1) Do not draft Marian Gaborik
This is probably thee most important rule for your fantasy draft. No matter what, if you want to have a stress-free year and limit yourself from one guaranteed questionable injury, the best way to do that is to stay away from Marian Gaborik at all costs. I know it might be tempting if he somehow manages to slip through the cracks and there he is staring at you in round 5... don't do it. You might think, "Well last year he put up 42 goals and 86 points, why wouldn't I take him?" Because Marian Gaborik is a notorious roller coaster of a player, and by roller coaster I mean he's up one year and down the next and I'm not talking just about points, I'm talking games played as well. Yes he has a great points per game average but consider in his last 4 seasons he has put up 48, 77, 17, and 76 games played respectively. Now you don't have to be a pattern specialist to see what this year is calling for. We're talking about a guy who has only once in his career played over 80 games and has never played a full 82 game season. If you can keep your temptations in check and pass on Gaborik at draft day, you should be fine.
(Here Gaborik explains to ESPN that he will be taking a sick day and not playing that night)
2) Stay away from rookies
Obviously every year a crop of rookies come up and dazzle the NHL and you sit there as a poolie thinking "Why didn't I draft Matt Moulson?" But the general rule should be to stay away from rookies unless they're the cream of the crop i.e. the Ovechkin's, Crosby's, Malkin's. Guys like Stamkos, Tavares, and Duchene will get you a solid amount of points, but they will most definitely get drafted many rounds before they should. If you can scoop one of those players in the last few rounds of your draft, go for it, but with the hype they have surrounding them coming into the NHL, they most always go in the top 10 rounds, making it absurd to reach for one of them in earlier rounds.
3) Do not pick with your heart
These are 3 sentences you should never make after drafting a player in your pool: "Well at least I'll get to see him play all the time on TV"; "I had to take him, he's my favorite player"; "How can I not take him? He's Mike Modano!" If you have a habit of dropping these gems at your draft, than we are holding our annual draft this Sunday and message me if you're interested. First of all, seeing "him" play all the time on TV can turn into the biggest nightmare of your pool. Picking a guy just because he's a local player and his games will broadcast every game is what lands you Darcy Tucker, Ken Klee, and Alex Mogilny. Watching those 3 play every night, or in Mogilny's case, watching the IR list every night will not be what you expect it to be. Second, you do not have to take him because he's your favorite player. Actually, chances are you will reach higher than you should to take him just because he is your favorite player which will cause you to miss out on many more players that will put up better numbers. Draft killer right there. Lastly, I know they used to be great, but players do not go out with a bang. They do not put up one last magical season in which they are in the top 10 or even 20 scorers, then retire. Sometimes they don't even make it through their last season i.e. Bret Hull, Jeremy Roenick, and even Mario Lemieux.
(In 03/04 Tucker only notched 32 points but at least you got to see this face nearly every game)
4) Embrace the ugly picks
Do you know how many times I hear something along the lines of: "Well I'd rather pick an exciting rookie then a guy like Ray Whitney." One thing I have noticed in all my years of fantasy, is that it's the guy with the ugly picks who wins. The guy who at draft day you're sitting their laughing because he just drafted Ray Whitney, Vaclav Prospal, and Slava Kozlov. You're thinking this guy has no chance. Well he ugly picks are the journeymen. The ugly picks get it done. If you think Kyle Turris and his drafted 3rd overall tag is going to get more power play time than a vet like Ray Whitney, you're crazy. Yet this mistake is made at draft tables all over Canada. Now don't be fooled into thinking Prospal, Kozlov, and Whitney will win you your pool. The NHL is ever evolving and each year different players are turning into journeymen and subsequently becoming ugly picks. Your mission is to adapt and adopt. Adapt to which players are the veterans getting it done and will drop to the last rounds of your pool, and adopt them.
(Ray Whitney has totaled 334 points and hasn't had less than 55 points in the post-lockout era, with where he usually gets drafted in pools, I don't think he has disappointed too many poolies)
5) Limit the players you take from one team
Sure it's nice to have a player or two that you can root for because he's not only on your fantasy team, but he's also on your favorite team. But be careful, loading up on too many players from one team can be dangerous, and a lot of guys do this with their favorite teams. There's only a certain amount of scoring and more importantly power play time to go around. Having 4 or 5 guys on one team means at least half of them will flop. Take for example an experience I had one year in a hockey pool; In the 2001/2002 season I was able to land Chris Drury, Milan Hejduk, and Alex Tanguay on my team. I thought the pool was over that day, give me my money. Three young studs coming off a Stanley Cup championship and three respectively great seasons. The year before Drury had 65 points, Hejduk had 79 points, and Tanguay had 77 points; not to mention they were all relatively young players. Drury and Hejduk were entering their 4th season and Tanguay his 3rd. Not only were they coming off a Stanley Cup and great individual seasons, they were in a position to only get better right? Wrong! Drury - 46 points, Hejduk - 44 points, and Tanguay 48 points. Not even Joe Sakic or Peter Forsberg could have saved those guys that year.
6) The sophomore jinx is a myth
Every player is different. Don't buy into sophomore jinx hype. It may lead to you missing out on some great years from some great players. From 2006/07 to 2008/09 52.5% of rookies with a minimum 25 points, followed their rookie year with a slump. Half is not a fraction to lead me to believe that this slump is even worthy of being called a jinx. I find those statistics to be skewed as well because how many of those rookies were guys that had a decent rookie year that nobody heard of, and then fell into obscurity the next year like everybody expected? Ahem, Trent Hunter anyone? Did anybody really expect him to follow his 51 point season with 75 points? My point is not that it can't or doesn't happen, but that anything can happen. The players I listed above (Drury, Hejduk, and Tanguay) combined for a 73 point swing from their rookie year to their sophomore year. The onus is on you to study the situations of each team and see what type of opportunities will be presented to a sophomore i.e. playing on the top two lines, power play time, or even centering or being centered by a premiere player.
7) Stay away from the Maple Leafs for the time being
You know that sign that you see sometimes hanging up on s small business shop's door that reads: "Out for lunch, be back in 15" Well, picture that sign being hung on the door of the ACC. Last year in my annual pool, these Leafs were selected in no particular order: Phil Kessel, Nikolai Kulemin, Mikhail Grabovski, Tomas Kaberle, Luke Schenn, Ian White, Jason Blake, Francois Beauchemin, and get this Viktor Stahlberg (yeah you know who you are). Can you believe that? That's 9 players being drafted from a team that finished 29th of 30 teams in the NHL standings and was ranked 26th for most goals for. Now this isn't to say guys like Tyler Bozak and Nikolai Kulemin won't be able to improve in scoring this year, it just means be prepared when you draft a guy like Luke Schenn, getting to watch him play most nights may land you a whopping 17 points.
(Can you name the last Leaf to win the Calder trophy? Art Ross? Hart? Most goals? Top 5 in scoring?)
8) Always keep tabs on the injured players
Seems like an easy rule right? Check the IR list and google any recent injuries on the day of your draft. Ok easy enough. But here is the importance of the rule that you need to be aware of and this happens every year in live drafts all over North America whether it's hockey, baseball, basketball, or football. A really good player that is expected to miss the first 10 games or so of a season will be drafted in the top 2 or 3 rounds and everybody will cross him off their lists, then the poolie will be informed that said player will miss the first month of the season, so he will want to change his pick, and because everybody's friends and easy going, we let him. Now here's your job, write down that players name in big letters somewhere you will see it because if you don't, that player will become forgotten and some lucky schmuck will scoop him up 10 rounds later possibly turning his team into a juggernaut. It happens all the time. Unless of course you pick your pool over the internet or are really cutthroat about guys changing their picks 30 seconds after they make it.
Trust me, take it from a guy who has never won a hockey pool and has habitually broken all 8 of these rules over and over again. It takes a guy who has been tremendously unsuccessful and very unlucky to see what cost him his pool year in and year out. Now if these were rules I followed every year and still lost, than I could see how you would be skeptical. But somewhere down the line I have either witnessed or experienced the breaking of these rules completely massacring and sabotaging teams. It's easier to analyze how you lose then how you win. When you're on top, you're just constantly looking at your own team and you are madly in love with every single one of your players and feel like you have made no mistakes, but when your on the bottom, you're looking at the draft and how it went down, you're looking at which players you should have drafted and which one's you shouldn't have. All you can see are mistakes. It's a lot more of an eye opening experience from the bottom. So take this for what it's worth. I will.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment