When did you start playing fantasy hockey?

[pmorrow]

Something I've been curious about for a while is when people on here started playing fantasy hockey (or other fantasy sports). Especially curious about those who started before it became digitized.

I started in 2005. High school and my best friend got me into it. I was definitely at a low point in my interest in the NHL having just quit playing hockey and then the 2004 lockout. But one fantasy draft - I didn't get Ovechkin or Crosby, but getting a team with Jagr, Bertuzzi, Lundqvist et al had me hooked. Following Crosby vs Ovechkin, plus fantasy, got me back into the NHL. Fond memories of that first year.

What is your fantasy hockey story?

[Axeman33]

Probably late 1980s, give or take.

The only place to get updated stats was every Tuesday in the newspaper when they released the points for all players for each team. Then you got out your calculator and started adding.

[hockeyrobot]

I started in 2003 (high school) when I joined a pool with a guy I worked with. I'll never forget going to his live draft and having no idea what or how roto worked. I don't think I figured it out until half way through the season haha

I quickly started my own league and changed to H2H.

[Daydream Nation]

Fantasy Hockey- Summer of 2012

I played Roto Fantasy Baseball going back to the early 00s and those early leagues with my friends with an in-person draft were my favorite leagues I've ever been in. I'd get multiple fantasy baseball magazines and spend hours going over stats and making lists and tiers. I used to dominate those leagues simply by out-working everyone since this was before numerous sleeper and breakout lists were everywhere online. Fantasy baseball and football were my main passions before getting back into hockey around 2008 or so. Nowadays I don't even follow football or baseball and strictly focus on hockey and my other niche sports (cycling and auto racing). 2 full dynasty leagues and 2 partial keeper leagues. My colleague just shakes her head at how much hockey I consume.

[Swarley]

2017, friend at work asked me to join a new league they were starting up. Had never played any fantasy sports before. Had done box pools at work for the regular season or payoff pools. Can’t see myself quitting fantasy hockey anytime soon. Maybe one day will play Fantasy Football as well.

[Grin]

Started playing Strat-o-Matic baseball in high school in the late 80s. There was a teacher league. One of those teachers taught us.
I then tried Strat hockey, basketball and football, but I played Strat baseball and hockey the most.
Got away from it after high school.
Then in 2010, after a rough few weeks at work, I decided to start Yahoo baseball, hockey and basketball leagues. It was good for my mental health.
I have since added fantasy football, WNBA and Premier League.

[Axeman33]

Started playing Strat-o-Matic baseball in high school in the late 80s. There was a teacher league. One of those teachers taught us.
I then tried Strat hockey, basketball and football, but I played Strat baseball and hockey the most.
Got away from it after high school.
Then in 2010, after a rough few weeks at work, I decided to start Yahoo baseball, hockey and basketball leagues. It was good for my mental health.
I have since added fantasy football, WNBA and Premier League.

I loved Strat-O-Matic hockey. I never played the other ones.

[LordoftheRinks]

I started right after the 2004-2005 lockout. I began in 1 public roto and H2H league to get my feet wet and have kept at it ever since.

[roenick27]

I forget the name of it and I want to guess it was early 2000s. I do remember having to call into an 800 number etc to speak to a live “commissioner” to make a lineup change (and pay for it).

[tweetdrivr]

Mid 90s for strat-o-mastic baseball. 2001 for hockey. Early ESPN online league. That league is still going. It’s the one in my sig.

[kovalchuk17]

The 2002-2003 season for hockey. It's the only one ive played every year since then.

Hockey: 2002 - Present
Baseball: 2004 - 2012
Basketball: 2012 - Present
Football: 2015 - Present
Soccer: 2015 (EPL)

Hockey is the only one I actually chose to play, the rest were cause my friends or colleagues wanted to play 'something'. I've been able to figure out all the sports which is good so Ive won at least 1 chip in each sport (including the 1 of soccer season), what I havent been able to figure out is keeping people interested in the game when theyve got other stuff going on (hence baseball dying off)

I resisted playing Football for a long time because the variance of the game and the subsequent huge highs and lows I figured would be a distraction on Sundays. Ended up playing anyway to bond with colleagues at the office when I was a few months into the job and got asked you gotta say yes! I can handle the swings cause I win far more than I lose haha

[Pengwin7]

1987 or 1988 was my first entry of a newspaper box pool pick 'em for hockey. (Windsor Star) First few years I just did free entry - then paid $5 for the ability to make "up to 3 trades"... by phone - which was exciting!

By 1992, I was running high school fantasy hockey box pool leagues making my own box pools and chugging stats using Lotus 1-2-3 (the precursor to MS Excel).
(Yup, Axe - our newspaper was Tuesday for full stats. First thing I did when I got home was manually enter them in computer, then print out numbers and take to school. I was a very popular boy at school on Wed morning with the league update!!)

In 1996, I organized my first live draft-style pure-points fantasy hockey draft as a freshman in college.

Mid 2000s is when somebody turned me on that ESPN/Yahoo had fantasy leagues online.
I did my first few on ESPN, but found & preferred Yahoo - my first recorded league was a 2007 with co-workers, Americans and Canadians and a team I called "Detroit Gash".
And 2010 is when I found this site and started joining a few leagues created by others.

[The Comish]

Oh man, in the early to mid-80's, I was running simple points only pools with my friends and later with my co-workers. Yikes, about 40 years of running hockey pools...which explains the origin of my dobberhockey handle!

Also ran rotisserie baseball leagues from about 1990 and that led to me applying that concept to hockey, but there really wasn't many stats available at that time. Had to manually input statistics from the newspaper every Tuesday and fax the results to everyone, lol! Oh man, I'm starting to feel old right about now!

My fantasy football league is in it's 25th season with many of the original guys still in, but also some new blood, which has helped keep the league alive.

[stevegamer]

I joined my first fantasy hockey league in 1996-97. It was the last of the 4 major sports I got involved with for fantasy. It had run the prior year, but owner changeover caused it to be a year where we drafted anew for a dynasty with weird scoring rules. It is still running today, although random number generation has replaced dice rolls in result generation. Yes that means it is still mostly scored by a person, and I sometimes help out. Yes, I'm serious. I did get the commish to use Fantrax to aid in getting stats easier, and it's much better for lineup submission, no emailing spreadsheets.

I got into this league from contacts in the Diplomacy boardgame hobby. There are 2 funny stories from that first year:

1. We did a list draft, where we all send lists to the commish, and they went down the lists to determine what teams got what player, round by round. Since having players from the same teams mattered, I avoided certain teams that I knew had fans going for them: Flyers, Penguins, Leafs, Canadiens. I ended up with the best goaltending in the league: Hasek & Roy in a start 1 weekly dynasty league. The league had end of season awards, and one was for the best guy over the year who wasn't playing every week. Patrick Roy got promoted to being ineligible for that award by year 3 or 4, because he was my backup.

2. The guy who got me into the league asked me how much I knew about hockey, and I told him I didn't follow it as closely as baseball, basketball, or football. I only knew what teams were good, star players, and the Flyers. He decided to ask me if I knew anything about a couple guys he was considering. The first guy he asked me about I said something like: "oh he's really good, he's a nice guy, and girls liked him." He chuckled, and asked me how I could say that. I replied that he picked the one hockey player I know personally from high school. I didn't know him well, but I knew him.

Like all the other sports, I played sim leagues before fantasy. I started with Avalon Hill's Statis-Pro line for baseball, basketball, and football in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Baseball was a neighborhood league, and I also started playing D&D in the summer of 1980 with the neighborhood kids. Football was less of a league and more of just playing games, also using Avalon Hill's Paydirt, which is team level stats. We did do leagues in that. Earl Weaver, MicroLeague, and other computer sims were used as well. MY introduction to Strato-Matic was later.

[everfeb]

Started in 1988 at age 41 so 35 years ago. A couple of friends invited me. Still in it. A simple non draft pool most often but I do recall several drunken live drafts at bars. No computerized stats back then. I remember getting a McKeans draft list a few times. Really enjoy fantasy hockey.