Blowing it up. How it went down, thoughts going forward?

[Rusty Pickles]

Greetings folks, hope everyone enjoyed a great regular season and are excited for playoff hockey's arrival!

Long time member, just been swamped with work this season and have not had the time to post for those who do not recognize me on here. I am a member of 3 keeper leagues, 2 yahoo and one espn. Today I will be discussing my yahoo league that is not in the signature below.

Team Name: KHL Bound

Background: long time competitive team. This was our leagues 5th year and in the first four my team secured 2 Championships (years 1 and 4) and a 2nd place finish. Coming in off a championship victory I was really hoping to be in the hunt again this season. Unfortunately for me, my prophetic team name claimed one of my superstars in the offseason as I got to watch Ilya Kovalchuk's steady fantasy production walk away for nothing but I am not too mad; in all honesty he still helped me to win the title that year. I am a player who will always try to win now if possible. You are only allowed to carry 3 goalies in this league during the regular season.

Keepers entering the year (14 - 2 goalie maximum)

RW: Kessel, Eberle, Loui Eriksson (lw eli)
C: Thornton, M Richards (lw eli), Desharnais
LW: MaxPac, JvR,
D: Byfuglien, Edler, Faulk, B Smith
G: Hiller, Miller

Departures from Championship team: Kovalchuk, Brunner, Dorsett, Hanzal, Kulikov, Paajarvi, Z Smith, Weircoch, Dubnyk.

In this league we do a non snaking draft, so as champion I pick last in every round and i did not have any traded picks from prior seasons.

15. (210) Viktor Fasth (Edm - G)
16. (224) Patrik Berglund (StL - C)
17. (238) Jake Muzzin (LA - D)
18. (252) Dmitry Kulikov (Fla - D)
19. (266) Frans Nielsen (NYI - C)
20. (280) Shane Doan (Pho - LW,RW)
21. (294) Cody Eakin (Dal - C)
22. (308) Kris Versteeg (Chi - LW,RW)

Needless to say once many variables doomed this roster (eriksson missing time w concussions, reaching high on fasth to cuff anaheim's nets and passing on some high end prospects to win now only to have fasth miss most of the year hurt, muzzin and kulikov having zero offensive effect, Derharnais/Richards early season milk carton appearance/disappearing act, berglund being hitcock'd and so on, Edler having massive Suckitis) I found myself in the middle of the pack and had started to think that this year was just not in the cards. I started working on putting together trades to target players for the future when one landed on my door step and really pushed me into the mindset that it was time to blow this core up completely and really attack the roster with a chainsaw.

Trade 1: Out: Jonas Hiller, rd 22 pick; Incoming: Sean Monahan, Markstrom, Rd 15 (1st rounder 1-14 are keepers)

Other team involved had lost Bobrovsky to injury and was in the hunt. Hiller has been a guy who helped me win as an under the radar goalie last few years but I felt the offer was the apex of his value and I would never be offered another offer for him that would pay me this high. I felt compelled to accept the offer bc my playoff chances were on life support early on.

While rostering Markstrom, who was not accruing stats, this helped me to sink in the standings. This also signaled I was in sell mode (along with a post flat out alerting the league) and got other things working.

Trade 2: Out: Shane Doan, Joe Thornton; Incoming: Sven Baertschi, Jonathan Huberdeau

Out with the old, in with the new. I was keen on landing Huberdeau as I am buying in hoping this was just a soph. slump and think he can really excel with all the other young talent going forward in Florida and is more the player he was as the Calder winner. Buy low.

Trade 3: Out: Phil Kessel, Kris Versteeg, round 21 pick; Incoming: Aleksander Barkov, Valeri Nicushkin, Round 15 (1st)

I think Nicushkin is the real deal and a future superstar so I am good with this deal and like picking up Barkov and a 1 as well.

Trade 4: Out: Frans Nielsen, round 20 pick; Incoming: Round 16 (2nd)

Frans is a player I am a big fan of for how he plays in real life, but he was much more useful to a contender so I shopped him for some draft positioning.

Trade 5: Out: Loui Eriksson, round 18; Incoming: Round 16 (2nd)

In an effort to make space for new keepers I moved Eriksson to another contender for some draft positioning. Big fan of him as a player but my team is very strong at forward and wing and again it was a situation where I felt this player was more valuable to a team in win now mode.

Key UFA adds:

I axed kulikov, eakin, desharnais and berglund over the course of the year (pretty early on) and also used the new spaces from trades for new faces.

UFA pick ups: Nick Bonino, Tatar, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, Tyson Barrie all joined somewhat early. I swapped out Baertschi for Nikita Kucherov when he became available after a slump. I also saved my waiver claim until it was #1 and used it once I knew Kuznetsov would be coming over to the NHL to join the Caps.

So by the end of the year my roster looks quite drastically different than it did when this year began.

RW: Eberle, Nicushkin, Kucherov, Etem (lw)
C: Barkov, Bonino, T Johnson, Kuznetsov, M Richards (lw), Monahan
LW: MaxPac, JvR, Palat, Tatar (c), Huberdeau (c)
D: Byfuglien (rw), Barrie, Edler, faulk, b smith
G: Miller, Markstom, Fasth

Draft picks

Round 1 (3) My pick #2, #8, #9
Round 2 (3) My pick #2, #8, #12
Round 3 (1) my pick #2
Round 4 (0)
round 5 (1) my pick #2
rounds 6,7,8 (0)

So again I get to keep 14 with a max of 2 goalies. I have it lined up as follows currently:

1 Huberdeau
2 Kuznetsov
3 MaxPac
4 JvR
5 Eberly
6 Kucherov
7 Nicushkin
8 Byfuglien
9 Barkov
10 Monahan
11 Barrie
12 Palat
13 T Johnson
14 Miller

I tried to upgrade my D via trade but couldn't get something worked out at the time. Thoughts on how I did? Any players you think I should target? Any keepers you like that are on my current cutting block more than the listed 14? (richards bonino markstrom tatar?) I feel my Forward group is the strongest sector of my team and will warrant the most keeper spots. Hopefully my #2 pick can land me a top end talent, not used to picking up that high!!!

how would people rank bennett, ekblad, and rein hart?

Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully post/give me some feed back.

Regards,

Rusty

[Dobber]

First off, welcome back! I've been putting in some monthly numbers, trying to see how many 100+ post months the members have had over the years and noticed your name yesterday and wondered where you'd been

Right off the bat, I looked at your roster and thought - yep, those are worthy keepers and -yep, I can see where things went wrong.

Trade 1 - awesome
Trade 2 - you didn't get nearly enough for Thornton. I don't like that deal at all.
Trade 3 - you did pretty good...but again, did Kessel get your enough? Probably...I'd need to study the rules

Awesome UFA pickups - wow. That will make sure your rebuild is a short one.

Your keepers are the right ones

[Shake]

Welcome back Rusty!

I personally like all 3 trades. I like trade 2 the least, but overall solid moves. I also really like your UFA pickups. Good job all around.

[Rusty Pickles]

hey guys, thanks for the replies. Hope all has been well with you and yours.

Cats for the league are as follows:

G, A, +-, PIM, PPP, SHP, SOG, FOW, W, Sv %, SV, SO

In trade #2 I would have liked to get more but there was not a huge reaction to my announcement that Jumbo was available. This is a league mostly filled of ageists who hate players over 30 and over value 18 year olds quite often. As you can see in my draft results I landed Doan in Round 6!!! I made attempts at other young players that were rebuffed (strome/mackinnon/jones/subban/drown i think were all targeted). What I wanted back was a young high end player, I also kind of feel this was my chance at huberdeau so in that sense I'm okay with it but if Hubes is a bust it is a clear fail trade. My league is very slow to trade young star type players so that I was able to pry away some of my main targets in huberdeau, nicushkin, monahan and barkov worked for me enough bc of the other additions I had sort of lucked into (looking at you TB core). My goal was a top 10 young player and I feel I got that here in terms of return. I also like to think of it as Kucherov and Huberdeau for Jumbo as that is what dumping out Baertschi/Doan's roster slot allowed me to do. At this point I had already added a bunch of those UFAs and had penciled some of them into potential keeper slots so I only had so many spaces to fill. Getting 5 players doesn't mean anything if I can only keep one or two. If Huberdeau can evolve into a 70-90 pt player with LW eligibility I will be very happy. That would put him in the top 5 this year and most years. We do not tally blocks or hits so I don't mind his skill heavy game. Also I felt like I had added a good solid young group up the middle with barkov, t johnson, and Monahan (yahoo also has kuznetsov listed as a C currently) while keeping all of my high skill wingers (wish I had one more slot for Tatar!!). For me I felt since Jumbo was having such a good Renaissance year, and given the leagues propensity to not go after aging Superstars, I felt this was going to be my best chance to extract some value from him in a trade. Hope that helps to clarify my train of thought.