League News Update:
After two rounds of voting the league has decided that we are going to move forward as one 24-team league! It is sweet that you all wanted us to stay together. A couple of reminders about this format...
-We will be limiting the keeper salary cap
-Roster sizes will be trimmed
-Weekly transaction limits will be enforced
-Any future expansion will result in a relegation league. So teams at the bottom of the league next year beware of the possibility!
In the coming weeks I will be sharing the official AltHL google doc. In it will be team information, league history, as well as keeper information. I will provide the official keeper rules as well the rosters of all of the teams. At that point owners will be allowed to submit to me their keepers for the offseason.
It is important to note that Fantrax has a tremendous ability for me to be flexible with the draft order. If you from this moment forward would like to make a trade that includes a draft pick in the next year's fantasy draft you may. BUT in order for you to do so you have to let me know in order for it to be official. Otherwise I will have no way of knowing to adjust the draft order. That can come in the form of an email or a PM.
Expansion Update:
After a great number of people submitted cities for expansion we officially have our 6 newest cities. Out of these six, only two of them have existing Alt Universe franchises. This means that we have chosen to really branch out into cool new markets.
I found it interesting that the six cities were easily able to slip into our current alignment relatively nicely. I see that there is a good opportunity to move Charlotte back to the east and Detroit to the central but I didn't want to make the decision without the group. If you have any ideas for new alignment PM them to me. Don't post it here for the time being, because we want to use this space for the design process. We could have an American conference (with an additional US team playing in the Canadian) and a Canadian conference, we could do east and west, we could do either with new divisions in them. Since this is one league teams will be able to play all the other teams. Once we decide on an alignment we can give our schedule some structure. We'll worry about that later. But if you have an idea send it my way.

Here is how the voting broke down. If you have any questions please feel free to PM me about it. Everyone thought that Anchorage was the most popular choice but it wasn't. Instead it was...
1.) Edmonton, Alberta - 109 points
2.) Anchorage, Alaska - 87 points
3.) Detroit, Michigan - 73 points
4.) Ottawa, Ontario - 55 points
5.) Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - 55 points
6.) Milwaukee, Wisconsin - 54 points
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7.) Kansas City, Missouri - 47 points
8.) Atlanta, Georgia - 28 points
9.) St. Louis - 27 points
10.) Washington DC - 26 points
What comes next? It is time to start naming the new franchises. For this stage of the design process we will be naming ALL SIX teams. For the logos and uniforms we will be splitting the group into two so those interested in designing can concentrate.
Rules for this stage:
1.) No NHL team names
2.) No Alt Universe team names
3.) No college, minor league hockey, or IceHL names from that market are allowed.
Do a quick google before submitting your team name idea. I'll simply omit names that don't satisfy our rules.
As usual I will be just making a poll of the names. The votes will rate the names on a scale of 1-5. Each user will have an opportunity to vote once. If you'd like to leave a short explanation for the inspiration of the name feel free to include it in your post. We will trim the list to the top two names for each city. We will then have a showdown for each city.
The deadline to submit names is Friday morning when I put the polls together. I'll post the poll Friday afternoon.
Looking forward to seeing what these cities bring to the table.