Who to keep? keepers stategies

[ALROU77]

Hi everyone,

I'm in a keep 6 league (out of 15 players, 9F, 4D, 2G, and we are 11 teams), cap league (Cap hit of 72m), points only (1pts goal, 1 pts assists, 2 pts win, 1pts SO).

I have a little problem deciding my two last keeper:

Mcdavid
Scheifele
Guentzel
J. Hughes - ELC contract to good to pass on
Fiala 5,1/1 year
Garland 4,95/5 years
J. Gaudreau 6,75m/1year
O'Reilley 7,5m/2 years
Barzal 7m/2 years

Letang 7,25m/1 year
Pionk 5,875m/4 years
Hronek 4,4m/3 years
A. Boqvist ELC

Talbot
Varlamov

At the end of the year, every team need to have 9 picks to fill there nine missing player's, but we can trade pick's rank. So i'm left with my late 1rst round pick and a lot of middle/low picks for this draft.

First of all, i'll try to win this year.

Second of all, I was planning on keeping 5F and 1D. Last year, my plan was to get a cheap defensive squad, to bank on a high end forward group, which at the end was really good in our format. With all of the big D signing this year, and not a lot of cheap D who run PP1 unit, i have a feeling i'll need to be way more creative to have a cheap D core this year. Also it's easier to find good deal with forward in the end of the draft than D men.

I was firstly planning on keeping Boqvist on Chicago, but in Colombus he lost too much potentiel. So i'm left with pretty much letang vs pionk. Letang should be way better this year, but at a bigger price and won't be a good keeper in year's to come. Pionk as a pretty good contract who could look like a steal in year's to come if he finally keep is PP1 role secure.

With my last keeper, I don't think i could go really wrong with any of these. My last debat was between gaudreau and garland. If I want to win, i have the feeling that gaudreau is my best bet. His chemestry with lindholm and tkachuk at the end of last year looks to me as we could see again the PPG+ that we saw in prior year's. In the other end, garland seem's to have a very good upside in Vancouver, that would translate in a huge steal, contract wise, or he could play 2nd line, PP2, and produce 55 pts. I have a hard time passing on a potentiel contract steal for the years to come, even if it's not very probable (20%...).

What do you think of all this? Thanks a lot for your good advices!

[Bubba55]

If your going to take a big chance, take Garland. Personally, I'm not going there. I may be wrong, but if the move to Van City suddenly makes this guy an 80 pt forward I'll be eating crow, I don't think that happens. I prefer to take my chances on the guy who has already been there and done that and I think will do it again, that would be Gaudreau. I believe Letang will out point all these other D, but I agree, Pionk is a nice alternative and saves you some Cap. I'll pay a bit more for Johnny Hockey and balance that by paying less for Pionk. Hope this helps.

[ALROU77]

If your going to take a big chance, take Garland. Personally, I'm not going there. I may be wrong, but if the move to Van City suddenly makes this guy an 80 pt forward I'll be eating crow, I don't think that happens. I prefer to take my chances on the guy who has already been there and done that and I think will do it again, that would be Gaudreau. I believe Letang will out point all these other D, but I agree, Pionk is a nice alternative and saves you some Cap. I'll pay a bit more for Johnny Hockey and balance that by paying less for Pionk. Hope this helps.

Yeah I see you point, thanks a lot

[E63Wagon]

I think if your main goal is to win this year, don't worry too much about contracts.

With that said I would keep Letang and then take a hard look at Gaudreau, ROR and Barzal as the last keeper as I could see arguments for each of them. Garland and Fiala are more "unknown" to me in the sense that it is harder to project where they end up this year, so I rather go with players where there is a little more predictability and reliability.

[Luffy D Monkey]

I don't think its crazy to consider Varlamov. I hate going into the draft having no goalies and knowing I have to draft both/all of them.

Hronek might be a little underrated. He's on a good salary.

I'm leaning towards 2 of 4 from this group:

Letang
Hronek
Varlamov
Barzal (last season was his floor IMO)

[ALROU77]

I don't think its crazy to consider Varlamov. I hate going into the draft having no goalies and knowing I have to draft both/all of them.

Hronek might be a little underrated. He's on a good salary.

I'm leaning towards 2 of 4 from this group:

Letang
Hronek
Varlamov
Barzal (last season was his floor IMO)

Thanks for your advice ! We really don't seem to have a consensus here.

I won't keep Varlamov because I think we can get some pretty good value late in our draft. Also, in a league where points come from wins, sorokin could steal a lot of starting from varlamov.

This sort of follows my idea that I couldn't really go wrong with any of my D. What do you think of Pionk?

I really like Barzal as a player, but in the points-only league he's too held back by the system he's in.