Auction Draft Strategy

[metaldude26]

One of my one-year leagues is finally dipping its toes into auction drafting so I am looking for some tips/tricks. Obviously, strategy will still revolve around scoring/setup but I need no help there. Just wondering if there are any auction specific strategies to consider? We are drafting on Yahoo.

Our auction limit is $200 to fill 17 roster spots (3C/3L/3R/4D/2G/4B), in a 10-team league.

Strategies I am pondering:

1. Push all my dollars towards filling my starting lineup and then just use the waiver wire to fill my bench slots considering how interchangeable players in that 120-180 range can be. Can I even get away with that or do I have to leave $1 for the end to fill my back half slots?

2. Come up with a price limit for each player/position before the draft. I'd presume I can use my own projections or Dobber's to come up with a value list for players in my league and set price points accordingly and not go past those points. How do others go about setting these price limits?

3. Throw the guys I desperately want out as early as possible. I am assuming most people will try to be cautious with their dollars early so it's better to get your big targets out early so you know whether or not you've got them at or below your pre-set price and can audible if they go for higher than you are willing to spend.

Do these strategies make sense? What other strategies are out there?

[saucelife90]

1. Push all my dollars towards filling my starting lineup and then just use the waiver wire to fill my bench slots considering how interchangeable players in that 120-180 range can be. Can I even get away with that or do I have to leave $1 for the end to fill my back half slots?

Most auction leagues make you spend $1 per player to fill each slot. I think all platforms will give you a "max bid" which is obviously just your total $ left, minus $1 for every other unfilled position. But yes, the strategy I use for any auction draft is spend your money on your starting lineup and fill your bench with $1 players.

2. Come up with a price limit for each player/position before the draft. I'd presume I can use my own projections or Dobber's to come up with a value list for players in my league and set price points accordingly and not go past those points. How do others go about setting these price limits?

This strategy is great 5 minutes before your draft starts, but usually get's crumpled up and tossed away a few minutes in. What ends up happening in these scenarios is; players you want go for more than you've budgeted for, and you're left sitting there scrambling. The next best options turn out to be the 2nd tier players and you have a crap load of $ to spend but very few options for top end talent left on the board. You end up being able to outbid everyone on those middle tier players, but don't have the superstars to carry your squad.

Assigning values to positions works a little more efficiently, but again, you'll run into scenarios where you'll have to spend a little more at one position to get the guy that you want. In those cases, you'll have to deduct that $ from a different position in order to keep your budget balanced. C is usually the easiest place to deduct from, simply due to the depth of the position.

3. Throw the guys I desperately want out as early as possible. I am assuming most people will try to be cautious with their dollars early so it's better to get your big targets out early so you know whether or not you've got them at or below your pre-set price and can audible if they go for higher than you are willing to spend.

I usually never throw out the players that I want early. Toss out some big names who you have no interest in, but you know will go for big $. This gets draft capital off the board and starts to limit the amount of owners who will be "in" on the guys that you want.

[newfcollins]

Like saucelife said, you need to reverse your strategy on point #3. For example, if you really don't want any part of Carey Price, put him out early and let someone else pay out the big bucks to get him. That way, when you want to buy Connor Hellbuyck later, the guy who paid big money for Price probably won't want to spend that much more money on a netminder, and it could bring down Hellebuyck's cost. But if you put Hellebuyck out there early, then he'll probably go for a higher price.

Normally in auctions, there's a lot of great players (especially defensemen) who are available later for $1 or $2.

Yahoo has mock auction drafts, but not many people do it, and it's useless to be the only person and nine robots in a 10-team auction mock draft. If you can get 9 people on here to do a mock draft at the same time, you could get a sense of what it is like.

[metaldude26]

Like saucelife said, you need to reverse your strategy on point #3. For example, if you really don't want any part of Carey Price, put him out early and let someone else pay out the big bucks to get him. That way, when you want to buy Connor Hellbuyck later, the guy who paid big money for Price probably won't want to spend that much more money on a netminder, and it could bring down Hellebuyck's cost. But if you put Hellebuyck out there early, then he'll probably go for a higher price.

Normally in auctions, there's a lot of great players (especially defensemen) who are available later for $1 or $2.

Yahoo has mock auction drafts, but not many people do it, and it's useless to be the only person and nine robots in a 10-team auction mock draft. If you can get 9 people on here to do a mock draft at the same time, you could get a sense of what it is like.

To me, this Price/Hellebuyck example is why I'd rather put the guy I am targeting earlier. Goalies are a finite resource, and it's not like anyone is sleeping on Hellebuyck. Whatever time he gets announced it's not like his price is going to go down. I figure that if I put him out early and his price ends up too high for me, at least I know that he's off the board and I can switch up strategy to a different starter. If I wait on Hellebuyck as the last good starter available, I'm as or more likely to get caught in a bidding war but have no fall-back options if I don't get him.

I'd be more apt to "hide" a guy no one is really going to go after but a proven commodity starter doesn't strike me as one of them.

[stevegamer]

To me, this Price/Hellebuyck example is why I'd rather put the guy I am targeting earlier. Goalies are a finite resource, and it's not like anyone is sleeping on Hellebuyck. Whatever time he gets announced it's not like his price is going to go down. I figure that if I put him out early and his price ends up too high for me, at least I know that he's off the board and I can switch up strategy to a different starter. If I wait on Hellebuyck as the last good starter available, I'm as or more likely to get caught in a bidding war but have no fall-back options if I don't get him.

I'd be more apt to "hide" a guy no one is really going to go after but a proven commodity starter doesn't strike me as one of them.

I have no hockey auction experience, but probably 30-40 league years of auction draft experience, with about 7 or 8 inaugural auctions. I am also going to tell you that you generally want to do the reverse of what you think here. However, everyone is dipping their toe in, so it may work. However, I think it's much more instructive to do it with non-goalies, as in fantasy football, you want to not do it with running backs.

Throw out a skater you don't really want, but will take if he's cheap enough first off. Do it again ( maybe a lower tier guy) for your second proposal, then start to switch it up. You gain a lot of power if you have one of the largest amounts of cash left, but you don't want to be so cheap that you are chasing non-stars at star prices.

If it's a competently run auction league, you will need to have a minimum of $1 for all slots. If it's not, you might get away with it, but I'd recommend it not be allowed - having a guy finish the draft taking a bunch of players at $0 is opening a big can of worms, it leads to potentially league wrecking trades, and people may want to keep their $0 guy, you get the idea. More importantly, I want to have $1.5 per slot when I get to my deep bench, so I can go $2-3 if needed. If you have $1 per slot, you have to take players nobody else bids you up on that you throw out. Eventually, you'll get there, but I've found ending with a couple bucks left over unspent isn't a huge problem.

[LawMan]

One key element to your strategy is knowing how the waiver wire works post draft. If it's the same as most hockey leagues all non drafted players are waiver eligible and you have 2-3 moves per week for free then focusing on the starting lineup, or higher is a good strategy. If that's the case then you really want to load up on high end talent in the auction, and the bottom half of your roster becomes interchangeable throughout the season.

If you look at a typical one year league roster of say 20 players usually around 11-13 of the drafted players last a whole season on a roster (or their trade replacements) so as many as 9 guys are dropped for different waiver wire options that emerge. That means you don't want to spend more than $1 for these 9 guys because they ultimately do not have much value over replacement and will get cast aside at some point in the season. As far as throwing out players early or late it's hard to know for sure which will get you a better deal. On the first stud goalie or superstar most owners will be hesitant to "overspend" while some will want to make sure they get a stud to base their team around. Instead of focusing on early or late I would simply say do not fall in love with any one player before the draft and try and avoid putting yourself in a position where you need to get a certain player. Both those mindsets can make you blind to how high you are bidding up a player which is to be avoided.

[metaldude26]

Figure I'll post my final results and some thoughts:

C - Seguin $37
C - Zibanejad $2
C - Larkin $1

L - Panarin - $29
L - Landeskog - $11
L - Forsberg - $8

R - Pastrnak - $47
R - Radulov - $5
R - Zucker - $1

D - Dumba - $1
D - Q Hughes - $1
D - D Toews - $1
D - Hronek - $1

G - Vasilevskiy - $50
G - Mrazek - $1

B - Rittich - $1
B - Nurse - $1
B - Galchenyuk - $1
B - Gourde - $1

*

You can see that I really went over budget on Vasilevskiy, otherwise I think I did a pretty good job of self control. With Vasilevskiy, he's my only Tier 1 goalie, so I was either going to get him or make someone pay through the nose to do so. Otherwise, I was going scrubs in goal. I also have Raanta available to me off the wire should I need another option.

Despite some restraint, I was still at a point where I didn't really leave any wiggle room. Over half my roster I drafted near the end just hoping not to get bid up. The result of that is a mostly theoretical defense. I just missed out on a bunch of bargains at the position like Gostisbehere for $2, that I had targeted. Now I need some luck. On the plus side, one or two defensemen usually pop every year. I just need to hustle in and get them.

Another strategy I wanted to try that you can't often swing in a snake draft is to load up on high-end duos. The old "MT" theory. I got a couple of good ones with Panarin/Zibanejad and Seguin/Radulov.

I really wanted to show a bit more restraint and leave myself $2 for all but my final bench slots so that I could pick off good value. There were a bunch of guys I could have snagged at $2-3 but couldn't bit anything for.

I also would have loved if I'd have passed on Pastrnak and instead spent in the $10 range on four to five other players instead of having so many minimum guys. There was a good amount of value to be found if I hadn't let this one get away from me.

I did end up throwing out a bunch of names I didn't want early on to have them bid up. That went well so thanks for that strategy.

[newfcollins]

That's some great value for guys like Zibanejad, Larkin, Radulov, Dumba, Nurse, etc.

Just wondering if there were any players that stand out from other teams that were way too high/low? I assume McDavid went for the most?

[metaldude26]

That's some great value for guys like Zibanejad, Larkin, Radulov, Dumba, Nurse, etc.

Just wondering if there were any players that stand out from other teams that were way too high/low? I assume McDavid went for the most?

MacKinnon actually went for the most at 63. He, McDavid and Kucherov were up around 60.