A New Season Begins This Thursday

Welcome back everyone!  We truly appreciate your continued interest in our league, and hope that this year should be one of the most competitive yet.

We hope you enjoyed your off-season, because the long-winded breaks between meaningful games and regular season speculation is over.  It’s time to put your GM hats back on and let your players hit the ice.

As you are all aware, we have implemented a number of rule changes (both for the off-season and the regular season). The changes that affected the off-season dealt more with the way Unrestricted Free Agency proceeded. By all accounts, it appears to have been a success, as we feel that salaries are more representative of a competitive player’s market. That said, we would like to hear your thoughts on the UFA process. Was it a success? Was it better than last year?

We are currently in the process of posting the UHP Rulebook online on the UHP blog (http://uhp-info.blogspot.com/). We ask that you read the document in its entirety as we have included a number of changes for this season going forward. Although not significant, these changes may affect the way GMs manage their day to day activities. The main sections that have changed are the following:

1. Change in salary cap and introduction of farm cap;
2. Beginning on Thursday on a prospective basis, all buyout costs will be set at 50% (applied to signed players beginning Thursday and forward);
3. UFA signing process to be used during the season (Note: This is not quite the same as used during the off-season);
4. Revised point system (previously communicated);
5. Additional roster spots (Farm and Prospects) – Previously communicated;
6. Modified Waiver Section (allows additional flexibility during the season).  All waiver moves will be posted on the same ‘Waiver File’ which can now be accessed via the UHP Blog site (http://uhp-info.blogspot.com/);
7. Modified IR section (impact on salary cap, and subsequent moves once IR period is over);
8. Retirement section added (ie: 35 year old rule);

Finally – As you are well aware (since you are reading this on the new UHP Blog Site), all important posts (trades, signings, other significant items) will now be posted on this site, rather than numerous emails being sent out directly to your inbox. If you wish to receive daily/live updates, you can subscribe to the E-mail update on the site, or sign up to the RSS live feed.

Now drop the damn puck already!

Cheers – UHP Management