12 team Yahoo Roto keeper (keep 3)
9 F, 6 D; roster 3 G max
G,A,PPP,SOG,BLKS,HITS - W,SO,SV%,Saves
F: B Tkachuk, Stutzle, Eriksson Ek, Necas, Konecny, Cooley, Boldy, Lehkonen, Tippett
D: Dahlin, Seider, Matheson, Durzi, Addison, Mintyukov
G: Hill, Husso
IR:
Bench: L Hughes, Merzlikins, Terry, Tuch
12 team Yahoo Roto keeper (keep 3)
9 F, 6 D; roster 3 G max
G,A,PPP,SOG,BLKS,HITS - W,SO,SV%,Saves
F: B Tkachuk, Stutzle, Eriksson Ek, Necas, Konecny, Cooley, Boldy, Lehkonen, Tippett
D: Dahlin, Seider, Matheson, Durzi, Addison, Mintyukov
G: Hill, Husso
IR:
Bench: L Hughes, Merzlikins, Terry, Tuch
Sorry fellas(nico and tweet) but one of you two is missing out next year as I plan on finally getting my callup after two consecutive 3rd place finishes in the Pro leagues.
Love the write ups guys! Always great insight to see what the legends have to say!
My team - Leisure Rules (John Hughes homage, Jack Hughes namesake)
Draft position #3
I haven’t posted around these parts for sometime with family taking up much of my free time nowadays. I am grateful to have retained my spot in the Experts league for a 3rd year now after having moved up from the Entry level starting way back in 2014.
I finally got a top 3 choice in one of these drafts so I figured I was going to get any one of Kucherov, Ovechkin or McDavid. From there, I wanted to put together a balanced team with an emphasis on strong defense and goaltending. In my experience in the Expert league, those teams who have 5 to 6 defenders who can put up power play points and hit enough are the teams who generally finish near the top of the league.
For this draft, I was targeting forwards with value and ideally on solid teams with the likelihood of being a positive in the plus/minus department. I did my best to also avoid players who will have little opportunity on the power play. Waiver pickups in Suzuki and Nylander will receive auditions with their NHL teams and this fantasy team to start the year - perhaps they will translate their preseason success to early season breakouts.
My defensive group is very solid with all 6 players locked into a one of their teams respective power play units. If Arizona can grow into a more competitive team his year, perhaps OEL will even be a plus player. By all accounts, Makar should be breakout player to watch this year. Although Edler may have to compete with Jack’s brother Quinn, he can still provide across the board production should he get relegated to the second power play at some point this year.
My goaltending should also be very competitive with Fleury and Hellebuyck leading the charge. I think the Jets will find a way to make things work this year despite the defensive overhaul.
I also feel like I was able to find some really solid veterans coming off down years who will hopefully bounce back this year to provide incredible value - namely Kopitar at 171, Zuccarello at 219 and Quick at 238.
Overall I am pretty happy with this draft. I think it is going to be fun to root for this defensive core and goaltending group. I also made some strategic bets to double down on players I also selected in my keeper league draft - I.e. Raanta, Zuccarello, Montour - whom I think will outplay their current perceived value.
My team:
C: C. McDavid (round 1/ #3)
C: N. Backstrom (round 7/ #75)
C: J. Hughes (round 13/ #147)
C: A. Kopitar (round 15/ #171)
L: M. Domi C/LW (round 11/ #123)
L: J. van Riemsdyk (round 12/ #142)
L: T. Tatar LW/RW (round 16 / #190)
L: J. DeBrusk LW/RW (round 18/ #214)
R: T. Johnson LW/RW (round 21/ #243)
R: D. Brown (round 17/ #195)
R: M. Zuccarello (round 19/ #219)
R: K. Kapanen (round 23/ #267
D: V. Hedman (round 2/ #22)
D: J. Carlson (round 4/ #46)
D: D. Hamilton (round 6/ #70)
D: O. Ekman-Larsson (round 8/ #94)
D: C. Makar (round 10/ #118)
D: A. Edler (round 14/ #166)
G: M. Fleury (round 3/ #27)
G: C. Hellebuyck (round 5/ #51)
B: J. Quick G (round 20/ #238)
B: J. Neal LW/RW (round 24/ #286)
B: A. Shaw C/RW (round 25/ #291)
B: A. Nylander LW/RW (waiver addition)
B: N. Suzuki C (waiver addition)
IR+: B. Montour D (round 22/ #262)
IR+: A. Raanta G (round 9, #99) (just utilizing the IR+ spot to audition some youngsters in Suzuki and Nylander)
10 Team Yahoo H2H Keep 5 G, A, PPP, FOW, SOG, HITS, BLKS, W, GAA, SV, SV%
C,C,LW,LW,RW,RW,F,F,D,D,D,D,G,G,BN,BN,BN,BN,BN,IR+ ,IR+
Keepers:
Makar, J. Hughes, T. Meier, K. Connor, Ovechkin
Projected Standings
Team Skater pts Goalie pts Total pts Max% Yellow Dogs 62 28 90 83,33% Last Resort 57 28 85 78,70% The Devil's MacKbone 51 20 71 65,74% Leisure Rules 30 26 56 51,85% Undrafteds 48 8 56 51,85% Lord of the Rinks 33 22 55 50,93% The Jobbers 31 23 54 50,00% Eberle Hills 90210 31 19 50 46,30% Sid the Sloth 23 26 49 45,37% CCCF 32 16 48 44,44% 666 30 15 45 41,67% Definitely AutoDraft 40 3 43 39,81%
Undrafteds, Lord of the Rinks, CCCF and Definitely AutoDraft are not projected to hit 164 goalie GP so some gains there are probable if those teams can reach 164 GP or close at least.
It's probably the first time in like 10 years that my own team isn't actually ranked 1st after the draft and you can see partially why I wasn't too happy about the draft results. You can also see why I wasn't particularly happy about Yellow Dogs getting both Halak+Saros as late as he got them as that duo is the driving force in catapulting his team to the projected 1st place in goalie cats. His goaltending was then filled out with goalies I consider decent bets like Allen, Campbell and Khudobin. It would be pretty incredible to draft goalies as late as he got them in the draft and still have best goalie results in the league. My goalie projections have been nearly completely worthless for the last few seasons though so Yellow Dogs could easily get like 10 pts from his goalies and I wouldn't be surprised. It should still be interesting to follow if this kind of "Pick 4-6 quality backups mid-late draft" type goalie strategy will work and where team will end up in goalie cats. It's not like Yellow Dogs has to have the league's best goalie results for this kind of strategy to pay dividends as getting even average goaltending results from late-drafting goalies is already a big win.
Ooof, your projections really don't like my skaters eh?
Associate Editor for DobberHockey (Wednesdays). Click that Ramblings button on the the menu bar!
(No I don't have a hockey problem...)
Man... autobot apparently drafted me some decent offense!
Sweet.
Now, to find some goalie SV.
I think we should take this as gospel. No need to play the season out.
My rudimentary arithmetic/gut feeling was that my skaters were OK. Clearly, there will be injuries. Every year, on most of my teams, I am waiver wiring together an entire bench of goalies trying to max GP. This year, I just thought I'd start early.
Two Fun CASE-STUDIES from this draft.
Case 1: the AutoDrafters
Assuming the team drafting at #2 ("DefinitelyAutodraft") also got autodrafted, there's actually an interesting draft study in "luck" of positioning here.
Slot#2 DA: Forwards in 12/13 rounds, with Buff left to be auto-drafted in round #6. Then goalies in rounds 14 (Kuemper) & 15 (Crawford), then the remaining 5D in rounds 16-20.
Slot#9 U: Forwards in 12/12 rounds, but since no D, auto-draft straight to goalies in round 13 (Varlamov), then into turn 14 (Greiss), then autodraft all of the 6D in rounds 15-20. (tho, incl. Klas Dahlbeck as my D1!!!)
What this showed:
The league definitely understands that D has value, is under-"ranked", and should be REACHED for.
This leaves ONLY forwards, 1st, for autodrafting, THEN goalies, AND LAST defense.
Because #2 team got Buff... it defaulted them into a later goalie-pickings.
This is the "luck" that at least landed my team 82gp from NYI... Team #2 should have picked a goalie first in odd-round 13... but got G1 pick pushed out to round 14... so my team got goalies first, in round 13, then earlier pick in 14.
And if Buff doesn't play... even an "avoidance of bad luck".
Second Case: Temek vs. the #1:
Temek has stated a few times that he has a preference to draft around #8 slot. (I don't see that, mathematically, people have "comfort zones"... but I've always advocated #1, then #2, then #3... etc.,)
I've stated a few times that there is mathematical (Gaussian) odds to having the #1 overall draft pick.
Now, for me, it's not surprising that the first team I have EVER (!!!) seen topple Temek in his own predictions is the team drafting the hoard of stats at #1: Kucherov is just a massive start/lead as predicted stats go.
Of course, the slick goalie drafting and GM-smarts is required... but it does go to show that having that #1 pick, then quickly the first 3rd round, 5th round pick... it's a lead-off into positional scarcity.
You can see the ability to double-down on D... and drain scarcity at the turns.
Yellow Dogs nabbed all six D in CONSECUTIVE PICKS (rd 6-11), specifically at turns: 72/73, then 96/97, then 120/121
Then back to forwards for a couple rounds... and grabbing the upper level G back-ups in rounds 14/15... which is before most GMs are thinking about "back-ups".
This overloading on pure back-ups on good-teams is a strategy I've always liked. (Campbell, Korpi... meh, but BOS/NAS/DAL/STL/CAR should have great win rates. Those are all top 10 NHL teams this year.)
This strategy basically HAS TO/SHOULD end up with the highest skater-total... and did... and by Win(%) and GAA(good teams), should have solid goalie stats.
*The downfall in this strategy, is slowly losing man-games due to injuries. Right now, he's got the bare minimum of 12F/6D. Every single lost game, injury/sickness... it can be tough to rally, especially if those happen start-of-week.
The other downside is that back-ups typically won't see their first starts until the 2nd week of the season... so there's some "wait" in soaking those stats.
This is why I prefer this strategy in "Daily Start", such as RHRS, because I can make up skater-GP by streaming quickly skater-GP... and this allows a slow-collect on back-up goalie GP.
Kind of fun to post-examine this draft, those two cases.
Given Temek's projections had me ranked 2nd last year after the draft and I ended up fighting my way out of relegation, we should probably play out the season ha ha!
(His team did remain right near the top where he ranked it though, so my team may have been the big anomaly. I think it was goaltending grossly under performing last year that really did it with Allen and Dubnyk as my top two).
I have always finished pretty close to the projection. I have been projected for 2, 2, 5, 2 and I have finished 2, 3, 3, 3 (by 0.5 points. I was second at times on that last day.) Now last year, HF was pegged for 11th and finished 2nd.
I drafted a baseball team years ago and was confident that I was going to lap the field. Most of my top picks had career worst years. Adam Dunn had hit 40 HR for seven straight years. He hit 11. The next year: 40+. So that's why we play the games, as they say.
Purely from mathematical standpoint #1 is more or less always the best spot to draft. For example if there was a "draft practice" league where you drafted based purely on last season's actual results, I'd probably want to draft from a Top3 slot. Also it's not really specifically #8 which I prefer, I just want to be somewhere in the middle of draft so I'd be happy with anywhere from #5 to #8 in 12 team draft so essentially any "middle-third" spot.
It's more like personal preference and probably has something to do with the players I am targeting in the drafts. I pretty much only draft players I am significantly higher than the consensus opinion so the only question is how long I risk waiting and when it's too late. I think you could even technically say that I "reach" for nearly every pick I do in most drafts. For example I had T.Meier ranked in the 20s in my rankings and the question was just how late could I get him. At #36/#37 he would have been a good pick by my standards, but I had about 5 pretty similarly ranked players available and I also wanted a goalie so went with Letang+Grubauer. I knew I probably wouldn't get Meier, but I assumed he was the most likely out of Letang/Carlson/Rantanen/Meier to drop and was in fact the last to be picked out of those, but still not late enough for me to get him at #60. If I was drafting from let's say #7 slot, I could probably get him at #42 or maybe even #55 if I wanted to take a much bigger risk. Once you get past about half-way mark of the draft, the draft slot doesn't really matter that much and I get lot of the players I want anyway so for example I have players like DeAngelo/Getzlaf/Halak in nearly every team I drafted. #12/#1 slot might even be considered an advantage if you want to safely draft platoons in mid-rounds, but I rarely want to pick both goalies from platoon situations so that doesn't really help me personally.
I don't think it has much if anything to do with the draft slot. I am in three leagues with duntroon68 this season and probably over 10 leagues total in last 5 seasons by this point and he nearly always drafts similar players that I like too. I always have duntroon68's team ranked really highly and practically always is a Top4 projected team in the league with high skater projections and sometimes even topping my own team's projected skater totals. It's the goaltending that usually I don't like, but if duntroon68 drafts goalies I like, it's not that surprising to me at least that duntroon68's team would top my team.
I also have considered going myself with this type of "Bunch of quality backups" strategy and was really considering going for it in RHRS this season. I decided to go with a lower risk strategy though and get at least 1 starter earlier. My problem was mostly that I think you nearly have to get both Saros+Halak for it to work like I wanted it to and if you have to reach 2-3 rounds earlier to make sure to get both of them, it significantly diminishes the value of getting them as late as possible.