Let me officially welcome @cbarnett-chicago to the NSHL as the new GM of the Thunder Bay Kodiaks.
While I’ve made it clear that my preference would have been to bring in someone who is not in the DFHL, that is not a reflection of Chris’ skills as a GM. The Kodiaks are in good hands going forward.
Those of you in the DFHL may have noticed this already but the ability to sim games has been restored to this site, with that league's exhibition schedule now under way.
As such, the only thing holding up the NSHL from getting going again is that we need to run a draft first, which means we need a GM for Thunder Bay. I have more changes that I'd like to get done on the site before advertising that but I'm also tired of putting it off. @zjamesbeck, the team is yours if you want them. If not, let me know and I'll share about the opening via the NSHL Facebook and Twitter feeds.
While the longer-term goal is to have our own ratings set, I'm going to do a re-rate of NSHL players using the CPHL's most-recent ratings set so that we have something that's at least a little more accurate to go on. This doesn't preclude us from using our own ratings for the coming NSHL season, it's just a step forward.
Okay, where we stand right now is that I'm still working on getting the back-end of the site in working order. I've been making some solid progress over the last couple weeks but I still don't feel comfortable putting a timeline on anything. There have just been a lot of moving parts that stopped moving, and they're starting to again.
Congrats to Kev and the Surge on their third Herb Brooks Memorial Trophy Championship. And congrats to Brian and the F'n Squirrels on their run to the Finals.
Those of you in the DFHL already know that I'm trying to get some work done on FHS before moving forward with another season, so we're going to take this offseason a little slowly. As of right now, voting for end-of-season awards is open via the GM Tools. We'll keep that open until 5:00 PM on February 23 unless everyone votes before then.
We've still got a couple GMs who haven't voted for All-Star teams yet. Like I said in channel, I failed to announce this when I planned on it so if anyone needs some extra time, I can delay a little bit. That said, what I'm looking at right now is Day 79 tonight (Sunday), no games on Monday, All-Star Game on Tuesday. If that doesn't work for anyone, let me know.
Okay, the Season 13 Entry Draft is done and all eligible players who were selected should now be on their respective team rosters. If anything doesn't look right, let me know.
With that set, we're on to the Waiver Draft. That starts at noon on Saturday, with rosters required to be compliant by 5:00 PM on Friday. Any GM whose roster is non-compliant by that deadline will be removed from the league. If there are any questions, feel free to ask.
Okay, since there was a decent amount of consensus around September 17th as our draft day, I'm officially setting 8:00 PM EDT on that day as the start of the Entry Draft. Assuming all goes well, that would put the deadline for roster compliance at 5:00 PM on September 21 with the Waiver Draft starting at noon on September 22.
Rerates are complete but it looks like TSN has some bad data so some players who are eligible have been declared ineligible. For example, Dylan McIlrath is listed as having no NHL team but he's under contract to the Red Wings (though he spent all of last season in Grand Rapids). As such, let me know what needs correcting and I'll make sure to manually take care of it.
Congrats to Brian and the Fort Worth F'n Squirrels, our Season Twelve Herb Brooks Memorial Trophy Champions! Kevin and the Sault Surge put up quite the fight, so congrats to them as well and to everyone else in the league for another successful season.