Rotisserie Draft Strategy Help

[mbdduncan]

Hello!

I'm looking for some tips, help or links to any info on rotisserie draft strategy. My yahoo rotisserie league counts G,A,P,SOG,+-, PPP,Hits, and Wins, Sv%, GAA. My team in my sig is my old one from last year and I'll be drafting a new one.

One of my more specific questions is when drafting, should I be taking goalies and defenceman earlier on in the draft as there are fewer of them and the elite ones disappear quickly. Or should I be drafting the best available player regardless based dobber or fantasy geek custom rankings? Thanks for any help!

[als_revenge]

How many starters at each position? Positional scarcity does make a difference.

[mbdduncan]

The starters are 2 Cs, 2 LWs, 2 RWs, 4 Fs, 4 D, 2 Goalies, then 3 Bench and 2 IR

[GSD]

Usually I target defenseman that may be under valued. I also target a goalie that is as close to a guarantee as possible ( sounds dumb). My overall strategy is shooters on good teams. Generally wait a little longer for centers as their are more to choose from.

[RizzeeDizzee]

Yours is not a deep league. Centers for sure will be a dime a dozen, and should be largely ignored for many rounds unless you can get one of the true superstars. And although wingers are in shorter supply, you only "need" 4 per team, so in that case too you can afford to wait a bit. Goalies are similar to centers in that once you get past the top 2 or 3 there's a lot of groups, plus they comprise only 4 of your 12 categories. On the other hand, defensemen are where you might want to focus early. With 32 being drafted, consider that three scored over 70 points last season, and 6 more topped 50. After that though, you had more than 20 from 39 to 49 points. If I was in your spot and I couldn't get McDavid, Crosby or Ovechkin, I'm going for Karlsson or Burns.

[mbdduncan]

Do any of you make lists or rankings of who you're trying to target early on? Also, how do you utilize the variety of rankings there are. During the yahoo draft they have both a ranking and an Xranking and I'm wondering if any one uses this or do you use the dobber projections or create your own?

[als_revenge]

Spend the few bucks and buy fantasy hockey geek. it's everything you need.

[TOCanadafan]

I am fairly certain that Yahoo allows you to sort players based on their projections in the specific categories of your league, giving you an overall ranking for YOUR draft. I think this is similar (or exactly the same) to how fantasy hockey geek "normalizes" a player's performance for each category specific to your league and then sums these up to give a player their final rating score. This is good to pay attention to if you want to select well-rounded players who perform across multiple categories. I don't follow this too much early on as there is only a small pool of players who can hit elite numbers for the scoring cats like G, A, and PPP. Use these rankings later on in the draft when you want to sort through the 50 or so players who all should hit between 50-60 pts.

[MasterByte]

Try Fantasy Hockey Geek. It offers a free trial if you want to give it a shot for your draft.

Dobberhas roto rankings on the site as well

[Pengwin7]

re: Roto for these settings.

1. With the +4F positions, C/LW/RW won't come into play. This is essentially a 10F/4D/2G league. With 8 teams, you are looking at 80F/32D/16G counting... most teams will probably roster a +F, +D, +G.
2. There are 31 NHL hockey teams and thus 31 NHL starting goalies. The other 7 teams need only roster 14G (at 2G each) or 21G (at 3G each). This means that goalies are available... and, personally, if you don't have a transaction limit, I'd simply be streaming in goalies for spot-starts. Don't forget, VEGAS BABY, VEGAS. They'll stink, so you can look at the schedule and grab back-up goalies that might get a start vs. Vegas. Pavelec (NYR) vs. Vegas... win. Lehtonen (DAL) vs. Vegas... still a win. Brossoit (EDM) vs. Vegas... win. You can do this ALL SEASON. [I'm also assuming there is a maxGP or "cap" on goalie starts, likely at 164gp, which is 82gp for 2 goalie spots.]
3. Your stats show G, SOG, GWG... that's THREE categories for shooters, so you want your entire team to be shooter heavy.
4. There aren't many defensemen that shoot/score/HIT/PIM much... but Burns, Buff, Weber, and Subban are the big four. I'm looking to try to get one, possibly two, of those guys. Burns is a top 5 pick in this format. Buff is a 2nd/3rd round pick. (Karlsson is a dandy too, but he'll likely be overdrafted).

For me, first 12 rounds: 9F/3D/1G.
But honestly, you can win this format even WITHOUT drafting a single goalie - I firmly believe it.

Mostly, I'm streaming goalies all season against weak opponents (Vegas, COL, VAN)... there'll be PLENTY on the wire with only 8-teams and only 3 BN per team.
I'm going to late value-draft Radko Gudas or another PIM goon defenseman late for HIT/PIM.

Oh - and there's one sort of {dick} move, you could do here.
Your only goalie cats are W, GAA, SV%... I've seen this done before... you could patiently wait and try to roster your first goalie start against a good opponent, say, Arizona vs. Vegas early in season.
Say Raanta or Domingue only gives us 2 goals, makes 25sv on 27shots. That's a GAA = 2.00 and a .926sv%. That's probably enough for 1st or 2nd in GAA & SV% for a season.

Now... in a league with veteran GMs, this is a major dick move... legal, by rules, maybe (if you don't have a minimum starts)... but a dick move nonetheless.
And - if you don't like it yourself, you may want to bring it up with your league commissioner, because it WILL happen over enough seasons with enough GMs, somebody will pull it.
I've seen a guy do it, then bail on ALL his goalies and use those roster spots for extra skaters.
I effin beat him too, forced him to finish 2nd when the rest of the league gave up on the season and I had enough 2nds and the 1st in Wins/SO.

That's it.
Skater-heavy with shooters.
Get HIT/PIM late from 1 or 2 of your D spots.
Don't overdraft HIT/PIM though... you can always chase those roto cats down later in season, but you do want to stay close.
Don't roster any light-weight passers (Henrik Sedin, Joe Thornton, even guys like John Klingberg may be no-nos in this format).
Stream goalies in for spot-starts against weak teams (i.e. Vegas).

If you use these tips (and as long as your league is semi-balanced/competitive), I guarantee a top three finish.