06-16-2020, 03:50 PMJKortesi81 Wrote:

06-16-2020, 02:58 PMJayWhy Wrote: For Minnesota and Toronto, you are absolutely ignoring they're deep prospect pools that will be filling their line-ups shortly. Or with Tampa's high number of draft picks for the next couple of seasons which will be filling those spots.

I get that you don't want expansion, as a GM, I don't want to lose good players. But by every measure, it is the correct path. You can say the 4th line argument is weak, but no matter what you do, they aren't getting special teams time, they're guaranteed playing less than 12 other people above them and you can fuck with it all you want, they won't play enough to be entertaining.

This is a game. This is for fun. Sticking people on the 4th line kills that for enough people that it would actively drive away active members of the site, I can guarantee it. I've seen enough who went inactive on the 3rd line because of limited opportunity.

This also ignores budgeting. Are we suddenly raising the budget for 4th lines to include actives? Because active teams will not have reasonable space for that under the current budget.

Stop it, you know this isn't for fun anymore.

i understand what you're saying, but it also feels like with more available builds at the ready, a defensively tough 4th line could be useful? And couldn't these players play on the PK? I get it though, its more because of how the TPE works, and its not like a 700 TPE 4th liner will build specifically to kill penalties.

The problem i have isn't even about losing good players, its that we have teams that still need to grow and grow. I'm not ignoring what's going on in the "rebuilding" teams for the record, and i think it has something to do with seeing how rebuilding teams could compete faster in STHS as opposed to being simply brutalized in FHM. I'm conditioned differently. Either way, my fears are that of potentially having 5 teams stuck in this rebuild for a long ass time phase as opposed to just the 3 we have now. I understand we'll never have a league of parity where everyone has a chance to win the cup in the same season, but i just don't want more opportunities for constant underacheiving. Though you're right. Toronto and Texas have done well, so it's clear that it can be done.

I don't think anyone would argue raising the Salary Cap either! haha.

Maybe i'm just bitter because I have to retire now, and I don't want to. A 4th line lets Joe K live a hockey life for another few seasons, lol. The problem might not even be with players not having spots as much as it is players being able to last 20+ seasons. Our weak regression system is partially responsible for what's going on here. Once we make regression more harsh (And we should, there shouldn't be another Joe K, or Esa, or Eriksson, etc ever again) that will also help with player movement up and down the lineup.

If we want to increase parity we should add a 6m and 7m contract tier for 1500 and 1700 TPE players. Would also open up spots for lower end players because teams wouldn't be able to afford teams full of 1000+ TPE players.