Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by Fantracks, your source of information and
analysis to help you win your fantasy hockey league. Fuck up a step hit,
stay lots. Here's your hosts, Jesse soup Here and Victor Nuno.
Fantasy Hockey Live back once again, Part three, up three of Salary Cap
League Talk. I am Jesse, severa fantraks and enjoining me between the benches,
between the benches, behind the glass, wherever else it is that we
put him. He's a good sport for going there. It's Victor Nuno of
Dapper Prospects. Victor, how you doing. I'm doing awesome, Jesse.
I can only assume that there are dozens of new fantasy hockey salary cap leagues
popping up all over the place based on these episodes, so love to see
it. Definitely encourage you to think about this if you haven't already. We
have a join our league or join my league channel in our discord. It
would be great if there were some new ones that popped up, people that
are interested in kind of joining or maybe creating a new one with some fellow
FHL fantasy enthusiasts. But yeah, I'm doing great. How are you doing.
I'm doing good, man, I'm doing good. It's briefly warm in
Wisconsin. It was like seventy degrees the last couple days we're out there.
The wife and I were planting trees in the backyard. Of course, it's
going to snow tonight and be thirty in the morning and not get above like
fifty all weeks, so yeah, I can't have it all, but yeah,
no, I'm in high spirits. I'm getting ready for the Stanley Cup
playoffs. Of course, in all excited about by the time people listen to
this. We recorded all three episodes, just full transparency for the Salary Cap
League series together, and we will be releasing them over the course of three
weeks. Just so Victor and I, come on, let us have some
rest. We're with you a year round, rather than make you take weeks
off from listening to us. We're going to try to keep the content consistent
by doing this, and it's just too big to do in one episode.
It's a three part series on salary cap leagues, so listen to this third
part and you can also, as you said, Victor, come into our
discord and discuss it because there is a lot going on there. It's free.
You just have to contact us Fantasy Hockey Life at gmail dot com.
Fan Hockey Life is me on Twitter. Victory twelve is Victor on Twitter.
Let's take a brief break. We're gonna come back with part three of three
on salary cap leagues. Victor, we're back. This is the third part
of our salary cap league, and we are all the way down the first
part. We were setting up our league very deliberately. We were not just
showing up one day and deciding to drap and then we'll figure it out later,
because that leads to injury. You will pull a muscle, you will
collapse the whole league, and you will be so frustrated and mad at the
end that it was all pointless. Instead, we had you set up your
league deliberately, made you think through all the things you should do there.
Then you built your rosters carefully for the system for setting up your roster construction
so that you can compete in the additional challenge of the salary cap league and
identify the players you want on your roster. Now we are down to playing
the games. Let's say the season is started and you are trying to figure
out how to maneuver every single day. So Victor give people some ideas on
the strategies that they should use to effectively manage a salary cap team. Definitely,
this is definitely different than your other league, so you want to approach
it that way. I think the biggest thing is your budget, and you
mentioned this. Many of you maybe are adults, but you know adulting is
hard sometimes and managing your budget is sometimes difficult. Just remember that this money
has to last you all year. You can't just say, oh, I
have all this money and then run to the candy and video game store and
all at once and spend it all or I guess blow it on Amazon buying
a bunch of things that you want to treat yourself with, So be careful.
Cap Space is a weapon, use it accordingly. Don't just blow cap
on some guy because you're like, oh, I guess I need a right
winger. I'll just I'll just add Phil Kessel, you know, which is
like terrible because he's so expensive right now or at least has been. So
don't be like some gms that just seem to sign a warm body and not
really think about it too much. There's a solution to that if you feel
like you need a player, instead of signing somebody or adding somebody who has
a bit of term, if you really need that, the easiest thing to
do is add a minors eligible player that you can flex up and someone who
you can easily drop. There's no reason to invest long term in somebody that
you might eventually have to buy out or is definitely not worth it on a
value per dollar basis. Don't take on a contract and lets it's useful to
you. So a lot of people will you take on some sort of cap
dump for what seems like peanuts. Maybe you've seen an NHL team do this
and you're like, wow, why are they doing that? And maybe that's
the relative value in the NHL. Who knows what goes on in those GM
meetings. But don't take on something unless it's worth it you. What is
it that you need. If you need a prospect defenseman, get that.
If you feel like you need a first round pick, don't do it unless
you get that. You know, and some people are maybe a little bit
unreasonable in their request for some of these things, but the bottom line is,
don't do it unless you think it's valuable for you. There is no
reason to take on that contract and fill up your cap if you don't think
it's something that's going to be valuable to you. More people are just like,
Oh, I'm just gonna I'm gonna do this guy favor, you know,
and take on this, you know, this long contract for you know,
pennies, and that's don't that's not worth it. If you can retain
salary, do it. It's super valuable. If you get the right return.
Maybe you can add someone like Jesse reference that Sergei Bobowski is available in
one league. Well, hey, if you can add him, retain half
the salary and send him to a competitive team, you might get a really
hefty return, especially like in some leagues there are it's really hard to get
a hold of goalies, and someone with a high cap hit like that might
be available and totally unattractive at ten million to some teams, but at half
that, all of a sudden, now you're now you're speaking their language,
and now they might be able to give you a really nice asset for that.
So a five million dollars Sergey Robowski all of a sudden is a lot
more enticing, and maybe they'll give you a prospect of somebody who isn't going
to help them anytime soon. You know, maybe think of like a Kevin
Korchinsky or Frank Nazar. I don't know why I'm thinking of black Hawk prospects
right now, but you know something that is a ways away. It's not
going to help that team anytime soon, but it's something that you would really
like as a maybe a rebuilding team get a hefty return, especially especially especially
if you are committing retention dollars for multiple years, you better get a really
nice return if you're if you're retaining like say on a one year, that
probably isn't worth a whole lot. And but this is definitely where something you
should ask us or ask the crowd, you know, ask us in the
discord, is this a reasonable return for this amount of retention? And it
definitely should increase in value the longer the term is that you're retaining for and
obviously the higher the dollar amount. Hopefully that makes sense. What exactly that
is worth, of course, is going to vary by individual and by team,
so you have to you have to think about that. But ask us
if you're if you're a questioning I personally do not retain money for long,
for more than a year unless I'm getting something really good for it, and
hence I don't have a lot of retentions on my books. You also have
to remember that that retention spot is super valuable if you can. Like most
of the leagues that I'm in, you can only retain on three contracts.
I don't want to do it for just some dinky old second round pick that's
not worth it. What is that going to give me? Not a whole
lot. So you have to be really strategic with what you decide to fill
up your retention spots for. But hey, if I'm getting a first round
pick, elite prospect and maybe another prospect or two, then that might be
worth it to hold in that spot. So that's something you have to think
about. The other thing, if you have guys on injured reserve, don't
just go adding more people to your team and put yourself in a bind when
they get healthy, because eventually those players may get healthy and now all of
a sudden you might be over the cap, or you might have to use
one of your buyouts. You don't want to put yourself in that situation where
you have to make a move down, down, down the road. This
happens often with teams, especially highly competitive teams. They don't want to miss
out on, you know, an activity, or don't want to lose a
week, so you just uh, you know, you say, oh,
I have the cap, I'm going to add this player. Now, well,
you have to be careful that that down the road, that player may
get healthy, and all of a sudden you have you have to make a
decision that you didn't you wouldn't have otherwise had to make. You have to
buy somebody out or trade someone, especially if you're beyond the trade dead on.
Now you really limit your options. You're either going to have any legal
roster for being over the cap, or you're gonna have to buy someone out
that you didn't want to buy out, or drop somebody. That's going to
be difficult. As Jesse you mentioned, I we keep a sheet for our
teams. Mine looks basically like a cap friendly page, except it's on a
Google sheet and I can move things around very nimbly and easily, and I
can look at because I think you need to look at, not just it's
helpful to see at the bottom of the page on fantracks what your salary is
and what you know how much how much your team is relative to the cap,
but you also kind of want to know not just right now, but
what is it going to be next year? What is it going to be
if I make this trade? What is it going to be if I move
these players around? You want to be able to adjust things and see,
well, what would this look like. If you have one of these like
Google sheets where you can kind of move things around and see a year or
two or three in the future, it kind of gives you an idea of
where your cap is going to be. And I think it's I think it's
essential for these types of leagues because otherwise you really have no idea, Like
I don't know that you could do all that in your head. If you
can, great, but most people can, so you really want to have
to do that. And if you want an example of a sheet like that,
I'd be happy to share with you. Just hit me up in the
discord. But that's really really key. You have to keep this all straight.
You have to kind of see where you are because this is going to
impact your decisions. Do I make this add do I make this trade?
Do I move this player? Do I add this player? And as Jesse
mentioned not only for the players currently what they're making, but what is what
are some of my star players going to be making in the future. What
I have to kind of be thinking about that in terms of what is going
to be, where's my cap situation going to be? And so you know,
like you know, for some of my h and one of my teams
that I'll be referencing kind of been a little bit of a of a rebuilding
state. And so I have a lot of really great young players on my
team, but all these players are going to be getting paid, and so
I have to sort of have a little bit of an idea what is going
on and what is the sort of projected cap years from now, so that
I don't get myself into too much trouble. You know, I have a
bunch of stars on the future, stars hopefully on this team. You know,
guys like eklend Nys Moroshashenko, I have Paturka, I have Thomas Harley,
Christian Kirru, Oland Zellweger, Lukasto Stall. So I have a lot
of really good prospects, which is great, but you have to remember that
in two three years these players are going to be making you know, probably
five to six, seven, eight million, and then where is that going
to put you in terms of your cap? So you have to be careful
having too many long term contracts like I have Spashenkov, Nachushkin, mayor Hishkin
in Jack Hughes. So you have to be careful like, Okay, I'm
not committing too much cap to these players or certain players three or four years
from now when all my other stars are going to be making money. So
you have to kind of have a little bit of a long view. Otherwise
you're just gonna get to that time and you're gonna realize I'm in trouble and
you're gonna have to trade a star that you didn't want to have to do,
and so you don't want to put yourself in that. In that position,
you have to consider all your tools at your disposal. I would say
some of these are rookie ads, buyouts, taking on money, retentions,
these are the things that you have to think about. And so for rookies,
if ads are limited, be judicious. In my recent That League,
I was talking about the twenty team cap deep roster. I finished nineteenth and
I really wanted Bedard. I have been rebuilding or I've been building this team
from the ground up. I wanted to be I wanted to be competitive in
years four and five, which are coming up here, and I wanted to
make sure that I positioned myself with enough actual NHL players to win Badard this
season, because in this league, you don't just get it through a lottery.
You have to win the consolation bracket, which is challenging. You have
a team of non NHL players, especially since my goalies decided to be absent
on this team, because I have Matt Murray, Cal Peterson, Spencer Night,
and I was thinking one of those guys is going to play some games.
Actually Mett Murray did play a few games, but Peterson's in the minors,
and Spencer Night is, you know, away from the team. And
then I have Lucas stir Stile who played some games. So anyways, you
have to kind of position yourself. But anyways, in terms of the ads
you have, there's limited number of ads, but I made fifteen in the
playoffs. There's thirty ads. I made half of my ads in the playoffs
alone, and it's a good thing I waited and didn't make a bunch of
silly ads. Throughout the season because I needed all fifteen of those to make
it happen. I'll talk more about that in a minute. Buyouts these are
also a weapon. Don't get lazy hit the AD button and then oops,
I'm gonna buy this guy out. Now you need these. You might need
these later. You never know. If your league doesn't have a buyout lead
a limit, then it might be a clown league. Sorry, but you
need to have a limit on your buyouts otherwise there's just no point. It's
basically just like no. It's like the same as not having buyouts if you
have an unlimited number. So you have to have a limit. Know what
your limit is. Use them very judiciously, really think about it. In
fact, you might want to ask us if you're questioning like should I buy
this guy out? Should I risk it? Whatever the case may be.
If you're a rebuilding team, you can take on assets in addition to contracts
to buy out. So last season, Jesse and I got into trouble with
too many players with the games played over the games played limit. So we
had all these guys that were great while they're on their elcs, but then
all of a sudden they're over there bills games played limit and now there we
can't put them in the minors and they're really just not worth it. So
we had to pay. And we decided that instead of just like paying for
one of them, we wanted the flexibility to be able to flex guys up
and down. So we had to pay our buddy Blair Simon Edvondson to take
five of our players we didn't want. That was a huge price to pay.
I'm pretty sure in a year or two we're going to really miss having
him, but Simon Edmondson, that is, but we needed to do that.
We need to do that to have the flexibility to move guys up and
down to add other players and not be constrained by that limit. So don't
make that kind of mistake or you're going to have to pay for it,
you know. So that was just not noticing, you know, not being
on top of it. Now we have kind of a timer where we go
in and check and make sure that guys are not over and then we make
sure we drop them before because unfortunately, that's one feature that I would love
to see Fantracks to add. But based on your league's games played limit,
if they could send you some kind of alert like, hey, this guy's
about to get to your games played limit. You should you know, do
something about that. Perhaps that would be a nice feature, but it doesn't
have that. You have to go in and check each time. When you're
in as many leagues as as I am, you have so many to check
that you kind of lose tracks sometimes. But anyways, if that happens,
if somebody has a bunch of these players beyond a game's played limit, you
can take advantage of that. You can take advantage of that and say,
hey, you have you know, these guys that maybe you're not using.
Let's go ahead and let's talk. Let's talk a trade maybe, and you
can take advantage of them. Taking on money can be very lucrative, but
don't take on bad contracts just to do it. You have to have a
plan in place when are you're going to compete. You don't want to be
saddled with dead money when you could have got a good asset for it or
for you know, you don't want to be in your competitive window having all
this dead money. So if you're going to take on a bad contract for
somebody has to be worth it, and it has you really want to make
sure this doesn't overlap with your competitive window, because that is that is going
to be tricky unless you can get such great value that it doesn't matter.
But it's kind of hard to imagine that. If you're competitive, you're not
going to need all all of that cap space to really push yourself to the
limit. So really, the taking on dead money should only be if you're
retooling or restructuring or rebuilding. Otherwise I would be careful about that. And
retentions for others. There's a really good way to make your roster more flexible.
Imagine Connor McDavid costing six million instead of twelve point five million. That's
insane. Retentions, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, make the value
per dollar skyrocket. There's nothing better than having a star on a retain contract.
It's basically like a cheat code for these cap leagues. It's fantastic if
you can, if you can do it right, you know. I think
it's important to keep in mind that everybody has a slightly different valuation on these
players, and so you may pay what you think is a reasonable price,
but your competitor things are getting a steal. Great everybody wins like as long
as that's the case, and generally in these cap dynasties, it can be
a win win because some as I mentioned that for that time that Jesse and
I sent sema Edvanson, that buyout costs that team five of their buyouts.
Most of them were single year or maybe another year or two, but they
weren't like huge contracts. It wasn't a whole lot of money. It was
just roster inflexibility that it cost them mainly. But it didn't matter because they're
rebuilding team, so that was a win for them. It was a win
for us. So it can be a win win. You just want to
make sure that it is a win for you and that you're taking on this
money and getting getting appropriate value. So shoot us a message if you're considering
that. And I think the one of the last things here is making sure
your position for the playoffs. You never know when you're gonna need buyouts or
ads in the playoffs or cap space. So this twenty team dynasty that I
was talking about, I was really gunning for Berdard. I had thirty ads
in the season I hadn't made I made twelve twelve of the sixteen ads in
the playoffs six of seven buyouts, not to mention taking on cap, and
we ended up ended up adding Tyler Bertuzzi, which is who was at four
point seven five million ending this year, Logan O'Connor a million ending in twenty
twenty five, Ulimata two point two five million ending in twenty twenty three,
Ryan Paling, who's league minimum ending this year in cal Clutterbuck ending one point
seventy five ending in twenty twenty four. I needed every single one of those
players production to eke out the win against our buddy Gregg, literally one hits
by two. And if I hadn't added cal Clutterbuck on the last day,
even though I'm saddled with one point seven five million for another year, I
wouldn't have won. So you never know where you're gonna need every single one
of those moves to put yourself over the top. So you want to make
yourself as fluid and flexible at the very end. If you if I hadn't
left myself both cap space and moves, it wouldn't have worked. It wouldn't
have worked. So you really want to make sure you're leaving flexibility for when
you need it most. And the last thing I would say is that when
you're out of it, don't just check out. You know, this is
the time to really put the screws to the other teams. So when you're
rebuilding, or if you're not competing, or say you thought you were going
to be competitive and it turns out you're kind of in the middle, flip
the switch. Take on bad contracts, get assets, get picks, get
prospects, get players who have passed their gleams play limit. This is a
huge untapped a huge untapped field that can be very fruitful. The guys who
have just gone over and a lot of teams are like, oh, you're
not miners eligible anymore, I don't want you. That may be true for
a lot of players, but some can really work out. Some guys this
year who have who fit that Bill Casey Middlestat who's maybe turning into an NHL
or after all, Dylan Cousins who flipped a switch this year and looks amazing,
Morgan Frost, Cody Glass, dam Steel, et cetera, et cetera.
There's a whole lot of these guys who are beyond the games played limit.
Maybe their contract initially looks like a bit much for the value. But
there's still guys who have some runway. You know, they probably haven't hit
their two hundred games played, you know threshold that Daber always talks about,
or four hundred for bigger players. So you can take some risks on guys
like that. You can take some risks on some guys that maybe still have
some upside and you know, are kind of being dumped because they're beyond that
game's played limit or whatever, so or they're just about to hit it.
That's the kind of asset you want to collect, and you can be patient
with them, give them another year or so, and then see what happens.
But those are some strategies that I would say that can really kind of
help push you over the top. Jesse, what do you think about those
ideas? I love it, Victor, and I want to add something to
this. And it's going to sound like I'm contradicting Victor, but I'm doing
exactly the opposite, and that is, don't be afraid to use your cap
room. I've seen so many dynasty leagues and cap leagues where people are like,
oh, well, well I'm not competing this year, I'm only going
to use half my cap. You know, I want to be conservative with
this money. You know, you're not the cheap owner of a pro franchise
who you don't get to keep the money. Okay, I've seen leagues where
actually you do pay dollars out of your pocket for each move or each contract
that you have somebody on, And to me, that's insane because I don't
know, I just think that's insane. But I, you know, don't
be afraid to use it. Weaponize your cap space, but be aware of
the text of your league. If eight of the teams are at fifty percent
of their cap, your cap space is not worth as much as it would
otherwise be. You know, if you know, I think Victor plays in
highly competitive leagues where everybody is bumping up against the cap. And by the
way, that partly means that the cap was well designed. If not many
teams or retaining cap space, but look at the environment of your league and
again, do what you need to do as a rebuilding team. That even
means look at and Victor said this as well, I think, look at
when you are going to be competitive. If I have a team, I
my Red Rock team three years ago, I identified twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three as the years that I could be competitive. Actually, twenty twenty
three was the year I thought i'd be competitive, and I did. I
got to the finals this year and last year I was a year ahead of
schedule, So I was making all my plans for that. I was to
take on contract for the years before the year I was going to be competitive,
but I wanted to make sure I did not have that going against maybe
year I was competitive, and and I do things in that league, like
you know, you talk about the things that the uncompetitive teams should be doing
in terms of gameplay, it should be things like identifying players you can pick
up for minimum contracts. Just what Victor's saying. You know, Casey Middlestat,
Dylan Cousins, people who were cheap at one point because they were not
looked at as having any value. You're scrounging for those guys, and if
you have fantasy generated contracts, you can be wise to sign them for long
term contracts if you could lock them in at a price, because what's the
downside. The downside is you end up taking a cap hit based on a
very small contract that you signed them to. What's the upside? The upside
is you captured immense value for a minimum level contract. Maybe somebody who on
the market would be worth ten percent of your cap that you actually got for
point two percent of your cap, which is a thing I've done in that
league a couple of times, in a thing that the most successful teams in
that league have done more than that. So yeah, I would just advise
you look at the context of your league. But like Victor said, these
successful teams are the ones who know what to do with every piece of their
salary cap, and that goes for the winning teams as well as the losing
teams. You don't get a prize in most leagues that I've seen for getting
to the end of the season and fifty percent of your cap was empty.
And you know, also look at things like expiring contracts and the value that
those things can have in these leagues. If you have an expiring contract this
year, I'm gonna be you know, there are leagues where if it takes
me up to the ceiling of the salary cap and I'm a rebuilding team and
you're willing to send me a first round pick along with a guy who's out
for the year and injury and his contracts going to expire at the end of
the year. That is a slam dunk win for me, and it's a
slam dunk win for both of us because you are going to have the space
to acquire a player. On the other hand, I can take that on
at no consequence if that contract is going to expire after this year, if
I already know I'm not competing, and I don't have a better use for
that cap space, So you can't take it with you. Like so many
things in life, Victor, you can't take it with you. So yeah,
I think there's having the money left to get Clutterbuck at the end,
and just enough money means that Victor efficiently used his cap. He used every
piece of it. He used every piece of the buffalo all season long.
And if you go to the end and you know, if you've capped yourself
out, that's a bad thing. But if you left yourself a lot on
the table, that's like getting to the end of an auction and you spent
two thirds of your budget. You know, to me, there's no point
to it. You leave yourself flexibility, but flexible you're realistically going to use.
And if you're a rebuilding team. You use all of that open space
and you get something, you extract something out of it. Let's take a
break. We're gonna come back and take some listener questions. W what are
you going to do to get me that selfish hockey? That's right, selfish
hockey. Break it down, skate to pluck, don't pass it. Head
man is still going to be there, and you catch up on taking coast
coast shots, some poor angles, they're still shot bad balance. That's a
good breakaway. Gotta get the bounces boys. So Victor, when we started
this, when we announced to the patrons and actually all the people on Discord,
I think that we're going to do a salary cap series. We solicited
questions from the listeners on their thoughts on salary cap leagues. We've captured a
few of them here today. I will, I guess read a couple of
them off and we can discuss whether we have answers to the or whether they
bring up a point that we maybe haven't. So the first one is from
Steven love to know more how you think young players coming off ELC examples page
and cousins coming off cheap deals. So that adds close to twelve million in
new costs next year? Do they knock out other core players like Crosby,
Crieder, Connor, Evander Kane and Matthews. Fy I am replacing their cheap
costs with the combo of Byfield, Ecklund and Rossi. So I guess this
is somebody who's thinking about planning for those elc's coming off and what you can
do to alleviate that crunch. Maybe you get another question of that, Victor,
or maybe it's just an observation by Stephen. What do you think?
Well, I think this comes to the age old question of you know,
what is what is the new value per dollar? Here? Is really what
it all boils down to? And we don't We're not necessarily going to know.
I mean with Page and Cousins, I think we do know what their
what their new contracts are. Um, but we might not for for the
ELC guys and so that and that's you know, gonna be a little bit
tricky. Um. Yeah, I think that Tage is one of these guys
that's really interesting because even though he's like incredible, he he's also a bit
frustrating at times. And I'm gonna we'll definitely talk about him in the team
previews because even though he you know, he's he's had an incredible breakout and
you know he's scoring you know, ridiculous number of points, almost one hundred
points. Um. He he he shoots a fair amount, but he also
has he's he's a little bit inconsistent at times in terms of the production.
You know, there's a lot of like in in points leagues, there can
be some some goose eggs there with minimal hits, I mean minimal shots and
stuff like that, but overall the production is huge and so as long as
he um fills it out in your league, he is probably going to be
still worth it in the value per dollar kind of a sense. Is because
the points are so high, I think Cousins is going to be a little
bit trickier because that's going to be a little bit lower. I would say.
The harder thing to evaluate is the ELC guys, And there's you know,
there's there's places where you can find contract projections, but basically you just
kind of have to look at what is similar production for guys that are that
and where they were drafted for what they're going to make, and try to
follow the news and figure out, like are they because because what you'd really
like is for these guys to take a bridge deal. You know, a
bridge deal is good. You know, it kind of extends their r failure,
but it you know, it kind of bridges before they have to sign
that really big contract. And so for all of these guys by Phil Eckland,
ROSSI haven't really broken into the NHL too much. I guess by Field
more than the other two. But um, his contract be a little bit
bigger. But you you hope from the King's perspective, you would hope to
sign buy Field for like a you know, six five or six million dollar
long term contract. But from a cap league perspective, you'd hope he signs
for half of that bridge deal for two or three years. And if they
do that, then obviously the value per dollar is much more. I can't
imagine that Eklin and ROSSI don't sign bridge deals because I don't think they have
enough evidence to support a long term deal. So anyways that's going to be.
That's that's the hard thing. It's trying to guess what they're what they're
going to be. But if they sign the bridge deal, there should be
more better value per dollar I think with these other guys that you mentioned,
like Kyle Connor, stounds out to me as different from the rest because his
contract is fairly high for what he does, which is basically just points,
you know, and Shotsy doesn't. His peripherral value is very low, whereas
the other guys have a fairly high perpherral value. So you have to kind
of look at the overall overall costs and evolving or not evolve evolving Hockey and
Hockey Viz and some of these other platforms. They will actually project like the
downward trend of some of these stars and kind of see where the production is
going. And so it's useful to kind of look and think about that.
There's no easy formula though, You're just gonna have to try to figure out.
And this is where I would lay it all out on a spreadsheet.
I would look at projections and kind of see, Okay, how how do
I think all these are going to continue to produce as the years go on?
And what is that value per dollar going to be? And you might
have to make some tough decisions and trade or sell some some stars to make
room for some of these other guys. It's it's something that you have to
look at in context with your whole team, and unfortunately, I generally have
to wait until September for all these things because you need, like I need
all the projections to come out and kind of see what I think everybody's going
to do, what the contracts, what everybody's contract is going to be as
much as possible, and then kind of fill it into my team sheet and
then say, okay, this is if I keep this guy, and I
have my spreadsheet, I have value per dollar and everything calculated in there,
including how long the term is, and then you have to make some tough
decisions based on that. That's what I think, Jesse. It's not like
it is simple in terms of value per dollar, but a lot of the
data that goes into it isn't always one hundred percent known or clear for sure.
And one of the keys to what you just said is this is why
you're mapping everything out in the spreadsheet. I want to spreadsheet that shows all
of my players their contract this year, their contract next year, the contract
the following year. I want to see where my contracts are going to get
into trouble and where they're going to be good. Because you're right, some
of these guys whose costs you're going to go expensive. You need to figure
out when these moves are going to happen. And then, by the way,
it's not as simple as saying, well, I want this guy,
I don't want that guy, so I'll keep this guy and get rid of
that guy. You probably got to send him somewhere. You probably got to
trade him. And yes, you want all the best players for all the
top values, but keep in mind everybody else has open eyes too, and
they can see where you have better and worse values and trading players, you're
going to get a better and worse return if you can outsmart the other teams
in terms of and not outsmart, but if your projection and your valuation of
a player is more accurate than in other team's, which is part of the
essence of playing a fantasy sport, is that you want to try to be
better than that, better than your opponents at that then you can potentially end
up with more value. But as you need to reduce your roster, somebody's
got to take them, and it's possible you're going to have to pay resources
to move some guys whose contracts are about to become a problematic. There is
a there's a concept that they talk about on a basketball podcast I listen to
called dunked On, which is then an a theory, which is the idea
that there is a tipping point above which when the contract gets above there,
the player has a negative value instead of a positive value, and below it
it's a positive value. I mean, that's I mean, you could probably
don't even need a name to describe that, because I think people understand it
intuitively. But the truth is is once you get a contract that goes flips
into a negative territory, even though it's a producing players, it's going to
bring you down relative to the league. Now you have to figure out how
to move it, and you might have to spend other resources to do it.
So just keep that in mind. I would say that it is nice
to think that I can keep my good guys, I can deal my old
guys, and I'll have young guys who come up to take their place.
Ideally that's what you want. Sometimes you might have to deal with the young
guy. Sometimes you might have to deal one young guy with one old guy
and take back one medium guy, you know, to be able to balance
things out. It's always a balancing act, and it's never as simple as
just being able to do what you want because everybody is playing the same game
as you. Victor if you ever if you ever run into that, what
if you run into situations where you've wanted to trade the Crosby's Criters, Commoners,
Kings of the world, but you're just not going to get the return
because everybody else knows that they're getting older and their value per dollar is getting
worse. Yeah, definitely. And my favorite thing that I was thinking is
so funny is that there's some people in these leagues that are just like,
Hey, I want to trade this guy, and everyone's like, yeah,
nobody wants him. Like, you have to read the room a little bit,
you know. You can't just come out and think that you're going to
be able to do the thing that you want to do, especially especially especially
if you're not willing to attach an asset, because that's the thing is that
you may have to if you want to make a move like this, even
with a name value player in a cap league. If you're not used to
it, you may realize it it's not as easy as you think, and
you may have to attach a pick or a prospect for somebody to take on
that cap, or to take on that buyout, or to do whatever.
Like, Roster flexibility is one of the most important things. Cap flexibility and
roster flexibility. And you can't just assume that you're going to be able to
do things, or you're going to be able to move guys, that you're
going to be able to do the things that you want to do. So
what I would say is the biggest thing is read the room. See where
everyone else is. Don't go asking people to take on, you know,
a Surgey Robrovski because you made a bad pick and they are only two million
dollars from the cap. They can't do that. Why would you even ask
them. That's like coming to someone with a really dumb question and without like
doing your homework. So do your homework. Figure out where everyone is.
See which teams could accommodate the move that you need. Figure out what they
need. Maybe they're you know, don't have any goalie prospects and you could
you could send them a decent upside goalie or a defenseman or for whatever prospect
or pick maybe they're light on picks whatever. Figure out what might help them,
what they might need, but come to them with something for them.
I think too many people blurt out in general channels or whatever, this is
what I want, this is what I need, and it's like, well,
great, who's gonna just give you what you want for nothing? Like
it's not going to happen. At least it shouldn't happen. Everybody needs to
get something for their trouble, and so it's better if you can kind of
guess. I mean, you may not guess perfectly, but at least if
you come offering something that they might need. I love when people do that.
Hey, it seems like you're a little light on d are you interested
in this guy for taking on this asset? Well, really interested in that
guy. But I appreciate that they came with some idea of what I might
want, and then I can we can further the conversation along at that point.
Right, So you want to do your homework. You want to realize
that what everyone else is doing and kind of try to try to give them
something too. Right, it should be a win win. I think when
people come at it from a let's try to make this a win win,
it's so much easier and it's less contentious. And it's more fun for everybody.
So I would just suggest you try to do that and requires doing your
homework and being a little bit more prepared than just like, oh crap,
I'm close to the cap. I need to get rid of somebody here.
You take him? Yeah, let's say you have. You can't fool people
if they are good at the game. You know, in a normal dynasty,
you could come to somebody and say, hey, I see that you
need a little bit to make your run here, how about I trained you
Jamie Benn for William Eklund. Ekland's not even playing this year. Man,
he's no good this year. Ben is playing like crazy. He's getting excellent
points this year, and he would help you win. Well. Jamie Ben's
getting two more years of nine point five million dollars. He's got one of
the biggest cap pits in the league, and that cap hit has been an
albatross many many times at this point. So I would tell the other guy,
why don't you send me Jamie Ben and William Aglund, and I will
give you back nothing. That's probably a fair trade. Why didn't we do
that? So it completely flips things on their heads. Let's follow follow up
question from Stephen My Cousin's debate is to keep him or Crider. I lean
Cousins, but I could get way more for him in a trade than Crider
for similar production next year. But Cousins a more valuable a few years into
his new contract. So he's actually comparing apples to apples here, Cousin,
Well, he's he's talking about guys who are both ends of the scale that
we are talking about here, Victor Cousins and Krider. What do you think
about this comparison and this combination of players. Yeah, I mean, I
think it's nice, you know, you have two forward opposite ends of the
time frame. But I also think this brings up a really good point is
that sometimes you just have to trade the player that's going to give you more,
and maybe it's not the one you want to trade, maybe it's the
younger player. You kind of also have to realize your league. You know,
some leagues just love, you know, player teams want to collect young
players and assets, and others tend to be, you know, a little
bit more wise to the fact that, well some of these older vets might
be better. But in cap leagues, it really just comes down to value
per dollar and how long the term is, and so if they're older and
still producing them, maybe a better asset. So I would absolutely anytime I
can trade the player that's going to give me more, as long as they're
relatively similar, you know, and apples to apples kind of thing, if
possible. And yeah, you might get kind of stuck with Okay, maybe
this player, maybe the production is similar. But that's what that's the way
you kind of have to think about it. I think is you know,
maybe this isn't the player I want to trade, but I need to make
a move it forward. I need to make a move to soften my cap.
I'm going to trade this one, even though I don't love the move.
Let's combine two concepts we've talked about this people who are afraid to use
their whole salary cap and people who are trying to do what we're talking about
people trying to do, which is, let's get rid of the old guys,
let's move in the young guys. Because people overcorrect for this. They
overcorrect for this, not only I mean they might even understand the valuation.
You might get to managers who understand that Sidney Crosby is probably less valuable in
Dynasty right now than Tag Thompson given their relative contracts. But how is it
possible that somebody will give you Sidney Crosby the first round pick and some other
good thing for th Thompson just to get crosby salary off the books. Well,
by the way, Sidney Crosby still scored ninety three points in eighty two
games this year. He is still extremely valuable there. And like Victor,
Victor said, sometimes you get the thing that we're more valuable with, So
we definitely need to keep that in mind when we're doing these things. All
right, let's let's move on. Our boy. Yarno out there in Finland
had a couple of things to say. Loves salary leagues, and he's really
asking the question about salary retentions. He's he's been mixed on these salary retention
things and how much they should really be used in a league. His point
is it's hard to keep your team good over the years versus non salary leagues.
But the salary retention can really screw the bottom teams by taking up a
bunch of their cap by basically, Arizona Coyote their situation where they've got all
these unvaluable players that they're taking on tracks, and maybe they're not getting everything
for it, and it also means they're not going to get anywhere in the
long term. And again, you don't need to keep pushing those players off
your roster just so you can get down to fifty percent of your salary cap.
There's no bonus for getting a fifty percent of your salary cap instead of
eighty percent of your salary cap if it doesn't have impact on future years and
you're gonna lose already anyway, and nobody's going to trade you guys to fit
into that cap. So I don't know Victor any further concept on a retention
of contracts. And I know you've talked about it a little bit, but
you're those comments here. Yeah, I think it can screw the bottom teams
if they don't get appropriate returns for it. I have seen some players,
some GM fantasy gms, retain four or five million dollars for several years and
get back a modest prospect or a second round pick. That is crazy,
That is not worth it. So I think it's a matter of educating the
GMS. I would never tell the league this is an appropriate value for this
type of trade. But I think that you know, as a commission you
might especially if people are new to cap league, you might say, hey,
you know, you might want to run this, buy some people before
you take commit yourself to a long because that can ruin the league. If
you get a new GM that's just wanting to wheel and deal and take on
all this cap and get nothing for it. That can create those really strong
teams at the top, and it can screw them into the basement on the
other end, and then they just leave the league and they leave it a
mess. So you want to make sure that that doesn't happen. You want
to make sure that if you have some inexperienced people that you don't let that
happen. But I think that as long as that's the case, as long
as you have some smart people that know what they're doing, it can be
fine. You know. That's what's great about dynasties. You can have teams
in different states of repair. You know, you can have the competitive teams
and the teams that are you know, moving moving up and trying to compete
those in the middle. They are going one or the other. But I
think that's the key is you have to have competence in our gms. Don't
let people make mistakes that can screw the entire league, and really kind of
if they're new, make them listen to this episode first before they join your
league. You are absolutely right, Victor. We've talked about how salary caps
can level the playing field in terms of not creating juggernaut teams, but with
this level of complexity, I also think what you said that at the startup
you can absolutely you can have managers who come in the league and really really
mess up teams more quickly than they could even in Dynasty, because at least
in the other realm, you're just looking at which players are more valuable than
the others, which players are younger than the others. Now, this element
of contracts adds a big complication that people can miss in the strategy. The
actual value of a retained contract, the actual value of a draft pick.
Before it stabilizes, before there's kind of a league consensus that makes economic sense
and there's a kind of a stable market, there's going to be opportunity for
exploitation and things are going to go a little bit nuts. Next question,
Victory, and I mentioned this earlier handling free agency in dynasty cap leagues,
and I railed against the idea of the slow auction where you have free agents
who are coming out there's a wide array of options. Quelly Ford ass mine
is only one free agent per week and big cap guys like line A Cadro
or sitting on free agency. How do you handle a situation where maybe you're
going into the new league year and there's guys who people would want who are
sitting on waivers because they weren't on a contract at the end of last year
or their contracts expired. What do you think about this? Victor? So,
I don't think I understand this question. Can you explain it to me
a little more? So? I think there are some leagues where like you
get Tag Thompson and you get his current contract, and if he signs a
new contract, you just get to keep Day Thompson at his new contract,
or you can choose to keep him or drop him based on his new contract,
and then he goes on to waivers. There are other contracts where you
can other leagues where you can take on a player with a salary for a
certain number of years. Even in leagues where I think you use a real
cap, you might have a limit on how many years a player can remain
on a roster with a particular salary. And I don't know, or I
mean particularly this is this is a huge problem in fantasy of value generated leagues.
Maybe in real salary cap leagues, Like you know, there could be
some differences here. But what do you do. Is it just going to
be waivers that decides who goes on to different teams or is there going to
be an annual supplemental draft of some sort. It sounds like you're you're you
kind of handle it by the guys on your team, as long as he
keeps, as long as he's you're willing to take on whatever the NHL's going
to pay him. Yeah, And most of my leagues, it's like it's
a dynasty league. So you you have the rights to that player, you
roster them, and it's usually dependent on the cap. So like DH Thompson
right now, Dylan Cousins, we just talked about them. If you don't,
if you roster them, and you basically have a decision to make once
the new league starts, once they play a game under their new contract,
you're committed to them for the long term. So basically the decision made in
the offseason. If you want to drop them or trade them, then you
can do that. But if you keep them and they play a game under
the new contract, you're you're committed to them. I know. There are
also leagues that basically, you know, once when that player is a free
agent, you basically have like a bidding war and you can basically decide,
you know, and bid you know, fantasy dollars or fab budget or whatever
to acquire those players sometimes at UFAs or RFAs or dumped back into the player
pool, and so you only get them for you know, that contract.
That's to me, that's a little bit more extreme. I don't I wouldn't
like that as much. That would be a little bit harder to keep track
of, but it certainly would keep the player pull churning a little bit more
if that's something that you wanted. I know. There are also leagues like
you mentioned, where you you basically get to determine how long you sign a
player for and how much, and so that that, uh, that are
offers another layer of complexity that you have some input on, and so that
can be interesting. Um I don't I don't like those personally, because it's
a lot to keep track of, and then you're kind of stuck at the
whim of other people, other gems in the league that might over or undervalue
some people, you know, might say I'm gonna I'm gonna pay you know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna roster this guy for you know, seven years or
whatever the max is. You have to have a max um, but yeah,
that's what you you kind of have to to think about. And there
are always opportunities there that you can take advantage of. So guys that are
maybe under under valued, you have to kind of look at, Okay,
well who's coming off right now and who has a decent value? Those are
the guys I want to bid on for sure. Yeah, I think that
whole mechanics is a big element that is a variable four teams. You know,
whether when you sign a new contract, whether there's going to be a
limit to a contract or whether you're just going to keep on with a guy
forever. So but Victor, I think we've kind of run at a time
on the listening questions. Why don't we take a break to come back kout
the show band tracks, best places to play your salary cap fantasy leagues.
If you ask me, you can play ten different sports in fact, and
they will load the real any shell salaries in there. They can customize to
about whatever types of scoring format you want to do. And the twenty twenty
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start that trade back up again to something to keep everybody warm while they're getting
excited about hockey during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Anyway, There is a such
a thing as fantracks HQ, which is an element of fan tracks where there
are lots of articles about different fantasy sports, including fantasy hockey. There is
also a series of podcasts. There are some podcasts there on fantracks on other
sports that you can listen to. Ours is the one and only that pertains
to fantasy hockey. In addition to being part of the fan tracks podcasts that
work, we're a part of the Dabber podcast network. Dabber Hockey probably the
number one, I'm just gonna say it is the number one fantasy hockey site
in the business. They have all kinds of different elements to them, one
of which is Dabber Prospects great site one again, probably the best site in
terms of explaining prospects and hockey, especially with a fantasy slant. And sure
enough part of that is Victor Nuno who writes over there the Detroit Red Wings
and other things. Can you tell us about Dabber Prospects right now, Victor
and what people can look forward to. Yeah, we got some really great
stuff coming on, a bunch of new content that we're going to be putting
out. The editors are getting together and working on different rankings lists and starting
to work on the guide, the Fantasy Hockey Guide, which is the bible
for our prospects, the Dabber Prospects Guide. So definitely be looking forward to
that. And if you have any any input on any questions that hit us
up. I imagine Victor and the other great writers at Dauber Prospects kind of
like in a monastery type thing, chanting prospect rankings to one another. I
think that would be fun. Let's talk about Patreon. We are a podcast
that in addition to you can just listen to it, you can enjoy it.
You can get into our discord for free. We also have a bunch
of extra cool stuff in our Patreon victor, Why don't you tell them what
they can get there and what kind of opportunities it unlocks if you become a
part of it. Yeah, lots of great stuff over at the Patreon.
We have our Patron casts that are exclusive content for everybody. We have our
ranks that we're going to be starting to talk about as we go through the
team previews. We have our prospect ranking list as well in terms of in
addition to the tiers, and that's getting a huge overhaul as I mentioned on
the last episode. Hopefully that's already out now and people they want to sneak
preview of that, you can pit me up and I can show you a
little bit behind the curtain. It's pretty awesome. Helps you kind of think
about which teams have the best prospects, what are the best on each team,
you know, broken down by goalie, d forward, all that kind
of stuff. Great stuff, and you can get extra bonuses. Like the
Patron Priority Channel. We also have a scouting information We have a one note.
We have all kinds of scouting reports that are for each player and each
team or most players in each team, and if you contribute to that,
you can hit us up and potentially, even if you don't have any experience
scouting, you can try your hand at it and contribute to the team previews
and help us out a little bit and get a lot of great access for
yourself as well. So hit us up if you're interested in that. Yeah,
imagine that. That's extremely cool. If you're into the prospects scouting,
you can help contribute to these team proves, we'll give you a shout.
We love to bring in some of the smartest people we know, which are
our listeners. I have a second podcast is called Dynasty Sports Life. I
cover four different sports there, baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.
Generally the hockey content remains here, but I do cross sports stuff and I
do episodes like this week, we're gonna have an episode on about half of
the NBA draft prospects coming up for the summer's fantasy rookie drafts. But I
also over there have announced recently something called the Diesel, the Dynasty Sports Life
for sport Dynasty League. That is a league that will allow you to draft
four different teams in the four different sports, compete against other players who have
teams in all four leagues, trade players across sports. If you want to
get Connorbadard and you're willing to trade away Mike Trout, Hey, you could
do that if you could talk the other owner into it. And it's incredibly
fun. I've been playing in a three sport league for years and this is
something I've dreamed about doing for a long time. If you're interested, dym
sports Life is the Twitter, you can apply for it there. I want
to get information, don't just send me an email say hey, I want
to play, get in there. Register. Give me some information so that
I know what's going on, who plays what sports and can try to construct
this intelligently. Follow us on Twitter f An Hockey Life. Fan Hockey Life
is the Twitter for this podcast. Victor Nunio can be followed on Twitter at
Victor Nuno twelve viic tr n U n O one two. Subscribe to this
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