Draft pause prior to Round 17

I agree with this, if we are able to vote on what happens after the 2nd round Prospect pick, i.e. pause the draft, autodraft, drop the pick, etc. If the majority wants to stick with the original rules, then that's that, but I think we should have the choice.

Yeah, let's just continue the draft and cross the bridge when we come to it (his next pick in either draft). It's lame, but we're making great time. Would a compromise be to just continue, put him on the clock for 12 hrs when it gets to him, and if he misses again, go from there? I don't think that's punishing him for going on vacation- NYR has been texting him, so he has info- whether he uses it will be up to him. He's already submitted a prospect pick, which will be chosen at no. 5 for him. Let's not derail the whole thing just because of this, nor throw our frustrations on the guy either.

Okay here are my thoughts and my proposal...

I think there are 2 sides here. First, the positives:

* He notified us (or Commish) that he was going away
* He provided a list (not a great one, but the effort was there) of people to choose from in the draft

Now the negatives

* He didn't say when he'd be back
* He's had an issue in the past where he missed his pick

Here's my suggestion:

His NHL pick today was skipped and moved down 5 rounds. Assuming his prospect pick is good, we don't anticipate an issue with him until the 2nd prospect round and/or the 17th NHL round. My proposal is to auto-draft him based on the spreadsheet of next best for no more than 3 rounds. If we get to the 4th prospect pick or 20th NHL round and he's not back, he's booted.

I say this because if he ends up getting booted, we still want a fair playing field for the person taking over his team and not have them starting crippled by missing out on so many picks. It's not fair to them. This also keeps the draft moving at a nice pace.

I disagree with pausing the draft until next week as we do need to push this forward. I know NYR and myself will be going on vacation (well, I'll be working, but unavail) in about a month and I'm sure others will take some time off here and there too. It's important that we keep this moving, but also keep things fair.

I think what the Rangers are offering is fair that is a lot of time to do what needs to be done. Also I have an S5 phone and I can open the Google doc no problem. I have done most of my planning at work while on break from my phone.

At 10 am I plan on sending out a message with the official way we are dealing with this. Tampa will be on the message so he is aware of everything that is going on and he has a fair chance to get back to us.

Please also send the message to his email, or text him that you sent a message. I personally don't get notified of messages on the forum, so unless I come on specifically to check, they do me no good.

Not sure if you know, but you can change that in your settings. I get emailed each time I'm messaged. 

Yup, but I don't think it's the default option. I check regularly enough for that not to be an issue for me, and prefer to have an uncluttered inbox.

He has past his 18hrs for this round correct?

We go by 12 hours this round, which passed at 7:30am (PST). This is the reason we are freezing the draft to discuss.

<Message going out shortly.

My vote is to stick by rules that we set forth at the beginning. What's the purpose for having them if we aren't going to follow them.