Why do they even bother designating positions? Everybody qualifies at every position anyway. Should be one - and only one - position per player, with no changes throughout the season. Everybody knows beforehand who qualifies where, and the positions actually play a strategic role in fantasy. I realize every player plays every position pretty much, throughout the course of the season, so if you want to be realistic then it should just be F and D.
And on ESPN, nobody has multi-position eligibility (yet) but a month into the season probably half of the guys will. Which is probably worse than doing it from the start like Yahoo does. But I digress...
20 team H2H keeper. Keep 10. Now drafting...
Start 2C, 2L, 2R, 2W, 2F, 4D, 1G daily
G,A,+/-,PIM,PPP,SHP,GWG,SOG and W,GAA,SV%,SO
C: Getzlaf, Zetterberg, Mueller, Gerbe
L: Parise, Elias, Prust, Pouliot
R: Gaborik, Briere, Clarkson, Brouwer
D: Weber, Yandle, E. Johnson, Zidlicky
G: Howard, Gustavsson, Fasth
Farm: Toffoli, Tatar, Lehner, Josi
Lines are shuffled all the time, most players have a primary position and once in a while play a different one. Most centers play wing occasionally (if paired with another center, for instance), and lots of wingers play C occasionally. Not regularly, but once in a while, maybe due to injury or ineffectiveness or whatever. To me the point of having designated positions is to affect roster construction. I'd rather they be artificially stable even if not reflective of where players actually play. Rather than half the league qualifying at both C and W. Becomes pointless to even make a distinction between different types of forwards. Obviously this is a perasonal preference but I think it makes fantasy hockey much more interesting to have a significant impact of position eligibility.
Last edited by Skin Blues; August 27, 2012 at 10:50 AM.
Fantasy websites should definitely TRY to start each forward with one position.
I'm disappointed (not surprised) that Yahoo! and Fantrax haven't tried to get these right.
It's not hard, IMO.
As a very general rule of thumb, I believe that any skater that takes 10+ faceoffs per game should be qualified as a center & center only.
There is no way a guy like Claude Giroux (1543 FO last year, 20 faceoffs per game) should still be retaining his RW eligibility.
And there is no way Dustin Byfuglien should be retaining his RW eligibility.
With fantasy keeper leagues being so common these days, it can really be an advantage to some keeper rosters to have so many dual eligibility forwards.
One of my fantasy teams has the following as keepers:
C/RW: Evgeni Malkin
C/LW: Pavel Datsyuk
C/RW: Joe Pavelski
LW/RW: Dany Heatley
LW/RW: James Neal
At the end of the year, the best team is based on top 2 skaters at each of C/LW/RW.
Where's the strategy in planning/drafting/trading if I don't even have to consider how to manage my forwards?
It's disappointing, for sure.
Considering the ad-revenue that Yahoo (or Fantrax) generates from us being online, they could at least try to get the positions right.
And even if it is their "statistical provider" that is providing positions... they should get it right themselves.
Rant over.
Just curious - has anybody emailed either Yahoo or Fantrax?
For anyone looking for the Yahoo Draft Rankings, I managed to parse them from Yahoo and put them into a Google Spreadsheet.
http://bit.ly/PJDK9k
Jer
I wish I had some rep to give out. Was about to go through Yahoo! and create this list myself. This plus your actual forward, D, and goalie rankings are great tools. Thanks!
As for this...
I couldn't agree more. I'm pretty sure he hasn't played RW since he was with Chicago