Idea for ATD2019

[BenchBrawl]

• If this auction draft comes to materialize, I propose a $100M budget, just to have a clean number.
• I really believe at least 5 players should be available per day (solves the duration issue) and the bidding should be done once a day in private.So everyone can come at any hour of the day or night to make their bid (solves the time zone issue) on one or many available players.Then the highest bidders get their player(s) at each day's deadline.
• Any discussion of a player's theoretical value should be forbidden.
• GMs should only be allowed to bid a total amount they still possess.Say they have $1M left, they cannot bid $500k on four different players in the hope of grabbing one of them, because if nobody made any bid on those, the GM would win them all but can't pay.Every bid must have some skin in the game; possibly you'll have to take the player and the cap hit.
• Not sure if trading should be allowed.
• When everyone is bankrupt: once we get to the end of the game, when either teams have a full lineup or still have vacant roster spots but everyone is bankrupt, we do a mini-draft between the incomplete teams to fill the rest of their lineup.
• Bidding unclean numbers is to be encouraged to avoid ties.For example, $1,000,024 instead of $1,000,000.

Thoughts on that?

 

[Johnny Engine]

I like it. I'd look forward to making up a detailed plan for my strategy, and watching it get blown to hell immediately.

 

[MadArcand]

When everyone is bankrupt: once we get to the end of the game, when either teams have a full lineup or still have vacant roster spots but everyone is bankrupt, we do a mini-draft between the incomplete teams to fill the rest of their lineup.

Or just everyone should make sure they save a few $ to bid $1 on still undrafted players to fill out their roster in the end...

 

[VanIslander]

Or just everyone should make sure they save a few $ to bid $1 on still undrafted players to fill out their roster in the end...

Yeah. No bankruptcy allowed.

Save at least the minimum amount allowed to bid (e.g., if we are doing an NHL salary cap of $75 million with a quarter million interval bids (eg., 2.25M, 5.5M, 7.75M, 9M) then a team must have at least a quarter of a million (0.25M remaining to sign AAA-level players to fill out the line-up (the equivalent of having to get free agents from Europe or the ECHL - a proviso could be added: these non-ATD, non-MLD players can be signed for less than 0.25M...)

plus optional rule: possibly... have them go through the bidding process!!!! Minimum one thousand dollars per player, so if one GM wants to sign Kenny Jonsson and offers $100,000, another GM could offer $120,000.

 

[Johnny Engine]

Any guideline to govern GM behaviour is a non-starter unless it has some teeth.
What about a waiver system? Someone goes bankrupt, and they have to drop a player into the next auction round. So you could potentially have a team in Bobby Hull's division decide they HAVE to have Provost, and they end up doing a stupid and paying him first line money. Then later on you have Provost up for bidding and someone gets an incredible 3rd line utility forward for a pittance. Raises the stakes for smart bidding.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Saving a minimum to bid will lead to multiple GMs having the same minimum for the left-overs, invariably leading to bidding ties.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Any guideline to govern GM behaviour is a non-starter unless it has some teeth.
What about a waiver system? Someone goes bankrupt, and they have to drop a player into the next auction round. So you could potentially have a team in Bobby Hull's division decide they HAVE to have Provost, and they end up doing a stupid and paying him first line money. Then later on you have Provost up for bidding and someone gets an incredible 3rd line utility forward for a pittance. Raises the stakes for smart bidding.

That's an interesting idea would depend entirely on implementation but I like the concept

 

[ResilientBeast]

I think we should try this as the main ATD maybe some people bored with the old format will be reengaged. I also love the the openness this creates in terms of team building.

Provided you make smart moves we're going to see a wider variety of team builds IMO

IE should love this, after his first team 2 winger start, and then his all in Roy team

 

[seventieslord]

Yeah. No bankruptcy allowed.

Save at least the minimum amount allowed to bid (e.g., if we are doing an NHL salary cap of $75 million with a quarter million interval bids (eg., 2.25M, 5.5M, 7.75M, 9M) then a team must have at least a quarter of a million (0.25M remaining to sign AAA-level players to fill out the line-up (the equivalent of having to get free agents from Europe or the ECHL - a proviso could be added: these non-ATD, non-MLD players can be signed for less than 0.25M...)

plus optional rule: possibly... have them go through the bidding process!!!! Minimum one thousand dollars per player, so if one GM wants to sign Kenny Jonsson and offers $100,000, another GM could offer $120,000.

If what you're saying is they must have at least a quarter of a million left per open roster spot , I agree. I like that.

Not saying I'd definitely be in. I might have more fun being just an administrator. The annual ranking of players and revisiting those rankings appeals to me the most. A draft where, say, Milan Novy is as valuable as Evgeni Malkin because of dollars isn't the same to me.

 

[VanIslander]

Not saying I'd definitely be in. I might have more fun being just an administrator.

I nominate seventieslord as Hockey Outsider's co-administrator of the inaugural all-time auction draft.

Together they could divide and conquer any obstacles!

 

[BenchBrawl]

I'm warming up to the auction draft, I'm down for it.

 

[Leaf Lander]

well imo we should draft a ahl team to go along with the changed atd format

and imo this shouldn't be repeated next year.

 

[Leaf Lander]

the bidding idea is nice concept but a draft like that would take a yr to do.

perhaos just bid on a first line or top pair dman and goalie

 

[Johnny Engine]

It wouldn’t take a year. It would take the same amount of time as any draft, and you could guarantee that exactly by dividing the number of expected days by the number of draft slots and offer that number of players each day. An 800 player draft would take 100 days if 8 players are available per day. Plain and simple.

 

[Johnny Engine]

The added benefit is that if the order is known beforehand, you could sit out days where no one interests you, or pre-prepare bids on players for days you know you’ll be busy for.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Unless we get a boost in participation, the draft will have around 600 players.If we want to avoid the playoffs going deep in June, and assuming we start end of January, we need to finish the draft by mid-March.So say more or less 75 days.So 8 players per day would be what we're looking for.

This will be tricky for sure, as since we don't have any intuition on how much the players are worth from lack of any precedent, some GM might over-bid on multiple players in a single day, thinking he might get one of them but not all of them, but end up winning all of them, decapitating his budget in the process.

Not sure how to handle this, but one idea would be that a GM can forfeit any player and it goes to the 2nd highest bid, which can also forfeit which then goes to the 3rd highest bid.Some problems with this will be that we need some "time out" everyday to sort this out, and it might happen that a GM under-bids every player and one of them falls into his hand for a completely cheap price after a series of forfeits.I don't know if any of this is realistic or to handle this.

 

[ImporterExporter]

How do we select the order of bidding?

And who is in the draft pool

I think it would be cool to have each pool of players be completely random. That way you have no idea who's coming up each round. Makes it tougher to just preplan everything.

 

[BenchBrawl]

How do we select the order of bidding?

And who is in the draft pool

I think it would be cool to have each pool of players be completely random. That way you have no idea who's coming up each round. Makes it tougher to just preplan everything.

I prefer if we follow a past list or something close to it.Completely random will make strategizing too difficult, and IMO strategizing will already be difficult given this is a new concept.

I think bidding should be done only once a day, in private, per GM.So no raise-reraise-rereraise type of bidding.Only one shot in the dark.Highest bid wins.Else it would be unmanageable IMO.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I think knowing when each individual player comes up for bid makes strategizing to easy.

I definitely agree there should only be 1 set of bids per day though.

 

[BenchBrawl]

I think knowing when each individual player comes up for bid makes strategizing to easy.

I definitely agree there should only be 1 set of bids per day though.

Strategizing will be difficult IMO.You don't know what the others will bid and you run many risks at every bid.You also risk losing out on a key player you need, forcing you to overbid, or you might spend too much money too early, so on so on.Seriously, I think this will be a complicated game, I don't see what you're seeing.Can you elaborate on how you think it will be easy?

 

[ImporterExporter]

I just think if you know that Gretzky is up in vote 3 and Kurri is up on day 7, Ching Johnson on day 10, etc, etc it makes it almost as if you'd know where somebody was going to go in a normalized draft.

Not knowing who will come up each day makes the game more difficult yes, but it should be IMO. All the ATD players will be available at some point but not knowing when forces the GM to make tougher choices as it goes along. Do you wait and wait and wait on a guy you have your sights set on or alter your plan earlier than expected.

Also how many players can a team big/win on per day? Is there a limit or are we only concerned with making sure everyone stays under a cap (100M or whatever amount is agreed upon)?

I would hope there are penalties for teams that go over the cap limit before the end of the draft.

 

[BenchBrawl]

I just think if you know that Gretzky is up in vote 3 and Kurri is up on day 7, Ching Johnson on day 10, etc, etc it makes it almost as if you'd know where somebody was going to go in a normalized draft.

Not knowing who will come up each day makes the game more difficult yes, but it should be IMO. All the ATD players will be available at some point but not knowing when forces the GM to make tougher choices as it goes along. Do you wait and wait and wait on a guy you have your sights set on or alter your plan earlier than expected.

Also how many players can a team big/win on per day? Is there a limit or are we only concerned with making sure everyone stays under a cap (100M or whatever amount is agreed upon)?

I would hope there are penalties for teams that go over the cap limit before the end of the draft.

The player being available for Round X or Y has no value for him, the only value is in how much people are willing to pay.So it's not really as if you knew when he was going to go in a normal draft.Someone in Round 7 might be paid more than someone in Round 6.

I'm not against your idea though.I'm not even sure it makes the game more difficult on second thoughts.Well, if availability is randomized, a top player is likely to be the sole top player in his day of bidding, leading to people overbidding for him potentially? I think for a first iteration of this draft concept, we should try to go smooth and make a more normal order, but whatever.I'm down with anything.

I'd say no limit of players per day.If a GM wants to overbid to have Gretzky and Orr on day one he can be my guess, but then good luck winning any bid for interesting players for the rest of the lineup with the cash remaining.He'll be left with scraps, just as if he made a huge trade to get 1st and 2nd overall in a normal draft, completely decapitating his depth.Making sure everyone stays above the minimum budget they need to fill their lineup should be a strict rule though.

 

[ImporterExporter]

The player being available for Round X or Y has no value for him, the only value is in how much people are willing to pay.So it's not really as if you knew when he was going to go in a normal draft.Someone in Round 7 might be paid more than someone in Round 6.

I'm not against your idea though.I'm not even sure it makes the game more difficult on second thoughts.Well, if availability is randomized, a top player is likely to be the sole top player in his day of bidding, leading to people overbidding for him potentially? I think for a first iteration of this draft concept, we should try to go smooth and make a more normal order, but whatever.I'm down with anything.

I'd say no limit of players per day.If a GM wants to overbid to have Gretzky and Orr on day one he can be my guess, but then good luck winning any bid for interesting players for the rest of the lineup with the cash remaining.He'll be left with scraps, just as if he made a huge trade to get 1st and 2nd overall in a normal draft, completely decapitating his depth.Making sure everyone stays above the minimum budget they need to fill their lineup should be a strict rule though.

Yeah, I'm all for trying to streamline the first go at this concept. I figured I'd just throw out some questions I had in my head.

But I do think something like this is needed. The normal way of the ATD has become stagnant and isn't attracting that many new faces. We've had a few but other veteran GM's have walked as well.

 

[VanIslander]

A two-tier system:

1. The administrator selects a set number (eg., 6) of ATD players (eg., top-300 from previous all-time draft) for the day's bidding.

2. Each GM could also offer a free agent bid to one (and only one) player who is from a lesser pool (eg., anyone NOT in the top-300 ATD picks from previous year's draft). So, if we have 10 GMs, there would be up to 10 players everyone could bid on.

This would be very interesting in terms of team building:

Should I make an offer to a backup goalie now? (Maybe avoid a bidding war later or maybe instead face another GM willing to pay more than the $1.2M you just offered for Bernie Parent.)

Should I target a penalty killing specialist early? (Offer $1.5M to Doug Jarvis or try to top another GM's $2.5M bid to Carbonneau).

If every GM was able to make an opening bid and a closing bid (max 2 bids per player bidded on), then choosing whom to make an offer to and when could be interesting. Some GMs get role players early, other teams focus on top stars and wait until much later to get special teams guys.

 

[ResilientBeast]

How do we select the order of bidding?

And who is in the draft pool

I think it would be cool to have each pool of players be completely random. That way you have no idea who's coming up each round. Makes it tougher to just preplan everything.

Random limited draft pool somewhat defeats the purpose of an All Time Draft IMO.

As a side draft sure