I have a couple thoughts on potential rule changes:
Move to FAAB instead of a priority waiver system.
- Waivers aren't as important in hockey as they are in football for obvious reasons. But a FAAB system is much better for reasons like the Power thing and just in general. Give everyone $100 FAAB and that's your waiver budget for the year. If people want to save all $100 for a chance at getting a rookie like Power at year's end, all the power to them, but they might miss out on a couple of sneaky pickups throughout the season.
Move to same day pickups instead of next day.
- We only get 3 pickups a week (I feel like it could be 4 or 5 but whatever). Why make it so people have to pick up a player before midnight to get them into their lineup for that day? Makes it a lot more interesting if people can stream goalies or pick up a skater on Sunday to try and win a category without having to remember to do so (or predict a starting goalie) the day before.
Now this is a big one but....change up the scoring?
- Look, I get category scoring and it's cool how it makes certain defenceman and other players more valuable at times, but my other league is straight up fantasy points (like a football pool) and it's a blast. Instead of sitting there on Sunday and knowing your matchup is basically done cause no categories are close (or hoping for 5 hits out of a player...) there are a ton of close battles that come down to the final game on Sunday. Goals worth 4, assists worth 2, SOG worth 0.5, hits worth 0.1, blocks worth something I forgot. Saves worth 0.2, win worth 5, shutout worth 3. You can actually just cheer on your players to do anything productive like score or assist or get shots or make a save. It also makes it so each week is worth 2 pts (a win or a loss) and the standings go that way. So if you're in a tight battle at the end of the week and your player scores to give you a narrow win, it feels great and you secure the big 2 pts and a win in the standings. The way we do it, there are plenty of times on a Saturday/Sunday where the matchup is 6-5-2 or something and the categories aren't close so the weekend basically means nothing and you know both teams will be getting 12-14 out of a possible 26 points. Takes some of the competitiveness out of it. Look how tight this consolation quarterfinal was in my other league last week...(consolation playoffs are for draft position)
