We're asking for all GMs to please vote on the following. BOG will make a decision solely based on the outcome of this vote. Should we
a) allow sign and trades. This means THAT, you are allowed to trade players that you own the rights to after signing them in FA
OR
b) to NOT allow sign and trades. This means that you are NOT allowed to trade ANY signed players you sign in FA, even if you owned their rights

Should be noted that, all signed players will later be allowed to be traded, after January 1st, 2018.

Vote away fellow GM's

As I said, players who's rights have never been traded would have made sense to be permitted (option 3), but given a choice of yes or no, I believe no sign and trades is the better choice.

December 29th, 2016 : Artemi Panarin signs a 2 year 12 million extension with the Chicago Blackhawks.
June 23rd, 2017 : Artemi Panarin is traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Had Panarin not signed the extension, he would have hit the RFA Market.

This is an example of what it would mean to have a sign and trade. You theoretically signed the player during the regular season, and then traded them in the offseason.

Player was already their property though. (RFA) (Late edit: pending UFA's are presumed to be no longer that teams property, at least for this game's purposes only) That's the difference. What sign and trade is being interpreted here is for UFA's only:

GM: Hi Oshie! We really want you here in Montreal and think you'd be a solid addition to our team who hope to go for the cup.
Oshie: Ok that sounds good I like where MTL is headed and want to be part of the team! Sign me up.
GM: Ok just sign here aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand by the way I just traded you to Colorado for a 1st rounder.....enjoy the skiing in fun town!!

Let me preface this by saying I think under the structure of our game and what the essence is, sign and trades should be allowed. Like I mentioned, Brian Dumoulin was traded 17 times this month but no one bats an eye. A GM wants to sign Oshie just to trade him for picks afterwards, No that's not allowed.........

That's the thing, we are picking and choosing our rules as we go so we have to take liberties with some circumstances. If Vegas wants to spend all there available cap on free agents just for the purposes of trading them afterwards, that should be there prerogative. It's technically legal in every way. What is the counter to that from the rest of the GM's? No one trades for those free agents and Vegas is now stuck paying Oshie, Shattenkrik and Hanzal 20M of his cap because no one wants to bite on his trade demands and even if they do, he might have to retain salary for it to work.

but the only thing that is different from these UFAs and RFAs is no compensation for signing another teams.

I think if we try to make it realistic, it contradicts everything that happened (Dumoulin)

I get what your scything though.

Once a player is signed who is currently an RFA even coming off a ELC and that new contract takes them into they're UFA status, they are by definition a UFA status player at the end of there contract. The minute McDavid signed his massive contract, he foregone is RFA status. He is technically a UFA contract player now. Its just that his contract ends in 9 years.....

That's the difference. If you sign an RFA to a contract that makes him a future UFA at the end of it and then trade him, he is a UFA regardless. Since in our game we took the player preferences out of it and made all current UFA's go to free agency, this doesn't apply to guys like Panarin who were signed at RFA status to a UFA contract.

lets just make it as realistic as possible. lets just make it just like FA, minus the location factor

edit : I've realized it would be better for the future

Unless the other two thirds of the league all of a sudden shout a resounding yes, then most likely were going to abandon sign-and-trades completely. We've only seen one yes to date, and I wonder who that could have been (cough, cough)

The beauty of having the free agent period IRL already passed us in the GM game timeline is that we now have a basis for our bids. So not only will signing Oshie to a 7 year 11 million dollar deal just to sign and trade him look bad, its not even close to what he got IRL. Meaning everyone's perspective of what he should be worth has now been fortified by the IRL events of the free agency.

Like I said, I'm all for sign and trading. I'm against bad GM's paying a 1st for example to GM so that they can get a Oshie at 50% retention from 10M for 7 years when they could make the smart choice and let the Gm that signed him to that contract be stuck with it. Like in real life. Regardless that should be the two GM's prerogative.

I would like to rescind my vote for Sign and Trades. I have come to the conclusion that it is best for the overall health of the the GM Game to make the FA period as realistic as possible, in order to better plan for the future.

tanks - phillyjabroni

I believe that if the GM has their prerogative, they should do it. That's your right as a GM. However, for the sake of the overall impact and health of the GM Game that it should be best to make FA realisitic

OK so just to understand correctly, you can sign and trade a player but only after Jan 1st 2018?

Correct. Doesn't matter if you owned their rights previously or not, Jan 1st they're all off their leashes

I understand where you are coming from Jab but the health of the game should not be from not being able to use tactical methods to your advantage, it should be from having GM's who can see these clear deceptions and make educated decisions about them.

Alas i voted to not have sign and trades in the game to have the free agency be as simple as possible and for no one to get butt hurt about sign and trade schemes.

Essentially sign and trade schemes should be similar to the Offer sheet tactic. No one uses them because there is an unwritten code but technically there us nothing stopping you from doing it.

I agree with everything you said. Its an unwritten rule to not do it, but its not on the books as a rule. I don't think sign and trades benefit anyone other than me and my counterpart who is receiving the play I signed, which makes up .06% of the Gms.

I am against the sign and trades, currently making the vote : 11-0 in favor of no sign and trades.

Yeah I was hoping to change my vote and hopefully help convince others to make the educated decision but once your vote is in, its final apparently. They should fix that.

Sign and trades have officially been removed from the UFA process.

Why is that? Not everyone has voted yet and there is still a chance for a majority in favor, no?

Odds and probability for that are quite low aren't they? In the odd event it does change, we will add sign and trades back, but it doesn't seem like that's gonna happen

in order to change Sign and Trades to yes, you would need to 10 votes for it, outscoring the already 11, at 10-21

Its called due process guys. If the US government called it after 11 votes Trump would of w..........never mind.

I think we agreed to the sign and trade as long as you owned rights, because trading is the nature of this game. Not being realistic lol. We ignore nmc, but now we're going to have players that can't be traded? I don't really care, I intend to keep my FA's. But just thought it made sense in the spirit of the game

Exactly. Sign and trade schemes are in the spirit of the GM game. Not in reality. It is a fine lien because we use reality to dictate somethings and fantasy for others. It comes down to unbiased opinion in the end.

Turner, You mention you intend to keep all your UFA's, if i sign them all to over bloated contracts that you don't want to match, does that change anything for you compared to if you were straight up just beaten on an offer?

I think that we should try to make FA realistic to see if it works, since we already have enough evidence of no trade limits, abandoning NMCs and NTCs has.

it is in the nature of the GM Game to be unrealistic and implementing an unrealistic feature would make it more realistic. what I mean by that is, if we added yet another unrealistic scheme, the game has fallen into a pattern of just doing stuff unrealistic, but if the game were to get something realistic, it makes the game more interesting

I agree with Marco on this, the nature of this game is that there will be a ton of trades. If we don't allow teams to trade their UFA signings until January we limit the trade possibilities. When V2 comes about I absolutely agree with having no sign and trades, but for this current game it just makes sense for sign and trades to be allowed. Also the vote is currently 11-6 so the BOG shouldn't conclude that no sign and trades has won.