CCHL Revenue increase, UFAs and Disk releases

 Well, it's been another week and although things are fairly quiet around the league right now, behind the scenes they haven't been quiet at all.  

The executive team has spent some time reviewing what the addition of the Seattle Kraken will do to overall NHL spending and what that means for the CCHL.  

Essentially, an additional $81.5 million in spending in the NHL could equate to about $50,000 more per CCHL game overall, so we've made that adjustment to our per game.  

For the upcoming 2021-22 season, teams will now receive $1,3000,000 per win, $1,1000,000 for an OTL or SOL, and a cool one million dollars (I said it like Dr. Evil there), per loss.  

We thought it was important to get those figures out to everyone prior to the UFA bidding period since we know there won't be any adjustments to the NHL salary cap for the upcoming season.  You may now bid knowing the full financial picture - but that does not mean you should be reckless as a lot of teams could still lose money in that scenario.  

Now onto the UFA period.  I have sent off the listing to Paul and Bobby this morning to review to ensure we have captured everyone eligible to be signed.  Remember, that the player must have played enough games to get on this disk.  A few slipped through the cracks last year so as a team we are working to avoid that scenario taking place again.  

Hopefully, that review will be done within the week and Paul can kick off the annual UFA bidding by the end of the month.  

I had hoped that the disk would be released in time for the UFA period but that is still a minimum of 2 weeks away - and it would be longer by the time things were imported and players were deleted accordingly.  We simply cannot wait that long given that's two weeks usually and we need to continue to move forward according to schedule.  You can still get an idea on ratings via the Showtime website, but it's important to note that the overall will change a bit (usually a bit higher) because our Simon settings are a bit different.  

I would expect that we'll have the new ratings imported shortly after the UFA period.  Don't forget that the ratings are based on an average of the last two NHL seasons since they were both shortened.  

The unfortunate part about that is that some of the players that have emerged in the last year will not rate accordingly.  This is where we have the ratings from another group available and for this year only, we are allowing CCHL GMs to pick up to 3 skaters from their team to change the ratings from the Showtime ratings to that set of ratings since it's a one-year disk.  I do caution though, without seeing those ratings, it may not be the windfall that people are hoping it will be as the ratings from the alternate disk aren't necessarily kinder because of how heavily they use defensive/offensive zone starts to determine a lot of areas.  

I'd expect we'll be looking to have those adjustments done over the middle to end of June - after that period of time, we'll close the opportunity to make those adjustments so that way we have our standard set.  

As you can tell, there is a lot going on over the next while for the league.  The exciting part of the off-season is finally upon us with the free-agent period, disk release, and then our annual entry draft. 

Stay tuned as things are about to get fun!  

Thank you Dave Atkinson

 On Saturday afternoon I received an email from Denver Spurs GM Richard Poelker to let me know that Dave Atkinson has passed away after a bout with cancer.  

There will be a lot of people in the CCHL that don't understand who Dave was, and why he was important to the CCHL - even though, to my knowledge, he was never a part of the league.  

To begin, let's take a look back as to how Dave Atkinson became the "ABPA guru" for the last twenty years out of pure necessity and a love of simulated hockey.  

About two decades ago, the DOS-based simulator program's manufacturers announced that they would no longer put together an annual disk for each NHL season.  It looked like the end of the APBA hockey simulator as we knew it.  There wasn't another simulator on the market at that time that quite did the trick and provided the same level of realism that APBA did.  Realizing this, and having worked for the parent APBA company Dave stepped to the forefront to ensure that APBA disks would continue on for the next two decades.  

He started a yahoo email group with APBA stakeholders and began crafting a disk to represent each NHL season.  Over the years, the process became more refined and defined, to the point where each year there was a site dedicated to doing voting of comparables between players that would garner 100,000 votes annually for Dave to craft the disk from.  

The CCHL used APBA for the first 16 or 17 years of our existence, but as time moves on, it was time to evolve to the Simon T simulator three years ago.  

Looking back at it, there were a few reasons to make the transition at the time.  The first was that APBA was still relatively giving us results from an older style of play and did not have the shootout.  It always weighed shooting percentage far too heavy and could lead to some crazy numbers on guys that didn't play a lot but scored on 35% of their shots in their 11 games.  

We saw the Simon T simulator as a way to change towards the future with the shootout and new rules of the National Hockey League being incorporated into gameplay.  The other aspect was that there were multiple rating disks available for us to use - we weren't limited to just one group should that group cease to exist.  Simply put, as much as we loved APBA, it was time to adapt.  

Without Dave though, the CCHL would have likely folded many years ago before Simon T's sim was a reality because there just wouldn't have been an APBA disk annually without his leadership and tireless work for the APBA community.  

A year ago, Dave hosted online seminars for a number of people that wanted to know more about what made the APBA simulator tick and how to generate ratings/the disk annually.  

Even though the CCHL had moved past it, I attended one of the sessions because, for 20 years, the APBA simulator was all I had known so I wanted to know more.  

It was interesting to see the inner workings of the process, but it also gave Dave and myself a chance to discuss the Simon T simulator and led to a lot of conversation between us in terms of the comparison.  He was super interested in learning more about it and we wanted to set up a night to go through it via zoom.  

Sadly, our schedules never allowed for that to happen and it's not going to happen now.  

I should have known something was up.  It's May and we haven't even heard anything about a new APBA disk creation process despite the NHL coming to a close for the regular season.  Honestly, I never gave it much thought this year and figured it would happen in the summer.  I was wrong.  Dave unfortunately had much more to deal with that the community did not know about.  

I would love to find a way to name a league award after Dave.  Even though he was not a part of our league, the CCHL likely doesn't continue on past the early years without his work on the disk with the team annually. l

While I never got to meet the man personally, Dave's presence for the computer hockey sim world really can't be forgotten.  Even if you didn't know who he was until today, he was a big part of our lives.  

Thank you Dave and may you rest in peace.  

CCHL RFA and UFA contracts - can be sent starting today!

 It's that time of the year again where the teams in the CCHL make decisions about their restricted free agents and who to sign with that one precious unrestricted free agent spot each team has.  

This is our first year where teams are eligible to sign somebody due for unrestricted free agent status in 2022, but at the cost of a 25% increase rather than 10% if it's a 2021 (current year) free agent.  

If you have a trade involving an unrestricted player you are resigning, once the information has been submitted to the league (Bobby/Matt/Paul), the player can then be traded at that point in time.  

While there is no benefit to sending in things early (you can only send in one list - no revisions), the benefit is that you'll have peace of mind knowing you've sent it in.  You'll also have an up-to-date roster shortly after in which to make your deals.  

If you need help with the formatting on your free agent signing email, please refer to the rules page in section M, point number seven where it lays out the exact format to be used.  If this format is not followed, the league does reserve the right to ignore the contract re-signings.  While it seems harsh, some people have submitted formats over the years that require the executive to have to interpret their intentions which is why we developed the process on the website.  

The deadline for submitting free agent contracts is on May 22nd.  Just four days after that we will enter a trade freeze in order to allow the league executive to prepare the free agent listing and bidding process.  

Have fun and please submit your contracts anytime - starting now!  

Love and hockey, 

-The Commish

State of the Loons; Damaged Goods

 Off-season trading recently opened up and the Loons have made a splash adding some high end talent, however some are damaged goods. 

First order of business was to address the head coaching position. After the Loons and Craig Janney mutually agreed to part ways mid way through last season, local scout Steve Heinze stepped up and led the Loons to some wins down the stretch. Being the long term coach was never what Steve wanted, however his success with the team was rewarded with the head coaching position for our minor league team the Northampton Chicks. Northampton's schedule allows Steve to spend more time with his family by remaining close to home. Steve came to us and recommended that we reach out to his former teammate Mike Sullivan.  Mike is a lifelong Massachusetts resident, having played for both the BU Terriers and the Boston Bruins during his playing career. Mike also is the only American born coach to win multiple Stanley Cups.

Having Mike at the helm definitely speeds up our rebuild. After both our fire sale last year and our investment in last year's draft we found ourselves with a very deep prospect pool. So deep that we were in a position to package multiple prospects together in order to bring in top end talent. Due to injuries, two such players became available: Jack Eichel and Marco Rossi. Both are dealing with significant injuries but the potential reward is worth the risk. Jack gives the Loons its first true superstar, and a Massachusetts star as well. Marco is someone we planned on drafting at the 4 spot before moving up to 2 and grabbing Stutzle. Capeside's center position looks to be stacked for years to come with Eichel, Zegras, Rossi and Turcotte.

After adding Eichel, it was time to start building around him. An immediate hole was at a top pairing defenseman. A trade with Bismark filled that by bringing in Jonas Brodin. Jonas is enjoying a breakout year and is entering the prime of his career at a manageable $5m a year. Pat Nemeth, Connor Garland and Nick Schmaltz were acquired to fill out the roster. Talented rookies Oliver Wahlstrom, Trevor Zegras, Janne Kuokkanen, Jesse Puljujarvi and Jake Oettinger are expected to make the team next year and be main contributors. 

After a large investment in last year's draft, the Loons currently do not own a draft pick in either the first or the second round. The 2021 draft class is thought to be on the weak side with a lot of unknowns so we will be looking to load up on longshots in the later rounds. 

We still have some holes to address either through trades or bargains in free agency. A top line wing would be a priority if we could find one without jeopardizing our future. Depth defensemen and a bottom 6 right wing are also areas of need for us.