No. I had to get up 4AM to go to work, and I went to bed after midnight.

Regular Season Standings as of Monday, December 5th.
Don Cardi

Are we required to carry three goalies, or can we carry only two and use that roster spot for another forward or defenseman?

I believe that you can opt to carry a another postition player instead of a Goalie.


Don Cardi

Standings through: Tue, Dec 13
Don Cardi

You still think that I suck Don MALTA? :p


Don Cardi

You really need a comma in there!

I was going to say something, but was good, and kept my mouth shut.

You really need a comma in there! [/b][/quote]In your dreams, Baby!

Ok, do you really think that I suck ,,,,,,,,,,, (in the fantasy Hockey League, Don MALTA?
:p


By the way, did you get my e-mail invite to the fantasy football playoff league?


Don Cardi

Like our head-to-head Yahoo football game, this would be much better if everyone played every day. And, I must confess, to see who had the good luck of playing me the first few weeks when I wasn't (Good thing for the rest of you guys that I didn't, or I'd probably be in first place by now). :p

I totally agree. If you people joined the league, then please stay on top of things so that the league remains a competitive one. Otherwise it takes away all the fun and causes a lack of comtetitiveness.

[QUOTE] And, I must confess, to see who had the good luck of playing me the first few weeks when I wasn't (Good thing for the rest of you guys that I didn't, or I'd probably be in first place by now). [QUOTE]

Excuses, excuses. :p

I'm actually in another league where everyone stays active by staying on top of their teams. In that league I am the New York Rangers. Here's the standings :


Rank Team Pts.
1 New York Rangers 101.5
2 yes... 100
3 THE GRIM REAPERS 88

You get the picture. :p


Don Cardi

There is at least one manager that has NOT touched his lineup in two weeks. As commissioner, I am going to go in and set his line-up for this week and if I do not hear from him after this week is over he's going to be locked out of the league.


Don Cardi

Hmmm.....

This is where we had a problem and a big debate in football, where we had two guys drop out in the middle of the season.

The problem is, everyone who got to play the guys in our league who weren't playing during the time that these guys weren't playing have a big advantage now if you're gonna have these guys start "playing" again by you changing their lineups for them.

Plus, what are you going to do about his lineup in the weeks that you play him?

Not to suggest in any way that you would do anything to benefit yourself in setting his lineup, but the only fair way to do it would be to have someone else set his lineup for the weeks that you play him.

And even if you do that, there are other problems involved. After all, there's some judgement and strategy involved in whether to play goalies or not, and when to play them or who to play them against. The same thing for forwads and defensemen; suppose you have three centers playing the same day, and one has worse scoring statistics than the other two, but is going against an easier goalie? Which two do you play? It's not always cut and dried what to do, there's a lot of opinion and judgement involved.

If you are going to change their lineups for them, you need to set down in advance the exact criteria that you will use; for example you will always play the guys with the most goals, or the guys with the highest rankings, or whatever.

Problem is, and we discussed it a lot in the Yahoo football thread, and sort of came to the conclusion that there was no 100% fair way to handle the situation without jumping through a million hoops.

What we wound up doing was just locking them out for the rest of the season, and if you happened to have played them early in the season in a week when they were trying and you lost to them, it was just tough shit.

This is different though. In football we had a balanced schedule, with everyone playing everyone else only once, and only one win per week at stake. Here we have 10 wins and losses at stake every week, and we play everyone else multiple times during the course of the season.

Here's what I think is the fairest solution, altho it involves quite a bit of work:

1- Decide exactly who you want to kick out of the league.

2- Take all of that player's W-L records for all of the weeks of the season - whether he played and was "trying" or not - and subtract them from everyone else's totals. This is the only fair way, because otherwise those of us who played these guys when they were "trying" are at a big disadvantage to those of us who played them when they weren't.

In other words, for the purposes of our League Standings, you'll be treating them as if they never existed.

4- Going forward, lock the rosters of the non-players, and every time one of us plays one of them, treat it as a bye week.

So at the end of the season, everyone's W-L record will reflect only weeks during which they were playing other players who were participating.

I have to give him a chance to start managing his team again before locking him out. If he does not start showing that he is managing his team, then I'll just start his players that are going to play that day and if it comes down to 3 centers playing I'll go with his two highest scoring guys by using total points ( G + A = Pts.). As for goalies, well right now he has only 2 goalies, so that is not a problem.

I'm not going to throw out his stats for the year and start figuring out who did what against him and so on and so forth. I don't have the time.

The fairest way is to start his players that are going to play and if there happens to be 3 palyers at a certain postion that all happen to be playing that day, I'll go with the 2 highest scoring (POINTS) players.

I think that is the fairest way without having to sit down and go back through all the games played and figure out what to throw out, etc.

But I need to give him a chance to come back first.


Don Cardi

I was looking at everything since my last post, and here's what I think:

We have three problem teams, Reg Dunlop, Buffalo Chill, and Ice Picks.

Reg Dunlop hasn't played since day one of the season, so I would just lock his team now, and by the end of the season everyone will have had the same number of opportunities to play against that same team, so it's fair to everyone.

To start managing his team now is unfair to the people who have to play him more times in the future, since everyone who played him already was playing the same, "un-managed" team.

Buffalo Chill was playing at the beginning, and then towards the end of October he just sorta stopped. Even when he was playing though, he wasn't really playing, since there were almost always days when he had players on the bench who were playing that day, and at the same time had guys in his lineup who weren't.

I'd do the sme thing for him. Lock his team now, and it will come out pretty close to being fair at the end.

Those who played him at the beginning will suffer a bit of a disadvantage, but it's not that big, since even when he was playing, he wasn't playing 100%.

Doing that, I think, is a lot fairer to everyone than to start managing his team 100% in the middle of the season, which is very unfair to those who still have to play him an extra time.

Ice Picks is the only real problem, I think. Let me take a closer look at his day-by-day history and see what I come up with.

BTW, I certainly don't think that we have any obligation to Reg and Buffalo to give them the opportunity to start managing their time again, considering that they basically weren't managing them in the first place.

Remember, DC, you asked me to be Ass Commissioner when we started.

Anyone who wants to be commissioner of a fantasy league that I'm in doesn't know what they're letting themselves in for.

Especially a Yahoo league, where a commissioner has to actually make a decision now and then. Just ask Don Sicilia.

Anyway, after thinking it over and looking carefully at the league as a whole, here's what I think:

Lock these three guys teams until after the 14th week. At that point, everyone will have played everyone else twice under roughly equal conditions.

Then, you can either keep them locked for the remainder of the season or, as commissioner, set their lineups every day.

But to do that for three teams for eight more weeks seems to be a lot of unnecessary work.

I'd just lock the three of them out now, leave it that way, and forget about them.

As I said, we don't owe them the opportunity to start playing again.

What happens if they play for a week or two, pick up a 6-3 or a 7-2 against their oppostition, and then stop playing again?

Then it becomes even more unfair.

I say fuck 'em.

And you still have the option of wiping out their W-L records from the league records and treating them as if they never existed.

Looking back on the weekly results and doing the necessary math shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Well Ice Man has PMed me and has stated that he wants to continue to play in the league. So I will let him. However I have not heard back from the other two, so for now I am going to lock them out.


Don Cardi

Standings as of December 26th 2005

IMPORTANT : Please read the league e-mail that I have sent to all of you.

Don Cardi

Just read the e-mail you sent out to all players. Thanks for making those players available. I've alrady put in for 4 just have to wait for them to clear waivers.

Thanks IceMan. I originally locked those two teams and put all of the players on those teams on the bench. However I noticed this week that somehow, and don't ask me how, those two teams actually scored a point in a game!

Now that is not fair at all. I don't know how that happened, as I am asuming that there is some kind of flaw in the league program.

So I figured that to make it fair to everyone I would release those players from those teams and put them on waivers so that everyone would have a shot at them if they desired, and also it would help to make the league a bit more competative.

I am glad that you agree with me that it was the fair thing to do.

We must keep in mind that this is a fun thing, something to enjoy, and not something that we should take so seriously when situations like this arise.

As the commissioner of the league, I made a decision because I felt that it was only fair to make those palyers available to the whole league, and to stop those two teams from scoring any more points. ( I'm still confused at how that happened as the players were all relegated to the bench and the teams were locked).

I also waited for everyone to become aware of what I did before I put in for any of those players myself.

Good Luck. Enjoy. And remember to have fun playing!


Don Cardi

I'm playing one of the teams, and it scored a point because its +/- is 0, where my team went -3 the other night. :rolleyes:

Personally Lou, I don't really like the way that Yahoo has this league set up. But after the strike, Yahoo was one of the only sites that was willing to commit to starting a league this year, so I jumped on it. Next year I will be looking for another league on another site.

What is stupid is that even though I am the commissioner of the league, it ( yahoo) won't allow me to completely delete the two teams who've stopped playing. So I just thought that the next best thing to so was to put the player from those two teams on waivers for the rest of the league to pick up if they so desired. I figured that this was the fair thing to do and that it may help some of the weaker teams to become a bit more competitive. After all we all drafted this year not really knowing who was going to be good and who was who because of the strike last year. We really did not have anything to base the talent on this year. So I don't see anything wrong with giving the weaker drafted teams the opportunity to become a bit more competitive.


Don Cardi

I'm still trying to figure out why players get rewarded for taking penalties. :rolleyes:

Yeah that is really odd.

My only objection is that I don't think that such a radical move as putting all of those players on waivers should have been made in the middle of a scheduling cycle - when everyone had not yet played everyone else the same number of times under the same conditions - much less in the middle of a week, when the matchups were already in progress - when it was not necessary to do anything at all in the first place excep freezing the teams belonging to the managers who were no longer participating.

Then, any moves we wished to make with their players should have been timed in such a way so that they would have gone into effect at the beginning of a week, and at the beginning of a new scheduling cycle.

I don't undertsand what the rush was to do anything at all, other than freeze the teams.

I understand that Iceman is delighted to have these new players available because after not having made a player move for weeks he has plenty of dead wood he can replace and improve his team, but if he claims four of thse guys while someone else who has been playing all season has the need to claim only one, that's unfair to the manager who has been playing all along.

And again - no problem, except that all of this should not have been done in the middle of a week and in the middle of a cycle of the schedule.

I appreciate that DC is trying to keep the league competitive and fun for everyone, but I don't believe that that is one of the roles of commissioner.

By putting these players on waivers, we have, in effect, penalized the managers who who had a better draft because they took the time to pre-rank their players, made the best free agent moves during the course of the season, and made beter use of the matchups by knowing who to play on which days.

The commissioner should try and keep the playing field as level as possible, not change it in the name of competetive balance and more fun for everyonne.

Yes, this is supposed to be fun, but the idea of it being fun and taking it seriously are not mutually exclusive.

FWIW, DC did ask me earlier if I had a problem with this, and I told him no. We will all have a shot at the available players, although the good teams will have to give up better players to get them. ( In my case, the rich will get richer) :rolleyes:
..... This is why I gave up playing in fantasy leagues with a draft. Dead teams always ruined the league.

Well, JL, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din"

But from your POV, I look at it this way:

The reason your team is doing well is because given the scoring setup of this league, your team has a higher percentage of the more effective players and a lower percentage of the less effective players, while everyone else has a lower percentage of the more effective players and a higher percentage of the weaker ones.

To some extent, that's obvious, right?

So how can you not have a problem with the idea of placing, let's say 8-10 good players in the free agent pool, the acquisition of whom will improve your team to a lesser extent than it will improve, say, Iceman's?

The proof of this will be tomorrow when the waiver period ends and you see who improved and by how much.

Hmmm.....I just looked at the waiver position, so let me amend the above.

Iceman, who needs the most help, stands to get the least amount of help because his waiver priority is 6th among the six of us left. Since he said that he only claimed four players, I have to assume that he's not gonna get any of them.

Even if he winds up claiming someone else later - either one of the guys from the disbanded teams or someone who gets dropped because of a winning waiver claim - who could be better than someone he already has, he may improve his team, but I don't think he stands to improve it as much as the others.

(I think that the way that they run the waiver priority is stupid, BTW. It should always be in the reverse order of the standings, just like in real life. But that's another argument for another day.)

I only put in for four players, also. Since we presumably claimed guys based on the categories in which we needed improvement, I may get one of them, but I'll be very surprised if I do, since my position is 5th.

Of the six of us who remain, we stand to gain the most, I think, in the order of our waiver priority.

Anyway......

If this was a money league, we would have done nothing, right?

Those who stopped playing presumably would have paid their entry fee and that would be that. It would be absolutely unfair to do anything whatsoever with their teams. They paid their money, what they do with their teams is nobodys business.

So just because we're not playing for money, I don't see why the league should be treated any differently, particularly in cases where an action is not equally fair to everyone.

If you want to say that this is just for fun and it doesn't matter what we do, then fine. But let's call a spade a spade.

There was no dire need to do anything in the first place with the three teams that weren't playing, even emailing them to see if they wanted to continue playing.

After finding out that two of them didn't want to continue, there was no pressing need to to do anything with their rosters other than freeze them, since we were in the middle of a schedule cycle and everyone had not had the opportunity to play all of these three teams under the same conditions.

If it was felt to be beneficial to put their players in the free agent pool (which clearly I don't think that it was. I'd still like to understand how doing that benefitted everyone), it should not have been done in the middle of the schedule cycle and in the middle of the week.

This move by me may have been done in the middle of a cycle, but in reality it actually takes affect at the end of the cycle, one day before. Because those players must remain on waivers for several days and it works out to their becoming available to play one day before the new schedule begins. And it just so happens that I actually did try to time it, but I was one day off. Big deal.

Number two, you were the one who probably benefited the most when those teams became inactive. If memory serves me correctly you went 9 - 0 against one of those inactive teams.

We've had this discussion through several PMs and e-mails and I explained to what my thinking was in doing this, along with giving the same explaination to the others, but you are the only one who's bothered by this move.

What's wrong with the commissioner of the league wanting to keep the league both fun and competitive? I actually did feel that by making these palyers availble to everyone, it would keep a level playing field.

Well you seem to be the only one in the league who wants to keep complaining about this.

DMC, Just Lou, IceMan, Don Pelosi and Myself all thought it the fair thing to do. 5 out of 6 managers have absolutely no problem with my placing the players from the inactive teams on waivers to make them available to the rest of us.

And again, they clear waivers one day before the end of the cycle.


So 5 out of 6 don't seem to think it a big deal.

Maybe you should file a complaint with the ACLU! :p


Don Cardi

It was Buffalo Chill, who stopped playing after Week 5.

Subsequent to that, all of us got to play him in his "inactive" mode against the exact same lineup. That I went 9-0-1 was just lucky.

Anyway, I still fail to see how doing this makes things more fun and competitive, and I believe that my point will be proven when the waiver period is over and we see the results.

Meanwhile, I spent the better part of this morning doing a little reasearch (nice to have all of this time on my hands)

Reg Dunlop didn't change his team since day one. The correct move, I believe, would have been to simply freeze it as it was.

Same for Buffalo Chill.

He stopped playing after Week 5, so all of us except for the SI Rockets had to play him while he was still active.

At least that way, the playing field would have been level in that we all get to play both disbanded teams against their same lineup the same number of times, except for the exception just noted, and the imbalanced schedule.

But this is important....

By disbanding two teams, you have, in effect, practically guaranteed a 9 or 8 or possibly 10 win week for everyone else who has yet to play them at least once, and in some cases twice.

Since we are in the middle of a schedule cycle, and since the season has 22 weeks instead if 21, making for an unbalanced schedule in the first place, the following four teams

SI Rockets
DMC
5 For Fighting
Ice Picks

play the disbanded teams a total of three times, giving them a big advantage over the following two teams

Broadway Blues
Plaw

who only play the disbanded teams twice.

Had you simply frozen their rosters, at least there would have been a chance (and a good one - they did practically every week so far) for the disbanded teams to pick up at least a few points against the teams they are playing.

Now, there is virtually no chance of that happening unless, as JL points out, someones +/- happens to end up negative for the week.

You're gonna tell me this is fair?

Hey guys,
My apologies for all the commotion I seem to have caused. This is the first time I joined an online fantasy (and the last!) and I thought that I could simply leave my team as is, and let it coast throughout the year. I *assumed* that since we didnt have to be online on the draft, and that the computer would automatically pick my team, it would automatically ice my team all year, and I could sit back and watch.
As I mentioned to Don Cardi, I still followed the standings and liked to follow the posting/banter between you guys.

Again, my apologies, and I hope this hasn't tarnished me on the boards.
Good luck to you guys, and of course, Go Leafs Go.

Paul