**I haven't given this a TON of thought so don't flame me if I'm missing something obvious about this, it's more of a fun idea I've had that I'd like to see built upon by others of the community**


There are lots of reasons not to do this that people will be quick to comment on, but I've had this in my head and wanted to share anyway since I think it would be a cool revamp. Perfect time to shake things up on the off chance this does get traction, entering a new era (66 games). I'm sure many people have had a similar idea before, and I have not ran any numbers to see if this could even work out.

To begin, I think it would be cool to add a third league alongside the SMJHL and SHL, with the goal to increase retention and keep people interested in the site. This league would act kind of as the SHL's AHL/Euro leagues. For the purpose of this proposition the league will be called the SAHL. 





Ideas about SAHL:

1) No TPE Cap in SAHL. Players would be free to keep building their players week to week and seeing their activity pay off in the sim. From personal experience, I almost quit the SHL in my second season with my first player since I got so bored of the lack of progression. I only stuck with it since I didn't want to let WPG down after being taken with their first rounder. This was my experience for just my 2nd season, as I was called up in my third. I can't imagine how some people that are forced to spend 4 seasons with no progression feel, or how many users we see dropping off because of this.

2) Basically players drafted to the SHL can be loaned to SAHL teams as soon as their second season, if their SHL team chooses to. This would be HUGE for the progression of 2nd/3rd/4th year players that can't make their SHL team, as many are capped for 90% of those 3 seasons. This also keeps the SMJHL competitive for new players. Having a system to loan your players to new teams also lets people meet new users, and helps fight against some of the cliquishness prevalent on the site.

2) SMJHL becomes capped again at 350 TPE. It should be a league that rookies can be huge contributors in, and a haven for slow earners. Could cap SMJHL as a 2 year league and age players out, unless your rights are not owned by an SHL team.

3) Some SMJHL teams will move to the SAHL to make the numbers work, it COULD also have some kind of relegation system to keep it competitive and fresh, without being at the expense of active users. With less SMJHL teams more rookies would have a chance to win championships, which is also huge for player retention.

5) SAHL teams would be loaned players from multiple SHL teams, since we don't have the users/players to give each SHL team their own SAHL team. These allegiances can be tweaked season to season to make the
  numbers work.

6) More GM jobs available (tons of people never get a chance to GM that would like to due to the number of teams). Also could create more jobs by having an SAHL HO to handle relegation and/or assigning SHL teams to SAHL teams.





Basically with this implemented the timeline for a new user would be: SMJHL -> Drafted to SHL -> Loaned to SAHL -> work way up into the SHL over time.

Like I said there are a lot of issues with this, I'm hoping that someone smarter than me likes the idea and figures out if there is a way to make it work. In my opinion this would make a players first several season immensely more dynamic and enjoyable than the stagnant system that we have right now.

As I said earlier, this is more of a brainstorm than a suggestion to feel free to post your own ideas or arguments against this!

**Edit

Just thought of something to add to the loaning thing, an option that would be pretty sick is if all the players loaned to the SAHL were put in a pool.

Then the SAHL teams could draft from this pool of available players each season to keep things fresh. Would also make it a lot more fun to GM one of these teams. **