Talk:2018–19 NHL transactions

Changing Start Date

It's that time of year again, and I am once again going to propose changing the start date of this article to July 1. I have it set up to begin today, Draft day, as we have been doing for years, but there are a couple reasons why. First and foremost, to the NHL itself, contracts rollover on July 1. That is when new contracts (and bonuses and NMC/NTCs) kick-in and when old contracts expire; it is essentially the day the NHL's calendar flips over (from 2017-18 to 2018-19 in this case). As the purpose of these articles are to track the movement of player's contracts, it sort of just makes sense to follow that built-in guideline. Secondly, the way we have it, with the split happening in the middle of June, we are creating a new article right in the middle of the yearly buyout window (so anyone who wants to see what buyouts a team did in the off-season has to bounce between two articles) and we are left with two 'June; headings in the trade section (with one currently having a year qualifier to reduce confusion). That's just kind of messy practice. Additionally, the Draft Day was (somewhat openly) selected ambiguously - a lot of movement happens on that day, and it can be seen as the "new start" for teams heading into the next year and it creates a slight disconnect to have the accompanied trades listed in the 2017-18 Transactions page (as an example), when the draft results are listed on a team's 2019-19 Season page - but for Transactions pages themselves, there is little significance of Draft Day. Lastly, one of the big things has been, "it'll be a lot of work to change it". I don't mind doing that work. It will be a somewhat slow process, but I am willing to adjust all of the old pages one by one to get them in line. Just my two cents. I know this has been a long-going debate, but I wanted to give it another go. –uncleben85 (talk) 16:09, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

July 1 as starting dates makes tons of sense due to the CBA. However, I would personally argue that the entire hard set date for transactions be removed and replace with including transactions to the season it impacts. For example, the entire Mike Hoffman (ice hockey, born 1989) debacle and subsequent trades have zero effects on the 2017–18 season, but as they took place prior to the draft or even July 1, we have them on that page. To me, that does not make sense. As part of that trade, Mikkel Bødker was traded, likely to free up cap space for 2018–19, hence it has everything to do with 2018–19 and not the season that had already ended (for all teams involved), more so if that cap space is used to aggressively pursue a free agent on July 1. It could be as simple as separating the transaction into a "pre-contract turnover" section that includes moves by teams whose season had ended, such as player/player's rights trades during the playoffs (although that might be a bit much).

As for "too much work", well it is what it is, but there would be no hard set deadline to fix it. Yosemiter (talk) 17:10, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Use the date of the deciding game of the Stanley Cup Finals as the end point for each season. The beginning of the buyout period is directly tied to it. Group any post-trade deadline trades into one table since there aren't that many until the Finals are over. --SP17 (talk) 19:35, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

One issue I see arising with that is that the page is also dedicated to things like free agents signings, retirements, contract terminations, and waivers. Plus a team int he playoffs could still make a trade, so you'd get some transactions on the 2017 page, for April 24, for example, and then some on the 2018 page for April 22. I think it would just lend itself to confusion. As for the second idea, about starting after the Stanley Cup final, there is sense to it, but then it's still a somewhat arbitrary, floating day, and would leave the month of June still split up (though less confusing, yes, with a post-TDL committed table). Lastly to the point, while the season is over, teams are still restricted to the season's salary cap - meaning any trades that happen after the season ends and until July 1 are still to be dictated by the current cap (until the new cap, as announced by the commissioner). July 1 is the only real date that is not arbitrary and contextually significant, imo.–uncleben85 (talk) 20:06, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I think consensus though the very many discussions that have taken place on this topic is well established at this point that the last day of the NHL "season" is the day the Awards are held. At this point there really isn't any need to keep bringing this up. The awards being the very last event held that has significance to the previous season so it is not arbitrary. -DJSasso (talk) 12:48, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

The awards, frankly, carry no weight at all on the transactions or business of a season, and they are not currently being used as the last day of the season, the NHL Draft is.–uncleben85 (talk) 02:21, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

The NHL Draft has always been treated as the first day of the following season because players drafted in it are for the seasons that are upcoming. If people have changed that I have not noticed. We put the draft results on the pages for the upcoming seasons. For the 12 or so years I have been editing here its always been agreed that the Awards ends the season (really the day before the draft, I just meant the awards is the last major event) and the Draft is the first major event of the new season. The Awards are used as the end as they are the last event that are the result of what happened during the previous months, whereas the draft affects the upcoming months (I would use the word season meaning the time the games were actually being played but in the discussion that would cause confusion). -DJSasso (talk) 17:23, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@Uncleben85 and Djsasso: As Uncleben85 points out, the the hard date of the awards is entirely arbitrary, and I entirely agree with that. But so is the draft day. You stated that having "a team in the playoffs could still make a trade, so you'd get some transactions on the 2017 page, for April 24, for example, and then some on the 2018 page for April 22. I think it would just lend itself to confusion". This is also true, but I counter with that having transactions that have no affect on that season (your example of the non-playoff with the April 22 transaction) is also confusing. My reasoning of listing transactions that are only effective to the season is pretty much identical to how we treat the coach and management changes of the league season page. (See 2018–19 NHL season#Coaching changes listing the April–June transactions. I do not think they are covered in the CBA with the July 1 date, but their effective seasons are similar and there has not been push back to their inclusions on the season pages.) As it stands, from a team business perspective the "season" ends when the team is done playing games, be that the end of the regular season for half the league or the last two teams in the Stanley Cup Final. Yosemiter (talk) 17:11, 12 September 2018 (UTC)