Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by fan Tracks. Here's your source of
information and analysis to help you win your fantasy hockey league. Block off hats
a step hit on staylock block. Here's your hosts, Jesse Sevier and Victor
Nuno. He to c Hockey Live Shopper, joining you from the fan Tracks
world. Over there, it's Victor Nuno of EP Ring side. Victor,
how you doing, Yeah, I'm doing awesome, Jesse. It is.
Yeah. It's like playoff time now for the NHL, which we tend to
worry less about. We're all about all league ground, dynasty leagues, things
like that. So that's what we're gonna focus on today. But what are
you focused on right now? Jesse? Oh man, I'm focused on so
many things. I'm just trying to keep afloat Victor. There are all kinds
of fan there's I think I still just cut behind a curtain. You're in
our future right now, people listening, Victor and I are in your past.
There is a time paradox occurring here. But I believe that as you're
listening, I'm still I hope I'm still setting a playoff lineup today. We'll
see, we'll see what happens at the very end here of the season.
We're very it's the very end of the season one way or the other.
Either I just said it or I'm about to set it, and Victor the
place I'm going to go. I'm not in every single conversation, but that's
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Those are really good to see where your team is headed, what you
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I do believe that after this break, you're gonna hear yourself a very
entertaining guest and we're gonna have a couple of folks ready to talk about that
tidy and what happened in this year of tisshow it is the time for some
tidy discussion and to do it today, Victor and I are bringing in Tim
Ay. How you doing, Tim, I'm well good to be with you
guys today, and I am handing as usual the big ancient mariner wheel that
steers the ship, the big wooden wheel with all the spokes on the end
to the Admiral Ryan Downey. How you doing, Ryan, I'm good.
I'm happy to drive the boat here on this holiday Sunday, and thanks for
again for having me and Tim. Welcome to the show. It's great to
have you. How are you doing today and how have you We've been teasing
this episode for a very long time, I think pretty much since January since
this all happens. So how are you feeling about taking us on a journey
here through this very odd experience? But it was an intense experience. I'm
actually I'm looking forward to it because I get to relive it from the start
all the way through, so recapping, thinking about some of my decisions along
the way. Hindsight's always twenty twenty, so it's gonna be a bit of
a fun episode to talk through with you guys. Definitely, And I should
give some full context here in case there's someone here who doesn't know who Tim
is or why we're talking to him. We are gathered here today to talk
about one of the more intriguing storylines of the latter half of our Tidy season
in the top tier, the Lord Stanley Division, and this is a tale
as old as time. We had a manager who decided that they didn't have
the inclination or the capacity to continue in the Tidy this season. And this
happens for various reasons. I've had to back out of dynasty leagues in the
past. Sometimes you just take on a bit more than you can chew.
So this happens every year in every dynasty league that I've ever been in.
And what's the usual commissioner response when this happens. There's one of two things
you could do. Usually the team would enter into some kind of commissioner receivership,
and the commissioner, who is already overloaded, and I could speak to
personal experience, commissioning six leagues at once is a challenge, but usually the
commission will take over and then eventually we'll find another manager. I know for
a fact that Victor certainly does not have the capacity to take on an extra
team as commissioner. How many teams are you at now, Victor, I
think it's twenty four. Yeah, so that's insane, twenty four teams,
and so we could not make it twenty five. But also at the same
time, we couldn't just pick anybody to take over a team in the top
division of the Tidy it kind of flies in the face of the entire promotion
of relegation structure that Victor and Jesse have set out for this league. So
that didn't necessarily sit right with us. So Victor, why don't you take
us through the process a little bit of selecting Tim here to take over in
Lord Stanley. Yeah, it is quite the honor to be in Lord Stanley's
top division. And yeah, we had to not just pick anyone. That
was a bit. Part of the discussion is how do we decide? And
one thing that I thought about is let's think who you know who deserved it,
who has been a part of this for a while, who has done
well, who maybe didn't quite make it before. And Tim's name stood out
because I went back and looked at who did well last year. Last year
Tim finished fourth in our division, in the Gretzky Division, and was pretty
had a pretty good chot of making it to the promotion because last year there
were four teams that got promoted, but unfortunately he was He was ousted in
the first round by hard Cider Hangover. I think that's Tom. I think
that was Tom's team. Who's in Tier one, who has come back to
haunt you again, which we'll get to later, but it wasn't just that
I wanted to also look at Okay, Tim was good last year and he
had a good squad, and this year in our same division, and he
was killing it. He was doing really well, finished as one of the
top teams. In fact, I think at the time you surrender your team,
I think you were in second or first. You were in first.
Yeah, I think you might have had a couple of lucky wins, but
either way, your team was great and you were steamrolling to potential promotion.
And spoiler alert, your team did not win promotion because my team won that
division a couple of good playoff performances there. But so we just had to
get that in, didn't you victory? You just had that out loud.
I'm very excited to be going to Lord Stanley next year. Anyways, So
we wanted to pick someone who did really well last year had continued to do
well this year, and Tim's name was an easy choice because we just looked
at points four over the last couple of years and it was an easy choice,
and so that's why I presented it. We have a board for the
tidy that has representatives from all different divisions, and I laid out some of
the evidence. Here's how some of these managers have performed over the last couple
of years. And Tim's name was at the top, and I said,
I suggest him, and everyone agreed that was a good choice. So that's
why I offered it to Tim. Yeah, and a worthy choice certainly.
One thing that I wanted to remark on before we invite Tim into the conversation
here is that Tim was also one of the more active managers in his previous
division. I believe actually before we announced that Tim was going to be taking
over the team, that Tim had made this big blockbuster trade even the week
before to try and improve his team for the playoffs. Since we definitely needed
someone active, we needed someone at the top of their game, and we
landed on Tim. Tim, why don't you take us through the feelings of
getting asked to jump into to the top division and then how you undertook the
process here of dissecting this team. Sure, when you guys reached out to
me, what has it been, it would have been the first week of
January. My initial thought was why me? So I wasn't first in Gretzky
at the time. By virtue of a tiebreaker, and with the pison Crafter
and that guy, he is a great manager. So I sat back and
went, well, that's that's a pretty lucky timing for this to go down.
I literally just passed him for a week. Crafter is a great GM.
He would have been well worthy of that selection as well. But when
you get invited into the top league, what else is there to say about
Heck? Yeah, yeah indeed, And I just want to echo what you
said Tim there about crafts a great general manager. Anyone who's listened over the
past couple months has known the kind of immense respect I have for Pies and
Craftster, and then I learn a lot every single time. And that's how
we feel about you as well, Tim, especially as we get into it
here back to you here. Yeah, it was really something because it wasn't
the normal type of promotion, right, some might look at and go,
well, did he really earn it? So one of the things that I
was starting to think about what my next move was how do I how do
I avoid relegation? Obviously, and then but I also want to prove that
I belong there. As I was making the first set of moves, I
was thinking towards next year as well. But it really was a mindset shift
because here I am, I'm going from challenging for first overall trying to look
to get promoted, and then all of a sudden, I got to think
about a relegation type format. It was an interesting time. Then I start
to walk through the initial steps. And anytime you join a league, the
first thing you're gonna do is look at your roster. I know the GM
that I took over for he is a worthy GM as well, so I
knew that there would be pieces on the roster. And when I started to
look at it, I started look at the core players. Who are the
players? Where are their point per game kind of statistics for this year?
And when I first looked at the core players, that thought, I need
a couple more impact players. At the time I took the team, there
was only seven players that were above five points per game, so that was
one of the things I had identified. Then I look at the state of
the team's prospects, and there was a lot of meat on the bones as
far as prospects go, because there's the capital that I might move to obtain
more now players, So there definitely was a cupboard to draw from. And
then my third kind of thing that I looked at is where's the replacement level
on my team? And then we check out the waiver wire, see what's
out there, and you really try to raise the floor of the team.
You don't have to give up any capital off the waiver wire. So that's
kind of the first three steps I took. But also as I was thinking
about what prospects am I going to look to move, I looked at the
waiver wire, started going deeper into the waiver wire to see what kind of
prospects were out there. One of the interesting things when I would say that
was the most noticeable going from a Tier two to the Tier one, was
that the prospect pool on the waiver wire was a lot shallower and lord lot
shallower in Lord Stanley. And I look at some of the gms in Lord
Stanley. There's Hook, There's Tom Steam, Steel City, Stampeding Stallions,
Norse Bouldershots. I've competed against them in other leagues and they're all top quality
GM. I knew I was into a different level of compete when I was
starting to think about how to maneuver the ship that is ally Frady's broken flow.
Definitely. Yeah. And that's one of the things about playing in these
leagues that are based out of the FHL is we do run into the same
managers and start to get the tendencies or understand the tendencies of these other managers.
And Tim, you've really outlined here a number of really interesting conversations for
us to have here about undertaking this complete overhaul of a team. I would
like to just contextualize here a little bit for the FHL listeners and for our
conversation here the state that this team was in when we gave it to you
to take over. This was a last place team, and there's a lot
of ways you can get to being a last place team, and unfortunately this
team was last place mainly because of inactivity. One of the reasons why we
had to replace the previous manager was that there was a couple of weeks of
not sending rosters and maybe not getting people off of the injured reserve. And
what I kept saying to Tim and to others when we were talking about this
in the Board of Governors was that this is a last place team, perhaps
in the standings, but it's not necessarily a last place team on paper,
there's a lot of great pieces here, Tim, why don't you take us
through a little bit, and we'll chime in Jesse, Victor and I here
as needed here. But why don't you take us through what you noticed of
the roster when you took it over. I noticed you had a couple of
core players. You maybe needed a couple of more impact players. So why
don't you take us through starting with the core here and the decisions that you
made to change that core up. Absolutely so, when I look at the
initial roster, I had guys like Matthew Chuck, Brian Rust, Matthias Aco
Home was my third, and points per game I do a lot of When
I'm thinking about players, it's points per game versus total fantasy points. So
those were the top three. And really at the time matt to Chuck's points
per game was just above about six and a quarter, and I thought,
wow, that's not high enough if I'm if I really want to set out
on my original objective. But yeah, and for context here, the top
player in our league by points per game, I believe was Kouchirov around nine.
I would say nine point two five is approximately where Kutrov ended for the
year. Actually, I'm lying, it's Nate McKinnon ten point four two.
Now that I look, if your best player is Matt kul Chuck at six
point five, that's a considerable gap to make up. No, yeah,
it absolutely is. And I'm well aware of Nate McKinnon's point per game because
Tom in the second matchup. I had no answer for that. So McKinnon
went on a tearvor for a couple of weeks there. Then I look at
my roster and I I saw a lot of good pieces as far as prospects.
So there was Rutter McGroarty, Quinton Musty, will Smith, so there
was a lot of kind of there's a lot of capital there that I could
look to move to start to add those pieces. Yeah. Yeah, So
taking us through the prospect pool here, and you definitely made a dent in
this prospect pool. I'll say, just more context here for people that you
made like ten or eleven trades through the course of this season, taking in
some players, shipping out some players, keeping players for a short time,
using them as trade chips. Let's talk about some of the prospects that you
moved out. And I'm just going to pull up your list here. Tim,
by the way, gave us excellent notes for for our use here today,
and so credit to you, Tim. Some players found their way off
of your roster. Let's talk about a few of them here, and maybe
we can get Victor and Jesse to chime in on a few of these guys
too. We had coming out in the first kind of initial weeks of your
tear down here Rutger McGroarty on his way out, players like Quintin Musty,
Arthur Kallyev who is unfortunately mired in a healthy scratch situation with la goos Chin.
What were some of that What were some of the reasons for getting rid
of these players? Were you trying to take advantage of the upside that they
might have had, and what were you trying to get back by moving some
of these impact young guys. Great question. It's an interesting scenario in the
Tidy leagues right because of the promotion and relegation, the dynamics on prospects changes
a bit, and I've heard you guys talk about it a little bit on
past episodes. But when you have prospects, and that's great and you want
them to develop, But when you're either looking at promotion or even relegation,
you're going to lose them at some point. In the case of say McGroarty
and Will Smith, I was able to get back on Morgan Riley. So
there Morgan Riley's sits I think about six and a half points per game,
there's another impact piece. So that was my logic was I need to use
some of the higher end prospect capital to go try and take that ceiling to
my team and make it a little bit higher, because those prospects weren't going
to be around if I didn't do that, So they were going to go
back into the pool for next year for someone else to get. Yeah,
it's a matter of hanging on for dear life, Tim, It's whatever prospects
you have to deal. If your objective is to stick around in that league,
you've got to make the moves you make, and you definitely dealt some
great prospects, but just for the ability to hang in there. So I
respect that strategy there. Yeah, I think, sorry, Tim, but
yeah, I totally see where you're coming from here. Especially given the Tidies
promotion relegation structure, you're incentivized to move as much out as possible to stay
up and your goal, as we stated, was to stay up here.
So I imagine if the circumstances were different, you maybe wouldn't have traded Will
Smith and Rutger McGroarty for Morgan Riley. No, those trades would have been
more thoughtful. I'm always open to moving that type of player. We'll talk
a little bit about another trade that maybe the BFS and ally afraid has broken
flow exchanged, which would have seen a little kind of tilted and it was
in the end. I have no idea what you're talking about, Tim,
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. But you make those decisions,
and yeah, in a different in a more traditional dynasty format, you
might hang on to some of those players or look for different types of returns
waiting. For me, looking at this list of all the players that you
traded is pretty mind boggling, Tim, It's a lot, But I think
you can see a clear pattern here of yeah, who's helping now versus who
is not going to help for a while or potentially is having a bit of
a down season, or or in the other sense, like you said,
Kuchuk, if sometimes you need to trade an A for two B plus's or
something like that. To get the depth in the middle is sometimes you have
to make those sacrifices. Think those are hard choices to make, and it
isn't always clear where it stands. But I think, especially in a league
where you're trying to not get relegated, sometimes it is better to have a
couple of really good players than one amazing player. Sometimes that depth can mean
a lot. Yeah, let's talk about that process of a massing depth here.
Tim. Another thing I realized going through some of your trades this year
is that you have the singular distinction of being a manager who has traded pier
Luke Dubois not once, but twice in two different leagues. And so let's
talk about extending that thought process of who's here to help now, who's here
to help later to the actual NHL players on your team, some of whom
you had to ship out and get other depth options. Yeah, it's you're
trying to every trade that I started to entertain, I was always looking towards
the playoff schedules. At that point. I wasn't going to move and pretty
much anywhere in the regular season standing. So every trade that I made was
with an eye towards playoffs, playoff schedule and maximizing my games played. So
that's why you might see some trades that kind of why would you bring in
someone like a Damn Forth or a domestic off because Winnipeg Columbus had decent playoff
schedules. That's where my headspace was. Yeah, it totally makes sense that
you would want to get rid of some of those guys who are underperforming,
get in some guys who might have better schedules in the playoffs. And I
think this is a great little kernel of advice for anyone who is undertaking this
kind of evaluation. It's many layered, as we've discussed already. But I'm
just looking at the waiver transactions that you made within the first week of taking
over, and you talked a little bit about scouring the waiver wire, seeing
which prospects are available, who might be you know, a small downgrade,
you know, I'm noticing here in January, for instance, you picked up
guys and here's just a random list. You picked up guys like Denver,
Barki, Yegor Sidorov, Villikoyven and just these are guys with some kind of
cachet, some name value, perhaps they were drafted a little bit higher.
Can you take us through the process of maybe replacing some of those prospects that
those great prospects that you shipped out with some of these kind of more replacement
level guys, just in your quest to maximize the point scoring of your roster.
Right now, it's funny someone in a discord at some point raised the
question, surely you can't trade all of your prospects, can you. Well,
frankly, last year in Gretzky, I did, And so last year
I sat there with open roster spots for a few months, and then I
started combing the waiver wire and really, those editions in Gretzky are sorry.
In Lord Stanley was just to replace the prospect capital that I trade away.
But also when I mentioned that, when my initial kind of discovery phase,
I was looking at the prospects on the waiver wire, realized it was a
bit thinner than what I'd experienced in Gretzky, and I thought, wow,
I better do this work now as opposed to wait in the offseason, because
I don't know who else has got interest in these prospects. Yeah, this
will be a little bit different for Victor, who will be joining Lord Stanley
next season after his successful season here in Gretzky. But I was right there
with you Tim last year at ME and Edward as part of the BFFs,
also traded huge amounts of prospects. I think we sent out guys like Jack
Quinn to bring in someone like Clayton Keller, and of course that was a
move that really helped us so and I think we acquired a goaltender as well
in the same way, just again shipping out some guys that won't be able
to help us in terms of the point scoring right now to help us get
to the next level. And so you had to do all of that span
of three weeks instead of having a whole season. So mad respect to you.
I want to finish kind of the conversation about the initial team state here
just by asking you, at what point do you feel that the initial work
of rebuilding this team is done for now or was that a process that kept
going over the course of those weeks. That's a great question one of the
things that I started to because you never really know, right I'm new to
the league. I've actually only had what three four regular season matchups, so
it's really hard to know if the moves that you've made are enough to push
to be competitive. So what I did was I really paid attention from my
week to week matchups to see where I stood from week to week in overall
Fantasy points. One of the first things that kind of tips me that this
team did have some potential in it was really my first matchup. It was
against Jurassic Park, who was all going to be crowned the Lord Stanley Champion.
I picked up the team on a Monday, so one day, sorry,
on a Tuesday, so one day it already passed in our matchup.
In that matchup, once started setting lines and started making those moves. If
I just look at our total Fantasy points for the six days of that matchup,
I ended up I was ahead of Jurassic Park by six points. So
that was a bit of a bit of a oh okay, there's a pulse
with this team. It was certainly a lot closer than I thought it would
be in that first week. And this is why I said, this is
not really a last place team. And I'm just doing some quick envelope math
here, but you had a better points score than probably at least half of
the league. That week, maybe closer to seven or eight teams, and
so there's definitely some hope here for this roster, and then you kind of
transition into next week after that and you get yourself a big win against a
favorite manager of ours, Dennis. Yeah, that was again another positive in
the direction of the team. And it's funny as I was thinking about,
Okay, now, who would I trade with. I do have some relationship
ships prior relationships with some gms, and I'm thinking, okay, so the
people that are going to be in the relegation bracket probably not good trade partners.
So I really felt like I needed to do a lot of the heavy
lifting in that week one Week two matchup, because at that point, if
I'm another GM looking at the standings, I'm going I may underestimate a bit
on some of the some of the standing of my team. As a way
to put it, I was just looking at this is not for the podcast.
I was just looking at Tim's record going into the playoffs. Pretty great
three and one. So I'm going to throw it to that in just a
second, but I miss what you had just said, Tim, So can
you say it again and lead me in a little bit, which part,
just that whole answer, just what you just said, the end of what
you just said to lead me into continuing the talk of this. We get
you to the playoffs and you're three and one, going to like, how
did you I think the question I want to ask or get to is like,
when you're going through this week and you have a win against Dennis,
you have another win right after that, and then you lose to Mason,
and then you have another win against I think, is it Tom or who
is it someone else? But yeah, what's going through your head as your
because I know you made some moves during this time too, So I want
to get into the kind of this February ish period, okay of the team,
Okay, all right? So then then I go on to my Week
three matchup. Again, it's a close win, but it was against the
impeding Stallions. They're in the upper half of the standing, so I'm starting
to feel good about my team, but I'm still trying to tweak for the
playoff schedule. So there's a lot of talk, a lot of people are
reaching out at this point. And then I get into to the Week four
matchup, my last matchup before before the playoffs. Mason another great GM and
so he takes me to the woodshed a bit. But when I look at
where I stand again in total points with the entire league play in, I'm
about sixth in the list, so I'm in the midsection. So I'm feeling
pretty good. And at that point we were still trying to figure out that
the relic the fourth relegation team came down to the very last day of that
matchup. Did yeah it? Did? I remember it fondly or perhaps not
so fondly, because you were really challenging the BFFs were in that kind of
final, the absolute final spot that you would need to stay in without avoiding
this relegation playoff, and so I was definitely sweating and maybe regretting a little
bit being such a champion of having you take over the team because it was
about to blow up in our face a little bit. Well there was,
if if memory serves me correct, there were five or six teams all buying
on that last day, so it was quite a time ready cur to work
out. So you go through this whole process of rebuilding this team for the
playoffs and looking specifically at these playoff schedules, and in the process of doing
that you moved out some players. It felt like your trades were a bit
were your waiver moves in perhaps maybe another kind of a league. And I've
been very kind of upfront with this on the podcast. I'm not much of
a trader in our division of labor. For the BFFs, Edward is the
trader and the kind of waiver wire scourer, and I am the kind of
person who puts the puzzle together to start the team every day. Can you
take us through a little bit of the process of looking at your roster week
after week and saying, Oh, this guy I just got him, he's
not maybe working out as much. I know a guy that you picked up
and then traded quickly was Morgan Riley for instance. We mentioned him earlier that
you traded Smith and McGroarty for him, and then you moved him out as
well. So how do you undertake the value of some of these players that
you bring in only to send them away. It's the Riley trade. So
the Riley trade was part of the Kucheroff Matt to Chuck trade with Mason,
and that was an interesting one. So I got I received the trade proposal
on a Saturday night. I looked at it, and I'm watching the hockey
game, and I literally just put my phone down. I couldn't even digest
that at that point. I wasn't really intending. At that point, I
thought I was pretty much done. Sunday would have been the trade deadline,
and then I will woke up in the morning, I sit down to the
table and I open up my phone and check last night's scores and I see
that trade, and Okay, I gotta give it some justice because it's Nikita
Kucherov. I believe he is. You just established McKinnon's number one in our
league, but he might be number two. And I had to give that
some deep thought, and I sent you guys my mad scientist notes. I
literally and written, by the way, this is the extra effort that we
have come to expect, and the managers in the top division. I do
the handwriting thing because I'm old screwl That's how I digest and keep it in
my brain. But so I started going down the rabbit hole, and then
I went down another rabbit hole. But I really just took the components of
the original offer from Mason and I started to apply it to the weekly break
out. The playoff matchups into weekly increments and start to look because I knew
Tampa Bay had not the greatest schedule for the playoff matchups, but I needed
to know where would that be, where would that fall? So Riley got
caught in that crossfire. It really wasn't intentional, and I thought long and
hard about that's right, because Tampa really had a tough schedule. They only
played four times in that second matchup, and that's where I thought. So
I added a couple pieces, that being Marcus Peterson and I gave up Jordan
Spence with the thought process of maybe the games played that I was about to
give up could be offset Peterson. Peterson's a four and a half point per
game kind of guy. Pittsburgh had some off days in those two weeks.
So that was my logic and Riley Riley. What I'd never intended Riley to
be moved, just that was part of the package that ended up with Kutrov.
Part of my logic as I was annalys analyzing that trade was, Hey,
if I do get through the relegation having Kuturov for a full season,
there's some star power. Yeah, lots to consider here, especially since you
were hoping to stick around and lots more to come here as we continue with
Tim after these messages, this lead too excellence our serious injury when and we're
back here on Fantasy Hockey Life and the Tidy Takes segment with our guest Tim
a, who took over as one of our teams in the Lord Stanley Division
here this year. And this wouldn't be a true installment of the Tidy Take
segment without diving into a few trades. And indeed, Tim, you've kept
us very busy on the podcast over the past couple of weeks. You've curated
a few trades here that were the most interesting from your perspective. So let's
dive right in. And I feel like I maybe need someone else to read
this trade because I have a little bit of a conflict of interest here because
this trade involves Tim and the BFFs, and in this case I will be
the kind of impartial observer because as I mentioned, Ed is the trader and
I'm the lineupsetter, and so Ed and Tim discussed this trade, and so
I'll just I'll say here that Tim acquired from the BFFs Stephan Nason, who
more of a depth level streamer and Joe Pavelski, a player who has a
lot of value still left in our tidy league, and we required in return
prospect center for the Detroit Red Wings, Marco Casper, Nepo baby goal tender,
Olivier Rodrigue in Bakersfield. And then the kind of crown jewel of the
deal, I would say, Nico Hescher, the captain of the New Jersey
Devils. Now, this was a deal, as I mentioned that you did
with a couple of very handsome and smart managers in the Lord Stanley Division.
Why don't you take us through a little bit the process of making this trade.
I actually have no real knowledge of it. I was just asked to
sign off on it at the end of it all, so I don't really
have that insight. So why don't you share that with me and the listeners?
Oh man, this is a trade where hindsight is twenty twenty. It
would probably be one that I would want to have back. I remember asking
you, guys, what is but what is Nico Heesher? Because when I
look, he's had one point per game season like being last year, and
he was behind that pace at the time of the trade. So sometimes for
me, I need to see a player do that point per game kind of
ceiling. I need to see that a couple of years in a row for
me to believe. So part of this is my own valuation of Nikohesher.
So let's go into the trade. It proposes the trade to me, and
my initial reaction is smash decline. At that point, though niko Hesher was
performing at about five and a quarter points per game, Joe Pavlowski's somewhere around
five and three quarters, so it's about half a point a game. And
I start to think about smashing decline and those points, knowing that everything that
I'm doing right now is all for a six week period to get to get
through the relegation round. And so I started to offer Nikohesher around to a
couple of the other managers just to see what the return would be. And
some of those players that I went looking for were in that five and a
half to six points per game, maybe a bit younger. I couldn't get
anyone to bite on that. In my mind, I just had this little
nagging voice that was saying, hey, but what if you lose? So
if I do the calculation, it would be three to four points a week,
based on a three game week, that that point per game difference would
make. So literally, this voice in the back of my head is going,
what if you lose one of the relegation matchups by four and a half
points or less? And that just kept nodding at me. So I eventually
rethought, I came back, revisited the trade. I threw casper at it
just to try and make sure the deal got done. But I really was
looking for another guy. Stephan Nason probably doesn't have the greatest deployment, but
he was getting that PP one for a while in Carolina, so his points
per game were a little over four at the time. So that's essentially that
was the logic behind my side of that trade. I know that it's a
risk, but I enter trade negotiations every time with a mind to for it
to be a win for both gms. So in my mind, you have
to give up something to get something, and sometimes you got to pay a
price. Yeah, and again I respect that you had to do whatever was
necessary to try to hang on and every little point was going to count for
you. Yeah. I don't think anybody loved the trade. I remember hearing
about this trade. I don't remember whether I was just editing and muttering to
myself or whether I popped onto that part of that episode. But yeah,
it's it's rough. The other thing that I've I've always said too is people
are like people might say, why can't you get more for Nicoheshire. You
can only get as much as you can get. Somebody has to make that
trade with you, and it's great for everybody to think in a vacuum.
We probably need to think the same way about any L teams. You should
have been able to get more. I had to get. I saw that
I needed to make something here. This was what I was able to get.
I know, Nason, I don't even think you kept Nason on your
team all that long. But if you felt Pavelski was going to give you
the chance in the playoffs with the playoffs schedule, I understand it would have
been a tough one for me to make. I'll be honest with you,
but I understand why you did what you did. At the end of it,
Nico Heisher did what I think Victor said to me. Victor said to
me when I asked him about what Nico Hesher really is. Jack Hughes came
back from injury, and now Nico Hescher, I think is somewhere around six
and a quarter fancy points per game, so he's back up near that seventy
eighty point per season range. Hindsight's always twenty twenty. Whenever we make moves,
there's risks to it. And I had to answer that, that nagging
voice in my head and leave it all out on the table. And I
think I can confidently say, although maybe it didn't turn out the way I
wanted to in the playoffs, we left no stone unturned trying to make it
happen. For sure, I agree with that statement. I want to just
echo what both of you guys said, and what we say on this segment
a lot is that these trades need to be win and we want to create
the diner leagues that we want to play in. And nobody really likes to
play with the trader who maybe offers up a player to every single team and
takes the best, or maybe someone who sends you offers that you would never
entertain in a million years. We want these trades to be win and so
I think this is another great We'll pat ourselves on the back a little bit
here, Victor for picking Tim, because Tim has great relationships with a lot
of these managers, and the idea of being a fifty to fifty trader,
a win trader, is something that will serve you very well, especially in
this kind of league. Moving on here to another trade that you curated for
us, Tim, and this is a big one. This is the one
you mentioned earlier about acquiring Nikita Kuchirov. So we'll just say that you acquired
Nikita kuchiov fellow Tampa Bay Lightning a defenseman Darren Radish, right winger Justin Dana,
defenseman Marcus Petterson, and defenseman now of the Vegas Golden Knights, but
then of the Calgary Flames, Noah Hannafin from Mason. And this was around
the time of your matchup as well, I should say Mason acquired from you
Matthew ud Chuck Morgan Riley, the aforementioned and Jordan Spence. So this one
seems a little bit more even than the bff's fleecing. We'll say, our
tidy managers definitely think that as well, despite leaning slightly towards Mason's side,
if only slightly. I'm seeing your notes here that you have referenced the Tampa
playoff schedule, and we've talked about it a little bit here today. Why
did you still end up pursuing Kucharov despite the challenging schedule. Oh boy,
I would have been in. I would have been maybe on week one,
and Mason and I had a bit of a back and forth because we completed
an earlier trade and he declared his interest in Matthew to Chuck at that point,
and so I, like I said, I wasn't going out looking to
make that last trade. But when I started to break it down, and
maybe a byproduct of having some success in those last couple matchups, I maybe
thought maybe I do have enough to overcome that Tampa based schedule in the middle
two weeks. When I looked at it, you got couture Off. He's
a world talent. It was a bit spicy at the time because I went
back and looked at the previous thirty days and see what they're scoring was And
actually Matthew to Chuck was actually outscoring couture Off at that point, so there
was a bit a bit it's couture Off, right, he He'll get back
on the horse. And then I looked at it and went, okay,
so Noah hannafin versus Morgan Riley, you're giving up at the time a little
bit under two Fantasy points, but I was gaining them in couture off and
to Chuck and Mason. Also included Justin Danforth in the original offer, So
there's a guy has had some preferable playoff schedule and was replacement level, but
was at the time getting some deployment on the power play in Columbus. So
all that kind of went into it. So when I did the math,
I wanted to get some of the games played back, so I countered that
trade. I added Petterson from Pittsburgh Solid d Man to recoup some of the
games played, switch some of my games played into off nights to ensure that
we get that. But he also sent me Darren Radish, and I will
never look at Darren Radish's name the same again because of that second matchup.
Will be forever scarred. And we're going to talk about that one a little
later. Why don't you take us through it right now? Because Darren Radish
is not a it's not the kind of name certainly that would cause strong opinions,
at least right now. So why did you take us through a little
bit. Yeah, So as I was breaking down the Chichuk and Kucher off
trade, I really did a deep dive into those the week by week playoff
schedule, and if I had a lessons learned from my experience, I would
have probably did that a couple of weeks prior, just to try and get
my head around your off nights and whatnot. But I go through the playoff
matchups. My first ones against Foggy come out on top and I prevailed.
That's great. I was actually the highest points for that matchup, although Jack
and Mason had to buy, so I'm not sure they were setting their lineups.
So I get into my second matchup, which I always knew was going
to be a difficult one. It's against Tom Tron and he's the guy that
knocked me out of Gretzky last year, and privately I kind of had a
little back and forth with him about that, but we have a lot of
respect for each other, so we keep that bantering behind closed doors. So
I knew I was giving up in that matchup because I literally drew it out
day by day for that matchup. I knew I was giving up games played
to start that matchup, so I was gonna start a bit behind the eight
ball. I had some guys in that matchup that maybe cooled off for that
week, guys like co Paitar, Sam Bennett, Tuski. At that time,
it slowed a little bit, and so I was chasing it all week.
But I was keeping in pace with Tom, knowing that I was going
to recoup some of the games played on the second the first part of the
second week, I wake up, I go to bed the Saturday night of
that matchup, and I wake up in the morning, get my coffee,
sit down on the couch, and I open it up. And now,
in the past, I really never paid attention to my bench points. It's
just something I've never done. But for whatever reason, with the score Sharth
mentality that I had in Lord Stanley, I started paying attention somewhere in second
or third matchup of the regular season. So I opened up the bench points
and I had sat Bennett and Pavolski that day, a bit of a move,
but they worked, like I said, slow, and I started scrolling.
And Darren Radish on my roster is the last name I get to before
I see goalies. So I'm scrolling and I'm looking at my bench points that
Saturday, and then I get to Darren Radish and he had something like twenty
four points that night. He had a career twenty four point ninety four an
incredible week from Darren Radish. And was he locked in your miners? Basically
he played on off nights, so yeah, he was either he was either
on my bench or in the miners. I actually went back a day later.
Literally, you know the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit And when Roger Rabbit
sees Jessica Rabbit for the first time, his eyes bug out of his head
and his sheet his fat showed out the back. That was me on my
couch. So I literally closed my phone and didn't didn't look at it.
And then the next day I went back and so it in total, it
was something like seventy three points I'd left on my bench that Saturday night,
And that dovetails us perfectly into kind of how this story will end a little
bit. And you're sixteen points behind Tom trom there in that week, so
certainly that have made all of the difference, and we have ended up here
at the end of the relegation playoffs with a bit of an interesting situation,
but a clear one in that it will be Tomtron who stays in Lord Stanley
next season, with the other three managers yourself included, being relegated. So
take us through a little bit of that tie break, and I think we'll
invite Victor and Jesse in here to comment as well on the kind of promotion
relegation aspect here. But take us through the tie break here and some of
the things we have to consider coming out of this consolation playoff. So the
tie break right now is still not decided. Right my matchup I should come
out on top today, so there is still the off chance that between Tom
Tron, Foggy and myself we could all be tied at two and one.
So our head to head matchups in the playoffs don't solve anything, so we
go to our regular season head to head. It's unfortunate. I thought about
it, and ivis go I have been around for some of those matchups,
but it is what it is. So Tom is definitely going to move on,
but Foggy and I still have a bit to settle today, and that
is the second or third seed in the relegation round. There is a little
bit on the line as far as where we could end up for next year.
Yeah, So this relegation just so everyone is clear. As we was
mentioned, four teams go into the round robin, one survives, the other
three go down. But there's a gradient there in terms of how they go
down. The team with the worst record goes down the fast track, which
could be as low as all the way down to Lidstrom, which is Tier
four. It depends on where the fast track winner kim comes from, and
in this case it actually came from Tier two Lemieux, And that's not such
a bad outcome for being relegated. You're only going down one division and then
the other two. The team that finishes next to last and third to last
will go to one of those two tier divisions. One will go to Gretzky,
one will go to the MEW and the team with the best record and
the tiebreakers basically gets to choose where they go, and the other one goes
to the other division. So there's a bit of an interesting choice here and
a unique situation since we have two teams being promoted from one division that's Lemieux
and only one from Gretzki, and there's those teams will have their team dispersed
back into the free agent pool that the players coming into have to choose from.
But there's also a team going down from that division. So essentially there's
three teams worth of players available in the MEU and two teams worth of players
in Gretzki, So there's a bit more options, I would say in the
Lemieux division. Of course, you're gonna have two other gms picking as well,
so it's not like you're gonna get all the options, but there might
be more choices, and there's more potential that you could make better choices and
make a better team out of those options. So even though you came from
Gratzki, I think it might make more sense to choose if you have the
option if you end up winning the tiebreaker against Foggy, to choose to go
to Lemieux. Is that the way that you're leaning him. That's one hundred
percent the way I'm leaning. I had originally thought about if it's me who
gets to choose Gretzky, because I'm familiar with the managers. But I do
agree with you in that if there's two team spreen from, there might be
just a little bit more to choose from. Begins a new chapter as far
as my my Tidy experience, So this is going to be a new one,
and so having more players to choose from, I think is definitely beneficial.
You can you can come on into Lemieux. We're ready for you,
Tim, We're ready for you. I'm a multi time resident of Lemieux and
we're we've got a pretty good thing going there and we'll look forward to to
getting you in and competing with you. Man. I wanted to just zoom
out for just a second and just a general comment because I don't want to
lose the fact this is our second year in this tidy dynasty, but it's
also the first time that we've had relegation as part of it. And listening
to Tim talk has really got me thinking about all the different strategies that a
tiered dynasty league is creating. Because obviously all the incentive for Tim at this
point was to hang on for dear life in that top tier. That was
the rational move. That was correctly what he should do, because it doesn't
matter what you do if you can't hang on in that you're going to get
a brand new team anyway, It made perfect sense what your strategy was.
It makes me wonder what sorts of secondary effects we're going to see in these
leagues going forward. For example, it makes me think that the upper tier
and the lower tier are going to be building go for it teams. Similarly,
now the upper tier, the top few teams that make the playoffs are
in much better position to have great win now teams, But the bottom teams
have to be win now too, which makes me think it possibly that what
we're going to see in the future is that the mid tier teams are going
to be the ones that can afford to invest in prospects. I wonder if
we'll see more and more of the top prospects end up clustering into those middle
tier teams and the lower tier teams, at least the ones that don't get
relegated. They're going to get top picks, they're going to get top players
in the draft, but they're also going to have to deal with not falling
off the ledge as the next season comes along. So I'm wondering I'm making
my stake here to think I wonder whether we will see a lot of the
best prospects cluster into those middle of the division teams that can really afford.
They've got enough confidence they can hang around for now, but they're also building
for the future. Yeah, and I think from my perspective as a team
who pushed my chips in, it happened to work out, but for a
lot of us that it didn't. And I think that you can clearly see.
I just think back to the trade that I made with Caprice Sons Simon,
and it was very clearly he got Mattave Mitchkoff, which even if he
doesn't stick around to wait and see if that materializes a he's a fantastic asset
there. There might not be too many better assets for those middle tier teams.
So I think it is going to create an interesting market. You're right,
It's like the top and the bottom are gonna maybe go for those players
that can help now as opposed to just the top, which I think creates
a really fun dynamic. And yeah, I'm really I'm interested to see how
it works out. The first year we had a lot more promotion. Now
we're making it a little bit more difficult to get promoted. And then we
also have relegation, which there's more relegation out of Lord Stanley than there is
any other division. Which I think should make sense. It's harder to get
there, it's harder to stay there, and then the other divisions just have
kind of the one up one day plus the omni track. So it's a
little bit a little bit safer in that fat middle for the other divisions,
but not so much in Lord Stanley. Another secondary effect here that Jesse has
just gotten me thinking about here on the law of unintended consequences is I think
once we reopen trading that we're gonna maybe see a huge amount of activity from
our teams before the summertime draft and before we get into the next season.
I think you might end up seeing perhaps some of these teams that sold it
all for bigger pieces to help them win in the playoffs might have to take
that evaluation and take a step back as well. So what do you guys
think about that as an unintended consequence of our particular promotion and relegation strategy.
Yeah, and you're gonna have to decide how much can you risk going for
those future based pieces. How much do you dare weaken your team, especially
in that top division where you're up against such savvy managers and the majority of
the team is going to be doing some version of going for it on a
yearly basis, assuming that the top teams will not just get conservative if they
make the playoffs, but will still push hard to get that overall championship,
even if it means that they don't go anywhere. They're going to unlike everybody
else, They're going to hang on to that team if they win it.
But yeah, it really will be interesting to see what happens when some of
these Anything that instigates and moves on trades is a good thing in a dynasty
like this. So I really like it. Victory, you had something to
say, Yeah, I think this is I hope people found some of this
discussion really interesting. I think the idea of coming into a team, doing
a quick evaluation and really having a clear idea of who can go, who
can stay, looking at the schedule, looking at your record, what you
have to do, I think those are really good lessons no matter what,
and really taking stock of your team. And I really appreciate that you did
that. Tim. I think that we'll never know if you had stayed in
Gretzky, whether you would have your team would have kept on rolling and rolled
all the way to Lord Stanley. I did want to mention that plason craftser
as we talked about a couple of times, his team was really good.
I managed to eke out a win against him, but we had another GM
and Lord Stanley decide they were stepping down, So he's actually going to take
that spot, which is a little weird because I know, Tim, if
we had if you had not taken the spot that you currently took and gone
through this process, you probably would have been that person who got the spot.
But we would have never known. We didn't know that this other person
was going to step down. It is what it is. It'll be fun
to see Crafts are up there, and it'll be fun to see you competing
in Lemieux. I wonder if you have any regrets for the choice that you
made and what ended up happening in terms of the general outcome. No,
definitely no regrets. It was a blast from start to finish. It was
It definitely got the heart rate going and I wouldn't have done it any other
way. Happy for the experience. I want to thank you guys for thinking
of me for that experience, and again I'll take away some lessons learned through
it and We'll try to do a good job and work our way through the
LEMU division if that's where it goes. And congratulations to Crafters. He's,
like we said, a great GM. He'll do well up there. Tim.
We have you to thank not only for stepping into the breach and helping
us in our time of need taking over this team, but for providing such
great insights for us today. I know that I learned a lot. I'm
sure that our FHL managers will learn a lot, and I'm wishing you the
best of luck as you take on, perhaps Jesse severe in the next season
of the Tidy. And if I may offer this, it's a tidy end
to a tidy takes. Thanks so much for joining us today, Tim,
and for everyone for listening. You know, as long as I got you
here, a couple of things I was gonna mention. You can play all
kinds of fantasy sports on fan tracks, ten different sports you can try.
You can move your leagues over there. Obviously, the Tidy is played on
fan tracks. There's no other platform that can support all the crazy things we
do there. They've got all kinds of options for scoring salaries, contracts,
rookie eligibility. Your twenty twenty four to twenty five leagues will soon be ready
to renew. Fan tracks HQ lots of fantasy content there you can read and
keep up with. There are lots of people who help us to create this
show. Content curator Kevin Adams helps out with show prep. Ryan Downey you
heard him today. He commissioned all the Tidy leagues this year, and give
him a hand. He did an excellent job. Jeremy our lead scout,
kicking it into gear as we get ready for our team previews. Brandon is
our website guru, a scout and helps with prospect ranks and visualizations. You've
heard him on the show and he's a wizard. If you have some skills
you'd like to lend the show, hit Victor up in the discord email or
on x We're also brought to you by Dabber Hockey Daber Prospects. Victor is
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So if you're into sort of meta talk about Dynasty, you might enjoy it.
Follow on x There is accounts for both. There are accounts for both
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