There's many different setups for keeper/dynasty leagues. I run a limited keeper league and a dynasty league where its possible for a team to keep every player from year to year.
In our limited keeper league teams can keep up to 3f's, 2d, and 1 g each year. We set a limit that a player can be kept at 3 consecutive years.
That's a pretty basic setup right there. We have additional rules to make it more interesting such as making the the cost of the kept players be one round higher than where they were drafted, and no players drafted in the first two rounds can be kept. So if you drafted Player X in the 3rd round this year then that means next year if you keep him he would be your 2nd round pick. That would mean the following year you can't keep him.
As for dynasty leagues some leagues will have a salary cap with or without contracts. One type of salary cap league will use the same salaries that the players have in real life. Another type of salary cap league will adjust salaries from year to year based on the previous years performance. And yet another type of salary cap league will let the players bid on players and let the market value determine their salaries.
In the dynasty league I run its set up to mimic the NHL. (Contracts, restricted free agents, buyouts, etc) We use the same salary cap as the NHL from year to year and hold an off-season auction which is basically our free agency period. After teams buy the free agents they want then we hold our prospect draft.
Many keeper/dynasty leagues like ours will have a prospect/farm team which will allow teams to hold onto young guys that aren't ready to be fantasy producers yet. Our league has 15 farm team spots that is kept separate from the regular roster that you play. In some leagues you can promote and demote them during the season and in some you can only promote them.
Generally a league will define a prospect as a player that has not played a certain amount of games. In our league its under 164 games and they must be under 26 years old. For goalies they must have played in less games than that to be a prospect.
That's a simple run-down to give you an idea of what a lot of leagues look like. There's so many different rule variations as you go from league to league and they can be really in depth. Some don't like that much depth and some love it. It sounds like you're ready to move onto something more challenging. I recommend before committing to a new league that you review their rules and ask a lot of questions and make sure its what you want to commit to. Dynasty leagues are meant to be long-term leagues that you build over time. To me its more gratifying building a team over years than just redrafting every year.
I played in redraft leagues for over 10 years then wanted something more and went to limited keeper leagues and then to dynasty and to me I'll take a dynasty format easily over the other two.
If you'd like to check out my league's rules let me know. I'm actually looking for a replacement gm right now for my dynasty league so if anyone's interested then just email me at
[email protected]
