Draft Strategy...

[B3tt3rMan]

So I've been playing around with a few different styles of drafting with mock drafts on Yahoo...I'm aware that most of the time the mock drafts are done with auto-drafters, not league specific, and typically a mildly accurate way to understand players draft rank/position to take them.

The combination that I've found giving the better teams in a 12-team (3C/3R/3L/4D/2G/4Bench) league is as follows:

Round 1: F1
Round 2: D1
Round 3: G1
Round 4: D2
Round 5: F2
Round 6: G2
Round 7: D3
Round 8: F3
Round 9: F4
Round 10: F5
Round 11: D4
Round 12: F6
Round 13: F7
Round 14: F8
Round 15: D5
Round 16: F9
Round 17: F10
Round 18: F11
Round 19 F12

Does anyone else use this style of strategy while drafting? If not, what have you found to work the best for you?

[Eskimo Brother]

I go in knowing what position is the scarcest deeper into the draft with my settings (one of defence, LW or RW), and target that position a little more early. After that, I go best player available with tie breakers going to position. If you go into a draft with a rigid position set already laid out, you will falter after some positional run and make mistakes in the middle rounds.

The other thing to be aware of, is having player targets in certain rounds where you think you can get them while they are still worth their draft slot. Stops you from reaching too high more often than not.

[YzermansLegacy]

Like EB said, it's critical to know your league settings to help determine your particular draft strategy.

Doing what you've done with analyzing the Yahoo mocks is a GREAT place to start... next is to get more specific to your league (other GM tendencies, positional scarcity, category scarcity, etc.)

That "strict" strategy you laid out above works if everyone in the league drafts the same way... which often happens in mocks (where the auto-picks keep things steady) but rarely happens in a real draft. Someone is out to corner Goalies early, someone else wants D... and those runs means you're left picking a guy too early to fulfill your positional strategy or missing a guy that's dropped.

My preference - and lots of guys here do the same thing - is to tier a clump of guys that I'd pick at a particular spot in the draft. I usually will lay out my first 3-4 rounds in terms of how I expect the draft to go (e.g. who I think the other GMs will go for), and then go by who is left in my tiers each round.

And for transparency sake, I am one of those drafters who will OFTEN bring a pretty unique draft strategy to the table in the hopes of zagging while everyone else is zigging. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it bombs. But even with a dedicated "unique" strategy in place - I still defer to my tiers and will always try to grab a guy who I think has "fallen" too far to maximize value.

Great question to ask the forums - I'm sure you can do a search and find some really great answers to others asking a similar question too.

[B3tt3rMan]

I go in knowing what position is the scarcest deeper into the draft with my settings (one of defence, LW or RW), and target that position a little more early. After that, I go best player available with tie breakers going to position. If you go into a draft with a rigid position set already laid out, you will falter after some positional run and make mistakes in the middle rounds.

The other thing to be aware of, is having player targets in certain rounds where you think you can get them while they are still worth their draft slot. Stops you from reaching too high more often than not.

I have my overall ranking of players based on positional scarcity, and point drop off, so C's in my ranking are valued significantly lower then anyone else do to the slower drop off from the mean points.

I've ranked all my players based on what they will do for the season, and compared them to the ADP's so make sure I don't reach too far and to let higher ADP's with lower rankings go by the way side.

I'll go back to trying for best positional player with no particular order again and see if I get any better or worse outcomes...
Thanks for your insight.

[B3tt3rMan]

Like EB said, it's critical to know your league settings to help determine your particular draft strategy.

Doing what you've done with analyzing the Yahoo mocks is a GREAT place to start... next is to get more specific to your league (other GM tendencies, positional scarcity, category scarcity, etc.)

That "strict" strategy you laid out above works if everyone in the league drafts the same way... which often happens in mocks (where the auto-picks keep things steady) but rarely happens in a real draft. Someone is out to corner Goalies early, someone else wants D... and those runs means you're left picking a guy too early to fulfill your positional strategy or missing a guy that's dropped.

My preference - and lots of guys here do the same thing - is to tier a clump of guys that I'd pick at a particular spot in the draft. I usually will lay out my first 3-4 rounds in terms of how I expect the draft to go (e.g. who I think the other GMs will go for), and then go by who is left in my tiers each round.

And for transparency sake, I am one of those drafters who will OFTEN bring a pretty unique draft strategy to the table in the hopes of zagging while everyone else is zigging. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it bombs. But even with a dedicated "unique" strategy in place - I still defer to my tiers and will always try to grab a guy who I think has "fallen" too far to maximize value.

Great question to ask the forums - I'm sure you can do a search and find some really great answers to others asking a similar question too.

I use ranking, ADP and positional scarcity to set my pre-draft list.

Most of the other GM's probably 8/12 don't go to hard into this mostly using ADP and Yahoo rank, which isn't league specific, which brings it down to a battle of about 4 people every year unless someone gets real lucky. The league has been together for a long time and it's difficult to remove members to make it more competitive lol.

I like the tiering idea, that I typically just wait for who's available and see what position I need out of F's and pick accordingly.

Thanks for your help!

[Luffy D Monkey]

Everything depends on the number of owners, league settings etc.

In my league, there are not enough goalies to go around. So if you want to compete you have to be very careful to get your good goalies before they're all gone. This year I got stuck with Mike Smith because I was being to blase about drafting a goalie.

Next, good defensemen are also very scarce. So you want to make sure you have at least one super good defensemen.

Forwards are plentiful so if you trust your drafting ability you can play 'Moneyball' and pick up overlooked guys in later rounds. There are always 20-30 decent forwards left in the free agent pool after my group drafts.