Speaker 1: Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by fan Tracks. Here'shit Cues,
your source of information and analysis to help you win
your fantasy hockey league.
Speaker 2: Bark Off has a step hit on stay lock.
Speaker 1: Here's your hosts, Jesse Severe and Victor Nuno Fantasy Hockey.
Speaker 2: Live once again. It is Jesse Severe, it is Victor Nuno.
Victor Nuno VP ring side. That is how you doing today, Victor?
Speaker 3: I'm good, Jesse. I am coming to everyone from a
different location, so if I sound funny, ologies for that.
But I'm down here in Arizona and I hain't spending
some time with the family. I have a question for you, Jesse.
You have to tell me if this is legitimate or not.
I'm doing a puzzle with my daughter, and you know
the way I always do puzzle is you frame the outside,
you get the straight edges, you make a little outline.
She know how big it is and where everything's going.
She is. I must have asked her like twenty times
and she still would like. She had this pile of
like blue puzzle pieces and she was just trying to
do this one little corner with hout that were all
middle pieces. And I'm just like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 3: Am I crazy? Is that the right way to do
a puzzle? Or is this? Is she like onto something?
I don't know? I was like, am I Am I wrong?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 3: Isn't doesn't everybody do it that way?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm just maybe I'm just off my rocker.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Victor. Listen, there is nothing in the
world that I think I enjoy much more than sitting
down and doing a nice one thousand piece puzzle. It's
a very it's a simple man's thing to enjoy, Victor.
I was literally doing a puzzle less than ten minutes
ago as we speak, and for a good part of
the evening. And I'm here to tell you, Victor, that
as a parent, there are moments when you can really
impact your child's life in a positive way, and you
are onto one right now. You have to instill that
there is only one true way to do a puzzle.
You start with that outside and then usually I will
try to get all the blue pieces, as you say,
get them all together, do your blue section. That's great,
but get the outside frame hemmed in first, Victor. Anything
beyond that is just it's not civilization anymore.
Speaker 3: Okay. See this is why we could be oh co
host co podcast friends, because yeah, if you would have
said anything different, I would have just hung up and
never spoken to you again.
Speaker 2: Sure I'm not a savage, oh boy. Yeah, I'm glad
that we came to that conclusion because puzzling is a
beautiful thing, and I'm glad that your children are taking
to it as one does. Victor. We don't have a
puzzle section yet on our discord, but maybe someday we will.
I don't know how you would. It doesn't seem like
a very social media friendly activity, which is maybe what
makes it's so wonderful. But there are wonderful social medias
and pretty much they're just our discord. That's it. Rest
of social media's everywhere, in all forms are awful. So
you should join it. And the good news is you
can join it for free. You just hit us up
and we'll give you a linking and pop in there
talk fantasy hockey. There's a few hundred fantasy hockey people
in there, just chatting it back and forth every day.
Victor's asking for ideas. Sometimes people are asking each other
questions and getting opinions and talking fantasy hockey. So hit
us up Fantasyhockeylife at gmail dot com, buy email or
Victor or myself on x at Fanhockey Life at Victor
Nuno twelve. But wait, Victor, there's more tell them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's lots more stuff if you want to help
out the show and get some bonus content. Someone was
just asking recently, where can I find good information about
hit some blocks or prospects. They're not posted anywhere. You're right,
my friend, they are not, and that's one of the
reasons we created the Fantasy Hockey Life player cards so
you can see all that great content and it is
available only to the ultra lifers. So if you want
to support the show, you can even try it out
for a month. You can get all that good information.
There's lots of other goodies too, like playing in the
Tier Dynasty, like patron Cast, like Patron Priority Channel, and
all kinds of cool extra bonus content getting someone on
one help. So go over to Patreon dot com slash
Fantasy Hockey Life if you're interested in that.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, Victor, we are going solo or going dual today.
Right after this little break, I will explain what's going happening.
Victor Unio, my friend. We are here today to talk
about some of the evergreen questions, some of the fantasy
philosophy type things. Just full disclosure, there were some different
plans for this episode because of a poor lack of
planning on my part. Essentially, he's in Arizona. He's not
supposed to be doing this right now. He's very graciously
back to help me out. But this is a good
opportunity for us. The season is underway, but we can
talk about some of the big fantasy questions and just
go back and forth on them a little bit. Tonight, Victor,
is that are you ready or is there anything about
the Arizona night that is making you feel philosophical? Do
you need to go out and be by a campfire?
Why do we do this or what.
Speaker 3: I don't know if anyone's ever been to Sedona, but
this area of Arizona is actually quite spiritual. A lot
of people say there's energy vortexs, so potentially that could
fit in nicely. I do not always. I don't always
feel those kinds of things, but when I'm here, I
do feel like there's a special vibe. I'm not sure
that I have spiritual experiences. Maybe I need a little
more peote to experience those. But I do feel maybe
a little extra philosophical being here, so I think it
worked out really well. Jesse.
Speaker 2: Wow, if Paote was in your future, Victor, I think
the whole episode would take a turn that might be
for the best. But yeah, we are going to have
some discussion and i'd cueue up a few things. So
I'm gonna take topic number one. Here'll introduce it, set
it up a little bit, and we'll get Victor's take,
and we'll get my take, and we'll just have a
really good time going back and forth.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: Here is my first topic, Victor, and it comes down
philosophically to how much value is the critical element in
how you select players, roster players, trade players, whatever like that.
What I mean is this in the draft season, this
is a hotter topic, but it's true all year round.
There is the old adage in the well worn school
of thought that says, any player is somebody won in
your team if you can get them at the right value.
If somebody slips, if a player who you don't even
think is necessarily going to stay healthy, and the ADP
for that player is number forty, and you can get
them at number eighty. Come on, at some point, don't
you have to take it? And that is I think
an approach a lot of people been very successful with
over the years. But I am here to tell you
that it is not the only strategy that successful players
over the years have used in a sense, because there
is also the school of thought that says, get the
players that you actually believe in, because the precision around
who is actually a value sometimes can be misleading, and
sometimes you're better off just saying, yeah, that guy's fallen
and falling, that's fine, But this other player here, even
though it's a quote, reach is better player. Okay, there
are tell And I was really thinking about this because
of I'm getting ready to go out to the Fantasy
Baseball Conference first pitch Arizona'll also be in Arizona, other
side of Arizona from you within a week here, and
they're like the high stakes fantasy baseball players come there.
And I remember hearing about a Fantasy high Stakes Baseball
play or NFBC wins hundreds of thousands of dollars. He's
won some national overall championships, and at one point he
told somebody that he's drafted in twenty three players or
whatever on his team, and he would bring a list
of like forty guys to the auction. He wouldn't even
bother really researching many more players than that, because he
knew the value some of these guys were going to
go out. He knew that they would drop into his range,
and he didn't care that it didn't look like as
good of a thing as other people will have. So
where am I going with all this? I guess I'm
looking for where you fall in the thought of do
you have confidence in contrary valuations that are so strong
that sometimes you're willing to thumb your nose at value,
so to speak? Or you a guy who says that
the smart money is always let the let the player
fall to you, Let the player fall to you, and
take what falls to you, and you will value. And
when what do you think about all this? Victor? Am
I making any sense? Do you need to stop and
go dose up a little bit before you answer, but
just to make sure this all makes sense what I'm
saying right now?
Speaker 3: No, I do think it makes sense. And I do
think actually a couple of things you said are really important,
and that is that valuations are often very flawed, and
so you have to keep that in mind. I personally
always like getting value. I think we talked about this
a little bit on the Shares episode. I try not
to get too attached to any players, although I certainly
have my favorites. I think we all do, and I
like to try to get them. But that's the thing
is that if you're getting value, what is value? And
is that correct? I think part of this also depends
on what kind of player you are, because if you're
a player who cares about trade value, then it doesn't
just matter what you think, it matters what everyone else
thinks too. So that guy you're talking about, I imagine
he's not trade a lot of those players. He's probably
just drafting them and sitting on them and sounds like
it's working because he's winning money. But if you quote
unquote reach on a lot of players, you might not
be able to trade them if that's something that's of
interest to you. Now, some people don't care, and they're
just like, I'm going to sit on my team and
I'm going to mind the wire or I'm gonna be
right or whatever the case may be. And that's fine,
but I think you have to bake that into the calculation.
If you're someone who doesn't care they're your guys, and
you are confident with your valuation, then you have to
be prepared to understand that not everyone's going to agree
with you. I think sometimes it's really tricky when you're
talking about value. You have to really tier these guys,
and sometimes it's really difficult comparing a veteran with a
known floor and a younger player with potential upside. So
those two might be here in the fifty point tier,
but they have very different floors and ceilings, and the
variability of the outcomes may be higher. So that's something
else you really have to pay attention to. I try
not to get stuck on my guys too much. I
think that if that's known to your trading partner, they
can really drive up the price and that can be
a problem, and then you might have to overpay. And
I think we talked about that on a previous episode two.
You can certainly overpay, and that can be a good thing,
but you can't overpay every time. At some point there's
diminishing resources and you just can't do that. And I
have done that in a couple of leaks where I've
overpaid to get my guy, and then you just don't
have as many resources to do anything else. So then
you're stuck. Okay, I got my guy, but what else
am I going to do now? And in one league
in particular, I've run out of assets to acquire anyone else.
I'm stuck with my team waiting for them to develop.
There aren't really free agents or anyone else to sign,
so I could maybe take on a contract or something,
but that's pretty much all I can do. So you
just have to make sure that you're not limiting yourself
in terms of assets. But I think all this really
comes down to, in my mind, and what you're talking
about is having the right valuation of assets. And nobody's
perfect with that. So you have to, I think, be
a little bit flexible with what your valuation is, and
I think that's where accepting value can be good. But
also I think a blend of these two is what
I'm trying to say, Jesse, is you have to have
a little bit of being happy getting your guy, but
also not being so dead set that you're willing to
pay so much more than they're potentially worth. Like, at
some point you just have to let go. Although I
understand what you're saying about that guy who just brought
a list of forty for a twenty eight man roster,
like at some point the law of diminishing returns, a
lot of those guys beyond a certain level just aren't
worth it. And I think we'll touch on this in
a later segment, but at some point you have to
just say, I need to get one of these five guys.
Maybe it doesn't matter which one, but I need one
or maybe two of them, And you just say I'm
willing to spend this much. But I think you have
to go into it with that plan and making sure
that you're sticking to it. Did that rambling make any
sense or sparkle any other ideas for you?
Speaker 2: No, yeah, it does make sense, And of course it's
a continuum. There is a continuum here. The interesting thing
about somebody going in and saying I know which guys
I want for my team and I'm going to take
them is that an extremely smart player and an extremely
poor player both could do that. That could be the
strate A cheve either one of them. You've got the
guy who might wander into the draft and say I
got the number one overall pick and dog on it.
I am I'm taking our Timmy Pineren and you can't
stop me. I'm a Rangers guy. I'm taking our Timmy
Pineren number one overall and you can't get reason with him.
That's somebody who just believes that's the right player. Now
what if he is. I guess, never be too arrogant
until everything goes on tape. But it's you have to
have a certain amount of contrariness in your opinions, and
then you have to decide how much you can actually
beat the system on it. Now, when I say about
that guy who brought in a very limited list, there's
two things you pointed out. One very important one. One
is that's a no trading league, so it really truly
doesn't matter what anybody else thinks of your roster because
there is no such thing as trading. And the other
is that to get the big money, basically your team
is stacked up against in rotisserie against a thousand other teams.
All thousand teams are occurring SATs, and so if you
have the same roster as everybody else, who everybody else
considers to be a value, you're going to lose anyway.
So really it does make sense in some ways that
a very contrary set evaluations is going to be the
only way to win. But yeah, I do. I traditionally
have been a value drafter, but I do think that
there is a logic sometimes to resisting a guy who
keeps dropping and you're just tempted to know, like, how
can this person's supposed to be going at fifty they're
not gone at one hundred yet why not? Sometimes you
know what, it's okay, it's okay not to take that person,
even if they're at that point, especially if you have
got like some existential question of is this player going
to play this year or not? It's okay not to
take them. It Valeri Nushushkin. If Valerie Nushushkin dropped to
pick one hundred and fifty in a draft and it
was a deep enough draft that like really still mattered
this year, would I draft him? Probably not, because I
just don't have any faith that anything good is going
to happen there. And now there's probably some recent news
that came out that you're gonna say actually has shed
light on this whole thing, But I think right now
it's just a whole lot of uncertainty. But Yeah, Victor,
I what you say makes sense. I think like you,
I'm trying to get in the middle of it a
little bit, but I think sometimes I can be a
little too low to value and I need to open
my mind to some of the get your guys type strategy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, I think that that makes sense about the
league that you were talking about with that guy, and
if you're all drafting from the same pool and it's
like Roto, it's one of those things too. It's like
when you're playing a playoff pool, you have to be
a little bit contraying. You can't just go with the
safe because if everyone does the same thing like you're
if everyone's picking the favorites, you're probably not gonna everyone's
gonna pick apart that roster and you're not gonna win.
So you need a little bit of that contrarian But
at the same time, you also can't just be like, oh,
I hate the Rangers. You're talking about the Rangers. I
hate the Rangers, so I'm not taking any of them.
And it's like a lot of good players. That's probably
not a good idea if you're going to completely avoid
certain guys for certain reasons, like at some point you
just have to take a step back and accept, Okay,
maybe I need to shift my evaluation. And Paneren, I
think is a great example with just how different his
seasons have been lately and how he's been shooting and
scoring more like, sometimes you just have to be willing
to change your mind on players and say, Okay, maybe
things are different here, or maybe they're not and he's
just shooting a ridiculous percentage. So really being critical with
your evaluation and I think bouncing off other people and
listening to podcasts like this and other people and really
trying to understand it from different perspectives because we're all
subject to our own bias and looking at it one
way is generally not going to be the most helpful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, for sure, Victor. Let's move on to
the second great question I've got here, And I think
this has come up organically in conversations that we've had
in the past, but I am going to maybe flesh
this out a little bit and have a little longer
dive on it. You're a prospect guy, and we've talked
about the funnel a lot, which of course is are
the concept we talk about on the show where the
range of outcomes for a guy is wider the earlier
they are in their development, and as they develop and develop,
the closer they get to their full performance level, the
better of an idea you have of where they're actually
going to settle in, whether they're really going to be
a star, whether they're going to be a marginal player,
whether they're not going to make it at all. You
get that picture. And my question is, maybe I'm desparing,
Maybe I just need a pep talk, victor maybe I
just need a good slap on the back, because lately, man,
some of these third tier guys in the deep leagues
that you trade for, because now every trade in a
deep league is going to get you Matt Veay, Mitchkoff,
and not everyone that's going to get you i'van Demedov.
Some of the time in these deep leagues, you're hustling
for somebody who, like on your list, maybe would be
ranked number seventy or number one hundred, and so I
went back and said, is that juice worth the squeeze?
Is it worth it for me to really grind to
try to get a level of prospect who's a little
bit better than what's on the waiver wire, and I
went back and looked, because I've done this with other
sports too, but I went and looked. I did some
googling to try to find a prospect list from ten
years ago, and I was able to get ESPN had
at the top fifty or the top one hundred from
Corey Primeman back in twenty fourteen. Opinions vary on mister
Primeent as a prospect analyst. He's still out there, he's
still kicking with the athletic But I was interested to
see his top fifty rankings in twenty fourteen, not the
two twenty fourteen draft, but a snapshot in time in
twenty fourteen of everybody who was everybody who had been
drafted by a team but was still a prospect, and
what his top one hundred were. Out of the top fifty,
I counted nineteen that had I had them at that
time and I still had them now, or I had
him for a good part of that time, I would
have been pretty happy about Rostering the whole time. And
then if I went to the bottom fifty of his
top one hundred, it's about half that. So all in all,
less than a one to three shot that a top
one hundred prospect is somebody you even want on your
team from something like that. And again, Prominan's take is
not necessarily and I don't think he claims for it
to be a fantasy forward take. He has a sort
of a different type of opinion. But man, I just
look at that list and it just depresses it. If
you hustled real hard in twenty fourteen and you ended
up getting Tanner Pearson in Anthony Mantha, who I didn't
count among the nineteen I said, I would be really
happy with it. Really, if you had Anthony Mantha for
the last ten years and you would been grinding and
grinding to try to get him, you would have been
happy two or three years out of that right to
various moderate degrees, and most of the time you'd be like,
what is this guy's at the bottom of my roster?
Dependent on the depth of the thing you'd you probably
would have spent a lot more time hoping for a
breakout from one of these guys than actually getting anything
worth of darn. And I don't know, Victor, everything is awful,
prospects are terrible, and I just never want to have
any of them again, unless it's a top five prospect.
Is this obviously the truth? Am I right to just
lose all faith in the prospected process?
Speaker 3: Of course I'm contractually obligated to disagree with that sentiment.
But no, it is frustrating. And I don't think this
has anything to do with a knock on Corey or anything.
I think if you look at anyone's list, there'd be
a whole bunch of hits and misses. I think it's
more just to I think you're talking about the idea
in general of how many of these guys are even relevant,
And I think this is Yeah, we talk about the funnel,
and I think there's a lot of things to talk
about here. So I think this is really good. I'm
glad you brought this up. I think that when it
prospects farther along, and with this list in particular, there
are some guys that were much closer to being NH
already and some that were farther away, So that always
makes it a little bit. But I think knowing what
someone is going to be, or having a better idea
of what they're going to be, as opposed to someone
who is still far away, it's really hard to make
that valuation. I think a really good example right now
is if you looked at maybe someone might say Zay
Perak versus like a pabl Minchikov or a Zelweger. These
guys are like in the NHL versus someone who's still
years away. It's really hard to make that comparison, but
it reminds me of a discussion I had with Dabber
about rankings. If you're talking about someone who's farther down
the funnel and they're already showing you who they are,
to me, that makes a really big difference. And if
someone is already playing numbers of games in the NHL
or having a hard time breaking into the NHL, that
tells you quite a lot about where they are and
what the status of what the team thinks about them,
and how likely they already translate to the top level.
So all of those things, his range of outcomes more narrow,
and you have more data and you have more of
an idea of what's actually happening. So for me in
that situation, like I think Zelweger's a really interesting conversation
because he's someone who's right now I'm actually writing about
him free p ringside, But he's someone who's playing. I mean,
he's as we're recording tonight, he scored a goal and
so he's breaking into the NHL. But if you look
at his time in junior, he was like the next
coming of cal mccarr according to some people, and he
was incredible. He's looking fantastic. But the more he and
then things were happening with the NHL club and then
Pavel Minchikov passes him and dryz Out gets traded in
the whole situation changes in front of him, and so
it's one of those things, and he's taken a little
bit longer to break in, which I don't think is
necessarily on him. So you just get a little bit
more data and it tells you something about what's happening.
And in particular, I think Daber is someone who famously
ranks guys that are farther down the funnel quite high
because of their proximity to the NHL. But another example,
I thought it was someone like Jacob Peltier, who I
can't remember how high he had him, but I think
it was like top five or something coming into the year.
It was really high. And I think that was almost
entirely because he's knocking on the door of the NHL,
but he's also someone who's taken a long time to
actually break in, and he's had some time in the AHL,
and it just he's one of those things where the
longer it takes, the more questions you have, and the
range of outcomes get more and more narrow, and he
starts looking like maybe a quad a guy, or maybe
a guy who's not going to score much in the NHL,
whereas some guys just step right into the league. And
we saw what jet lu Chenko is doing at such
a young age, super impressive, so that that kind of
raises your stock a little bit. So I think that
it's one of these things that it's interesting and you
have to think about all these contexts, and the more
someone shows you that they're closer to average, I guess
what I'm trying to say is that the more you
should be disinterested in that, because, like you said, these
guys that we're looking at, I looked at this list too,
and it's a really fun thing to look back. I mean,
like Jonathan Jurand is number one on this list, which
is hilarious because he's one of the least relevant guys,
you know, behind Neilanders, on this list, Sam Ryan Hrt
those kinds of things. So yeah, you definitely look through
in the top you know, you could quibble with some
of the top but then you start getting towards the
back half of the top fifty, and like you said,
a lot of these guys are not interesting. And that's
why people often ask me what do you think of
this guy? And I just usually often my answer is
I'm just not that into it. And the reason is
because what I'm trying to say is that he seems
like a guy who might be on your roster for
a long time and just never do anything, and then
you end up just dropping him and then maybe years
later they become relevant again, but they are not with
the original team they drafted him. And you can just
look at this list and find some examples like Max
Domi can be a Fantasy relevant player, but did you
hold him for tenure? Who would have done that? This
is jacob Ron, Anthony Manthe. You mentioned Robbie Fabre. There's
a bunch of guys Raquel who's gone up and down
in terms of value. So it's really that's one of
these things when you look at these lists, and that's
what I often ask myself, is this someone who of
you gonna want to hold the entire time, never drop,
and be a staple of your team for years to come.
Those guys are rare, right, And I like to think
we have more hits than misses, but everyone's going to
have their misses, and I think that the more someone
starts to show you their average, you have to just
pull the plug a little bit in terms of your
interest level. And I would rather drop someone who's going
to be like an average producer and take my chances
on getting some of these post hype sleepers, because some
of the guys on the back half of this list
have actually turned out to be relevant, but it wasn't
right away. It took a long time. Mac Matheson is
number sixty three on this list. He's pretty interesting and
valuable right now, but he went through phases where he
was nowhere near anyone's roster had much interest in him.
William Carlson has another one on here. I haven't Barbashev.
There were a lot of nothing years and then there
were some there's some decent years. So I think where
I kind of land on that is that if they're
going to be someone that I can probably reacquire labor later.
If I drop them and I don't have to hold
them the entire time, then I would rather do that
because I could always add someone as a post hype
years later and I didn't have to hold them the
whole time, and you get a lot of value out
of that. Sharon Govic is a classic example of a
guy who has been pretty relevant recently. But I doubt
most people draft and held him the whole time. So yeah,
it's an imperfect science, and I'm you know, we all
get stuff wrong, but I think I think you have
to shift how you think about it. Right when you're
drafting these prospects, of course, we're all getting really excited
about it, but you have to ask yourself, is this
someone I plan on drafting and holding the entire time,
or is this someone that might have a good pedigree
and I can get another asset for them. Or do
I just hold them for a year or two, which
is often my strategy, see if they continue to increase
their value or if they stagnate, I'm just going to
drop them. I think you have to be really aware
of the long term outcomes there, because drafting and holding
for five or six years and having them be a
you know, a superstar on your team is super rare
or anythink.
Speaker 2: I absolutely think that, yeah, and it really Yeah. The
thing is you look at a list like this was
like number eighty seven Braiden Point, number ninety eight Dylan Larkin.
And that's why and that's why this happens, is we're
all convinced we've got Braidon Point and Dylan Larkin in
our prospect systems, and just often enough we do. And
that's why you listen to Victor Nuno because he finds
these guys. But I think I'm going to chill a
little on the Josh Davies watch, even though I was
trying to get into my Florida Panthers prospect a little
while ago. I just think some of these intermediate guys,
if you can trade them at the right time, you're
going to get something out of them. But it's those
marginal guys like you talk about the Jacob Pelotier's are
just they're going to be an anchor on your team
more than likely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think some people underestimate how costly that is,
like it might seem you might. I think people are
averse to the oh I'm going to drop a superstar
before they really break out. I think that's often the concern.
How often does that really truly happen. I would say
it's pretty rare, but everyone's scared of that. But they'll
hold on to a Jacob Pelotier for six years after
he's drafted because you still think that he can be
a seventy point player. But that's actually pretty costly because
in that time you could have picked up any number
of free agents who got a new opportunity, got traded
to a new team, or finally broke out according to
their potential when it took overally long time and maybe
a couple of teams to really get that out of them.
It is the opportunity cost of having that roster space
and being able to take a chance on someone who's
still showing more promise, and not just continuing to anchor
your belief space on something that was happening years ago.
So I think the lesson here is just be a
little less attached to your guys. In the NHL, they
do this with players, They treat them as assets, and
maybe that's a little wrong because they are people. But
on your fantasy team, you have no control over that,
and you should treat them exactly like assets because you
don't know them, and you should just try to detach
yourself from the outcome of what's really going to happen,
because they may be on your team or they may
not be. But like you said, they can often provide
much more value if you trade them at exactly at
the right time, than they ever will on your roster.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, all right, Victor, we're going to take a break,
We're gonna come back. We got a couple more good
topics to discuss. Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself?
Speaker 3: Well, the only thing I can't figure out is how
to keep the change in my pocket?
Speaker 2: Victor. My next question inspired a little bit by you,
to be honest, and yet it's a broader topic in
play here than just that. And my topic is how
should we or should we not fan as we are
analysts making fan into a verb, of course. And I
know as the years have gone on and you've become
a real media professional, you don't identify as being a
Sharks fan the way that you were several years ago.
I think this is a natural progression that you hear
a lot of people who are in media go through
is when you start out, you are into a team
because you're young, you're trying to get into a sport.
Of course you're going to have a team that you
cheer for. But as time goes on, especially those in media,
will say I'm a fan of the league, I'm a
fan of the players. I do not anymore identify with
the launch. That is not what I'm doing, and that
makes a lot of sense. And so I'm not trying
to put words in your mouth because that's you might
have a different way that you'll put this. I know
for me, I'm a little bit torn by it. I
might have some maybe carve outs that I think are true.
But as we take a journalistic approach or also a
fantasy approach where we have to value players from all teams,
things can change a little bit. Can you talk a
little bit about your approach to whether you identify as
a fan of a team now in how you arrived there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a really good question, and people
may or may not realize this, but when you write
for a team as an actual journalist, a lot of
these sites are like fan sites. That's different. If you're
a fan site, then you're supposed to be a total
homer and pump up your guys. But most journalists with
any integrity, you first sang is you don't cheer for
the team, you're not a fan, And the reason is
you can. I think it's really impossible to be objective
when you're rooting for someone. I think inherently we all want,
especially if you're covering our team, you certainly want them
to do well, but you're not fanning for them. You're
not cheering. You're trying to be objective and really break
down what is happening, what's going on, And I think, personally,
I just think it's really impossible to do that, to
be objective if you're fanning. And I think part of
it comes down to what's your goal, what's your intention here?
And I think if your intention is to pump up
your team and talk about how great they are, then
clearly you're a fan. And if that's what you're trying
to do, and you're just trying to get everyone else
excited about your team, then that's fine. If your goal
is to provide media coverage for the team, like the
beat writers do, they're certainly not fans. They're trying to
be objective and bring you the information that isn't colored
by trying to see everything who rose colored glasses, And
I think the same is true for me. My intention
is to provide fantasy hockey analysis and try to decide
which prospects are best and if you're a fan of
a certain team that has right reason against other teams,
Like early on, people would often say this, Oh, you
just hate this prospect because they played for a rival
of the Sharks. If I was a fan for the Sharks,
I think that would be a real problem. And that's
partly why I don't do that, because I've heard a
lot of people say this. It's actually funny recently they'll say,
put aside my bias against this player. But this is
what I think right now, and it's no, you can't
do that. Your opinion in that context has been valid.
If everyone knows you have a bias for or against them,
how can they take you objectively seriously when you are
clearly have a hard time or or maybe it's impossible
to be objective in that context. So I think that's
where But it's really important that when I started writing
for the Sharks, which was the first sort of media
thing I did that was the first thing that I
had to say is no, I'm not a fan. That's actally.
When it started, even though I was still covering the team,
I wasn't really in my mind, allowed to be a
fan anymore. And then it shifted away from just the
Sharks to all prospects and looking at all different teams,
and I think that's particularly important. I see some people
do this pretty well. I'm not saying it can't be
done where you're a fan of the team, but you
provide some pretty objective analysis, and I think it can
be done. But I think it's extremely hard, and I
think that you're always going to have certain biases and
people will have to take that into context. And I
would like and hopefully this is the case for people
to be able to listen to things that I say
and not say he's just saying that because he's a
Sharks fanner, he's saying that because he doesn't like certain leagues,
or he's biased concertain things. Would I'm sure we all
still have our biases people were talking about. Prominent people
are saying, oh, he has a bias against short players.
I don't know that I would agree with that. I
think that he has seen the difficulty that short players
have breaking into the league, and he's using objective information
to help make his opinions, which I don't think is
a bias, it's a this is reality. And I think
that's what I try to do too, is say what
is realistic here, blending what's realistic with what is an
objective opinion. And I think all of that is really
hard to do if you're just fan boing for your guy,
And so that's where I come down on that. I'm
not saying it's impossible. I'm sure some people can do it,
and I've heard some people do it pretty well. But
I think that's that's why I decided to forego my
fandom about five years ago. Now when that's sort of happening,
and I continue to feel that way. Now, will I
ever be super ecstatic if the Sharks ever win the
Standy Cup. I'm sure part of me will still say, yeah,
that's really cool for all those guys in the organization,
But I'd like to think that it'll be just a
little bit more special than when another team that I
think deserves it would win, Like Nashville would be really fun.
They have a great city, and a great vibe there,
and I think there are a lot of other organizations
where I'd feel happy for them getting it done. I'm
sure the Sharks will have a special place, but I
think that anything beyond that is really it's clouding your
judgment too much, and I want to make sure to
do everything I can to avoid that. See.
Speaker 2: No, it makes a lot of sense, and I do
think of I'll be honest, I think of myself almost
as much as an entertainer as I am anything like
a journalist. I'm providing commentary on fantasy hockey and things
like that. You're writing and doing some of these things
in a bit more professional fashion than I am. To
be honest, I think I am a fan a little
bit differently than some people are though I and I'm
not talking about you. I'm just talking about the general public.
Like I've never been a guy who turns on the
TV and watches a game and like yells at the
TV or gets incredibly excited when something goes for or
against my team. It's just almost more like philosophical, like
you know, and I get nervous. I mean when the
when the Capitals won the Stanley Cup, I was quite nervous.
In fact, I found it almost impossible to watch those games.
I was glad I did watch them, but I find
them they were incredibly painful at those times. I do
wonder sometimes whether people identify me as is some kind
of a Capital's homer. But like I've said before, sometimes
I feel like the fact that I watch more Capitals
games than I watch other teams. That does mean some
nights Caps might be on and I might say I'm
just going to watch the Panthers tonight. And it's not
because I'm mad at the Caps or anything. Just we
try to watch a little bit of everything around here,
so it's not like I'm all the way in the
bag for them. I'm still perfectly willing to have Sidney
Crosby on my team any single day of the week.
There's not a bias against other franchises, I think because
of any perceived rivalries. But I don't know. I guess
I've just been trying to hold those things in creative
tension in my mind. Maybe at some point I will
think the same way that you are for my own
choices as far as is how I want to do things.
But I think for right now, I'm already fairly separated
from I think of myself as I'm not going to
I'm still going to say I'm cheering for a team.
I'm still gonna wear a Capital's T shirt from time
to time, but it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean
that I think I'm not seeing those players objectively. And frankly,
I got a long Logan Stankovic jersey too. We'll end
to wear that. It doesn't matter. Kicking a broad approach there, Victor.
But yeah, if you see I know it's one of
your least favorite things in the past. Not to call
anybody out, but when we've had people on the show
who very definitely have been Homer's for a team, it's
made for some fairly painful content, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think the thing is that people who follow
our team previous series probably realize that we have moved
away from those types of guests, And I think it's
for exactly that reason. If you have someone who is
clearly fan going for a certain player, and you say,
is he going to get seventy points? And yeah, definitely,
So do you believe that or do you believe someone
when they can sit back and say they don't have
to consider I want them to. They just have to consider, actually,
can they do it, how would they do it? How
much even strength time are they getting, how much time
on the power plant, how many powerful the points have
they got in the past, how many assists, the shooting
percentage high, all these things that we think about, And
maybe they don't have to say it in those terms,
but they're thinking about a realistic context for how this
can happen and not just trying to wish it into existence. Right.
So that's why I think having those kinds of guests
is just inherently flawed. Unless you just want to, you know,
shoot the bs about a certain team and just talk
about whatever, I don't necessarily find that it's helpful. So
that's partly why we've moved against that. And the other
thing I wanted to mention too, is that I've heard
some people say, I'm a fan of this team, but
I'm I'm super critical. Like I maybe on the other side,
like I think they're a little bit more pessimistic, which
I'm sure that can work to some extent, but I
still think you're gonna be biased. You may be biased negatively,
but you're still going to be biased because you might
say this guy is terrible defensively, and I don't think
he should play as many minutes as he does. So
if someone asks you how many points they're going to
get next year, you might use that negative context for
that player based on your feelings, which may or may
not be echoed by the coach, which sometimes we know
they play guys many more minutes than they should. I'm
looking at you, Ben Shrot. But anyways, there's a lot
of guys like that in the league, and when you're
a little too bought in for one reason or another,
that can make it hard to make an honest assessment.
So I'm not trying to say anyone's wrong for doing
it one way or there. Those are just some of
the reasons why I think it's important. And frankly, when
we had some of those guests on and they were
just clearly, yeah, I want that to happen. Yeah, that
sounds good, I just didn't find it as helpful, and
I don't know if anyone else felt that way too,
but I felt like I had a hard time believing
what they were saying when they were a little bit
too fanboy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're definitely not doing all of you out there
listening to the show a whole lot of good if
that's the type of content that we emphasize or we
promote here. So yeah, I think hitting that sweet spot
where you are more in tune than the casual NHL
watcher for a team, or you're the the or level
would be your flut ocian Zawa. Hear in that Bruins
locker room every day and you are incredibly well connected
and one of the best journalists in the business. Is
that that is where you can go to be in
the or level of these things. All right, let's set
one more topic to talk about here and just really
uh really trying to get into process stuff here. We've
talked about processes for how you set your lineups and
how you keep track of your leagues and all these
types of things. But I'm curious to the extent that
you do trading in season, Victor or I'm sorry, streaming
ads drops those types of things. I'm curious what types
of things you look for in terms of computating right now,
and I'm going to put three five things out there.
You can rank, rate, stack, these add other things whatever
you want to do with them. But some of the
things that I think are sometimes things to look at
one of them when you're trying to decide, Okay, I
need to pick up a player for this week, or
I want to pick up a player. You got your
recent performance in terms of some service numbers, as he
had three goals in the last seven days, line placement,
deployment moves, so and so has just moved up to
power play one. So I'm going to add them because
of that recent underline numbers. Of course, we all like
to talk about that we're looking at the underlying numbers
and if so, which ones guys who shouldn't be on
the waiver wire somehow or are due because you know,
somebody dropped them because they're down a little bit, but
now I'm going to add them, or the upcoming schedule.
I think that's another factor in there. What do you
look at as most important victor when you're trying to
make an ad.
Speaker 3: Are we talking specifically dynasty or redrafts or what are
we talking about?
Speaker 2: Because I was thinking more about redraft here, because obviously
the longer you're expecting to keep a player, then the
more you are likely to go into the long term
underlining number type things. And I think that's if I'm
really like, I've only got a few moves to make
this season. But after a certain point, every league, including
a dynasty league, turns into a redraft league because you're
doing the tactics of trying to win the HW. So
if you're picking up somebody for maybe he's not mister right,
but he's mister right now. What are the things that
you look at to say, of all the players that
I could take for the next month or the next week,
this is the one I'm gonna pick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a good question. And yeah, the
more you get into dynasty, there's that narrows the options
a bit, because in some dynasties that are deep enough,
it's just whoever's available or limited options. And as you
get more into keepers and more shallow leagues, and there's
more things to consider. I think, so it's a more
interesting question. I wanted to address the idea of someone
being due. I just think that's a ridiculous idea. I
don't think it really exists. Quite frankly, if you being due,
I personally this is maybe my bias opinion, but I
think someone who believes in that doesn't understand math, because
it doesn't really work that way for the most part.
There are some events that are like, if you have
someone shooting one percent and their career average is twelve
or something, then to some extent you expect that to
regress to the me and I understand maybe you could
say that being due, but there's nothing that says someone
can't go on a twenty game cold streak and not score.
And if you drad someone game ten of that streak,
you might be in for ten more games of them
not scoring. Right, It doesn't mean that they're necessarily going
to start scoring, none of that. Like each event, each
game is one of these random events where the outcome
could be zero, one, two, three, four, whatever, however many
points and so it's essentially like a new coin flip
every time to some extent. So I don't really believe
in that idea at all, Jesse, And you can tell
me if I'm missing something there, I definitely look at
I think the schedule is the most important thing in
terms of just that specific league. I was just listening
to some of our friends podcasts about who's on the
top line in this, and frankly, that kind of noise
just really bothers me, because, oh, this guy had got
on the top line in the last three minutes of
the game when they were up four to two. It's
who cares is not going to continue? We don't know
like that. So sometimes I just seem like it's I
feel like it's too much in the weeds. If someone
now on the opposite side of that, I might be
too slow to react and someone might go pick up
that player and they might stay there for three or
four games. And I understand that, and I'm willing to
accept those losses because I personally want to see it
for a little bit longer. I want to see that
top and that the deployment changes certainly matter. I'm not
saying they don't, but I think they need to be
a little bit more sustainable, Like I would say at
least a couple of games, if not obviously longer. But
then you're playing a game of chicken, or how long
can I wait until someone else adds him? So there's
a bit of that. And if it depends on your team,
if one of the really underlying or one of the
really underused strategies and redraft is if you're pretty unlikely
to win, like you should just pack it in and
stack your team for the next week. You know what
I mean, because there are times where like this happened
to me last week. I was getting destroyed about seventy
points on Monday, and I was just like, Okay, this
is it's not gonna be my week. And so the
earlier you can accept that, the better, and then you
can turn around and now I'm competitive in the set
and this third week against someone I probably shouldn't have been,
but I added, I used all my ads last week
to stack this Monday, and so I got a bit
of a head start. Probably the other guy did. So
I think really playing the schedule and understanding where your
team is at and where it's realistic to go, I
think is really important. And in terms of recent performances,
there are a couple things that I like to look at.
I like to look at roster percent that gives you
just a general idea of maybe someone's out there who
shouldn't be. Maybe there's a good reason why, maybe they're
out for a long time, or maybe they're just ice
cold and have poor deployment, but people have been rostering
them because they thought they'd be get good deployment. So
I think that's one quick screen of a way that
I like to look at it. I also like to
look at like the last fourteen days or so and
just see who's doing what. I'd like to look at,
even if they're not scoring. Look at shots in terms
of just raw numbers, and time on ice is another
big thing I look at because oftentimes, if I'm looking
for someone to stream, I don't want someone playing twelve
minutes a night. At least give me someone who's playing
eighteen to twenty. There's sometimes double the amount of time
that you can expect to do something. That's a big one.
Early on, I didn't really look at that, and I
realized I was streaming guys that were playing like eight
or nine minutes a night, and it's what, Yeah, what
did you really expect them to score in those nine minutes?
But they might have had a couple of points in
game beforehand, So the numbers look good in terms of
underlying numbers that I definitely like to go and look
at like evolving hockey and just look at who's driving play,
who's individual expected goals on the team is better. I
also that helps me to pick up guys who maybe
are producing yet but or do and individual corsi four
is another thing you can look for, that's who's driving
shots and who's generating even if they're not converting or
maybe their linemates aren't converting. And on the other hand,
I also like to look at corsi against and expected
goals against because that tells me someone's deployment is probably
going to drop if they're really maybe they're getting lucky
and they're scoring some points, but they're not driving play well.
I think there if you see that oftentimes there's deployment changes.
They maybe moved off the line, or they maybe move
down the lineup, and you might want to get out
before the bottom drops out. So I think there's a
couple of different ways to look at. But for the
most part, I think in most free draft leagues you're
looking at guys that just fit the schedule. I think
that's pretty much like one, two, and three for me,
and then I look at some of those under underlying things.
The only other thing I would add is that sometimes
you want to see who might be a season long hold,
because there are always these guys that are forty to
fifty point players and like top of the waiver wire,
and then they break out and become full roster players.
And probably will be for a long time. But you
want to catch those guys obviously while you can. And
those are the league winners, guys that were free agents
and then they turn out to be seventy plus point
players if obviously you want to take a look out
for those guys. So oftentimes those are prospects for getting
the right number of games. Or there's someone who has
always had a good pedigree but didn't have the right
opportunity until right now, and now all of a sudden,
they're playing eighteen to twenty minutes a night. Okay, now's
the time to potentially hold them for the whole season,
because before that they might have been producing but in
just not enough time. So those are some other things
I look at, Jesse, what do you think about those ideas?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I those are good takes on this, Victor, I do.
I love I love putting the thing together. We started
this episode talking about puzzles like put it together, like
a jigsaw puzzle of how many games can I fit
into my lineup by the end of the week and
how am I going to get those games? And all
the things you talked about are things to take into
account sometimes though, like you said, just the quick and dirty,
the who's been producing lately, the who has the higher
roster percentage, other news that you glean very frequently. I
find you need to win. You need to win the
matchups you can win. You should be going for it
this week when you can't do this week anymore. Like
you said, maybe you have the time to get a
little ahead of things to stack against next week. But
that's the that's the game you're constantly playing, is trying
to find a way to be successful in the here
and now. So I do is I take the quick
and dirty of what are the last fourteen day? I
wear the fourteen and thirty day buttons for passtats out
on my computer. I'm always looking at what have they
done for me lately to try to figure out that
it's a proxy. Yes, there's some luck involved there too,
but especially when you're looking at things like peripheral peripherals,
or you're looking at time on ice, those types of things,
like you said, Corsi four could be a nice approximation
for it as well. But those are the types of
things that I'm looking at.
Speaker 3: Victor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're simpatico on these things, don't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think for the most part, I think we
all have slightly different things that we may look at.
I know some people who are absolutely looking at who
hasn't been scoring and maybe getting last line top deployment
and just expecting them to be due. I don't know
how well that strategy works, but there are a lot
of different ways that you can. The thing is, we
often just remember our hits, right. We don't necessarily remember
the fifteen times it didn't work, but we can remember
the two or three times it worked really well. And
I think if you're just really trying to be honest
with yourself and look at what you do and see
what actually works the most frequently and not what worked
that one time and you picked some random guy who
like scored two goals and you know, so you think
that strategy was more useful, really try to be critical
about it and say, okay, no, what really truly works
for me? And I think personally for me, I've just
found that sometimes those in game where one game line
changes aren't enough for me to want to react because
it often isn't really that helpful. And just playing the
numbers game in the schedule because by large and redraft,
unless there's a limit. The team with the most games
played typically wins more often than not, so just playing
that game and forgetting everything else for the most part,
I think is a winning strategy.
Speaker 2: E meant to that victor. This has been a great
ride through some of the great fantasy debates. Thank you
for taking the tour with me. Man. We'll be right
back to close out of the show before we call
on ourn episode. A couple more things. Our show is
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