2016/17 Rocky Horror Roto Show

[PenguinHunter]

I know I'm not part of the league anymore, but I've been creeping the thread, and miss the banter.

For what it is worth (from the guy who finished 8th last year...terrible? Respectable? Not worth mentioning?), I like Thirteen Ghosts team best. Nice blend of points, Hits and two starting goalies. Hopefully neither Benn (IR) or Gaudreau (contract) are out too long or it could sink this team early.

Enjoy the season, guys!

wow! Thanks! I hope you are right and that I have compiled a competitive team! Thanks and good luck to everyone!

[Maaaasquito]

I am not saying more icetime is directly correlated with more points, just that icetime is necessary to produce a lot. You need both talent (I guess you could use P/60 as as a surrogate) and icetime to produce. Put Crosby on the 4th line with no powerplay minutes and he probably wouldn't hit 40 pts in a full season.

So I am not saying Comeau is a better pick or even close to Iginla actually, but just that I don't think Iginla will get that much icetime anymore at EV as coach seem to prefer Comeau for some reason (there was a coaching though so these are kind of guesses anyway).

Yeah 100% agree with you! I think ice-time is key especially if you're looking at the top-50 in scoring... I think it probably is the difference maker between someone who scores 60+ vs someone who scores 45... In terms of efficiency there's a select group that gets 3+ P/60 range then you have a big chunk which is around the 2-2.5 range... so it then comes down to how much ice-time the actually get... and this is where team structure plays a big role, offense by committee team vs. top heavy teams.

[Maaaasquito]

1st trade of the season...

Nightmares (Pengwin) acquires Nicklas Backstrom and Justin Faulk
Maaaachete (myself) acquires Steven Stamkos and Erik Johnson

[horrorfan]

1st trade of the season...

Nightmares (Pengwin) acquires Nicklas Backstrom and Justin Faulk
Maaaachete (myself) acquires Steven Stamkos and Erik Johnson

First trade has significant pieces - nice start!

[4T2]

I gotta say, really like the Cannibal Staalocaust name!

[horrorfan]

I gotta say, really like the Cannibal Staalocaust name!

Thanks. I would've preferred if you said you liked the team!

[Pengwin7]

1st trade of the season...

Nightmares (Pengwin) acquires Nicklas Backstrom and Justin Faulk
Maaaachete (myself) acquires Steven Stamkos and Erik Johnson

Thumbs up!
Always nice to have a first trade proposal (via Ma) of the season be something reasonable.
I looked at it... and tilted my head from side-to-side like a velociraptor trying to figure out a mirror...
And thought - hmph, a decent trade offer... how 'bout that.
I'll be honest, it took me 10-15 min of mulling before accepting.
Tough to lose Stammer's G/SOG & EJ's BLK... but overall I just like the P/PPP spike from having Backstrom/Faulk.
[and no, I'm not terribly concerned about Kuznetsov opening the season with Ovechkin. Good passers put up points, and OV hasn't exactly been an ES dynamo over the last 2-3 years anyways.]

[LordoftheRinks]

Meant to add my thoughts earlier but it's been a whirlwind weekend...

To start off, I'll share my insights about this league: it is, without any doubt, the crème dela crème of fantasy hockey leagues. Like most of us in this league, I play a fair amount of fantasy hockey... Yahoo Pro Leagues (easy money), Yahoo Winner Leagues (hah!), Dobber Invitational Leagues (meh), so-called 'expert' (not) leagues from other websites...all pale in comparison to the RHRS.

RHRS - you've made your 'bones' when you're asked to join this league. As the title suggests, it's roto, so none of the luck factor in H2H. Lots of scoring cats to factor in your decisions. The GM's know their stuff, picks are made quickly, and your queue evaporates right before your eyes. Want someone really bad? Better draft him a round (or 2) in advance. Coming out of the first 6 rounds I wanted 2 quality goalies, 2 roto QB defenseman, and 2 roto forwards. My plan was to set a solid 'floor' for my scoring categories in the first 6 rounds that would be the foundation for me to build on for the remainder of the draft. Goalie stats are the most challenging given positional scarcity, so establishing a high goalie floor was something I could easily achieve with pick 4. I anticipated that Ovechkin, Crosby and Benn would likely go in front of me so my real decision point was to either select the best goalie or best defenseman. I went goalie first and drafted Holtby.

My picks through the first 6 rounds were:

1 (4th) - Holtby (G)
2 (21st) - Subban (D)
3 (28th) - Allen (G)
4 (45th) - Hall (LW)
5 (52nd) - Johansen (C)
6 (69th) - Shattenkirk (D)

My final team looks like this (including day 1 waiver wire changes):

The Kings in Yellow (an HP Lovecraft horror reference for the non-literati out there)
C: Johansen, Carter, Turris, Koivu, Rakell (currently NA)
LW: Hall, JVR, Palat, JT Miller
RW: Okposo, Zuccarello, Coyle, Reinhart, C.Smith
D: Subban, Shattenkirk, Leddy, Gudas, Edler, Pulock, Provorov, Del Zotto (IR)
G: Holtby, Allen, Hellybuyck, Hutchinson

In summary, I went with a balanced approach that gives me a decent floor with potential for a number of players moving towards their ceiling. Perhaps not a sexy team, but it's a solid team. I still have 1 or 2 tweaks to make in the next few days. While it's nice to see that I'm rated at #2 or #3 in some of the forecasts, I also know that 1 or 2 key regressions or injuries will change the landscape dramatically. I'll need to be diligent working the waiver wire, shedding assets that aren't performing, and identifying trading partners to address areas of weakness.

Let the games begin!

[Maaaasquito]

Thumbs up!
Always nice to have a first trade proposal (via Ma) of the season be something reasonable.
I looked at it... and tilted my head from side-to-side like a velociraptor trying to figure out a mirror...
And thought - hmph, a decent trade offer... how 'bout that.
I'll be honest, it took me 10-15 min of mulling before accepting.
Tough to lose Stammer's G/SOG & EJ's BLK... but overall I just like the P/PPP spike from having Backstrom/Faulk.
[and no, I'm not terribly concerned about Kuznetsov opening the season with Ovechkin. Good passers put up points, and OV hasn't exactly been an ES dynamo over the last 2-3 years anyways.]

That's generally how I operate... but let's face it, in this league there is no sure-fire colossal win, you aren't going to take another manager to town by giving up the crap pieces for gold pieces... So you really have to offer up fair pieces where you gain some and lose some... The big thing is looking at the other manager's perspective and seeing what their needs are and what you can offer to help them and in return help yourself. It's a good win-win fantasy hockey trade...

With Thornton and Backstrom I'm really dropping in the overall SOG department and probably over the top for PPP production, so shipping off Stamkos for the SOG boost at the expense of some PPP production (Stamkos to Backstrom is probably a drop of 5 PPP give or take...) I think is a win for me. Also shifts the dynamics a bit to get me a bit more goal scoring. From both Temek's and Shoeless' projections, goals and SOG were my low points, so he's some action to addressing it.

I think the bigger win for me is moving Faulk for EJ... once again probably a bit of dropoff in PPP (I'll lose about 20), but EJ is a better across the board producer, he'll get me a boost of over 100 BS, and probably about 20 some extra HITs. I think EJ bounces back a bit and probably gets back towards the 40 point mark, so I'm probably losing out on 5 maybe 10 points overall...

Overall not a bad deal, I think I made some gains in some areas of weakness while sacrificing some areas of my strength... but we'll evaluate the trade a lot more at the end of the season to see who came out on top.

[Atomic Wedgy]

1(1) AO. Didn't have to put much thought into it. Easiest pick of the day.

2(24) Martin Jones. I had my goalies ranked into tiers. Elite - Price(gone) and Holtby(gone). Tier 1 - Jones, Schneider(gone), Quick(gone), Bishop(gone). Only tier 1 goalie left was Jones so I picked him. I rated Jones over Crawford, Rask and Lundqvist as well as the rest of the tier two goalies (Dubnyk, Allen, Gibson, etc). I needed to get a goalie here cause after these two picks, nothing until #48. Happy to get Jones under the circumstances.
3(25) Shea Weber. Dmen and goalies were flying off the board. Hoping for OEL.... come on baby...... BOOM drafted right before me. Crushing. My 2nd tier of dmen was almost drained! I need to pick a dman here. Weber contributes to a lot of stats, so I went with it. Man... people are drafting FAST! Its difficult to even pause to have a drink of beer. Madness.

4(48) John Carlson. There was a big run on goalies, so my 2nd tier and most of 3rd tier are all gone. My backup plan was Mason/Neuvirth. I knew I could wait as it was early for Mason (bottom tier 3) to be picked. Pleased to see Carlson still around. I had him ranked almost as high as Weber and still in tier 2. John Carlson it is. Drafting the bookend makes things extremely difficult.
5(49) David Backes. I was hoping for Backstrom here. Ma picked him a few spots before me. Disappointing. I have only drafted one forward so far, so there are a few stats which are suffering. Backes has RW eligibility and gets a fair few FOW. Happy to draft him here. Was considering Getzlaf, decided against it.

6(72) Jack Eichel. Gonna push it and wait for my next goalie. Again I'm considering taking Mason here, but... Eichel will progress and I expect more FOWs from him. Need to draft a forward.
7(72) Milan Lucic. Need more forwards. Lucic ticks a lot of boxes so I am happy to draft him here. Goalies will have to wait until my next two picks.

8(96) Derek Stepan. Waiting for Mason, then Boom. Shoeless takes him. The pick before mine happens really quick and now I am scrambling. Was set on Mason. DAMN! OK, going over my spreadsheet again. I feel like my FOW are really weak. Decide to draft another center now. Stepan will score 60+, but this is the first pick where I think things haven't gone my way. Not really happy with drafting Stepan here.
9(97) Craig Anderson. Really needed another goalie. Went back and forth between Varlamov and Anderson. Eventually landed on Anderson (4th tier). Also, not ecstatic with this pick. I did not envision Jones/Anderson as my top goalies... The curse of 1st overall is apparent. Man, these people are drafting fast! Slow down you pricks.

10(120) Tyler Johnson. For some reason, I am focussing on the fact that I missed all the stud centers earlier in the draft. I'm worried about my FOW, so Johnson is looking attractive. Eberle is still there.... nah, feel like I have to go a center. Can't shake that feeling. **Gotta slow down and have a drink of beer. Its going warm FFS**
11(121) Dion Phaneuf. I am thinking Jones/Anderson are not the best goalie pair I've ever seen. So I'm considering Bobrovsky with this pick. He's really the only starting goalie left that I would want to draft. He could rebound this year.... but I have been eyeing Phaneuf as well since my last two picks. He is ranked toward the top of my dmen remaining here and I like his peripherals, so I draft him instead. Bobrovsky goes right after this pick. I'm second guessing my choice now. Shit.

12(144) Auston Matthews. My obsession with FOW is still going strong. AM seems like fair value here as long as he scores 30-30. He may end up as the top center. I'm obsessed with centers now. I draft him. Probably a reach, but there is potential for payoff.
13(145) Hendrik Sedin. Definitely a reach. I think I actually have my spreadsheet ordered by FOW now. Not really happy with this pick. I'm realizing that for next year, I will have to make ranking comparable to other positions. Ranking for each position is not cutting it. They need to be relative rankings.

14(168) Troy Brouwer. I like Trochek here. Damn. Gone now. OK maybe Vasilevskiy. Shoeless strikes again... He has my goalies! I settle for a winger with good HITs and a modest number of FOW. I'm pretty good with HITs now. Need to start making sure of the BLKs which leads me to...
15(169) Morgan Rielly. I'm happy with this pick. He could be a steal at 169. He will likely hurt me in the +/-, but hopefully it wont be too bad. I tend to not really worry about +/- too much. It is a volatile stat. I was looking for blocks and Dmen is where to go for that.

16(192) TJ Brodie. OK. This was a rush pick. I'm thinking for sure I'll get Neuvirth this round. 6 or 7 picks went very quickly in front of me, Neuvirth is one of them! ARRRGH! I am trying to find these players in my spreadsheet so I can tick them off as picked. This is slowing me down and has created a situation where I now have to find a player to draft and fast. My queue is empty. I'm in the weeds... big time. It happens really quickly.
17(193) Adam Larsson. My spreadsheet is updated with the last flurry of picks. I have a look at who is available. Larsson is standing out. Now that I have a few seconds to find my feet, I realize that I probably should have just taken him the last pick. That would leave me to try and snag a goalie with this one. Nope. Screwed the pooch and now I draft Larsson. I'm full on D now and I dont like to do that this early. I'm not happy with this round. The Brodie pick fiasco has thrown me for a loop. OK, OK, OK.... drink some beer (warm) and relax. Prepare for your next pick. I down the beer, run to the kitchen and grab another one instead of preparing... hahah I'm the worst.

18(216) Johnathan Bernier. Was considering Hellebuyck, taken. Plekenac... taken. Lehtonen, taken. Jeez. This is a tough draft. This late and still picks are going right before my slot. Incredible. In my scrambling for a goalie and I mistakenly think that Bernier plays for SJS. Hahahaha. Wrong Californian team... Still an ok pick, but I wish I had Gibson as well.
19(217) Reilly Smith. Decent scoring. Decent HITs. Potential for more if he finds another gear. FLA is on the upswing so he could make another step in point production. Face value, he's still worth the pick at 217.

20(240) Marcus Johansson. Thinking I still need some wingers and at this stage, I'm just going through my position lists trying to find value. Was thinking Komarov, but couldn't find him in my list, so I assumed he was taken. Turns out I was spelling the name wrong. Figure that out when Ma picked him a few picks later.
21(241) Teuvo Teravainen. I'm hoping he will surprise people this year. Gotta start swinging for the fences with these last picks. Striking the lottery with picks at the end of the draft gives you a huge boost. Hopefully Teravainen can do this.

22(264) Nino Neiderriter. I'm liking this pick. I think he's good value at 264. I also think he has another gear. He looks good when you watch him play. New coach. Broudreau is not afraid of the offense. Could be a good situation for Nino.
23(265) Andrew Hammond. I'm thinking my goalies are a mess. I will need starts. Anderson/Hammond tandem! Gross. Its slim pickings though. Need another goalie. Not liking this pick, but what's a guy to do? At least I know that I will likely get 82 starts out of Anderson/Hammond. Hammond has decent stats.

23(288) Antoine Vermette. He's changed location and was way at the top of the list for FOW at this stage of the draft. Drafting a buy out player is not usually what you want to do, but an injury to Getzlaf or Kesler and he could be the 2nd line center on a good team. Most likely he's waiver fodder once the league begins and there are tasty nuggets to pick up. Worth a shot this late.
24(289) Sebastian Aho. Normally I hate it when people talk about players that have not been drafted yet while the draft is live. Drives me nuts.... In this case I knew it was a joke, so it didn't bother me. This pick was meant to be funny, but at the same time, its a last pick hail mary. Dobber has him in a 2nd line slot for the Canes. Waiver fodder if something better comes up.

~end draft. Crazy two hours. It went faster than I could have imagined. I was prepared for three hours, but it only took two. There were times where 7-8 picks all happened immediately after each other. It was complete madness. I will be better prepared next year. Never played roto before so the strategy is new to me. Jumped at the chance to join this league and I am looking forward to the season. Thanks for having me lads.

[horrorfan]

Thanks for having me lads.

Great writeup. I could feel the pressure you felt live just by reading it!

Also, great to have you on board.

[Pengwin7]

I thought I'd drop some post-draft insight into how I do my own math.

1. I don't use FHG, though I believe my own math uses similar concepts. In September of each year, I start tinkering away on my own spreadsheet. I use long-style of iterations & guesstimates to get going. First I take Yahoo!s rank and try to extract their "category weighting" (or "multiplier") for each category. Yahoo!s base-6 doesn't include P, HIT, BLK, FOW... so I have to do that myself.
2. Then I shift the weighting myself for sake of drafting. Since I believe PIM, HIT, BLK, FOW can be overdrafted - I seriously downweight those... even though they are still a category. (As a tip, I'd say the #1 mistake that the NOOB-ish GM makes when use an FHG-weight-score table - is that they'll overdraft peripherals like HIT/BLK, because its that contribution that gives a player more perceived value than his Yahoo rank, which does not include those stats.)
3. This year I imported Yahoo!s "projections", because I thought those were pretty solid (except for certain rookies, esp. Laine & Aho).
4. I include columns such as XRank, Rank, and Current - to see where the numbers fall and what players have higher value than the positions that will show up on everybody else's draft screen when sorting.
5. I sort by position - I feel this gives good "drop off" information. It makes it easier to "tier" the players, so I grab solid players before value drops off. From the attached pics, you can see that Toews is the last in the top twenty C... then a big DROP to Brassard/Trochek/Turris/Kadri. Dark Green is the Elites - of which most of us will get only ONE of those players: first round. Light green is the very good tier, where I want to get 6-7 of these. Yellow is the middling tier. Outside of yellow is a guy that might be overranked by any given waiver-level player during the year.
6. Because the league starts a collective 48C/48LW/48RW/72D, I find the value of that slot of player. Then I deduct it from all players to give them a "REL10" score, to determine who has best relative draft value when comparing C vs. LW vs. RW vs. D. The "relative value" of the 48C vs. 72D would both come in at 0.00: this being the main basis of my own weighting system. This gives me a numerical value - which I combine with intuitive/visible grade of players - to determine those tiers. As an example, in my team-draft-analysis post - I mention being happy to snag Brad Marchand, who I thought was the last of a tier of the very good LW. The visual to that can be seen by colour & score in the LW chart.

Here's some players on my own Excel charts.
Centers:
rhrs sort-by-c.PNG
Left Wings:
rhrs sort-by-lw.PNG
Right Wings:
rhrs-sort-by-rw.PNG
Defense:
rhrs-sort-by-d.PNG

For the week or two before my leagues... I study these, look them over, sort a hundred times.
Usually, by the draft, it's completely in my head.

For RHRS, I actually didn't have any of this info available. I wrote down the 30 NHL teams with a few targets that I liked significantly better than their rank slot.
And some of the guys in the chart I think will do way better than Yahoo! projections, like Nik Ehlers.

During the actual draft... this one, it was just me & the computer.
I ended up chatting a lot (most of my co-GMs know I am chatty in-draft), petting my cat, helping my wife with my daughter's out-of-bed issues, and getting the wife popcorn.
I drink a beer and have a good time.

One of my dreams is that someday there will be a REAL LIVE "Champion's League" Fantasy Hockey Pool somewhere...
Where the GMs will have to walk into a room with ZERO tools, have the settings announced, and then pick their teams.
For now, there ain't no league closer to that then the superb group of guys we have in RHRS!!! (and I give them the benefit of the doubt that nobody runs FHG-in-draft software, right?)

[PenguinHunter]

I thought I'd drop some post-draft insight into how I do my own math.


2. Then I shift the weighting myself for sake of drafting. Since I believe PIM, HIT, BLK, FOW can be overdrafted - I seriously downweight those... even though they are still a category. (As a tip, I'd say the #1 mistake that the NOOB-ish GM makes when use an FHG-weight-score table - is that they'll overdraft peripherals like HIT/BLK, because its that contribution that gives a player more perceived value than his Yahoo rank, which does not include those stats.)

I really like the above post. I do something similar... definitely not as in depth with a 8 month old hanging out at home right now... definitely need to get more in depth for next year.

As for the bolded above... I don't use the FHG and I think I may have under drafted lots of the peripheral stats... hopefully It does not come back to bite me.

[LordoftheRinks]

Thanks for sharing. I don't use FHG either. I also create my own rankings, tier by position, and apply a more 'qualitative' lens on breakout, regression, strength of team, etc. I set my strategy based on my draft position. I then build my queue in the 30 minutes or so before we draft in Yahoo, grab 2 beers from the fridge, settle in and draft.

[Pengwin7]

Thanks for sharing. I don't use FHG either. I also create my own rankings, tier by position, and apply a more 'qualitative' lens on breakout, regression, strength of team, etc. I set my strategy based on my draft position. I then build my queue in the 30 minutes or so before we draft in Yahoo, grab 2 beers from the fridge, settle in and draft.

You are my kind of guy!