NHL - RFA rights expiration

[ideawithoutamind]

NHL team RFA rights (previously signed, having had a previous entry level contracts) should expire after a certain amount of time.

From one site: A player who is drafted or signs an entry level contract with a team has their ‘rights’ held by that team for a minimum of seven years or until they are 25, whichever comes first.

Once a player has reached the seven year or 25 years old mark becomes an unrestricted free agent (“UFA”) if their contract expires. I’ll talk more about this below, but at this point the most important thing to know is that a UFA can sign with any team of their choice and the team they finished playing with cannot do anything to stop them.

https://hockeyanswered.com/guide-to-restricted-free-agents-nhl/

Most NHL EHM RFA rights are held indefinitely after RFA, many times in EHM sims, it conflicts with a teams reservation count, and teams will release the rights to younger players, while keeping euro players taking a reserve spot even though there is likely 0 chance they will ever make it over (whether lack of being good enough or they aren't leaving their home country again)

Example would be Alexander Khoklachev of the Boston Bruins.

From this site: https://blackngoldhockey.com/2020/05/03/alexander-khokhlachev-still-bruins-property-traded-in-khl/: The Bruins hold Khokhlachev’s NHL rights until he is 27 years old, so long as the team submits a qualifying offer each year. Khokhlachev will turn 27 on September 9, 2020.

Either way, even if there isn't an exact real life translation in game to the real life rules, there should be an expiration upon UFA age (27), in my opinion

Running a test sim now, will give examples later.

Edited May 22, 2021 by ideawithoutamind

[ideawithoutamind]

Uploaded a file called: RFA.7z an unmodified TBL 13, simmed 4 years

Specific players, rights should have expired

Petteri Lindbohm - age 30 rights held by St. Louis in 2024

Ivan Telegin - age 32 rights held by Winnipeg in 2024

Alexander Khoklachev - age 30 rights held by Boston in 2024

Edited May 22, 2021 by ideawithoutamind

[wazzaflow10]

22 hours ago, ideawithoutamind said:

NHL team RFA rights (previously signed, having had a previous entry level contracts) should expire after a certain amount of time.

From one site: A player who is drafted or signs an entry level contract with a team has their ‘rights’ held by that team for a minimum of seven years or until they are 25, whichever comes first.

Once a player has reached the seven year or 25 years old mark becomes an unrestricted free agent (“UFA”) if their contract expires. I’ll talk more about this below, but at this point the most important thing to know is that a UFA can sign with any team of their choice and the team they finished playing with cannot do anything to stop them.

https://hockeyanswered.com/guide-to-restricted-free-agents-nhl/

Most NHL EHM RFA rights are held indefinitely after RFA, many times in EHM sims, it conflicts with a teams reservation count, and teams will release the rights to younger players, while keeping euro players taking a reserve spot even though there is likely 0 chance they will ever make it over (whether lack of being good enough or they aren't leaving their home country again)

Example would be Alexander Khoklachev of the Boston Bruins.

From this site: https://blackngoldhockey.com/2020/05/03/alexander-khokhlachev-still-bruins-property-traded-in-khl/: The Bruins hold Khokhlachev’s NHL rights until he is 27 years old, so long as the team submits a qualifying offer each year. Khokhlachev will turn 27 on September 9, 2020.

Either way, even if there isn't an exact real life translation in game to the real life rules, there should be an expiration upon UFA age (27), in my opinion

Running a test sim now, will give examples later.

I don't think that website is quite right. In order to be an Unrestricted free agent you must complete 7 years or be 27. i.e. if you start your professional career at 20, the earlies you can be a free agent is 27. if you start at 18 you're a UFA at 25 having completed 7 years in the league. For players in the rare occasion (Artemi Panarin for example who was a undrafted UFA) who start later than 20 in the NHL, they are RFA's until they turn 27. Hence why he as able to sign with the Rangers after only completing 4 years in the league.

As for players who sign overseas as RFA's rather than play in the NHL....  I do think I remember reading somewhere that the rights of those players are held indefinitely.  It's extremely rare that anyone worth keeping rights too is going to sign overseas. However in the game there's loads of examples of talented young players playing overseas rather than the NHL b/c the team can't afford the contract. Teams should be much more aggressive signing these players and trading them or trading other players to fit them into the cap. But that's not a bug as much as a limitation of the game imo right now.

Also : https://www.nhlpa.com/the-pa/cba is the actual CBA for reference.

Edited May 23, 2021 by wazzaflow10

[ideawithoutamind]

46 minutes ago, wazzaflow10 said:

I don't think that website is quite right. In order to be an Unrestricted free agent you must complete 7 years or be 27. i.e. if you start your professional career at 20, the earlies you can be a free agent is 27. if you start at 18 you're a UFA at 25 having completed 7 years in the league. For players in the rare occasion (Artemi Panarin for example who was a undrafted UFA) who start later than 20 in the NHL, they are RFA's until they turn 27. Hence why he as able to sign with the Rangers after only completing 4 years in the league.

As for players who sign overseas as RFA's rather than play in the NHL....  I do think I remember reading somewhere that the rights of those players are held indefinitely.  It's extremely rare that anyone worth keeping rights too is going to sign overseas. However in the game there's loads of examples of talented young players playing overseas rather than the NHL b/c the team can't afford the contract. Teams should be much more aggressive signing these players and trading them or trading other players to fit them into the cap. But that's not a bug as much as a limitation of the game imo right now.

Also : https://www.nhlpa.com/the-pa/cba is the actual CBA for reference.

 

I'm not finding the word indefinitely in the CBA language anywhere, although just a quick look. If you find the exact language somewhere, def post it, but the examples I had, at least in the Alexander Khoklachev example, his rights will be lost at the age of 27 in real life.

In terms of EHM, the reservation spots do take up space, and Ai definitely holds some of those rights in favor of a recently drafted player. (don't have an example on a recent save), but let's a say a rebuilding team has 15 draft picks and a reservation of 75 players. If they make all 15 picks, the Ai tends to just release recently drafted players instead of relinquishing rights to a 31 year old euro player. For player controlled teams, this shouldn't be an issue, but rebuilding Ai teams shouldn't be releasing 18 or 19 year olds in favor of a rights for a 31 year old that's never coming back. I think having some sort of rights expiration similar (if it can't be exact) to real life would be a useful fix in the game. Or at least for the Ai (if reservation list > max; prioritize releasing rights of players 27 and older)

 

Running an old sim now to see if I can show an example of Ai doing this.

Edit: I noticed as a human GM, some of the older RFAs have a "Do not count", in the reserve list, so this actually may be moot, finishing the sim to the end of the draft just for testing and confirmation,

 

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by ideawithoutamind
running a sim for example

[ideawithoutamind]

Update: Ai actually does seem to do a better job at this in 1.5.

You can skip this one, specifically, don't think it's a pressing issue at the moment.