Byfuglien

[Gramps]

What are the odds of Byfuglien being designated a F next season a la Brent Burns?

[MillerTime89]

Slim for next year, IMO.

He still is playing defense on occasion.

[Eazy BZ]

I would say Byfuglien keeps his RW/D status next year for sure.

[Gramps]

Any other thoughts on Byfuglien being designated F next year?

[petegreg21]

On yahoo he will be RW/D.

[SittingRed]

He should lose it...

[petegreg21]

He should lose it...

I agree. I'm basing this on how loosely Yahoo attaches positions to players.

For example, despite not playing a game on D this year, Burns kept RW/D. And now with his move BACK to D this year, Burns will likely be RW/D again lol.

[The Wrong Marine]

Currently on ESPN/TSN, he is listed as D/F. Our league doesn't distinguish between LW/C/RW. Not sure if it will carry over until next year though. Hoping though as it will impact my keepers

[Coyote]

We'll it totally depends on what site you use for your league. Yahoo's eligibility has no real rhyme or reason so I wouldn't count on them getting it right

[jcairns]

Am I the only one that thinks the proper way to do positioning is to have defensemen keep their forward eligibility? It's not a huge deal in one year leagues giving a D man like Buff RW eligibility - it just means he will get drafted sooner.

But in keeper leagues taking away an eligibility like that really screws everyone over. If you draft a D man as a D man, and he switches to forward, you shouldn't get D revoked and have your team be screwed over.

[chuckcouples]

Am I the only one that thinks the proper way to do positioning is to have defensemen keep their forward eligibility? It's not a huge deal in one year leagues giving a D man like Buff RW eligibility - it just means he will get drafted sooner.

But in keeper leagues taking away an eligibility like that really screws everyone over. If you draft a D man as a D man, and he switches to forward, you shouldn't get D revoked and have your team be screwed over.

I completely agree with this statement. My belief is that players should maintain eligibility for any position that they have shown they can play at the NHL level. This means that players like Burns and Byfuglien should always maintain their D/RW position eligibility since they have the ability to play both.

[kevin_mcallister]

Big buff is now listed as rw on nhl.com. Burns is back to being listed a a D.

[LordoftheRinks]

Yahoo has been getting more liberal on positional flexibility each year. My money is RW/D in Yahoo and likely (starting out) RW on ESPN and CBS.

[Savvy1982]

FanTrax still has Buff listed as F/D, for whatever that's worth.

[ross10019]

Am I the only one that thinks the proper way to do positioning is to have defensemen keep their forward eligibility? It's not a huge deal in one year leagues giving a D man like Buff RW eligibility - it just means he will get drafted sooner.

But in keeper leagues taking away an eligibility like that really screws everyone over. If you draft a D man as a D man, and he switches to forward, you shouldn't get D revoked and have your team be screwed over.

As a default rule, I have to disagree for leagues that have D v F positions. A typical Dman that becomes a forward can see a significant spike in point totals - even a middling forward who puts up 40 pts is worth quite a bit more as a fantasy dman. It gives the owner a huge advantage potentially, which isn't fair, since the guy is racking up those points as a fwd. It gets worse when you consider other categories, like SOG.

Burns is a good example of that - they guy always had the potential to be a 40-50 pt dman and did put up 46 and 43 during his time wiht the Wild. But as a forward last year he put up 48 in 69, prorated that's a 57 pt pace.

Byfulgien is actually a rare example of where it probably doesn't make a difference - that guy puts up 60+ pts wherever he plays, and a ton of SOG - if anyting, for Byfuglien, moving to forward may HURT his production.

But the default rule, to me, is that once a Dman has obvously been moved to Fwd, you can no longer allow his owne rto play him as a Dman, even in keeper leagues. You can deal with the perceived unfairness of that by reassessing each year, and so that the eligibility change is not permanent.