16-year old trades and roster limit

[Jerry]

Currently the OHL has a policy that a team can have a maximum of 4 16-year olds on the roster.
They also have a rule that the 16-year old cannot be traded until they are 17. This occurs for all 16-year olds on Jan.1 (not their real birthday)
With the trade deadline usually around the second Wednesday of January, this gives teams about 10 days to deal 16-year olds, during the regular season.

The purpose of these regulations is to keep teams from bailing on a season and stocking the team with tons of 16-year olds to build a powerhouse team 2 or 3 years down the road.

For our league it would even have a higher purpose of protecting a team from losing its future to future GMs. If a GM trades all his youth and picks to build a powerhouse then quits as GM in the next year or two, the poor sap that takes over this team will be 6 years from being able to build them back up again. We HAVE to protect against that action.

I don't think this rule needs to be discussed or voted on as this is an OHL sim-league and these are the realities of that leagues real rules.
The 4 max 16-year old rule would only impact one team, Guelph, at this time. We could make an exception for teams that are short players to make a whole team, but otherwise we should begin enforcement of this rule ASAP.
The same for trading 16-year olds.

If you're just dying to trade 16-year olds then just wait for Jan. 1 but remember you can only use 4 at any given time.

Comments - questions?

[Devils GM]

makes complete sense...

good rule to follow for the reasons listed.

man, we can't slide much past you can we?

[BramptonBattalion]

And in the real league only first rounders can be traded in that ten day period... but we wont mention that...

[Jerry]

I thought I had heard something like that but didn't have the details to back it up.
IF that's the rules then that's a good place to start.
That's why I opened the threat - to see if anyone knows the details and how they can apply to our league.

[Andrew-Moncton,Guelph,MooseJaw]

We shouldn't be enforcing this rule until next season. Not becuase it just affects me, i would be saying the same thing for any team that would have more than four 16 year olds. Noone new of this rule...or at least brought it up...so for someone like me that took over a crappy ass team last season decided to rebuild and did a pretty good job acquiring draft picks for players...then we shouldn't be penalized. If that rule would have been brought up in the beginning...then it would have been easily enforced. At least if we wait until the off season, everyone will be on the same boat and for those of us that have a lot of first round draft picks next season, we can move them and have much more time.

[Jerry]

I kind of agree that a rule like this may be easier to enforce with some lead time.
That would make next season a better time to prep for it.
We'll just have to be more vigilant in making sure people don't dump a team's future and then leave when they win or don't win right away.