3 Rules
  league logo
 
SSFHL Rules
 

Registration fee-

There are two levels of fees depending on which league you join. We offer our Premier league and a Basic league which both offer cash prizes for the top five places. Entry fees include both the regular season as well as the playoffs. Payouts are based on a full league of 20 teams and any league that is not full will have the payouts adjusted accordingly. The fees provide the prize money at the end of the season. All other costs to maintain and run the league are covered by me as this is one of my passions, not a profit center.

Premier League – Registration fee is $50

Payouts:  

                       
Placing
Full League Payout
Example of Adjusted (85%) League Payout
1st
$348
$296
2nd
$261
$222
3rd
$131
$111
4th
$87
$74
5th
$44
$37


                        Playoff Champion - $100

Basic League – Registration fee is $30

 Payouts:  

Placing
Full League Payout
Example of Adjusted (75%) League Payout
1st
$214
$182
2nd
$161
$136
3rd
$80
$68
4th
$54
$45
5th
$27
$23


                        Playoff Champion - $ 75

 

Fee can be paid through Pay Pal or a money order, contact me directly if you need to mail us a check.

Dues for current GM's are due July 15th 2023 for existing GMs, or prior to the draft if you are new to the league for the 2023-24 season.

New GM's must have their dues paid at sign up. Period.

You may still sign up after the draft has been done but you will already have a team roster to contend with.

Contact me if this situation applies to you.

 

League Type

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rule One - The commissioner makes the rules and has final decision making on everything. At times I will put things to a vote of GM's where I will let the majority rule, but this is not required. This is my league and if you do not like the way I run it or any of the rules you can find another league and if you have paid I will gladly refund your dues. Not trying to be a jerk here, however after 20 plus years doing this, I have given up on trying to keep everyone happy and being democratic about it...enough on that.

Draft Order -

Draft for the 2023-24 season we will be done is reverse finish order as has been done in the past.

The Drafts-

We will use the ESPN (Tentative) Fantasy draft system to facilitate the actual draft process. You will receive details on the draft as we get closer to the actual date. The third party draft for this league are only used for drafting purposes. It will help the speed by clocking the selections a 1:00 to 1:30 per pick and will allow GM's to pre rank their selections. This serves a dual purpose, due to the fact that if you are not able to attend some of or even all of the draft, you can still participate and get a reasonable draft list.

The draft dates are:

Premier League - Sunday October 1st 12:00PM Eastern / 9:00AM Pacific Time

Basic League -Sunday September 24th 12:00PM Eastern / 9:00AM Pacific Time

In years past we had done a main draft and an adjustment draft to get under the salary cap. This season we had hoped it would track the salary and would stop you if you spend too much. Since that feature did not come to fruition, Once the draft is complete, you will have only 6 hours to drop enough players to get under the cap of 83.5 million and maintain the minimum roster requirements. For those of you participating in the live draft the adjustment will be minimal. For those who are auto drafting, unless you were careful to sprinkle in some value players, you will likely have alot of adjustments to make to become compliant. After submitting the drops, to fill out the remainder of your roster to be compliant, it will be based on email submissions on a first come first serve basis with only one selection and we move to the next drafting team and so on. Those not responding to email in a reasonable amount of time will be passed over until the next round. You will need to have a compliant roster by Opening day. The same rules of dropping players will apply beginning the day after the draft *see waiving players.

Preparation is critical and you must insure that your draft lists are deep enough to support a seventeen round draft. Watch for any per-season injury rumors, players that may retire or rookies that won't make the cut on their pro team. I strongly suggest that when you are creating your draft selection list, that you utilize the pre-ranking system and rank all players in the league for each position (Forwards, Defensemen & Goalies.) As you can imagine, with everyone interested in the same top players, a ten-team league can easily go through the top 100 forwards players. To be safe you should have half of all forwards, three quarters of all defensemen and three quarters of all goalies ranked on your selection list.

Players waived during draft -

The waived players will be dumped back in the free agent pool and will be available immediately upon release and can be acquired by submitting an e-mail to the Commish. The requests will be prioritized utilizing the waiver draft order which is simply the reverse order of the draft. Each player that is picked up is one turn and it moves to the next team in the waiver order.

Final Team Roster-

Each team’s roster will be finalized and verified by October 7th. Starting rosters must be submitted by 12 noon (Pacific) on October 10th 2023. I prefer that you use the roster submission interface through the web site but if you have issues, you can e-mail them to me. Late roster changes and drops will not be permitted and will have to wait until the following week to take effect.

The Salary Cap-

The salary cap for the 2023-24 season, will increase to $83.5 million per team. The SSFHL uses the salary cap information from the Hockey Buzz Cap Central web site. In some cases the salary may not be listed as they are negotiating a new contract, in that case the last known salary (for draft purposes) will be used for our salary cap.  Any GM that should acquire a player that was awarded a larger salary after the start of the season WILL pay the higher salary amount and it cannot put you over the cap. Likewise if a salary is decreased or adjusted due to a trade, the rate will be adjusted.

Team Player allotment -

The maximum number of players you are allowed per position breaks down as follows:

11 forwards, 6 defense and 2 goalies Plus (1 rookie prospect).

SSFHL Rookie/Prospect definition is as follows:

Player must be less than 26 years of age at seasons start and cannot have exceeded playing in 25 NHL games in any preceding season.

Players that exceed the 25 game limit will lose rookie status and will start counting against the 19 man roster. At that time the GM will have to decide if they want to keep that player and will need to drop one of their others off the regular roster to the FA pool. In conjunction with that move, the GM will also be required to add a new prospect as they must have one as a keeper at seasons end. Prospects can remain on your team indefinitely until they become a regular roster player at which time you can sign them to the standard three season keeper deal.

Rookie prospects will be counted against the salary cap. (revised)

Owners must select a prospect during the draft. For those that are auto drafting arrangements will be made for them to pick-up a prospect post draft. The minimum number of players you are allowed per position breaks down as follows:

9 forwards, 5 defense and 1 goalies Plus (1 rookie prospect).

Leaving yourself some room under the salary cap can be a strategic plus if you plan on completing many trades during the regular season.

The Regular Season-

Now that you have drafted your team and your rosters are filled, you're ready to mold the team to your own specifications. Of your 20-man roster, you are allowed to dress a maximum of 13 players, leaving the remaining 6 on the bench.

Your teams weekly line up must consist of:

8 Forwards,4 Defensemen and 1 Goalies

Bench player points are not calculated into your team’s score, so paying attention to hot and cold streaks are critical to the success of your team. Points are awarded by player’s real performance and are weighted differently on the desired merits of that position. See the league scoring page  on the web site for details.

Keeper players -

Each team will be allowed to have 3 keepers beginning in the 24-25 season, one of which must be a prospect. The keepers must be declared by July 15th after the completion of the season. The maximum term for a keeper is three seasons and that term balance transfers if the player is traded to another team. You are not required to keep any players if you do not wish too unless the deadline has already passed and you made the commitment to a player(s). GM's that have committed to keeping players will have that many less draft selections the following season. ***Goalies are excluded from being selected as keepers!

Keeper contracts are for a maximum of 3 seasons, to prevent one team from monopolizing the possible pinnacle of the playing career of the many super stars The season that you acquire them does not count as the first season.

Keepers may be traded, but the team getting them only gets them for whatever time is left on their current contract.

Each season you have the following choices at the trading deadline:

Option 1: Keeping your existing keepers, assuming they have contract still remaining.

Option 2: Selecting different keepers for a three year contract.

Option 3: A mix of the two above policies where you retain 1 or 2 contracts and opt in for a new three year contract on a new player.

We are allowing teams to opt out of selecting keepers if they wish. This will mean that for those teams the draft will be one or two rounds longer for those particular teams. The additional picks will be added to the end of the draft so it actually is more of a disadvantage, unless you like drafting in later rounds.

Your keepers can in fact have three different start dates if you changed one out every year.

Activating/Benching Players-

As the team owner, you decide which players to start or bench for upcoming games each week. You should frequently analyze each of your current players, review their year-to-date and previous performances, and freely move players between your active roster and bench. There are several helpful links on the main league web page that can assist you in making your selections.

Submitting lineups-

Roster changes for your team must be submitted by 9 AM (Pacific) on Mondays to be in effect for the next week's games. The selections you make will be in effect for all games played from Monday through Sunday night. When you are satisfied with your starting lineup, you may either login to your team page and make the changes there or submit the changes via e-mail to the commissioner. Note that once you have set them they will not change immediately, but will go into a review process for verification of rule compliance.

 Player Acquisition &  Movement-

Trades/Transactions -Players can be added or waived from your roster via the free agent list or trades with other GM's. Player transactions are made to the roster once per week and must be received via e-mail by 12 noon (PST) on Sundays.

You must include in your e-mail, the current salary for the player you want to sign. Current Cap salaries are listed on the free agent list and are updated on a regular basis using the information provided by on the Hockey Buzz Cap Central web site. Approved transactions submitted within the above guidelines will take effect for games played the following Monday.

Transactions submitted after 12 noon on Sundays will not be effective until the following weeks roster.

Rosters may be submitted anytime up until 10 AM (PST) each Monday. The commissioner reserves the right to (and will) adjust illegal rosters (too many active players) so that they comply with the minimums of 8 forwards, 4 defensemen and 1 goalie that are active for that week.

If your transaction puts you over either the dollar cap limit or makes your roster non-compliant, either under min or over max player allotment, the team shall forfeit points for that week until the roster is fixed.

Waiving Players -

·          Players may be waived from a team’s roster at any point during the season. Once the player is waived a 48 hour hold goes into effect before the player can be acquired by another team. The waiver draft order (reverse of main draft) will be used for the entire season to award first pick of waived players. If a player is not requested during the 48 hour waiver period then they are returned to the free agent pool and may be acquired by any new team.

·         Waived players cannot be re-acquired by the same team until the following season.

Upon approval of a transaction by the commissioner, the transaction must be completed and the acquiring team must keep the player on their roster for a minimum of one week before they are eligible to be dropped.

·         Players that are on the IRL are allowed to be dropped 14 days after they appear on the Injures page posted on the SSFHL web site. Should a player come back and be re-injured, the 14 day clock will start over from that point. Drop requests that are made the same day the player is injured are subject to commissioners discretion as to the eligibility of the drop.

  Adding Players -

·          You can request a player as soon as they appear on either the free agent list or on the transaction page as a drop.

·           Player transactions are on a first-come, first-serve basis, so when more than one team requests a player, the player is awarded to the team who's e-mail is the first received.

·          All requests are subject to the limits of the 20-player roster, as well as the salary cap ($82.5 million), It is the GM's responsibility to know if the transaction is within cap limits..

·          If the requested transaction puts the team over on either the roster or salary cap, the transaction will be rejected. Again the burden of responsibility for keeping your roster under cap and within roster limits is your responsibility.

Trading/Acquisition deadline -

All rosters will be frozen for the remainder of the season (including playoffs) at the NHL trading deadline. The deadline is March 8th at 3:00 PM EST, but we will extend our deadline to midnight PST to allow for GM's to analyze and make adjustments.

Normal roster rotation (bench or active status) is still applicable through the remainder of the season and playoffs.

Playoff format - This format adjusts every year depending on whether we have an even number of teams. If we have less than a full compliment of teams (22) we switch to a "bye" format to balance the rounds and allow us to have one from each conference arrive for the cup round. This year we have exceeded 16 teams so each conference will send 8 teams to the play-offs. Perhaps next season (2023-24 we will look at breaking out into divisions.

Your playoff roster consists of any players whose teams have made the playoffs. This can be by luck, skill or late season transactions trades or acquisitions if you are looking to given yourself a competitive advantage for the playoffs.

Round one (Quarter finals)

Each conference will be paired up as follows:

1st plays 8th, 2nd plays 7th, 3rd plays 6th and 4th plays 5th.

Round two (Semi finals)

The winners of 1st vs 8th plays the winner of 2nd vs 7th and the winners of 3rd vs 6th plays the winner of the 4th vs 5th in each conference.

Round three (Conference Finals)

The last two teams standing after the semi finals will play for the conference title.

Round four (SSFHL Cup Championship)

The conference winners will compete for the SSFHL Championship.