Details on the DobberHockey Tiered Invitational: 10-year anniversary

by Brandon Nihmey

Welcome to the DobberHockey Tiered Invitational! Do you want to compete against your fellow Dobber readers for a chance to become ultimate champion? Furthermore, as it’s the 10^th edition of this competition, all league winners in the 2016/17 season will receive a bonus prize!

What it’s all about

This is a tiered competition consisting of annual one-year rotisserie leagues, which are held on Yahoo, and run and participated by members of DobberHockey. Previously managed by Dobber himself, this competition began in 2007 so next season will be the 10-year anniversary!

League settings

For those who participated in the Pro and Entry divisions in 2015/16, the league settings won’t be changed. This is expected to remain the same for all divisions going forward unless there is a competition-wide desire for change.

Part of a community

Each league has its own thread in the ‘Your League Chat’ section in these forums, which usually includes draft results/analysis, standings updates, trades, other discussions and just general chat. Feel free to have a look around here!

What about that prize?

Because it’s the 10-year anniversary of the competition, we’ve arranged for the winners of each league in 2016/17 to receive a copy of Dobber’s 2017/18 Fantasy Hockey Guide! It’s an added bonus for being successful in this special year so here’s another reason to join the competition this season! The current edition is available for purchase, so if you want to know more about it, check it out here.

Structure of the competition

Recent participants may notice a difference in the structure from last season. The competition had to undergo some changes in the offseason that resulted in this new format. You can find out more details about this and the new structure further below. This is the current, and planned future structure of the competition: 

Entry managers – future turnover

If we achieve a full capacity of participation in the Entry division (four leagues), then in order to continue welcoming new managers into the competition, there may be a requirement to have some turnover on a year-by-year basis. This could mean managers finishing below a specified position in the standings will be replaced by new recruits the following season. However, those replaced managers will be eligible to return after a year’s hiatus, depending on current numbers and demand for places.

An important reason for doing this is to ensure that managers joining competition will try to be as active as possible for the whole season and not give up early if not in contention. The battle for relegation/replacement could be just as exciting as the battle for promotion.

I’m mentioning this as it’s important to be transparent when there are changes. Of course, in the future this can all be re-evaluated but let’s see how it goes in the meantime.

Promotion, relegation and the future

The plan is to maintain this structure depending on continued interest from existing and new managers. The number of managers to be promoted and relegated each year in each division may change annually as it could depend on the league size, the number of returnees and joint positional placements. However, the one definite rule is for those who win their league – they are promoted up to the next division the following season. While it may be adjusted, this is the initial plan for promotion and relegation in each division:

Recent Changes

Some of you may be wondering what happened to the existing Expert league?

Up until last season, it has been split into three tiers (Entry, Pro and Expert), which gave managers the opportunity to be promoted to the division above, with the ultimate goal of reaching the Expert league to compete against the writers.

However, through feedback from Expert league managers and additional discussions with league commissioners, it was agreed that it will no longer be a part of this competition. This decision has resulted from a combination of a lack of future leadership and commitment in its current structure. It may continue as a stand-alone league if someone comes forward to take it over and enough writers return, but it will not re-join this competition.

Looking ahead, this is an opportunity to strengthen this competition by having more integration, which will allow more non-writers to reach the pinnacle of the competition.

2015/16 Winners

Finally, I want to give a mention to last year’s winners. Well done!

Entry Smythe – yipper005

Entry Norris – MCMackerel

Pro Campbell – jcairns

Expert – temek

And finally…

Good luck to all and enjoy the 2016/17 season!

Brandon is horrorfan on the forums.