Fantasy Pool Guide: NHL 2015-2016 Season
By Ryan Ritchie
Mar 9, 2015; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; New York Islanders center John Tavares (91) against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Air Canada Centre. The Islanders beat the Maple Leafs 4-3 in overtime. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
Say what you want about the evolution of fantasy sports and pools. They’re here to stay, and most fans these days have connections to most of the games. Most will tell you that whether it’s betting or fantasy, there’s no better way to get involved in a game.
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Backtrack about 15 years, If you weren’t betting on the games themselves, the only other real way to get involved was through ESPN and Yahoo Fantasy sports. I don’t know whether any other companies came before the big two, but ESPN and Yahoo are the big ones that helped revolutionize fantasy sports. All of a sudden CBS, NFL.com, NHL.com, etc. all began offering fantasy sports.
If you weren’t playing fantasy 15 years ago, maybe you’ve been part of private keeper leagues with your buddies. Maybe it’s a simple office pool, or something along those lines. These may be the oldest and longest lasting of the bunch.
In more recent years, there’s been a new evolution in fantasy sports. Although the concept of picking a team with only so much cap space has been around for a long time, through all sorts of weekly pools. DraftKings and FanDuel took it to another level offering major cash prizes for weekly fantasy pools.
Believe it or not, there are some pretty simple strategies you can take to attack all of the above. You don’t even need to be the most knowledgeable person on the sport (but knowledge helps a lot). I can’t help pick your team, but I can offer over 15 years of experience in fantasy sports, pools, etc. that I’ve been playing since I was 10 years old.
Talking strategies
Basic Office/Friends Pool
You’ve got two different types of pools that generally work very similar. You’re either in a yearly pool or a keeper league. Usually, these pools have the most basic of scoring systems. It’s usually total points (goals and assists), with a point system for goalies (wins, shutouts). These are the easiest pools because they take little to no management. Unlike fantasy hockey, you don’t have to change your team on a daily basis.
If you’re in a non-keeper pool, the strategy is simplistic. You’re probably picking from a box of players. Figure out your best options from that group of players, and then weigh a couple important factors. Team success and injury risk.
I don’t usually like to take the Marian Gaborik’s or Kris Letang’s of the hockey world for their injury history alone. Sure a massive year from one could help you win your pool, but an injury could just as easily devastate your team. Durability and consistency are the safe bet on most occasions.
Keeper league mentality shifts a little bit. It very well depends how you’d like to build your team. When starting out a keeper franchise, some people focus a little too much on getting young guys to build around. Pools and fantasy are all about finding the right balance.
Outside of Connor McDavid, there’s no kid you’d likely otherwise take in the first round of a draft. The one thing that can devastate a team and a draft is by reaching too far for a player. It’s okay to reach a little bit now and then if rankings are a bit mucked up.
Classic reaching example in a draft (rankings are fictional for example only):
James van Riemsdyk ranked #60
Ondrej Palat ranked #90
Round 5 or 6 comes up in your draft with the 50-60 range being visible and next guys to be picked. I know Ondrej Palat will likely score slightly more than JVR, but JVR range guys are going now so I’d rather draft JVR now, and take my chances that Palat is available in the next round still (9/10 they’re still there). Had I taken Palat because he’s going to do more, the next round I’d be looking at players who produce a little less than JVR. Get what I’m saying? Rankings are never perfect. Identify the weaknesses in the rankings and know where your value picks are. Surround those value picks in other rounds with the next 10-20 guys that are available at any given time. A good keeper team will have a nice balance of youth of vets.
ESPN and Yahoo Fantasy Hockey (could also include CBS, NHL.com, etc.)
It’s a shame that ESPN cares so little about hockey and it’s evident in their rankings every year. They put a lot of effort into their baseball and football. When it comes to hockey, it’s almost unanimously known they make a mess of their rankings. For probably the best fantasy sports software platform, it’s more than disappointing that they don’t put more effort in to hockey.
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Cardiac Cane
Yahoo’s software platform is a little less desirable, but they put a lot more work into their rankings and do a lot better job. The only real difference I’ve ever found between Yahoo and ESPN is the fact that Yahoo designates particular positions in standard pools (2c, 2rw, 2lw, etc), whereas ESPN does a simple 9fwd, 6d, 2g concept. Otherwise the two are very similar, especially in strategy since they both offer the same types of scoring and use basically the same categories. Now you can obviously create your own pool on these and customize everything yourself. Not everyone likes that fantasy rewards things like PIM, Hits, Blocked Shots, Ice Time, Plus-Minus, etc. but these are things that have been around in standard leagues for as long as I can remember.
They do a top 300 and I’m not exactly sure after that. In the 300-500 range you can find all sorts of retired players like Joe Sakic, Derian Hatcher, Brendan Shanahan all still available among hundreds of retired players. We’re talking about guys that haven’t played in nearly a decade. With a database of over 2500 players ,it takes nearly an hour to skim through and find all the hidden gems. You’re better off to sort things by teams so you can find your value guys that way. I prefer to do the 20-team custom pools for more of a challenge. There’s no shortage of depth though. You can draft a team and still have close to 50 players on your queue.
Whether you’re playing head to head categories or a rotisserie style, goaltending can make or break a season. You can draft two great goalies if you want. But you really only need to have one dependable starter, then I usually like to roll the dice on another starter who I think could have a good year.
Be aware of what categories you need to have balance in. If you’re in a league that tracks plus-minus or hits for example, you need to find players that excel in those categories. Sure most of your picks are based solely on what production you think you’re gonna get point wise.
But I always appoint a guy or two that does really well in one of those other categories while drafting. Or you draft one of those all-around fantasy guys like a Corey Perry or David Backes. On a side note, don’t be afraid to draft line-mates as you can double up on points with a goal.
Your draft is the most important part. Yes you can make improvements through free agency or trades, but neither will make a bad team good. It starts from day one when you first draft. You need to lay the foundation of your team, and address your holes in the roster via free agency or trades as the year goes on.
If you’re lucky and keep your eye on the waiver wire throughout the season, you may find guys people give up on too early and get lucky, but free agency should be used to help strengthen, not fill starter slots.
Fan Duel/Draft Kings revolutionize fantasy sports
In recent years, we’ve seen both Fan Duel and Draft Kings burst onto the scene in a huge way. All of a sudden we’re being offered “1 Week Fantasy Leagues with big cash prizes”. Give them credit; it was a brilliant idea to combine sports betting with fantasy. No season long commitments and you get to select a new team every week.
It works on a cap salary. Not a new development believe it or not. Over the years all sorts of sites have offered hockey pools based around a basic amount of money that can be spent on a team. It’s all about finding the best bang for your buck type players obviously.
Try and find your bang for buck guys early. It’s always nice to fill a few slots with some really low costing value players so you can spend a little more on some of the better players. You want to pick guys on teams that are gonna win, especially for goaltending since that’s where a lot of your points are coming from for them. But as well, you need to score goals to win. Keep on an eye on which teams and players are on hot streaks and these tools can be useful.
Strategies in these pools are very simple. The most important factor is who plays the most that week. I’m not sure if Fan Duel or Draft Kings allow it, but CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada pool does. Just click on the total points so it organizes the league leaders. Then you should be able to click the “games this week” tab, which should organize from highest to lowest point totals starting with most games that week. So the best point scorers who play 4 games the next week are in order. Then the top point scorers to lowest who play 3 games is underneath, so on and so forth.
It doesn’t mean you have to select a team full of guys who play the most games. Most weeks there’s maybe 4 or 5 teams that play 4 games, the majority play 3 games, while another couple only play 2 games. I always avoid the 2 game teams. Only 3 game teams I look at are big point producers playing weak teams. Otherwise the majority of guys picked play the max games that week. It’s simple probability math. Those extra games could be very valuable.
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