[This was written after the whole post: I didn't start writing this as a manifesto for hits as a fundamental category for fantasy... Nor would I like this to be seen as a plea for all pools to have PIM and hits involved. In fact, I'm not really all that big on hits as a category... What does it matter if you hit someone in a hockey game? I hope some discussion follows.]
Originally Posted by metaldude26 View Post
Explain your reasoning. I definitely would say the same thing about GWG and SOG, mainly because GWG are a farse anyway but that's another story entirely. Goals are a fundamental category in any fantasy pool. Show me a fantasy pool where goals aren't a factor somehow and I'll show you a boring ass league.
Hits and PIM are peripheral stats. I like having at least one of them in a rotissery league but there had better be like 10 other categories that aren't dominated by the meatheads if I'm going to use both. The point being that the Boogie Man Derek Boogaard should not be as valuable as a guy like Kaberle, but if the scoring categories are limited to 6, 7 or 8 and you have both PIM and Hits then Boogaard is as valuable. So maybe I should have prefaced my statement better in that regard.
Let me preface this by saying I think we're totally in agreement.
I think I get what you're saying - you want there to be a statistical, categorical breakdown of your pool which approximates, if not translates directly, the breakdown of the various elements of real life hockey.* I'd call this a 'realistic' pool, meaning that players will have approximately the same value, in terms of performance, in your pool as in real life. Is this what you meant?
I agree about goals, at least if the above is true** - success in hockey is determined by goals, right? But what about shots? Gotta shoot to score, right? I'd say that shots on goal is a peripheral stat - in the end, everything except goals is. So are you saying that having one or more peripheral stats which are associated with a fundamental category,*** or at least fundamental area or element of the game, is a way of making that part of the game more important, for fantasy as in real life? I agree.
Going back to my earlier question "Couldn't you say the same thing about goals and shots on goal?", my reasoning was this: I'd say there's a similar (or even greater) correlation between shots and goals as between hits and PIM. Certainly you don't have to hit to get a penalty in the way that you have to get a shot on goal to score, but I'd argue that they're both peripheral stats which measure the physical element of hockey. In fact, it's more common for a player with high shots to also have high goals than it is for a player who gets lots of hits to get lots of PIM (Dustin Brown comes to mind). This means that hits is a stat which measures a different aspect of the physical element of the game, at least moreso than shots does of goals; compare goals to assists, or even +/- to blocked shots, if you consider those to be both measuring the defensive element of the game.
To sum up, my point above was that including both shots and goals is having two servings of meat just as much as, perhaps even more so, than including hits and PIM... although maybe it's more like having a hot italian sausage then going for an oktoberfest.
But to come back to those elements of the hockey game - offensive, defensive, physical - I completely agree with you that each part of the game deserves proportional value in your fantasy pool, if you're going for a 'realistic' fantasy experience. What the actual proportions are, and so what constitutes 'realistic', depends on how your commish balances the elements of the game. But shouldn't each fantasy squad have a Derek Boogard to keep the other Derek Boogards honest? Shouldn't that type of player also have value? Or, in a more likely situation for fantasy pools, why shouldn't Ovechkin's hits, which have a role in real hockey, contribute to his 'realistic' fantasy value? If that means adding more offensive scoring categories to make the balance, I'm all for it.
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*It needn't be said that fantasy hockey is not real hockey, and that any statistical breakdown of something it is inherently flawed as a representation, for any number of reasons...
**However, if you're not trying to say that goals are important in fantasy because they are important in real life, but rather that they have some value that is intrinsically fundamental to fantasy (rather than real life) hockey, then I'm not really sure how this could be. Boogard and Kaberle essentially score about the same number of goals, in terms of the total number of goals your average fantasy hockey team scores each year... On a side note, it's also possible that if you had a league that only calculated GWG, BS, H, PIM, shootout goals, shoot out saves, goal posts hit, and whatever other crazy categories you wanted to add would be kinda fun as an experiment, rather than boring - although it'd be totally unrelated to real life hockey success/value.
***There is, of course, a counterargument to this: by adding any other stats to the equation, you diminish the value of that individual stat. This seems like a topic for another time, though.
Icy Dead People
Limited keeper H2H (G A +/- PIM PPP SOG BLK W GAA SV%); 14-teams, 18-man rosters; 2C, 2LW, 2RW, 5D, 1 Util, 2G, 3BN; keep 7
C: Getzlaf, Malkin
LW: Hall
RW: St Louis
D: Subban
G: Quick, Niemi
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Originally Posted by horrorfan
