My season in review

[doulos]

Well all of my season pools are over and here\'s a little rundown with what I learned by the end of the season.

Yahoo Pool 1 - Ended up in second place by about 5 points (rotisserie style). By fatal flaw was on Day 3 of the season dropping Vanek and picking up Vrbata. Don\'t ask me why. I have NO clue. Just one of those things I did. I ended up last in the league (of 18) in +/-. Vanek\'s +12000 would have won me the pool this year. Lesson: When choosing between 2 guys of (I thought) equal value, chose the guy on the better team

Yahoo Pool 2 - After we had drafted, 95% of the pool found out that the Commish has changed the scoring system to make PIMs a negative point earner in the pool. Should have taken it as a sign.

After several rule changes made halfway through the season the Commish shut down the pool because we were \"whining too much about the rules being changed\" Lesson: Never use Yahoo again unless I personally know the Commish and player I am in it with.

Keeper League - My very first keeper league this year. Inherited a very skilled team but with some deadly salalry cap issues (Havlat, Jagr, Kovalchuk etc all on the same team) Blew the entire team up and traded almost everyone off for top end prospects (Radulov, Backstrom, Carey Price etc) and ended up squeaking into the playoff and making into the second round before getting smashed.

Now I have a much younger team but lots of guys (like Datsyuk, Redden and McCabe) who are going to cause me salary headaches once again.

Lesson: Running a top end keeper league with a salary is going to be a ton of hard work and upkeep.

I was in a few other leagues this year as well and finished second in almost all of the rest, not winning a single one. Not a great year in that regards.

Went with a strategy of drafting goalies later in the rounds this year for the most part and while I was able to pick up guys like Backstrom throughout the year to cover for my mistakes at the start of the year (Denis, Theodore...ugh) I think I am going back to my tried and true goalies first method which has won me pools before.



Lesson:

[Dobber]

Good summary! Anyone else?

[Nifty Mittens]

Yahoo Pool G(2)A(1) - I had the 6th overall pick. After Ovechkin, Thornton, Kiprusoff, Crosby and Niedermayer were picked i chose Dany Heatley. Some of my other picks were Malkin in the 3rd round 36th overall, Briere somehow in the 5th round 66th overall, D. Sedin in the 7th round 96th overall, Langkow in the 11th round 156th overall and my two most disappointing picks were C.Ward in the 4rth round, Zidlicky in the 6th round. There were 165 players drafted and Vanek went undrafted, I thought about picking him up but somebody did before me. Carle also went undrafted so i picked him up. I traded Lidstrom (who i drafted in the 2nd round) for Giguere and Berard who was a big disappointment. Late in the season the 8th placed team traded Crosby to his friend in 2nd place for a injured Shanahan. But i still managed to hang on to my first place lead because i picked up Mason when Vokoun got injured and i picked up Stastny 3 games into his 20 game point streak. I finished with 1047 points.

[repenttokyo]

I had first overall pick, non keeper league Yahoo league mostly filled with people I knew. 12 teams. I finished second by 5 points after finishing first the year before.

I picked Kipper with my first overall, and I feel that was a mistake, as he played well, but not outstanding, which is what you expect from your first pick.

Biggest mistakes: Drafting Brendan Morrison and holding on for too long. Drafting Vanek last, and then dropping him for I forget who in the first few weeks of the season.

Best moves of the season: Drafting Matt Carle. Picking up Kopitar on the waiver wire. Trading Kunitz, Kopitar and Kozlov for Salei, an underperforming Zetterberg, and an underperforming Staal in November. Holding onto Brind\'amour and having him win me the FW category while putting up good points.

Sadly, tho, there were several things that happened over the course of the season that were completely out of my control. Zetterberg\'s injury , followed by Erat\'s injury, wiped me out at LW, and pretty much removed me from contention. Redden playing injured most of the season also hurt my defense quite a bit. We had 2 players essentially quit before mid season, which really altered some aspects of league scoring. Another player didn\'t understand the concept of max games and ran up to his max well before the end of the season. As commissioner, and trying to setup a keeper league for next year, I have really learned a lesson about finding active league managers who will not slide into apathy.

Post edited by: repenttokyo, at: 2007/04/18 17:18

[lockedge]

Yahoo Pool 1: Head to Head 18 team keeper league.

I started off really stupid and bought into the hype for Rachunek in NYR. I could have picked up someone more efficient, but from there on out I think I did fairly well. Going in this year, my goaltending was horrible, and it ended up being identical at the end of the year with no changes. I refused to be drawn and quartered to get a decent goalie, and thus I didn\'t get one. I made a few trades, some good and some bad. I traded Jeff O\'Neil for Derek Roy, then turned around and traded Roy and Mike Johnson for brad Richards. COuld be bad news depending on how many Buffalo centres leave this summer, but I felt at the time I had a good chance at the playoffs and dove for the best player possible.
Then I traded Matt Cullen and Antii Miettinen for Dustin Brown. Cullen had recently had a scoring surge and I desperately needed to take advantage of that(and did). Still, at the end of the season I did something foolish and made a bad short term trade as I tried to make the post-season, trading Brandon Bochenski and Jeff Tambellini for Freddy Modin. I also traded Loui Eriksson and Ed Jovonovski for Shane Doan, which is questionable as well, as Loui could get good points next year, but again, I was sacrificing for an effort at 6th place to reach the playoffs(with those two spots I opened up with those 2 traded I picked up Callahan and Mueller though). I made another bonehead move dropping a sure thing in Backes(STL) for Tomas Fleischmann, who would\'ve gone unnoticed this offseason anyways. I could\'ve dropped Callahan instead of Backes, but I really liked securing Callahan, and he\'d have gotten interest after this post-season for his great play so far.
Anyways, I finished 9th in the season and surged through the consolation rounds to tie for 7th in an epic 5-5 matchup. 4 of those wins for the other team were in goaltending, so you can tell where I dominated and failed. I\'m seriously thinking of dangling Jack Johnson straight up for a solid goaltender, because I need one. My D is already solid enough with Carle, Liles, Ehrhoff, and Whitney.

In my second H2H Yahoo pool, a one year private league, I started off first, dipped as low as 8th due to a lack of interest(didn\'t dress players for about a month, didn\'t replace injured players, left goalies in after they had shutouts, etc.). I ended up 4nd in regular season I think, and came second in the end. Not a bad finish. Not a bad start.

My third Yahoo H2H pool had a rough outing. It was another private pool, and the commish was corrupt, stealing players mid-way through the season(we\'re talking Ovechkin, Brodeur, and I think Elias or Gionta), crippling the teams with players stolen from them. As a commish, he was able to make adds and drops for other teams, edit the waiver priority, etc. and he used that to his advantage to save his team from mediocrity and seal the fate of more respectable managers. The one who lost Brodeur was left with Belfour and Chris Mason and ended up only 20 or so points shy of the playoffs(not much considering there were 15 categories, 30 points possible each week), and I felt really bad for the guys, especially since the prick commish went inactive, and Yahoo refused to do anything about it. I ended up winning this one too, after finishing 5th in the regular season(I think) and beating out the top teams for first. I don\'t want to be in another broken Yahoo league ever again. Last year, the public league I was in was broken with one team bugged up with a permanent 1st waiver priority and took advantage by dropping and picking up players every day to win the league. I came second by a hair with my own team(no drops, I don\'t play that way. It\'s easy to abuse the yahoo leagues, but I\'d rather win with my players than win by most players played).

My last yahoo H2H league, a public one, I led the league most of the year after November, and succumbed to the one team i just couldn\'t beat at all during the season9after two blowout matches). it was history repeating itself and I had a miserable week after having an incredible week when my team had a bye. I came third, which was good enough for me. The team that beat me went on to win, I believe. Might have been a tie for first.

Overall, a much better year than last year when I couldn\'t afford the time to take care of my teams and frankly, was embarassed. I hoe next year that the private league I finished last in last year will take me back next year. I want to show them that when I\'m active that I can actually keep up on my own, not just playing spoiler in my final weeks where I was actually active. :P

[repenttokyo]

how do you have playoffs in a yahoo league?

[lockedge]

I believe the last four weeks of the NHL\'s regular season are the playoffs. The top 6(2 byes, 2 first round matchups) are in the playoffs, the next six teams battle for the 7th-12th spots in the consolation rounds.
The first week is the first round, the next week is the second round and determining 5th place, the final round (for 1st/7th, and a battle for 3rd/9th) last two weeks.

This is in a head to head league, of course. I\'m not a roto guy.