GDHL Rules: The 'Franchise' Player Tag

Calgary (CP) Its been many many months since I last posted. A lot of exams, work, and well I've been extremely busy. With the GDHL 2007-2008 season coming to a close, I wanted to get this article up to get some good discussion happening. I still have a back log of posts on the way that will be rolled out over the playoff time so we have stuff to talk about in the summer... including Final Team Report Cards *gulp*.

In any event, this will be a start of a series of articles that should spark debate on possible improvements in our next iteration of the GDHL. Here we will discuss with the concept of a "Franchise" tag, but first I'd like to define a term that I will use later one.

Elite Player - One that is realistically capable of leading their respective position in PPts for a given season within the time frame of this pool.

Basic Concept:
Before each season starts (after draft) each GM places a "Franchise" tag on 3 players for each team except their own. After all votes are tabulated, the 3 players with the greatest number of "Franchise" tag votes on each team will be the team's Franchise players (i.e. each team will have 3 Franchise players). In the event of a tie, the player with the greatest number of PPts the previous season will be used. During the season, whenever a trade is made involving a player with a "Franchise" tag, there must be an equal number of "Franchise" players exchanged between the GMs. Since the voting is done after the draft of each year, the "Franchise" tag for players can change from year to year.

Why Have a "Franchise" Tag?
I guess you could call it the "Kevin Kwasny" rule. No fault is put on Kevin since he has shown himself to be a powerhouse in the GDHL with 2 convincing victories, but this proposal will:

• Prevent one team from having a boat load of elite players.
• Prevent teams from having NO elite players.
• To theoretically improve the equality and evaluation criteria for trades.
• To keep all teams in the league competitive year after year.
• Decrease GM inactivity.
  

As mentioned before, this is no slight on Kevin since he did not 'force' the other GMs to make the trades (although I'm still convinced he has some Jedi mind control technique he's perfected) but I'm going to use his team as an example.

Alex Ovechkin
Jarome Iginla
Evgeni Malkin
Marian Hossa
Sergei Gonchar
Dion Phaneuf

I'm sure everyone will agree that all 6 are elite level players. They will be on his team for the final 3 seasons of the league and he is a virtual lock to finish in the top 2 spots each successive year and win the dynasty prize.

Taking a look at other teams in the GDHL, there are some with only 1 or 2 elite player on their team which will greatly hinder their chances of being competitive with the rest of the league within the next 3 years. If a team isn't being competitive, what motivation does the GM have to work on his team? In an ideal world, the separation between first place and last would be 200 PPts, not 500 PPts. A 200 PPts spread averages out to be 10 PPts/player which someone can swallow. A 500PPts spread works out to a whopping 25 PPts/player which is insurmountable.

The Big Questions:
Do you think this will work?
Will it solve our problems?
Do we even have a problem to solve?

Fur Engee (CP)