From the office of the Finance Guru ; the magic of the Payroll Page

Before taking over the finances for the league the only real use I had for the payroll page was during trade talks to match up salaries. But this year thanks to a certain CCHL team, I find myself spending a lot more time on it learning the ins and outs. Last night while processing a minor transaction I noticed a multiple teams were in some cases well over the roster limit. But worse - a lot of teams do not seem to have a handle on the rules.

In my opinion what makes the CCHL great is the investment we all make in the league, anyone can sign up for a yahoo league and let yahoo run the league for them. The CCHL is our league and with that comes a lot of work and a lot of reward. When I took over the lowly Ottawa Barracuda 7 years ago I was overwhelmed with all the procedures in the CCHL and of that is the case for you I would like to remind you that you can email me at any time and I will do my best to help. But in case you are worried that I may try and suck you into long drawn out trade negotiations around your star American player I’ll post some free advice here.

Each team is allowed to have up to 30 players on their rosters. Reserve and M-designated players do not count towards your 30 active players.
- A reserve player is one that did not play in enough NHL games the previous year and is not allowed to play in any CCHL games for the year. A skaters needs to have played in at least 11 NHL games and 5 for a goalie to be “disc eligible”.
- a M-designated player is a rookie that did play enough NHL games the previous year and has become disc eligible for the first time. Often their ratings stink and are unusable so to help with that tou are allowed to place a M-designation on them prior to the season . This allows you to maintain a roster of more than 30 players. You are able to use these rookie players in CCHL games if you get into a pickle , but once they play their 11th CCHL game they lose their M-designated exemption and become an active roster player thus counting against your 30 man roster. If this is confusing it may be better explained in section C of the CCHL rules.

So when you look at your team’s payroll page you will see all your players listed. The first group will have the term “on roster” to the right. You need to make sure you have 30 or less of these “on roster” at all times.
After those your M- designated players are listed. They are ins a light blue font and have the term “minors” next to them. There are no limits to how many you have but they must have been submitted to the league during g the appropriate time in the off season.
After your rookies come your Reserve players. Again there are no limits on these but they can never be used in a CCHL game .
Following your reserves are players that have been traded, waived, released or bought out and are no longer a part of your team .

Hopefully you are still paying attention and this has helped you if you were previously lost. And while I have you I need to remind everyone that there are reasons why we are so strict on how we format communications to the league. This league is hopefully fun for you and it’s why you’re here reading a blog about a league that if you are lucky enough to win (I never have) your reward for your hard work is a digital banner on top of the website. Don’t worry if and when I do win I will be going out and buying myself a trophy that I will display prominently in my house! But I’m getting off track, the CCHL as I mentioned is not yahoo or espn or fantrax we run it ourselves with our own time and out of the kindness of our hearts. Matt has much more of a life then I do and has a lot more work between simming the games, updating the website and making sure all the rules are being followed . It’s a ton of work, we ask you submit in a certain format so that as these transactions come in at all hours from different time zones they can just be copied and pasted. It may not seem like a big deal but there are sooooo many transactions and it would be insane to constantly be having to retype everyone’s .

When I started I made myself a little cheat sheet with the different formats so I wouldn’t get scolded and have to be on a phone call for 2 hours with a person 20 years older then me that I didn’t know - so be glad you’re just reading a blog lol. All formats can be found by scrolling through the transaction page but here are some common ones

SIGNINGS
CAP signs T. Czepiel to a 2 yr., $500K contract…
(Please abbreviate the word year to yr and use K for thousands and M for millions )

WAIVING
CAP waives T. Czepiel (waiver expiration date 11/26/25)…
(The waiver date is always 3 days from your submission date )

TRADING
CAP trades T. Czepiel, Hank Czepiel-p, CAP 1st-26 & $1.75M to CGY for B. Tkachuk…

*in a trade always list active players then prospects then draft picks (try and place them in order by pick and then by year, then cash
** active players have first initial . Last name (T. Czepiel)
*** prospects are ones that are still located on your prospect page , full first name last name -p (Trevor Czepiel-p)
****draft picks ie 1st-26 or 4th-27 and so on

I hope all this helps , please remember this league is hopefully fun for everyone that loves hockey. None of us want to be hard asses over small things and remember if there is something you don’t know and you can’t figure it out in the rules email me and I’ll try not to guilt you into trading me one of your upcoming American players I promise!