Sudden Death Gets a Website

The Sudden Death league gets an upgrade to 3.0, and with it comes a slew of updates!

The first update should be obvious by now... we have a website!

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Why have a website?

The website will allow the League Managers (Rick and Aaron) to connect with the General Managers (presumably you) in new ways.  We will be able to push updates and news, to you all, through the site with higher quality than ever before!  This site also allows you to comment on what we put out there so that we can improve the league as a whole.  Unlike the ESPN league landing page (Sudden Death 3.0 League Home Page) this site will also allow us to have a running repository of our weekly updates and great headlines you all love.  (if you clicked on the link I through in there then you may have noticed that the league landing page has been improved as well.... I'll explain later).

What will be on this new site?

Weekly updates for the league's performance.  Major developments within the NHL.  Resources to help you with any fantasy league choices.  Anything else that can pertain to what we do!

Our second major update is on the ESPN league landing page (Sudden Death 3.0 League Home Page).

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Take a second and click that link (if you haven't done so already).  First, you may notice that our league now uses a custom wallpaper... you won't find this design in other leagues (however I know the listing of teams going down the sides is out of date).  You'll also notice that where we used to put the weekly updates now has a rolling highlight film from the previous night's games.  NOTE: if you are viewing this before the start of the 2013 - 2014 season then you will be looking at the highlights from the Stanley Cup finals.  However, in the future this will automatically show last nights highlights via the good'ol NHL!  Right below those highlights you'll see a new chat board!  Please feel free to use this however you want, talk trash... praise others... look dumb, anything you want!  At the top of that chat box is a space that says "name" simply type in your name there (it doesn't have to be your real name... you can use your team name).  You can ignore the box next to it that says "email / URL" just leave it blank.  Below those two boxes you will see a nice big space to enter your message... simply type whatever you want there and press your Enter key and vua' la you've just chatted!  Another great feature is that those messages aren't going anywhere, so feel free to trash talk someone knowing they'll see it the next time they log in....ooo and the icing on the cake... it syncs with the Smack Board displayed below on this web page as well!  Above the highlights video there is a red box with the phrase "Recent Transactions" simply click on that box and you will be taken to a list of the recent transaction that have taken place in our league.

The goal of this new landing page is just to entertain.  Do not expect write-ups there.  You come here for that now!

Now fellow GM's it wasn't particularly easy to bring these slew of changes to realization, particularity the updates for the league landing page.... I had to use custom HTML, some DropBox web hosting, and ugly CSS wrapping.  So I hope that these updates are a pleasant surprise, and if any of you have problems viewing anything on these updates please let me know and I'll see what I can do to fix the problem!  The next write-up on this site will be about the changes in the League Manager position, as well as changes to the league rules!

League Manager & League Rule Changes

GM's,

Our first big league change is due to the incident from our previous season between team Legion-dary of Doom, formerly team Bo-Dangles, (Rick, former League Manager...that's me writing this post) and Vanek at the Disco.  Through that incident I felt it was necessary to pass the title of League Manager to Aaron Cooper (team Keep Calm and Bergeron) this season.  I still have League Manager powers, but only so that I could write some coding to make the league more visually appealing, and sync things up with this new webpage that we have!  Ideally down the line I will have Aaron take my League Manager powers away and I will continue to do write-ups and improve league experiences for you all through this site.  So please welcome

Now, onto the rule changes for this year's league!

I am writing this so that it reads linear similar to this layout (League Rules).  I will also highlight the major changes that I feel you need to be most aware of.

First, there are no changes to the number of teams, or the head-to-head format (weekly match-ups) we've had in the past.

Second, roster limitations have been changed.  Every night you are allowed to have 2: centers, left wings, right wings, D-men, and goalies.  You also have 2 utility slots every night, these slots can be filled by any type of player except a goalie.  There are 5 bench slots which can be filled by any type of player, except goalies.  You are allowed a MAXIMUM of 2 goalies ONLY.

Third, there are limitation as to how many games you can play per week per slot type.  This is referring to the number of times, per week, that you can have a certain slot type (forward, D-men, utility, or goalie) play.  Currently we have 36 forward games allowed per week, 12 D-men games, 12 Utility games, and 8 goalie games per week.  
EXAMPLE: you have 2 D-men slots available per night.... in a normal 7 week match-up you could potentially play 14 (2 x 7) games with your D-men slots.  However, we have a limitation of 12 games for that slot.... so any games that go over the 12 mark WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN YOUR TOTAL POINTS.
So if you believed that one of your players will not have a good game one night, but later in the week will have a good game... you can bench him to prevent from hitting the cap, OR you could put them into your utility slot and have them counted under that instead.  In all honesty, these game caps will not restrict you at all.... meaning it would be very hard to reach these maximums, and in fact you would likely have to drop a significant amount of people to reach these caps in a given week.

Forth, our scoring categories and amounts have changed.  If I could sum this up I would do so with this... SIMPLICITY.  We have gotten rid of a lot of categories that inflated scores in the past, and have brought some of the point values down as well.  Instead of me just listing out the point values I suggest you head to the rules page and see the values for yourselves.  I will tell you that we got rid of these categorizes: hits, shots on goal, blocks, short handed goals and assists (but added short handed points, which adds to your +/-), power play goals and assists (but added power play points, which adds to your +/-).  We've also added "Defense Points which essentially give defenseman an extra boost for ever +/- they get.

Fifth, this is a NEW RULE... it's called the "KEEPERS RULE".  Essentially this rule allows each team to choose a predetermined number of players to carry over to the next season.  We currently are allowing 3 keepers per team, but this can change depending on your feedback which you can leave as a comment below or vote on our pole which is on the right of this website.  Now, if you choose to "keep" a player currently on your roster for next season then he will be un-draft-able by other teams and will NOT count against your drafting either.  If you want those high value players that others have chosen to "keep" then you will have to trade for them.  To see how to choose your "keepers" then click on the image below.

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That covers all of the changes this year.  Please leave feedback below, and based on the feedback we will make changes to improve the league!  However, we will not change these rules once the season starts!