Optimum amount of D?

[malafry]

What would you say the optimum amount of D is for this league? (We can change our benched players up every day.)

26 total players per team.
Start 2C, 2RW, 2LW, 1F, 6D, 5 Util, 2 goalies, with six benched.

It's a question of min-maxing. Saturdays are (mostly) the only days where I have to bench players, but I want to have all the slots used up for defencemen then, otherwise its wasted production potential.

Minimum would be six defence, but what about a seventh or (a stretch) an eighth defenceman? In the case one of your D-man wasn't on a team playing Saturday.

Anyone thought much about this before?

[Anonymous]

I usually don't go with too many defencemen because even the best won't outscore most forwards, so when you get down to your 7th and 8th they likely aren't going to be that good.

Just think about it this way, there will probably be 20 points season difference between a forward and defencemen of those depths, so to make it worth it, the defencemen would have to get 20 more points than a benched forward over the course of a season's saturdays.

I don't look for more defencemen, but if theres a hot one and I have a lame forward, its a no brainer. If you think you have some weak forwards and there are some defencemen then by all means go for it, but I probably wouldn't pick up a worse player for the sake of it.