I am obsessed with numbers. When I told myself that I needed a hobby, I took up fantasy hockey. Got myself new numbers to truly enjoy playing with.

After being a gypsy across different types of scoring and leagues, and obtaining a huge variance of scores (worst to best), I came to think that the ultimate fantasy calculation had to include salary: no team can afford to have 6 or 8 of the top 20 fantasy studs on their roster, no matter what newbie helped him get there.

I started a Cap league two years ago, a 3 year trial. As a "hobby toy", bought myself a slot at Fantrax, and shared my toy with some classic fantasy hockey friends. The duty fell on me to come up with a point system, so I targeted a very narrow bell curve for each position. The narrower range of weekly points should make for tighter scores heading into puck drop on Saturday night. To accomplish that, I had to come up with algorithms that rewarded the top guns for what they were worth, and gave power to the multi-cat studs. And it turns out that the meat-and-potatoes players that played well by shutting down the studs also had to play hard every night, and that has fantasy value: good night, bad night syndrome.

Decided to look through the League numbers this morning, to see what was happening with the scoring. The league has 12 teams, active rosters with 4 C, 4 LW, 4 RW, 6 D and 2 G and 2 Skaters. Now, the Fantrax spreadsheet download for each position also includes cross-listings, so the results are not pure, per say. A deeper analysis is something I can do over the summer months. Results for top 24 Goalies and Top 48 by position and total FPts, here are the averages for roughly first 30-35 games, or half a regular fantasy season:

Goalies = 131 pts
Centers = 143 pts
Left Wings = 128 pts
Right Wings = 143 pts
Defense = 139 pts

Every weekend there are always 2-3 teams heading into Saturday night with less than a 20 pt spread when a 300+ weekly score is an average week.

Question begs, what do other Salary Cap Keeper Commishes do to make their leagues super competitive?