Blues Discord Keeper League Rules

Date of last update: 2021-03-18

Version: 0.1

Authors: guccipotato#7117, SchoenKills#3915, zonk#2716

Table of Contents

Roster Slots

Position Count
C 2
LW 2
RW 2
D 4
Utility 1
G 2
Bench 5
IR+ 3
Minors 3

IR+ Slots

The league will feature three IR+ slots as described in Roster Slots. These slots can be occupied by any player who is considered ‘Injured’ as per Fantrax. This includes but is not limited to: day-to-day, players put on IR in the NHL, out indefinitely and more.
If a player becomes healthy while on IR slot, team’s transactions are locked (except for dropping players) until the healthy player is taken off IR.

Mode

Number of teams will be 12. Mode that will is played is weekly head-to-head with points. Top six teams by standings at the end of the season will make the playoffs, bottom six teams will make the consolation bracket.

Points for Different Categories

Skater stats Points
Goals 6
Assists 4
Power play points 2
Shorthanded points 2
Shot on goal 1.6
Block 1.6
Hit 0.6
Game winning goal 3
Goalie stats Points
Games started 5
Saves 0.5
Goals against -2
Shutout 1

Season Timeline

The league will run for 22 weeks, so that each team players every other team twice. After that, the playoffs start. Each round of the playoffs is one week. This adds another three weeks.

Playoff Format

The playoffs are split into the Champion and the Consolation Bracket. The former is for teams who finished the regular season places 1 through 6. Teams who finished the season on places 7 through 12 will play in the Consolation Bracket. The format for both brackets work the same.
The first week, the two top teams of each Bracket will have a bye and automatically advance (Teams #1 and #2 in the Champion Bracket, Teams #6 and #7 in the Consolation Bracket). The winners of the first week advance and play the teams that had a bye in the first week. The losing teams will play each other, so that exact standings can be determined, as this defines the order of next season’s entry draft.
Teams will be reseeded each round, which means that the highest finishing team always plays the lowest placed remaining team. Winners of the second playoff week will advance to the Champion Bracket or Consolation Bracket final. Losers will play each other here as well.

Entry Level Draft Order

Initial Order

For the very first draft, the draft order will be randomized and in snake-style. Draft picks cannot be traded in the initial draft.

Subsequent Order

Any subsequent draft after the initial season, the draft order will be determined as follows:

Picks 1-6 (lottery streamed and done via draftpicklottery.com):

Picks 7-12 (in order):

Once a round is complete, it starts at the first pick again.
The draft will have 8 rounds, since there are 18 roster slots and 10 of them are reserved for the contracts of each team. Draft picks are tradeable in the league, see Draft Picks. If a team uses either of their two ELCs, they will be taken from the back of their draft rounds.

Player Contract System

At the end of each season, players can hand out contracts to their players, effectively protecting them from being draftable in the upcoming Entry Level Draft. The player can hand out contracts with the length of four, three, two or one years. One week before the draft takes place, the commissioners make sure that each team is “Contract Compliant”.
A team can have a maximum amount of:

If the team is under the limit for a specific contract length, they can put any player without a contract on their team under contract, as long as they obide the limits. Players that have an active contract, can not be contracted again or extended. Teams are free to use less contracts than the limit. If they have more contracts than allowed, they have to dissolve (a) contract(s) of their choice.
After the draft has taken place and a new season starts, one level is subtracted from their contracts. Then, at the end of the season, teams have to make sure that they’re Contract Compliant again and the process repeats.
If the team has players that lose their contracts next season (i.e. before the draft takes place they have one year left), those players can not receive new contracts at the end of the season and will therefore be available at the upcoming draft to any team. This counts on a player and not team basis, that means even trading those players does not make them eligible to receive contracts before the draft happens. Players that have only one year left on their contract before the draft will be tracked in a public spreadsheet by the league commissioners.

Entry Level Contracts

Teams get additional contracts for so-called Entry Level players. If the team employs a player that is under the age of 24 at the start of a season, they have the option - before using any regular contract to draft-protect this player - to give them a one year Entry Level Contract (ELC). ELCs are completely seperate from the regular contracts and play no role in being Contract Compliant. A team can hand out a maximum of two ELC in a single season before the draft. A player can only receive a single ELC.
If the team wishes to keep the player after his ELC year, they have assign a regular contract to the player. Players with ELCs are tracked in a public spreadsheet by the league commissioners.

Using an ELC to protect a player, will take away a draft pick of the team per ELC from the back of their draft rounds. For example, if you use both of your ELCs, you forfeit your draft picks in round 7 and 8.

Minors

In addition to the slots mentioned in Roster Slots, the player has three additional bench slots for minor players. Minor players can’t contribute to the team’s score as long as they’re on a minor bench slot. Players lose their minor status, once they:

Minor players do not need to be protected before the draft, as they are automatically protected.

Trading

Waivers

Players dropped off a team are placed on waivers for 2 days. Players with contracts keep their contracts, even after being dropped off a team. If they’re not picked up during their waiver period, they become free agents, lose their current contract and can be picked up by any team. Once picked up, players become available to score for their new team the next day (cut-off is midnight PT).

Team to Team

Players that are part of a trade between two teams keep their contract status. This means: if there are any years left on the contracts, they will also have these years left on the new team. If they ran out of their contract at the beginning of the season, they’re ineligible to receive a new contact at the end of the season and will be available in the draft.

Draft Picks

Draft picks can be part of a trade, even though some limits apply. The roster size is 18 players and teams can have 10 contracts, which means that each subsequent drafts after the initial one will have 8 rounds. Teams can also potentially protect young players with ELCs up to a maximum of two. Therefore, only 6 picks are guaranteed for a team and therefore only picks 1 to 6 can be traded.
If you do a trade with a pick for a player, you possibly end up with more players than what is allowed on the roster. Illegal Rosters will be allowed up to the start of the league. By then, the team rosters have to be compliant to the roster limitations or they won’t be able to score points.

Organization

Platform

Rule Changes

Communication

Example Schedule

Here is an example schedule with placeholder dates to give you a rough idea how the season looks as well as which steps and dates to look out for.

The actual dates might be on slightly different dates, depending on availability and weekdays. Official dates will always be publicly announced in the league Discord.

Expansion Draft

each team has to expose 1 player of each position? or keep number of exposed players variable, depending on how many new teams join and make it a team manager agreement during off-season

Team Naming

To make it easier to track individual teams even when the team’s manager changes between seasons, a team name consists of two parts: <Location, static> and <Name, chosen>. The location (can also be fictional) will be chosen when teams are initially created and need majority commissioner approval. This part will be stuck with the team then and can’t be changed, even when the manager changes. The second part can be freely by the manager, but again needs majority commissioner approval. If a team’s manager switches, the new manager is allowed to change this part of the team name, according to the same rules.

Team Abandonment

what happens if a team is abandoned by the manager during the season for any reason and the waitlist is empty?

Penalties

List of Penalties and Actions

Not being Contract Compliant by deadline

Action 1: Reminder send to team owner and new deadline is two days later

Action 2: If still not compliant, commissioners will randomly cancel contracts of each length until the player is Contract Compliant

Not setting your lineups during regular season

Action 1: A warning will be issued to the team manager.

Action 2: If the team manager repeats this behavior, they will be removed if there’s a unanimous commissioner vote n favor of it.

Not using IR slots and/or not replacing hurt players

Action 1: Will be handled like Not setting your lineups during regular season

Action 2: Will be handled like Not setting your lineups during regular season

Not setting your lineups during playoffs

Action 1: A warning will be issued to the team manager and they must set their lineup from thereupon.

Action 2: If the team manager fails to set the lineup again the next day, they’re automatically removed by the commissioners.

Collusion among team managers (with proof)

Action: Permanent ban from the league for all team managers involved. Decided by unanimous vote of commissioners.

Tanking (? hard to define criteria)

Action: !!!!!!

Removal of a Manager by the Commissioners

Is it necessary for a manager to be removed due to them failing to follow the rules, they will immediately be replaced by the highest manager on the waitlist (if available).
In case there is no manager on the waitlist, the commissioners assume shared management. Actions are:

Commissioner Tasks

Changelog