RFA Changes 2023
Aug 24, 2022 15:26:19 GMT -5
Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, and 10 more like this
Post by Philadelphia Flyers on Aug 24, 2022 15:26:19 GMT -5
The Virtual Hockey League, starting in 2023, will be completely abolishing RFA negotiations.
Between RFA and UFA negotiations, the staff conducted a total of 192 negotiations in 2019, 203 negotiations in 2020, and 232 negotiations in 2021. Simply put, the volume of negotiations and working throughout the calendar year was / is causing burnout amongst the staff. This is what leads to contract offers being untouched for weeks-to-months, and leaves GMs in limbo regarding the future financial outlook of their team. This is not fair to the rest of the league, that also puts a lot of time and effort into the negotiation process. The current system simply isn't sustainable, and we could not continue to operate it without risking possible collapse of the league itself.
This new system will completely eliminate RFA negotiations from the VHL. That means, that after this off-season, GMs will never send another RFA negotiation again.
So how will we sign our RFAs?
We are introducing a NEW RFA Signing Grid, and there is one for skaters and one for goalies. Let’s cut to the chase, here is the new RFA Signing Grid:
A little confused on how it works? Here, I’ll use Jack Hughes as an example. Jack Hughes is rated 79. So in order to sign him, I have to see which column he fits under, which is the 71-79 column. If he were rated 71, he would have to sign to $1,500,000 – However, in his case, he is rated 79. So I take the base salary of that column ($1,500,000 + $750,000 x 8) because he is 8 OV pts higher than 71 so I have to add an additional $750,000 per OV pt. Therefore his salary would be $7,500,000.
Now we understand that GMs may not want to sign every one of their young up and coming players to their full contractual worth, we understand that teams may still want the option to bridge deal their players for either cap or other reasons.
So we are offering a bridge scale contract application, BUT it only applies to skaters rated 76 and under and for goaltenders 80 and under. This is to prevent teams from signing all of their proven, elite level players to cost friendly bridge deal contracts. Therefore, the stars and elite players will always be paid their full value.
RFA Bridge Scale
Let’s continue to use Jack Hughes as an example for purpose of this exercise, although to clarify, he is NOT eligible for the bridge scale as he is rated above 76 OV.
Jack Hughes contract according to the RFA Signing Grid is $7,500,000
So IF he were eligible for the bridge scale, he would sign to the following contracts based on how many years he signed for.
5 Years (100%) – $7,500,000
4 Years (91.75%) - $6,881,250
3 Years (83.5%) - $6,262,500
2 Years (75.25%) - $5,643,750
1 Year (67%) - $5,025,000
So if I signed Jack Hughes to a 2 year deal, for example, he would sign the bridge deal of 2 years @ $5,643,750 per year.
Example aside, Jack Hughes is rated 79, he is rated over the 76 OV threshold eligible for the bridge scale, so no matter how many years I want to sign Hughes for, he is locked in at $7,500,000 no matter what. As stated earlier, this is to prevent teams from bridge scaling and signing all of their proven star players to cap friendly deals.
Additionally, if a players bridge deal makes their salary scale under the $1,000,000 one-way contract limit, the deal will not be permitted. A team cannot bridge a player to the point it makes their one-way contract a two-way contract. If a players salary is already under $1,000,000 according to the RFA Signing Grid – they are not eligible for a bridge deal AND they are only eligible to sign to a max of 2 years, the GM will have the option of 1 or 2 years for all two-way contracts.
So how do we determine contract length for players making over $1,000,000 (one-way)?
This will be fun, and I already know it’ll be met with some disgruntled GMs, but we collectively decided that dice rolls are the best way to determine RFA contract length, however teams will be permitted to select one (1) RFA every RFA re-signing period to determine the amount of years to sign for. This is to allow GMs to at least have full control over their top RFA. The rest of their RFAs will go to a dice roll to determine their contract length only.
Dice Roll
1 – 1 Year
2 – 1 to 2 Years (GM Chooses)
3 – 2 to 3 Years (GM Chooses)
4 – 3 to 4 Years (GM Chooses)
5 – 4 to 5 Years (GM Chooses)
6 – GM Choice (GM picks the amount of years)
Doesn’t look as bad as it sounds, does it? Using this method, GMs still have a 50% shot at rolling their desired amount of years.
Why have dice rolls? We needed a mechanism in place to naturally stagger contracts in the VHL. If teams had 100% control over contract length, then we run into issues with all deals expiring at age 27 as GMs would design their deals to expire the off-season before their players are UFA age, thus re-signing them to long UFA deals at age 27. We’d have a problem of players not becoming UFAs until age 31.
We feel this system, which still has a 50% shot at rolling the desired amount of years you want on your RFAs, plus the addition to ‘waive’ one RFA from the dice roll and picking your own set years on, there shouldn’t be an issue with this process.
Once the dice is rolled, that is the players official ‘asking price and terms.’ Even if they are traded during the off-season between the RFA re-signing period and the end of free agency, their asking price will follow with them to their new team, in no case will a dice be re-rolled.
So… how will this all tie into the VHL calendar?
Order of Operations
There will be no RFA signings throughout the course of the regular season, the reason for this is because teams cannot sign an RFA until their rating for the following season is revealed.
1. Trade Deadline: Once the trade deadline has passed , teams will have a clear picture of whom their pending RFAs are for that season.
GMs will be given full transparency on how their RFAs will be rated the following season before making any roster or signing decisions. Once the following seasons ratings are revealed, we will then have teams send an e-mail to the league with a list of which RFAs they are qualifying, which will reserve the right to re-sign them during the RFA re-signing period. ANY players not qualified will become a UFA. So that means RFAs will no longer linger on rosters waiting to be signed or released by their parent club, if we don’t see them on your RFA qualifying e-mail, they go to UFA Auction that summer. Teams would have until the Entry Draft to qualify their RFAs.
2. Example e-mail:
The Philadelphia Flyers qualify the following RFAs:
Miles Wood
Kailer Yamamoto
Jack Hughes – 5 Years
Ethan Bear
Tobias Bjornfot
Jacob Larsson
Why did I put ‘5 Years’ beside Hughes? That notifies me that THAT is the player you do not want going to a dice roll. Therefore Jack Hughes will sign a 5 year deal no matter what, while the rest of the players in my qualifying e-mail will go to dice rolls to determine their contractual length. Please structure your e-mail this way, so that we know which RFA of your choosing is to sign to the length you request. Don’t worry, when the time comes I will be posting many reminders on how to send the qualifying e-mail this next summer.
3. We will then reply to your e-mail copying the list of RFAs you sent, with the contract details determined by the new ratings and dice roll results. This e-mail will be sent to you promptly so you have time to prepare for the RFA re-signing period.
Example reply e-mail:
The Agents have determined the contract and terms of your RFAs:
Miles Wood – 1 Year (1,025,000)
Kailer Yamamoto – 2 or 3 Years ($4,500,000)
Jack Hughes – 5 Years ($7,500,000)
Ethan Bear – GM Choice ($1,750,000)
Tobias Bjornfot – 4 or 5 Years ($2,250,000)
Jacob Larsson – 1 or 2 Years (Two Way Contract, $850,000)
Note: These would be their salary based on the RFA Signing Grid, Bridge Scale not yet applied.
Note 2: If you see a ‘GM Choice’ dice roll next to one of your RFA, that means you can select any amount of years you’d like on that RFA.
4. When Free Agency opens (Same day as the UFA Auction) in the summer. Teams may then reply to the e-mail either agreeing or not agreeing to the terms laid out for their qualified RFA’s. Teams will be given 30 days to reply to this e-mail August 1st to September 1st. Which means this is also the window in which Offer Sheets are allowed on your players IF you’ve yet to respond to the e-mail indicating which players you signed. If you’re yet to reply to the contract and terms e-mail, your RFAs will be considered fair game for an offer sheet.
5. RFA Offer Sheets will still be negotiated via an agent, because it is not as cut and dry of a process than the RFA Signing Grid. Offer sheets are generally designed to try and ‘steal’ or sway a player from an opposing team by offering more money than their asking price, and they have their own parameters in the form of draft pick(s) compensation. If you see an RFA yet to be re-signed between August 1st and September 1st, and wish to attempt to sign them to a deal, you’d still send an e-mail to the RFA e-mail with the terms and draft pick compensation in order to do so. It is up to the agent(s) to determine whether or not it is an offer sheet worth signing, so generally you'd want to make the offer much more luxurious than that players current contract terms via the RFA Grid Scale
6. Lastly, once you get your contract and terms e-mail back, it is not required to have to sign everyone just because you qualified them. It is your last chance to elect to ‘pass’ on the contract terms of an RFA and release them, thus effectively that player would immediately go to the ongoing UFA Auction.
In conclusion: Trade Deadline > Ratings Released > RFA Qualifying Period (7 Days) > Dice Rolls > August 1st RFA Re-Signing Period and UFA Auction (30 Days) > September 1st (Any RFAs unsigned go to Auction) > Regular Season Begins Late October
All of these new rule changings involving the UFA and RFA changes, including a detailed ‘order of operations’ which will show a schedule of when each action will take place will be detailed in the rulebook so it is easy to follow.
Between RFA and UFA negotiations, the staff conducted a total of 192 negotiations in 2019, 203 negotiations in 2020, and 232 negotiations in 2021. Simply put, the volume of negotiations and working throughout the calendar year was / is causing burnout amongst the staff. This is what leads to contract offers being untouched for weeks-to-months, and leaves GMs in limbo regarding the future financial outlook of their team. This is not fair to the rest of the league, that also puts a lot of time and effort into the negotiation process. The current system simply isn't sustainable, and we could not continue to operate it without risking possible collapse of the league itself.
This new system will completely eliminate RFA negotiations from the VHL. That means, that after this off-season, GMs will never send another RFA negotiation again.
So how will we sign our RFAs?
We are introducing a NEW RFA Signing Grid, and there is one for skaters and one for goalies. Let’s cut to the chase, here is the new RFA Signing Grid:
| PLAYERS | ||
| OV Rating | Min. Salary | + per OV point |
| 59 and below | $700,000 | ------ |
| 60 to 63 | $725,000 | $25,000 |
| 64 to 67 | $825,000 | $25,000 |
| 68 to 70 | $925,000 | $50,000 |
| 71 to 79 | $1,500,000 | $750,000 |
| 80 and above | $7,750,000 | $750,000 |
| GOALIES | ||
| OV Rating | Min. Salary | + per OV point |
| 68 and below | $750,000 | ------ |
| 69 to 72 | $800,000 | $50,000 |
| 73 to 74 | $1,000,000 | $125,000 |
| 75 to 79 | $1,500,000 | $250,000 |
| 80 to 86 | $2,750,000 | $1,000,000 |
| 87 and above | $9,000,000 | $500,000 |
A little confused on how it works? Here, I’ll use Jack Hughes as an example. Jack Hughes is rated 79. So in order to sign him, I have to see which column he fits under, which is the 71-79 column. If he were rated 71, he would have to sign to $1,500,000 – However, in his case, he is rated 79. So I take the base salary of that column ($1,500,000 + $750,000 x 8) because he is 8 OV pts higher than 71 so I have to add an additional $750,000 per OV pt. Therefore his salary would be $7,500,000.
Now we understand that GMs may not want to sign every one of their young up and coming players to their full contractual worth, we understand that teams may still want the option to bridge deal their players for either cap or other reasons.
So we are offering a bridge scale contract application, BUT it only applies to skaters rated 76 and under and for goaltenders 80 and under. This is to prevent teams from signing all of their proven, elite level players to cost friendly bridge deal contracts. Therefore, the stars and elite players will always be paid their full value.
RFA Bridge Scale
Let’s continue to use Jack Hughes as an example for purpose of this exercise, although to clarify, he is NOT eligible for the bridge scale as he is rated above 76 OV.
Jack Hughes contract according to the RFA Signing Grid is $7,500,000
So IF he were eligible for the bridge scale, he would sign to the following contracts based on how many years he signed for.
5 Years (100%) – $7,500,000
4 Years (91.75%) - $6,881,250
3 Years (83.5%) - $6,262,500
2 Years (75.25%) - $5,643,750
1 Year (67%) - $5,025,000
So if I signed Jack Hughes to a 2 year deal, for example, he would sign the bridge deal of 2 years @ $5,643,750 per year.
Example aside, Jack Hughes is rated 79, he is rated over the 76 OV threshold eligible for the bridge scale, so no matter how many years I want to sign Hughes for, he is locked in at $7,500,000 no matter what. As stated earlier, this is to prevent teams from bridge scaling and signing all of their proven star players to cap friendly deals.
Additionally, if a players bridge deal makes their salary scale under the $1,000,000 one-way contract limit, the deal will not be permitted. A team cannot bridge a player to the point it makes their one-way contract a two-way contract. If a players salary is already under $1,000,000 according to the RFA Signing Grid – they are not eligible for a bridge deal AND they are only eligible to sign to a max of 2 years, the GM will have the option of 1 or 2 years for all two-way contracts.
So how do we determine contract length for players making over $1,000,000 (one-way)?
This will be fun, and I already know it’ll be met with some disgruntled GMs, but we collectively decided that dice rolls are the best way to determine RFA contract length, however teams will be permitted to select one (1) RFA every RFA re-signing period to determine the amount of years to sign for. This is to allow GMs to at least have full control over their top RFA. The rest of their RFAs will go to a dice roll to determine their contract length only.
Dice Roll
1 – 1 Year
2 – 1 to 2 Years (GM Chooses)
3 – 2 to 3 Years (GM Chooses)
4 – 3 to 4 Years (GM Chooses)
5 – 4 to 5 Years (GM Chooses)
6 – GM Choice (GM picks the amount of years)
Doesn’t look as bad as it sounds, does it? Using this method, GMs still have a 50% shot at rolling their desired amount of years.
Why have dice rolls? We needed a mechanism in place to naturally stagger contracts in the VHL. If teams had 100% control over contract length, then we run into issues with all deals expiring at age 27 as GMs would design their deals to expire the off-season before their players are UFA age, thus re-signing them to long UFA deals at age 27. We’d have a problem of players not becoming UFAs until age 31.
We feel this system, which still has a 50% shot at rolling the desired amount of years you want on your RFAs, plus the addition to ‘waive’ one RFA from the dice roll and picking your own set years on, there shouldn’t be an issue with this process.
Once the dice is rolled, that is the players official ‘asking price and terms.’ Even if they are traded during the off-season between the RFA re-signing period and the end of free agency, their asking price will follow with them to their new team, in no case will a dice be re-rolled.
So… how will this all tie into the VHL calendar?
Order of Operations
There will be no RFA signings throughout the course of the regular season, the reason for this is because teams cannot sign an RFA until their rating for the following season is revealed.
1. Trade Deadline: Once the trade deadline has passed , teams will have a clear picture of whom their pending RFAs are for that season.
GMs will be given full transparency on how their RFAs will be rated the following season before making any roster or signing decisions. Once the following seasons ratings are revealed, we will then have teams send an e-mail to the league with a list of which RFAs they are qualifying, which will reserve the right to re-sign them during the RFA re-signing period. ANY players not qualified will become a UFA. So that means RFAs will no longer linger on rosters waiting to be signed or released by their parent club, if we don’t see them on your RFA qualifying e-mail, they go to UFA Auction that summer. Teams would have until the Entry Draft to qualify their RFAs.
2. Example e-mail:
The Philadelphia Flyers qualify the following RFAs:
Miles Wood
Kailer Yamamoto
Jack Hughes – 5 Years
Ethan Bear
Tobias Bjornfot
Jacob Larsson
Why did I put ‘5 Years’ beside Hughes? That notifies me that THAT is the player you do not want going to a dice roll. Therefore Jack Hughes will sign a 5 year deal no matter what, while the rest of the players in my qualifying e-mail will go to dice rolls to determine their contractual length. Please structure your e-mail this way, so that we know which RFA of your choosing is to sign to the length you request. Don’t worry, when the time comes I will be posting many reminders on how to send the qualifying e-mail this next summer.
3. We will then reply to your e-mail copying the list of RFAs you sent, with the contract details determined by the new ratings and dice roll results. This e-mail will be sent to you promptly so you have time to prepare for the RFA re-signing period.
Example reply e-mail:
The Agents have determined the contract and terms of your RFAs:
Miles Wood – 1 Year (1,025,000)
Kailer Yamamoto – 2 or 3 Years ($4,500,000)
Jack Hughes – 5 Years ($7,500,000)
Ethan Bear – GM Choice ($1,750,000)
Tobias Bjornfot – 4 or 5 Years ($2,250,000)
Jacob Larsson – 1 or 2 Years (Two Way Contract, $850,000)
Note: These would be their salary based on the RFA Signing Grid, Bridge Scale not yet applied.
Note 2: If you see a ‘GM Choice’ dice roll next to one of your RFA, that means you can select any amount of years you’d like on that RFA.
4. When Free Agency opens (Same day as the UFA Auction) in the summer. Teams may then reply to the e-mail either agreeing or not agreeing to the terms laid out for their qualified RFA’s. Teams will be given 30 days to reply to this e-mail August 1st to September 1st. Which means this is also the window in which Offer Sheets are allowed on your players IF you’ve yet to respond to the e-mail indicating which players you signed. If you’re yet to reply to the contract and terms e-mail, your RFAs will be considered fair game for an offer sheet.
5. RFA Offer Sheets will still be negotiated via an agent, because it is not as cut and dry of a process than the RFA Signing Grid. Offer sheets are generally designed to try and ‘steal’ or sway a player from an opposing team by offering more money than their asking price, and they have their own parameters in the form of draft pick(s) compensation. If you see an RFA yet to be re-signed between August 1st and September 1st, and wish to attempt to sign them to a deal, you’d still send an e-mail to the RFA e-mail with the terms and draft pick compensation in order to do so. It is up to the agent(s) to determine whether or not it is an offer sheet worth signing, so generally you'd want to make the offer much more luxurious than that players current contract terms via the RFA Grid Scale
6. Lastly, once you get your contract and terms e-mail back, it is not required to have to sign everyone just because you qualified them. It is your last chance to elect to ‘pass’ on the contract terms of an RFA and release them, thus effectively that player would immediately go to the ongoing UFA Auction.
In conclusion: Trade Deadline > Ratings Released > RFA Qualifying Period (7 Days) > Dice Rolls > August 1st RFA Re-Signing Period and UFA Auction (30 Days) > September 1st (Any RFAs unsigned go to Auction) > Regular Season Begins Late October
All of these new rule changings involving the UFA and RFA changes, including a detailed ‘order of operations’ which will show a schedule of when each action will take place will be detailed in the rulebook so it is easy to follow.
