WAYS TO KEEP OR RE-SIGN A PLAYER STARTING IN 2018 OFFSEASON:

There will be a "keeper cap" of $100 to be able to re-sign players already on your roster. Playoff teams have a minimum cap of $25 while non-playoff teams have no minimum for keepers. This will change the previous setup where there were no limits to how many players you could retain.

Contract types:

• Guaranteed Contract (GC): Up to four years in length, this contract involves very moderate increases per season. However, if released, the franchise incurs a salary cap penalty each year for the life of the contract. Details are listed below.
• Non-Guaranteed Contract (NGC): Up to four years in length, this contract involves higher increases per season than the GC. The plus side is that the player can be released at any time with no obligation to the franchise. You cannot switch a player in the last year of an NGC (4th year) to an Option Year Contract. You can do it in years 2 and 3, but not the 4th (and final) year.
• Option Year Contract (OPT): This is a one year guaranteed contract where the player's salary is frozen. However, after that one season, the player earns unrestricted free agency and becomes draft eligible again, available for any team to bid on him in the annual HAC Auction.
• Restricted Free Agency (RFA): Starting in the 2018 offseason, each franchise, in the offseason, will be able to grant one player RFA. This player will not count towards that franchise's keeper cap. RFA will commence before keepers are declared and the RFA period will last for two weeks.

KEEPER SYSTEM IN AUCTION FORMAT

HAC owners voted to install a four year maximum length for a contract. This does not include the first year of acquiring a player, either through the auction or as a free agent, when that player does not have a contract. It only applies once the player is a keeper. Then, that player can be retained for a maximum of four more years before becoming a free agent or restricted free agent.

With the non-guaranteed contract for a player, that player's cap figure would only affect the very next season, as there is no penalty to release that player. For a guaranteed contract, however, this would affect the franchise's cap for the life of the contract. In years 2 or 3 of a non-guaranteed contract, an owner could switch to a guaranteed contract to lower the cost of the contract.

These are the cap penalties for releasing a player on a GC:

• 100% in the 1st year
• 50% in the 2nd year
• 25% in the 3rd year
• 10% in the 4th year
• Penalties will round up. So, in the event a player is released who has a $9 salary on a two year GC, the franchise will be assessed a $9 hit on their cap in that first year of the contract. In the second year, they would be assessed an $5 hit ($10 x 50% = $5.00).

RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY (RFA):

This will be a new program in the HAC to allow owners more flexibility with keepers. RFA would be a two week long process. You can only grant one player RFA during a non-guaranteed contract or a player not on a contract to try to lower the player's salary. An owner cannot grant a player RFA while on a guaranteed contract or Option Year. Otherwise, an owner can use HAC Coins to buy the right to offer RFA to another player.

Other owners will have two weeks to bid on the RFA players. If no other owner bids on a player, then the original owner would get the player back on a discount. If, at the end of the week, there was a bid on a player higher than the starting RFA salary, then the original owner would have a choice: match the highest bid for the player, or let the player go to the high bidding franchise.

Click here for more details about Restricted Free Agency

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