In yesterday's FTB, SkinnyFish linked to an article published on The Hocky Writers blog, where the writer provided himself with a little challenge; create the best hockey team possible under the salary cap, using a few house rules (you can find the original article here. It was a pretty interesting challenge, and the author's team was pretty intriguing (although I agreed with Skinny's original take that the defence seemed a little lacking).

Anyways, we're kind of in the lull of the offseason; the amount of playoff hockey to watch is shrinking by the day, but coverage of the NHL Entry Draft hasn't ramped up to the point of becoming unbearable yet. So let's have some fun, and see which PPPer has the best salary cap acumen.

Want to participate? Here's how.

Create a FanPost and name it PPP Salary Cap Challenge, username. Then go about creating your 23-man roster (yes, you must use every spot; no skirting the salary cap by carrying the bare minimum).

This challenge will use the same rules as the original article that started this idea. The rules are as follows:

  • The team must be compliant with the salary cap ($64.3 million).
  • You can only choose one player from each team (obviously you won't select a player from every team, but you can't have two players from the same team).
  • You can only choose up to two players from a single draft year. If you select two players from, say, the 2009 Draft Class, they must have been selected in different rounds (in other words, you can't have two first round-picks from the same draft. So you'd have to choose between Stamkos, Doughty and Pietrangelo if you wanted all three).
  • (edited to add) You can choose one player who wasn't drafted.
  • We'll be using the 2012/13 salary cap figures. That means that current RFAs and UFAs can't be selected.
  • If there is a dispute over what the cap hit of a player is, the figures per Capgeek will be used as the official numbers.

At the end of the month, we'll take the very best entries and have some sort of little mini-tournament to crown the champion. We'll scrounge up some sort of token for the winner.

What makes a winner? You should probably try and focus on the following:

  • Good players, obviously. The team you construct should be able to be a serious threat to win the Cup, especially since you can cherry-pick players from every team and avoid the albatross contract every team invariably has.
  • Cap flexibility. Obviously loading up great, cheap players is the easiest way to build the best possible team for this challenge. However if your entire team is RFA or UFA at the end of the 2013 season then there's no way you could possibly keep that team together folliwng the first season.Try and balance a team that has lots of great players with favourable contracts, so you could keep your team together for several seasons.
  • Originality. Think outside the box and avoid picking the stock players that are so obviously undervalued that they end up on every single team in this compettion. Show that there's more than one way to build a championship team.

Good luck!