CLH contract will be anywhere from 1-3 years in length. A player drafted will be signed for two years, if signed as a free agent the managers has a choice on the length.
RESIGNING PLAYERS
When a player’s contract expires, a team can resign the player or let their contract expire, allowing them to become a CLH Free Agent (CLH UFA). If choosing to resign, the compensation the player receives is calculated as per the official CLH Salary Table. Any player, at any age can be resigned by the team who owns the contract. No resigns can take place during the regular season or playoffs.
CONTRACT RELEASES & BUYOUTS
At any point in the year, CLH teams can buyout contracts of their owned contracts. Once a player is bought out, the team will have to pay half of the players salary each year remaining of the contract. This counts as a salary on the roster against the salary cap.
In order to buyout a player during the season, that player must have cleared waivers first. A player cannot be brought back into the team if they were already bought out. They would become players to be drafted again or signed as free agents at the beginning of the next draft or free agency.
TRANSACTIONS
All roster changes must be announced by 11:00pm Pacific time the day before each game day and must be reported to the forum to be official. You can't bring a player in while a game is in process even though it is a new day.
Many CLH games are two days in length (ie. CLH game may be one day to many days in length). A manager cannot add players after the first day for the second day. The roster move will only take affect after that CLH game ended. It can be made for the for the CLH next game only.
In the playoffs a team can only make five transactions per series and a maximum three per game day.
If a player is traded by a team, that player cannot come back to the same team via trade from ANY team for 12 month. So for example a team traded Crosby in January 2014, that team cannot get Crosby back by trading for him from any team. Only January 2015 could that team again get Crosby in a trade. If Crosby is traded in May 2015 then the same team cannot trade back for him until May 2016.
TRADING TRANSACTIONS
All types of trades are allowed in the CLH. The trade components include:
Players
Dispersal Draft Picks
Waiver Draft (1st round picks)
Salary Cap space (current season ONLY)
A team in a single season is only allowed to acquire a total of 5 mil dollars difference of additional cap space in total. Teams can only trade away a maximum of 5 mil dollars difference of cap space in total for a single season.
For example: A team has a cap space of 64.3m (this cap includes any awarded cap space from the Gretzky cup and/or the 2.5m cap added at the start of the season). Then all teams must stay in the range of 69.3mil to 59.3mil (+5 million from the team cap, to -5mil of the team cap)
Note that you may only trade dispersal draft picks up to two drafts into the future and waiver draft picks only in the year of the draft taking place.
More than two teams can be involved in one trade.
Any trade will be accepted, however, if CLH Executives feel a specific team is consistently making poor trades for themselves, hurting the competitive level of the league, then a penalty will be handed out. The GM of this team could be removed from the league. Obviously there are no penalties for making good trades but please be truthful about player information and respectful to the other managers.
A trade becomes official when a post in the transactions thread (located on the forum) is made by one of the teams followed by the other team(s) accepting. If a GM is unable to reach the CLH forum for some reason, they can entrust another GM to accept the trade on their behalf or let any of the CLH Executives accept.
If Teams trading players or assets for nothing (traded for 150k cap or less) in return or what is deemed a severely under market value trade then these trades will be rejected by the league. Should a team want to trade a player for nothing in return, this player must first be placed on waivers, giving all other teams a chance to claim this player within the 24 hour window.
Any player currently on waivers cannot be traded.
Like mentioned before, any player who is traded after December 31st cannot return to their original team they were traded from via trade until January 1 of the following year.
Trading with the same one manager on the great majority times is not prefered. If these trades tend to be one-sided there would be a warning from the Board and if another such trade is again made, the trade may be voided.
WAIVERS
Any player can be placed on waivers (this needs to be posted in the forum). When a player is on the waiver wire, any team in the league may select that player to their own team without any compensation. The new team is then responsible for that player’s contract and must place the player on their pro team initially (for at least one game), moving someone off their roster to clear up a roster space if need be.
To select a player off the waiver wire, a post must be made within the transaction thread to officially claim.
Disputes
Should there be a waiver dispute (more than one team tries to claim the same player from waivers within 24 hours), the team lowest in the CLH standings at that point in the season will receive the player. During the off-season, the team who was lowest in standings at the end of the previous season will receive the player. -UPDATED 05/08/12- Any expansion team is assumed to be the same priority as the lowest place team from the previous season.
Length
Players are on the waiver wire for 24 hours and if successfully clearing, they return to the team’s farm club.
Exemptions
Players who are 23 years of age and under are exempt from waivers unless manually placed on waivers by the GM.
The first 14 days of the season are known as the ‘waiver free period’. There are no waivers unless a player is manually waived in the CLH playoffs.
PLAYER TRANSACTIONS
Any players demoted to the farm will be ineligible to play for the pro-team again for the time period of 14 days during the regular season and 10 days during the playoffs. At the start of the playoffs, all ineligibility will be reduced by one third (a player who was ineligible for 12 days would have his ineligibility reduced to 8 days).
INJURED RESERVE
Should a player on a CLH team get injured, they may be placed on the Injured Reserve (IR) list. The CLH GM is responsible for providing a credible link when posting the injury update on the forum. A credible link is: tsn.ca, nhl.com, rotoworld.com, espn.com, slam.ca, yahoo.com, cbc.ca. This way, teams do not have to waive a player to the farm to bring a healthy player to the roster spot. When placed on IR, the player is on the list for 21 days at the least (14 days in the playoffs). After 21 days, a CLH team can then move the player back onto the pro-team (after clearing a roster spot) or send the player to the minors, after waiving the player or skipping waivers if they are exempt from the waiver wire. Indefinite leave players/goalies can be put on IR by the GM.
NEW FOR THE 2012-2013 SEASON:
If a team recalls a player from the injured list earlier than the 21 days then that team will receive a warning. If they do so a second time, then they will lose their most up coming 4th round pick that they have available, if they do it a third time they will lose a 3rd round pick and so on.
GM’s cannot intentionally keep healthy players on the IR list. CLH Executives will send out a one week warning and the player will be automatically placed on waivers should the team not act on these warnings during the week period. If the player is not claimed, they return to the team’s farm.
CAP STRUCTURE AND FINANCES
THE CAP STRUCTURE
In every CLH off-season, the specific salary cap will be announced (this will be ratified by the CLH Executive Team each year). Usually, the CLH will match what the NHL makes their official cap.
If a team goes over the cap at any point during the season or playoffs, the penalty will be that the team will not receive any points until the salary is below the cap and they are not be eligible for the top three overall picks of the first round in the upcoming dispersal draft if they didn't fix the problem after seven days.
***After the first week that the regular season starts, all teams with the condition that they are under the cap at that time will receive an addition 2.5 mil cap room for trading. This cap space is only good until the end of the season.
TEAM FINANCIALS
Financial Disputes
If you question the players salary which was assigned, please contact the CLH executive in the forum. CLH Executives will look into it.
FREE AGENCY AND DRAFTS
FREE AGENCY
FREE AGENCY WILL BE AT AN ASSIGNED TIME IN THE OFF SEASON
Any player who is not owned by a CLH team and have played at least ten NHL games during one season are eligible to be signed as a free agent in the CLH. Any CLH team may sign these players without surrendering any compensation.
Free Agency is done through a bidding process. Teams will bid on a free agent and the team who bids the highest receives the player after the 24 hour clock runs out without another bid taking place.
During the Free Agency bidding period, no players can be bought out.
Bidding starts at $450,000 contracts for players. To beat a previous bid, teams must raise the contract by $100,000 otherwise the bid is disqualified. Any player won in free agency cannot be bought out until after the first CLH game is complete for the upcoming season.
The length of the contract must be announced by the team following their successful signing (winning bid).
DISPERSAL DRAFT
The Dispersal Draft takes place at the beginning of every off-season. Absolutely any player who is not currently signed to a CLH team contract is eligible to be drafted. The only players who are not eligible to be drafted in the Dispersal Draft are players who have not yet reached their NHL draft year.
All players drafted will be signed to two year contracts regardless.
(Note: this does not apply to the 2011 – 2012 season as there will be a roster draft conducted instead).
Length
The Dispersal Draft is four rounds.
Draft Order
The first four overall draft selections are determined via a lottery system. The participants of the lottery are those four teams who fail to make the playoffs that year.
The original team order of picks 1-10 remains the same throughout all four rounds of the draft.
Lottery System
The 10th place team receives 29% of winning the draft lottery
The 9th place team receives 24% of winning the draft lottery
The 8th place team receives 19% of winning the draft lottery
The 7th place team receives 14% of winning the draft lottery
The 6th place team receives 10% of winning the draft lottery
The 5th place team receives 4% of winning the draft lottery
In the event of expansion, each new team would get the same amount of bingo balls as the last place team from last season.
The 7th overall pick goes to the team who finishes 3rd in the playoffs. This way the match for 3rd place means more.
The 8th overall pick goes to the team that finished 4th.
The 9th overall pick goes to the 2nd place
The 10th overall pick goes to the champion
WAIVER DRAFT
Before the start of every regular season, the Waiver Draft takes place in the month of September. Any player who is not protected by his CLH team will be available to select by other CLH teams, at no compensation to the players previous team. (Note: this does not apply to the 2011 – 2012 season as there will be a roster draft conducted instead).
When and if a team makes a selection, they must expose a player that they previously had protected. CLH teams are NOT required to make a selection in any round of the Waiver Draft. They can simply ‘pass’.
The order of the draft is the reverse order of how CLH teams finished by standings in the previous season (same order as the dispersal draft). It will not be a snake order draft.
The draft continues as long as there is at least one selection made in every round. If a team have passed in a round, that team is ineligible to make any further selections in the waiver draft.
CLH teams will be able to protect:
18 skaters (either defence or forward)
2 goaltenders
Auto-Protected players include any player that have two or less years of NHL experience. One year consists of a player playing at least 10 games in the regular season.
Any players not protected or auto-protected are exposed and free to select to other teams in the Waiver Draft.
A team can lose one goalie and three skaters total; than the amount that they selected in the Waiver Draft. If and when your CLH team claims a player, the number of total players that can be lost goes up by one. In order to lose more than one goalie, the team must have selected at least one goalie.
If a team loses a player who should have been auto-protected, the following rules apply:
If the error is noticed less than a full round later, the clock returns back to the pick in question and such team is forced to re-pick or pass. They will have very limited time.
If the error is noticed full round later, the team may request the ineligible player back, but must sacrifice a waiver draft pick (one round higher) in the following year as compensation to the team that took the ineligible player. If the ineligible player was taken in the 1st round, then the compensation becomes a 1st and 2nd round pick in the next Waiver Draft.
If the error is noticed once the season begins, any pick is irreversible.
EXPANSION DRAFT (IF APPLICABLE)
If there are expansion teams coming into our league then the expansion draft will be part of the waiver draft. However, only 14 players are protected (with the exception of auto-protected players) for the expansion draft. Expansion teams can draft players for as long as they wish until there are no players left to select. If a team have passed in a round, that team is ineligible to make any further selections in the expansion draft.
NEW GM/MANAGERS
All new managers are not allowed to trade any first round picks that they own or any players they have selected in the first round for one season. All new managers will have their trades reviewed by the league before the trade is made official for one season. The trade review process is listed below.
DISPUTES AND AWARDS
OFFICIAL APPEALS AND DISPUTES
If a CLH GM feels there has been an error in any situation or have a complaint, they must file an official appeal by reporting to the CLH Executives. Should there be a dispute about points leading to a different result in a season or playoff game, it can be posted in the results thread of that season. Any questions about rules or league concerns must be officially reported to the CLH Executives.
NEW GM/MANAGERS TRADE REVIEWS
1 year veto/change/review of trades for new GMs.
voting rule on a contested trade (voting done by board members only):
parties involved in the deal cannot vote.
vote trade as either fair or unfair.
if 100% vote as unfair = trade vetoed.
If ( less than 100% unfair vote ) AND ( unfair vote wins (50% of votes or more for unfair = win) ), then the trade will be updated with regards to the reasoning of the two parties, updated trade offer is sent to both teams (ONLY ONCE IS THIS UPDATE DONE) in the deal. If either team rejects the deal then it is vetoed. If accepted by both teams then the trade proceeds.
if 50% vote is to the unfair side, then the unfair vote will win. (This means to review a trade, vote needs to be 50% or more)
If fair vote is majority (51% or more of votes) then trade will proceed as is.
A trade can only be disputed once.
A Veto will require the board to properly justify their reasoning for the veto.
A Veto does NOT mean the players involved cannot be traded, but a trade proposal which considers both teams purposes needs to be made.