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Fantasy – Drafting Strategy |
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Here we are; one week until the season gets underway. Some people have already drafted one of their fantasy teams; others are just about to make their selections. Either way, it’s the first step to an exciting season of hockey, and of course cheering on the fantasy players you have chosen. Even if you have done your draft, there is still some good insight to be had…some of the logic carries over to making trades and picking up free agents, which to me, is one of the most important parts of Fantasy. Of course the draft being the most important, so let’s get started.
From your first pick you will be placed in a drafting order, whether you have fifteen minutes before the draft begins or days…come up with a game plan for your first 3 picks. You have three options the way I see it: (Forward, Goalie, Forward) – (Goalie – Forward – Forward) (Forward – Goalie – Forward). If you want to try and pick Karlsson as your third pick, by all means, he SHOULD be worthy; I just find more often than not forwards who are consistent pan out more often than not.
1. Draft a high end forward with your first pick – a consistent all-star player who puts up big points in most categories.
2. Draft a top notch goalie – one that is on a great team and who will put up big numbers for you, in most pools shutouts are worth a lot as they also go hand in hand with goals against and save percent.
3. If you got a goalie with your first pick, I highly recommend using your next few picks to take high end point producing forwards as there are only so many those that consistently put up big numbers. If you took forwards with your first two picks, make sure that you have kept an eye on which goalies are being drafted; you want to have at least one goalie you can count on to take you to the top of the standings. Not very often will you want to take your first goalie after the third round, the only case would be if there are very few goalies taken in the early rounds; which is very rare.
Now, from here it all depends on how your pool is set up. Do you count hits, blocked shots and penalty minutes? If you count all three of them, well, then of course defense is going to be worth more to you. In which case you might want to do some research and find some defensemen who gather a lot of hits and penalty minutes; quite often they go hand in hand with blocked shots. Of course finding one who also puts up 40+ points is the target. Someone like Weber pops into my mind.
Most of the pools I enter do not count hits or blocked shots. Therefore I prefer to go for my defensemen in the middle to late rounds of the draft. Most pools I find have four defensemen slots; the way I see it you want to fill two of these slots with guys you can count on for 35+ points. The other two slots you save until the dying rounds of the draft. When the end of your draft is coming I find it best to have your last three slots filled in with two defensemen and one sleeper pick. I find this works great as there is often a handful of younger defensemen that go unnoticed on most people’s radar. I will list a mock draft I did earlier this week and you can see how I did. Here are a few defensemen that were taken in the mock draft passed the 10th round:
Morgan Rielly -- Jay Boumeester
Jack Johnson -- Mark Streit
Aaron Ekblad -- Justin Faulk
Dougie Hamilton -- John Carlson
Jason Garrison -- Andrei Markov
Alexander Edler -- Dion Phaneuf
Jake Gardiner -- Brian Campbell
Of course there are some in there that could go higher than the 10th round, but this is just an example.
It’s very important to stack up your forwards with as much firepower as possible. As each round goes through the likelihood of getting a big name player goes down. One strategy can be to draft a plethora of quality forwards and plan to eventually trade someone for a defenseman. After many successful Fantasy drafts I find the best teams I have drafted come out with 1-2 true high end defense and the rest is forwards who produce big points from high firepower teams whom which are at the top of the standings.
Here is a good example of how to trade someone in need of a boost. They have a player you really want, but they are also struggling in a few categories; that’s where you come in with a couple trade proposals. Perhaps offering more than one player for theirs, two guys who are doing better than you thought they were doing, sell them high. You can also look at their roster to get a better idea of what they need. Just say a guy in your pool is in 8th place out of 10 and you are in a top 3 position; you have the upper hand, but you also want to come across as willing to help. In most cases, getting the best player out of the trade is going to win you the trade; most cases!
So look at your team and see where you might be overpowering in some aspect, perhaps you are killing it with tons more points every week…Look ahead; offer him 2 forwards for 1 forward; look at this persons roster and make sure you have 2 forwards that are going to be improvements over any forwards on his/her roster. This way you can tell them “look, if you drop this guy, and trade me this guy, I can give you both of these guys to fill the voids.” It works, trust me it works…this person will see it as their team in the overall is better, but they are losing the better player.
Last season I trade Kyle Okposo and Brian Campbell for Phil Kessel. It took some going back and forth, which most trades do; but in the end he was happy with a player producing at similar stats to Kessel, but also upgraded one of his defensemen in the process. Sure I fleeced him, but that’s what I do best
Here is who I got in the mock draft:
1. Malkin
2. Toews
3. Crawford
4. Kunitz
5. Marleau
6. Datsyuk
7. Spezza
8. Simmonds
9. Lucic
10. Oshie
11. Bernier
12. Boyle
13. OReilly
14. Goligoski
15. Garrison
16. Johnson
17. Kuznetsov
18. Barkov
A couple sleepers at the end; if they work out great…if not, I will find some gems on the wire as the season gets going!
As always, thanks for reading.
Blogger •Fantasy Hockey Expert • 
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