How do you handle released players?

[Kramden23]

I see a lot of leagues where if you release a player you are still responsible for part of their salary and/or it counts against your cap room. For example, I release Player A who is making 5million, but in doing so I will take a cap hit of 25% of their salary (1.25million).

My question is for commissioners who have these rules, how do you keep track of this? Do you keep track of these accumulated numbers in a notepad, spreadsheet etc.. everytime a team drops a player? Or have you found some way to "integrate" this into the sim, such as "dummy" players or something along those lines?

I guess this question also only applies to leagues where a teams cap room is NOT determined by available/current funds, otherwise I can see how you could just deduct it from that.

We have a hard cap, and your available cap room is determined by subtracting your teams payroll from the salary cap.

[Kramden23]

Anyone?? I'd really like to know how some of you guys handle this.

[ynohtna]

yea I just started my league and I'm sure this may eventually come up for us too since we try to mirror NHL behaviour for cap stuff.

[CMHLCommish]

In my league, we have a hard cap (i.e. not influenced by available/current funds), and buyouts do not count against the salary cap - there's just no easy way to keep track of it so we don't bother. In fact, it gives some GM's a quick way to get out of a salary cap problem which they appreciate having. Bought out players have to go on waivers for 48 hours first, and then if they don't get picked up, they become free agents. If they do get picked up, the team picking them up takes on their full salary.

If they do get bought out, we subtract the prorated remaining value of the contract from the teams current funds - in other words, if we are 41 games into the season and the GM wants to buy out a guy with a 2 year deal at 1 million per year, then he has to pay 1.5 million out of his current funds to buy the player out (500k for the remainder of the current year and 1 million for the 2nd year on the deal). So they have to have enough money in the bank to buy the player out or they can't do it, plain and simple. We have a pretty tight financial system, so not all the teams in our league can afford to buy out some of their heavier contracts - this keeps GM's honest. GM's in our league also use current funds to pay for position changes, upgrades to arenas, etc., and they can earn money by posting articles on our league website, or when their players win awards like player of the week, or an all-star berth, etc.

We're into Season 6 now, and we still don't have a perfect financial system, but it gets better every year.

[Icepilot]

In my league if a team releases a player they have to payout 50% of the remaining contract.
The teams pays out the players contract from his available funds.
I made it very simple as i do not want to try to keep track of these salaries to count towards the cap.

[Kramden23]

Thanks for the responses. However we don't utilize available funds. I would like GMs to be responsible for a certain percentage of a players salary against the cap if they decide to release them. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to apply this.

[jetsdude]

Thanks for the responses. However we don't utilize available funds. I would like GMs to be responsible for a certain percentage of a players salary against the cap if they decide to release them. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to apply this.

You create a new player on their team and make his salary 50% of the other guy's.

E.g. Spezza is released maing 8 mil a season.

You create a player named RELEASED - Spezza and make his salary 4 mil.