15 Years of Fantasy Hockey Lessons

[doulos]

From the days of copying out hockey stats from the newspaper on a weekly basis to the complicated inner workings of an horrifically detailed, salary cap, tiered, keeper league, the progression from fantasy hockey newbie to fantasy hockey addict (that still loses like a newbie), has been an interesting one. Along the way there have been a few things I have learned, usually by making huge mistakes.

1) Injuries are a huge X-factor in any league.

Clearly this doesn't need to be pointed out in this season of all seasons, but all of the planning and perfect drafting can be thwarted by key injuries to the right guys on your roster. I am expecting that by the end of the year there will be a lot of upsets in leagues as injury depleted rosters get passed by GMs who avoided the Kovalchuks, Markovs and Savards this season. It's a little like wandering around through a minefield and only having an old map of which areas to avoid (Gaborik, Havlat etc) but knowing that you might have your leg blown off at any point by a mine that the map didn't have written down.

2) A mediocre draft can be overcome by some excellent waiver wire work.

I have experienced this on both ends, both as a guy who has drafted well and been beaten by some savvy GMs who out "free-agented" me during the course of a year, and as the guy who scoured the wire and worked my way up the standings after doing poorly at the draft. It seems that every year there are GMs who struggle to understand the nuances of the draft but make some fantastic pickups to claw their way up towards the top. Understanding when to pick up "hot" players and when to drop guys that you normally never would (I held onto Marleau for WAY too long a couple seasons ago), is the subject of much study for me right now, and I think there are a few interesting 'streaky trends' that can be identified and used as an advantage for a smart GM.

3) I suck at keeper leagues

Seriously, I have NEVER won a keeper league in any format. Been close a number of times, but really I struggle to put together a winning team in a keeper format. I'm still not 100% sure why it is, but this year is not shaping up to be any different. I've got 2 keeper leagues where I thought I had great rosters and I am struggling big time in both of those. This could certainly be related to point number 1 (injuries) but it's a reoccurring theme in my fantasy hockey - keeper league struggles. One year leagues are where I tend to really do well so I tend to now stick to those outside of the ones I am in.

4) Head-to-Head for Fun, Roto or Points for Cash

The fun of lining up against your bitter enemy in a semi-final clash that has involved 6 months of trash-talking is SUPER fun. However, the way that upsets can happen in a one week knockout format makes head to head a frustrating experience to intertwine in a money league. I have one league that is an exception to this because of the great community, but generally I have shied away from connecting head to head and cash in leagues.

5) Simply watching the game can give a slight edge

This might just be a personal experience but I have found that simply being able to watch more hockey and see players actually play has usually led to more success against folks who don't do that. Sentium has brought this issue up in a thread regarding Igor Radulov and his lack of production this season and it is a very valuable point. When someone is only looking at numbers they are usually at a slight disadvantage to someone who is looking at numbers AND watching players play. Want to improve at fantasy hockey? Watch the sport whenever you can.

6) Great people and an excellent commish will trump perfect league settings every time.

I have been in a sim league for a number of years now that has all sorts of horrible flaws in it in terms of league setup. But we have 30 owners, many of whom have been involved since the very start. Those owners have created an excellent community of people who put out video content, trash-talk each other, check in every day just to talk hockey and make trades and generally make it an awesome time. I could care less how I do in the league really, because it's free and fun. I have a feeling more leagues would experience higher GM retention by having a strong commish combined with an excellent and fun league culture.

Happy Hockey Pooling everyone!

[Crazynuck]

Great post Joel and congrats on 6K.

Through my fantasy hockey experience I have found that I tend to over manage. Picking up the hot player is great but not at the expense of a proven player going through a slump. Having said that no one is perfect and thats what makes FH so much fun. This season I held onto Burns too long and just when I drop him he starts to warrant a spot in a deep league.

Secondly I find the key to winning in a keeper league is to not draft overly young. I'm not the type to build a young team and then wait a year or two to compete. I usually have the oldest team and build youth through the farm or my bench.

[frozenboards]

x2 - Great Post! Thanks for sharing.

[Chicleteur]

Definitely a nice read!

[fantasyhockeygeek]

Great post for 6k, Doulos. Nothing but wisdom in there!

Congrats on the milestone. You're one of the good guys here - always extremely respectful and that's one of the things that kept me coming back to the forums when I first found this site. You've shared a ton of knowledge, so thanks for that.

[bizzy]

i can really relate to the sucky draft/waiver wire work. Since our inaugural draft last year I have made some major moves and its starting to payoff:

Draft 2008
Luongo
Hossa
Kopitar
Stamkos
Gomez
Visnovsky
Brown
Jovonovski
Afinogenov
Cole
MKoivu
Voracek
Bernier
Carle
Fillipula
Booth
Salmela

I only have 4 remaining players from that draft....Luongo/Hossa/DBrown/MKoivu and have picked up some excellent players thru trading waiver pickups along with draft picks and guys on the above list. See sig for current roster.

[mister_mcgoo]

great stuff man, I think we all have our little version of the lessons learned list

4) Head-to-Head for Fun, Roto or Points for Cash

H2H can be a little more flukey than the other formats Ill give you but IMO it involves strategy like no other if you use daily line changes. Let me give you an example, one of my teams was getting spanked pretty badly last season and I was down 14 to 4 in categories or something like that. A quick review of the matchup showed that my team just wasn't scoring that week and with only 2-3 days left for the matchup I basically had no chance to catch my opponent in Gs, As, plus minus, W, GAA, SPCT etc etc. So at that point you take on a roto strategy and say OK which categories can I win this week? So I wound up sitting my scorers for tough guys and faceoff guys...I also put in my goalies on crap teams that I saw were facing powerhouses because we count both SA and SV so since I didn't care bout GAA or SPCT at that point I could target the raw stats and not care if they lost 6-1 as long as they faced a ton of rubber. I didn't win the week but I wound up taking an additional 4 categories, and a 10-8 loss is alot better than a 14-4 loss!

[mister_mcgoo]

this is really odd, I'm trying to enter my post and it keeps giving me this annoying 'Forbidden' error like this:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /forums/editpost.php on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

...I'm able to enter it bit by bit though which is what I'm trying to do now...apparently some character or set of characters is hosing the post so I'm trying to figure out what it is by entering each word one at a time, stand by

EDIT: this is the most bizarre bug ever, I was trying to say 'faceoff s p e c i a l i s t s' and it was choking on the word s p e c i a l i s t s...go ahead and try entering it yourself (without spaces obviously)

[Dobber]

this is really odd, I'm trying to enter my post and it keeps giving me this annoying 'Forbidden' error like this:


...I'm able to enter it bit by bit though which is what I'm trying to do now...apparently some character or set of characters is hosing the post so I'm trying to figure out what it is by entering each word one at a time, stand by

EDIT: this is the most bizarre bug ever, I was trying to say 'faceoff s p e c i a l i s t s' and it was choking on the word s p e c i a l i s t s...go ahead and try entering it yourself (without spaces obviously)

spec ialists

[Dobber]

weird, did that to me too. Had to stick a space in the middle

[Chicleteur]

HAHA! I know why... Because it contains the word "c i a l i s" (v i a g r a type of drug) so it's probably acting the same way as when you try to write AKost i t syn.

[mister_mcgoo]

HAHA! I know why... Because it contains the word "c i a l i s" (v i a g r a type of drug) so it's probably acting the same way as when you try to write AKost i t syn.

good call Chicleteur! thats gotta be it!

[Chicleteur]

Well, if that's not the case, that's definitely a weird bug...