Speaker 1: Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by fan Tracks. Here
shits your source of information and analysis to help you
win your fantasy hockey league.
Speaker 2: Block off hot a step hit on, staylock.
Speaker 3: Here's your hosts, Jesse Severe and Victor Nuno.
Speaker 4: Fantasy Hockey Live back once again to talk fantasy hockey.
I am Jesse Severe fan Tracks, and it's also Victor
Nuno of Elite Prospects. Victor. How you doing. Wait, No,
Victor's not here. Victor's not here. You would think I
would know that before I get started. No, I knew.
I'm fooling with you. Here's the deal, Victor and I were.
Our schedules have been crazy. I know we've been saying
that for a while. It's been true for a while.
But Victor is going to be well heard on this
episode in just a little while. But before we get there,
let me start us off. We have a discord you
can join, and you can get there by emailing this
Fantasyhockeylife at gmail dot com. We have a Patreon Patreon
dot com slash Fantasy Hockey Life. By the way, don't
do that from the Apple app. I happen to know
you get a big cut taken out of it. You
have to pay extra. Don't do it. Go to your
website of Patreon dot com and subscribe. Victor's got all
kinds of cool things there, access to some additional statistics,
some wonderful visualizations, and other cool and sundry stuff. Roster Doctor,
Victor ogo and look at your roster and to do
like a whole hour chat with you about it. So
many cool things you ought to try it. Well, today,
here is the deal. We've got an interview. It's between
Victor and a guy named Kevin Oustigee, who does something
called Windmill Dynasty Hockey. If you're familiar with Fantasy Football's
Campus to Canton format, that is what Kevin is doing.
That is leagues that go all the way from the
juniors to the pros. Dynasty leagues. It's an amazing, amazing
thing that he's doing there. Victor participates in one of
the leagues, as you'll hear in this interview. So let's
without further ado, let you go Victor interviewing Kevin Ostagee,
and they're gonna talk not only about that format, but
about some timeless commissioner questions right after this.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm pleased now to have with me Kevin Ostigee,
who commissions several deep leagues, so we can chat a
little bit about league design, setup and being a commissioner.
Speaker 3: Kevin, how are you doing today?
Speaker 5: I'm doing great. How are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm doing all right as you can hear.
Speaker 2: My voice is still a little struggling with some after
effects of a cold, but I'm doing well. I'm excited
to talk to you. You have been doing these leagues
for several years now, and I'm in one of them.
Speaker 3: As we'll talk a little bit more about later, But.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering what was your inspiration to start all these leagues,
or at least the first one.
Speaker 5: So my inspiration was actually from a fantasy football league
I was in called Campus to Canton and it was
a very similar format that I started here with Prospects
to Pros, where you have a pro team and you
have a junior team and you get points for both
and that way, if you're rebuilding, you still have something
to focus on and to contend in. So that's that
was my overall inspiration to when I started this, And yeah,
it was two or three years of trial and error
and a lot of error on my part. And I
guess you've been unfortunately in the league that's suffered through
many of them. But we can get into that a
little bit later if you want so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember first hearing about this. I think
I think the first league was already going. I think
you call it dynasty thirty two and then there's thirty three.
Speaker 3: Then what do you up to thirty eight?
Speaker 5: Now, yeah, thirty eight. We have one spot left, so
we're going to be starting that one up this summer
in thirty nine forty. However, many leagues people want to be.
Speaker 3: In until your head explodes.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing about it and thinking, like you said,
you have a prospects a team essentially, and they acquire
points from whatever league they're in. And I remember thinking,
this is really cool. You can have both aspects. It's
a little bit we don't there's not really a good
format to track, and it's not like fan tracks will
do it for you, so essentially you have to do
it on your own. So that makes it a little
bit interesting, but it's it helps to keep track of
some of these players around the league, around the world,
and I think that was an attractive part of it. It
seems like that's a decent selling point for some other
people as well.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's I think the biggest selling point. I talked
to a lot of people about making it optional because
the added forty dollars of having it's tough for some
people to league can say I have to give forty
dollars for a Prospects League where I'm not going to
get any of that back. Granted, we do have prizes
if you win the Prospects League, and I've added a
bunch of different prizes and tournaments and everything, but that
is a tough part for a lot of people who
are winning in the NHL and aren't focusing on the
Prospects League. But if you're someone who loves to rebuild
and loves to build a dynasty, then that is the
big selling point. Like that is especially if you live
in a town that has a junior team. You can
go and watch the Kingston front Acts and say, oh,
like Jacob Pataglia's scored tonight, I get I'm going to
have a five point night and that's awesome. Whereas if
you live in Finland, you can get points for just
about anyone in Finland as long as they have anygel affiliation.
So it's definitely the selling point I think for prospects
to prose and that's why I wanted to share it
with so many people because I think it just adds
another element to going to the rink and watching your
favorite junior players.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and one thing that you know, I don't
I think we've talked about this a little bit. I
am in the league and I am in the discords,
but it is a lot of noise sometimes for me,
so I have a hard time keeping up. But if
you're really into that, one thing that's nice is people
are constantly posting information about this player you know, had
a good game, or this is happening. So there's a
lot of just discussion and bringing all the names and
the news and the events to the forefront, which I
think is really great, and so it helps. It helps
to have a really discussion place, and especially because you
have people in all these different leagues six different leagues
now or whatever, so you know you have a lot
of people in that must be hundreds of gms at
this point, all looking at this from a similar lens
and with that passion.
Speaker 3: So I think that's a real bonus too. I would
imagine yeah.
Speaker 5: I think one thing I wanted to do is I
wanted to create a format that was it was universal
and it was uniform, and I wanted it to be
so that if you built a team in one league,
you could say, I'm not just the best in my league,
I'm also the best in for single league. And that's
that's why I created the Champions League, where you're gonna
be competing in that one this year. And I'm really
excited for that because you know, you get to say, hey,
I'm the best potentially GM in prospects to pros and well,
you and Mason Black. To be fair, it's a team
effort for you guys, but it's exciting, like it's you
get six leagues and you get the thirty two highest
scoring teams throughout all of them, and you just say
who's the best, and it's a head on head and
or head to head the tournament. And I've got one
guy in my format who's got five teams going to qualify.
Might be some conflicts of interest through the tournament, but
we'll figure that out later. Hopefully with more leagues, we'll
get more talent and it'll just make the whole tournament harder.
And harder to win.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: At the shout out Mason, I was interested in this league,
and I went to him and said, I want to
join this league.
Speaker 3: But I can't.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do it on my own because
I have too many leagues. And so we paired up
and it's been really fun. I'm a huge fan of
co managing teams together. I just think it's really nice
to bounce ideas off people, and when you have a
star like Mason, that's obviously really nice to be able
to pair with him. But yeah, we can talk a
little bit more about how we did in our league later,
but this champions Yeah, it's really fun. Tell us a
little bit more about that. So is it from all
the leagues a certain teams qualify? Explain a little bit
more how that works.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, because all of the leagues within Prospects to
pros have the exact same rules within the startup draft
has the same rules for each league. Now, that was
one issue we had was we allowed startup draft trades,
which completely messed with the league for a little bit.
But we're getting through it. But yeah, so now that
all of the leagues have the exact same rules, it's
a uniform format, and it's all of the teams go
into basically like a big spreadsheet, and it's just the
thirty two highest scoring teams automatically get entered into a tournament.
So if you've got three teams and if you've got
one that's rebuilding, you're obviously not going to have that
team qualified. But if you're lucky enough to have a
really good team, you've probably got to be about top
five in your dynasty league to qualify for this tournament.
Depends on the league. Some leagues are a little bit
behind right now because there's teams haven't gone all in yet,
Like they haven't traded all their draft picks, they haven't
traded all their prospects. So there's still a lot of
teams that haven't you know, jockey through position yet. But
it's going to be really fun over the next two
to three weeks because that's when the tournament will start
on March the second. I believe that's the Monday, makes
sure here, that would be it starts on March the third. Okay,
so it's going to be it's a thirty two team
tournament and it's just one B thirty two to B
thirty one, three, B thirty all the way down, and yeah,
I think it's going to be right now. I think
you're in eighth or ninth place, Victor. It's you're in
really good position, and it's going to be a lot
of fun because with six leagues, you've got one hundred
and ninety two teams right now that are totally in
total competing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've we've not been doing as well as I
would have liked this year, but we're still fourth in
the league and so you can't complain about that. You
also did a World Junior thing that was really fun.
Do you want to tell people about that. I know
I was in that and I didn't win, but I
did Okay, I think I.
Speaker 5: Think you were in the top ten. So it was
I did a World Junior lineup challenge where you just
picked six defenders or sorry, six forwards, four defenders and
a goalie that were participating in the World Juniors and
whoever had the highest scoring submission one one hundred dollars.
So it was the cool thing about with my format
is that we're scoring players all throughout the world. And
one change that we made this year that I think
was just a key change to improving the format was
adding pro rated scoring, which means that if you have
Ivan Demidov in the KHL, you get three points for
a goal, as opposed to like Jacob Atteglia and the OHL,
who would get one and a half points for a goal.
It just means that if you're scoring a goal at
the highest level of hockey in the world that isn't
the NHL, you have to be rewarded for it at
a higher level. So that's definitely a different element. But
the World Junior Challenge that I ran was pretty awesome. Actually,
it's the first time I've done that, and it was
I had fifty two or fifty three submissions overall this year,
and I'm hoping to get hundreds or thousands next year
if more people know about it. I'm happy to be
on your podcast for that reason, because I don't really
podcast very often. I'm too busy running all the leads
to do too much outreach. I do appreciate this, but yeah,
it was a great tournament that I ran. I think
it was someone who picked almost all Americans and Swedes
ended up having the highest score because most people had
at least three or four Canadians on their team, and
Gavin mckenno was in thirty five or forty submissions. Matthew
Schaeffer was in so many that was unfortunate. It was
really interesting though, because it was not many guys picked
Americans or all Americans. I was surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was really interesting. I think I finished third.
I was in the lead for a little while, but
I did have a couple of Canadians. Even though I
had a lot of Americans and Swedes I didn't have.
Speaker 3: I didn't have enough to pull it out.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's really funly. And you mentioned the pro
rated scoring. That was something I know we talked about.
I felt very strongly that it should be pro rated
and something that Mason and I took advantage of when
that wasn't the case because we realized, hey, you can
just have players from these lower level leagues and their
scoring counts counts just as much and they're just tearing
it up, Like why not flood your system with these
lower level leagues. And I do think it makes more
sense to have it pro rated because those players that
are playing in more difficult leagues typically it translates better
to the NHL, So I think it makes sense that
it would also be the same in your minors league
as well. So I like that change, even though it
did hurt maybe a little people who were taking advantage
of that role. I think ultimately it strives for the
best league, which I'm always a fan of.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And if there's one thing about prospects to prose
that I think a lot of people sometimes struggled with
early on, was there was all going to be changed.
I was trying to grow a format that was not
only consistent, but it was fair for everyone, and it
gave everyone a chance to share their opinion and have
their opinion shape the rules. I didn't want it to
just be like one person or a group of five
or six deciding rules for everyone. So that was one thing.
Like with pro rated scoring, that was one thing I
actually don't think I allowed people to vote on. That
was just something I decided why I'm changing this because
it needs to be brought in. I can't have the
CHL completely dominating prospects to pros every year because it
just devalued so many other prospects to the point where
you had who was it like you had six round
picks in the CCHL being traded for outrageous amounts because
it was like, oh, this guy can help me win
a championship, and it's okay, I get it, but I
also don't want this happening because it's bad for leagues
long term if you have low level prospects just being
traded for prospects league titles. Quite what I designed the
format for. I still wanted to be more realistic, and yeah,
it's It was definitely a great addition though, because it
also forced me to start an entire database, Whereas, like
when I first started this, I was tracking individual lineups
each week, and that was time consuming and it was
also redundant because I was tracking players multiple times. I
was going through game box scores twice and three times
to get if you had to go to anyone who
had London Nights players, You're going through that box score
like eight times, going through like the twelve guys they
have on their team that have affiliation. So it just
became a nightmare. So I said, I want to track
every single NHL affiliated player every single week, and that
way we have consistent data and we also have it
just created a better product, I think for everyone. So
it was a needed change, but it was it added
a lot of work, so I will say adding the
five and six other leagues the summer was also a
way for me to get some more volunteers, some more helpers.
It's created a really good database, and I've made it
worth their time to help out as well. So helping
out in prospects to pros will be worth your time.
That's one thing we'll say to new people. I've made
sure all my guys got tickets to games one way
or another. So it's been a really good It's been
really fun running this for a few years. I will
say it's it was a dream of mine to start
something like this, and I had some time on my
hands a few years ago during COVID and that's when
I spawned the idea and tough summer just getting as started.
But because we didn't even have we didn't have a
salary cap when I started this. All the first league
came in like there was no salary cap. You could
have unaffiliated players, so guys, we're taking like players from
the AJHL who were just ripping it up. So I
know Josh Lawrence and the Q and JHL. He was
he helped me win in the first year. That's when
I realized we have to cut this down to only
affiliated players. And then we also had one team who
had one hundred and thirty million dollars in cap, and
I was like, Okay, we need a salary cap because
this is not realistic at all. There's just been a
lot of change. But I think last summer I started
four leagues, and all of them this year have run
really smoothly, if anyone can attest to that. That's the
one one thing I'm really happy about is I learned
my lessons from the first two that I started, and
I've really come up with a consistent product now, so
I'm excited to grow it further. But yeah, we'll just
see how much demand there is and we'll go from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to get into some of those other
things in the second half, but before we do that,
I just wanted to mention that I one of the
things that Kevin and I are Kevin, that Mason and
I first realized when we joined is that there was
a much bigger prize for the pro winning the Pro League,
and so we put all our efforts into winning the
Pro League and not really into the minors thing. So
even though that was The main attraction for us for
joining the league was like, oh.
Speaker 3: This is cool.
Speaker 2: There's a whole miners league that we can track and play.
We pushed all our tips into winning the Pros instead,
which was funny. So I haven't even paid as much
attention to that part because I was really trying to
win the Pros. But I still think it's a really
cool format and really excited to dig into that a.
Speaker 3: Little bit more.
Speaker 2: So before we do that, we're gonna take a quick break,
and then we're gonna come back and talk about some
things that I know you wanted to talk about, Kevin,
So be right back with Kevin ostigate with the prospect
of prost.
Speaker 5: Selfish shocking. That's right, selfish hocking.
Speaker 3: Break it down, skates, don't got its head.
Speaker 5: It's still gonna be there when you sat jumps.
Speaker 4: On taking coach coach talking for a shot.
Speaker 5: Bad balance. That's a good breakaway.
Speaker 2: Gotta get the bounced boys, and we're back. And if
you are just joining us or forgot, we're talking with
Kevin here, who runs several deep dynasty leagues, and I
know that you had some questions for us to ponder,
for us to discuss together and We've had some great
conversations over the years. I've been a commission for many years,
not quite leagues to this depth or complex. So I
really applaud you for setting all this up and happy
to always share my thoughts as you're going through and
learning a lot with this whole system. So why don't
you take it away, Kevin and let us know what
you are thinking about.
Speaker 5: Yes, I've learned a lot commissioning in the last three years.
What I wanted to ask you is, what are the
biggest lessons you have learned as a commissioner in your
time running fantasy hockey leagues.
Speaker 2: I think one of the biggest things for me is
that when you're running a league, just like any kind
of leadership position, you really have to think about what's
best for everybody.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of times, not.
Speaker 2: From you, but I think I've seen this in some
other commit from some other commissioners, and certainly from other leaders,
is that they're pretty self centered about what they're getting
out of the league. It's what they want, it's what
works for them, it's their vision, but they're not really
thinking about the whole league. What is incentivizing the top teams,
the middle teams, the bottom teams, to have a good time,
to have camaraderie, to enjoy themselves.
Speaker 3: This is supposed to be fun. If you're making decisions that.
Speaker 2: Just really help some people or really ostracize others, that's
really not good for a league and it's not sustainable.
You may make a decision that is nice for you
or one person now, but then you have to be consistent.
You have to be consistent. You can't go you can't waffle,
you can't go back and forth. You have to make
good decisions that are good for the entire league, for
the integrity of the league, and for the longevity.
Speaker 3: Of the league. And that is not easy.
Speaker 2: So I think that's one of the biggest things is
to really take a broad scope of what makes sense,
what is the goal and mission of the league. A
lot of times for me, and I think it's true
for this league, is you try to mimic what the
NHL is, That's what a lot of these leagues are
based on, or what a real team would do. So
you try to have that fulcrum of what is realistic,
what is real, what a real team would do. Would
a real team make this trade, would two real teams
make this trade. Would two real teams make these decisions?
Does this make sense? Does it reinforce good hockey, good play,
good sportsmanship, all of those things. Trying to really be
realistic about it. If you were really Gary Bettman and
had these decisions, is this kind of how you would
run it? And so that's what I always try to
think about. It's not easy, and you're always there's always
going to be people that are unhappy. But I think
for me, if people are unhappy because it doesn't help them,
I'm fine with it. If they're unhappy because it doesn't
make the league seem right or doesn't seem fair to
everybody that bothers me.
Speaker 3: So that's really where my fulcrum is.
Speaker 2: I want it to be fair for everybody and give
everyone an equal shot, as opposed to if my league
champ is upset because this hurts them and they're the
only one that's upset, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's I've struggled with, definitely waffling. Just in
the last week, I've had a pretty rough go in
our league with an issue that I'm not going to
get into that on the podcast. We had some unique
circumstances because I allowed trades during a startup draft and
it allowed a few teams to build a squad that
is a little bit a little bit overpowered. We're going
to put it that way. Yeah, that our league is
a little bit unique to the rest of the format
in certain regards. It's the only league that I would
say has a daily daily chat. Most leagues, you don't
really hear it much in the general banter all too
often because it gets all put into the Prospects to
pro server that I run that combines everyone, so that's
more of a hangout now. But yeah, it's tough, Like
I've really struggled being consistent on certain issues because public pressure,
individual pressure. It's definitely something I do struggle with. And
I commend to anyone who's a commissioner that can just
be put their foot down and say I'm doing it
this way because it's right. That is always my goal
and I try my best to get there in the end.
But yeah, it's I'm not perfect, and I try to
learn from my mistakes, and that's the biggest thing where
I'm still learning. So there's I'm never going to be
arrogant enough to assume that I know what's best and
I know what is right, so it's I always try
to bring it up to as many people as I
can and say, what's your opinion on this? How you feel?
I always try to I always try to ask you
questions personally because I know in the server it gets
so hectic, and I just say, hey, I want to
talk to Victor because I know this guy is smart
and I know he has a lot of experience. And
that's one thing as a commissioner, it's great when you
have experienced people in your league that you can lean on.
Because when I started this, I was sewing over my
head and I still am in a lot of ways,
but I kind of learn as I go and I
just try to do the best I can. So that's
one thing I really appreciate, though, was having experienced gms
that I can't lean on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that's really key.
Speaker 2: I think it's really key to lean on people having
one on one conversation. Sometimes in the group chat, people
will just gaslight things and they're just you got these
stuff stirs people who like to just say things, and
this league chat is no different. I have leagues that
have that too, and people just want to say things
to rile others up and they think it's fun and
it's okay whatever. But also it's hard to have a nuanced,
reasonable discussion.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when there's a lot of that going on.
Speaker 2: So I think it's really useful to just have one
on one discussions. And we'll get into some other thoughts
on that in one of your upcoming questions.
Speaker 3: So why don't you go ahead?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So my next question for you would be, this
is something we've struggled with a lot. Is I know
you are not a fan of trade vetos. What are
your reasons for being anti vito? And what advice can
you give to commissioners on how to deal with vetos
within dynasty leagues, within redrafting. It's a universal issue throughout
just all fantasy sports because you don't see trade vetos
almost ever in real life. Like I can think of
the Chris Paul trade that was vetoed by David Stern.
That might be the only one in my life, but
I can think of, Yeah, how would you recommend commissioners
to deal with this?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: The reason I don't really like vetos is there's a
couple of reasons.
Speaker 3: It depends on how you said it. Set it up.
Speaker 2: But I think in dynasty, for the most part, it's
easy to say initially.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's such a lopsided trade.
Speaker 2: And then things can change, things can shift over time,
those picks can be used wisely, prospects can develop or not,
and so it's really hard to judge in the moment.
Speaker 3: So that's always that's one thing.
Speaker 2: In redraft leagues, I think it's a little easier when
people unload McKinnon and Crosby and Evan Bouchard.
Speaker 3: For guys they just picked up off the wire.
Speaker 2: That is ridiculous and is uncompetitive for the league and
not really helpful to anyone except the player receiving those
And that's I think where you really get into an issue,
and in that type of situation, I wouldn't be opposed
to that. I think the where I really have a
it and one of the issues frankly, that I have
with the way you set up your league, which we've
talked about this is not news to you, but I
don't like that people in the league have a say
over what is vetoed and what isn't and the problem
that everybody has a vote. And I understand like being
democratic and all, but people in the league literally vote
along whether this helps them or not. If it hurts them,
they vote against the trade. If it helps them, they
are fine with it. That to me is a huge
problem because you're not saying whether this is good for
the whole league. You're saying whether this is good for
you or not, and that, as I said earlier, to me,
really should not be the fulcrum of where you're trying
to decide this. If a trade is truly unfair, someone
is just selling peanuts for massive improvement. And I would
argue there is a team in our league that has
done that and gotten away with, not us. The team
that has gotten away with some really lopsided trades. They're
in first place right now. And I haven't squawked at
all about that because I firmly believe that if both
sides are okay with it, then it should be allowed.
I have not vetoed a single trade. We did have
one of our trades vetoed, which made me very upset.
But the reality is that I think if there really
is an uncompetitive trade like that, there should be objective
people evaluating that.
Speaker 3: So one of the ways that.
Speaker 2: I feel very strongly about when I do my leagues
is I always have a board of governors, and the
reason is I think that there should be objective people
deciding this. So on my board it's typically an odd
number and so that I can always not including me
as the commission, so I can break a tie if
need be, and people can be recused if they have
an involvement. So if a situation comes up, we discuss it,
and if anyone involved in this issue is affected by it,
we remove them from the discussion. We have discussions about it,
whether it's a lopsided trade, or we had issues of cheating,
we had issues of people making mistakes with their roster,
different things. It's important to have people who aren't going
to benefit from that decision have honest and open discussions
about what's good for the league, what is best for
this situation, to really have a ruling on that. That's
my feeling, and so the reason the veto bothers me
is that if you're having people say this hurts me,
so I'm going to veto it. And the people involved
in that trade, were they okay with it? Was it
a reasonable trade? Could it work out well for both sides?
In a lot of cases, the answer is yes. It
just may not seem to you at this moment, or
what I've seen a lot of is, wow, this really
helps this team who I'm competing with, and I don't
like that, and I want them to be punished, and
I just really don't think that's fair. And so I
think that if you're making decisions like that, it's helpful
to have objective people in a board. And I have
a couple of leagues where like your system, where there's
multi same rules for multiple leagues, and we have a
board from people from all the leagues, it's actually really
helpful for people to make decisions when it doesn't directly
involve their league. Having a board that is represented by
people from multiple leagues that are familiar with the settings
and everything, but it doesn't actually directly affect their team.
To me, that's really helpful because then you're getting an
objective view of this is what's reasonable, based on people
who are familiar with the situation and are not being
directly influenced by it.
Speaker 3: So that's my kind of take on it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the trade veto was something that we voted
on as a format this summer. It was probably an
eighty or ninety people that voted total, and I pushed
very hard to get twenty four votes as the threshold
for vetos because I know that one of the issues
when you have just a pure democratic like seventeen votes required,
is that you end up getting fifteen teams or sixteen
teams that are all in the playoff hunt that say
I don't like this trade because this makes my competitors
so much better, so I'm going to veto it. And
I understand the personal incentive there. So that's why I
wanted to say, hey, I'm twenty four or at least
twenty it gets. It means that you're forcing some of
the bottom teams to say I don't like this trade,
just based on principle, and generally speaking, if you get
sixteen or seventeen votes for Vito, it is a pretty
bad trade or it's lopsided enough to get half the
league to Vito. But I do understand, you know, having
it purely at seventeen is it's still not high enough
in my opinion, to get truly bad trades filtered through
to just okay, like it's I would say this, there's
a lot of trades like that that you said that
are not that bad, but they're just it looks bad
at the moment, but in two to three years it's
going to be fine. We had Laine Hudson for Timo
Meyer veto in League thirty two in the first year,
and now we look back and we're like, wow, okay,
that should not have been veidoed. And I think he
got a similar trade veetled right after, which was like
Timo or Lane and something else and it got vetoed,
and they're like, okay, I think it was also Sam
Rinzel on that trade, which he's looking really good. Oh,
it's funny. It's changed my stance on Veido's for sure,
and it's why I wanted twenty four votes and it's
why I pushed for it. I didn't get it. I
only got the votes were for seventeen. So that's what
we're stuck at. But I definitely agree with you on
certain respects. The Board of Governors is something I tried.
I had it in Leegue thirty two, but I got
a lot of accusations of people, which just we're leading
from above. We don't tell anyone that's going on. I
try to be very transparent as a commissioner. I post
my thoughts in the server print as much as I can.
I'm quite active in posting my thoughts. But yeah, I
don't know if there's any perfect way to govern, and
I do agree with you on a lot of your
points though, Like I liked having a board of governors,
I personally right now don't enjoy having no group of
people I can just go to to have a good
honest discussion, and putting it up to a server of
one hundred and twenty people isn't always the best way
to do it, but it's at this point what I've
decided is the best because it's I don't get any
accusations of leading from above or you know, just running
things with a small group. So it's yeah, I really
wish I could run things the way that you're talking about,
and that's a board of governors to me, would be
great and it's something I will maybe push for this summer.
I would love to get you in it, honestly, that
would be a very nice thing to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Honestly, I think it's just too hard on you.
It's too hard on one person.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You're trying to you're trying to make the best decisions.
I see you when they're trying to be reasonable. People
are throwing stuff against the wall and just kind of
they're advocating for themselves. I understand that, but it's really
hard to be the one person that's trying to hold
that line. It's easier when you have a little bit
of a group. Honestly, I think it could work really well.
You could get one or two representatives from each league
and people in different positions. If someone if you're discussing
something that's particular to one league, which our league D
thirty three seems to have the most issues, you could
just recuse the people from that league and just let
the other people decide, and then you have an objective response.
Speaker 3: Like to me, that seems very reasonable, and I don't
really understand.
Speaker 2: I know we talked about this before and some people
were really against that because, oh, some other people are
deciding our fate. The reality is, that's how our justice
system works, That's how it's supposed to be. You don't
want people that are colored by the events or too
involved to make bias decisions.
Speaker 3: You want people that are informant. You don't want some random.
Speaker 2: Person off the street deciding your fantasy league fate.
Speaker 3: I get that, but if they are.
Speaker 2: Familiar with the format, they understand the nuance of what's happening.
Speaker 3: That should be a bonus. You should want that.
Speaker 2: You should want that objectivity, and I think if you don't,
it really calls in the question what your motives are.
Speaker 3: Are you just trying to win?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to be part of a really great
and fair league, because I think that's what we should
all want personally.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that's and I think what you're
saying is, actually it's a great point because when you
have people in seven I've got people now in seven
of these leagues, and it's I think it's a little
crazy personally, but it's great because they've got skin in
the game in the sense that they want the format
to be fair because everyone knows that the rules are
always going to be uniform for all these leagues. I'm
not going to deviate with one league. I'm not going
to It's always going to be uniform throughout. So if
it's going to be that way, you're not going to
have necessarily if you can get people that are in
one or two leagues to help judge on someone in
another league. They just want it to be fair because
they want the format to be kept intact. It's not
a and I agree with you on that, it's not.
They don't have that personal skin in the game to
actually have a selfish judgment in that sense. So it's
I think what's your point, which you bring up is
actually great and I'm it's something I will actively look
to probably implement, because I do get burnt out when
it comes to trying to make decisions and trying to
deal with some of the issues. I think we've really
fixed a lot of the streaming issues we have because
we fix the minor league eligibility, and we've we've done
a lot of things to improve the day to day
management of rosters. But there's still some issues with tanking,
and there's still some issues with salary path atension, and
it's there's things to figure out. But I think having
a group of people that are actually dedicated and want
to help is better than just growing into one hundred
and twenty people and saying what does everyone think. I
think having a smaller group that actually is very intent
on being here long term and creating the best possible
product is actually ideal. I do agree with you on that, Victor.
I will say y and the last question I do
have for you. So you built a championship winning team
last year in Dynasty League thirty three. I just want
to ask you how did you build that team from
start to finish. I remember when I put out power rankings,
I had you ranked thirty first or something like that.
It was pretty bad in hindsight, but you also picked
a lot of league winners, and that really helped your
squad down the road because I didn't see guys like
Michael Mathison being like a top twelve defender. That was
not something I had seen coming tell me about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, having a really smart co GM is a huge bonus.
Speaker 2: So I have to shout out Mace, and everything I
say is with that caveat that. It really helped to
have someone with a keen eye like that and to
bounce ideas off of and to make sure that you're
not just thinking about things in a weird way. I
think we all have our own biases, and so sometimes
you have an idea about something and it's ooh, someone
will look at that and say, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know if I agree with that. We keep each other
in check. I think that's really helpful. The other thing
that is really.
Speaker 2: That I think we did well is that we always
when you're in a cap league, it's all about value
per dollar. So when we were drafting, I think our
first round pick was Brady Kachuk, and so you're looking
at guys that may have a higher salary but have
huge production, and you've got to be careful of drafting
guys that have a high salary and don't deliver as
much in points per game. So we started seeing a
lot of high ticket guys go off the board and
people filling up their cap with, you know, maybe not
as much production as we would have liked. So when
people kept making those picks, we just started going for
really good value guys, guys in the three to five
million dollar range or less that had really good production.
Speaker 3: And so that's what we were looking at. And initially
we weren't really sure how.
Speaker 2: Things were going to go because it was a new league,
so we just wanted to see how it was going.
And I remember when you put out that ranking, which
was totally fair because our team was not good at
that time. But what I realized is that we were
actually pretty competitive. We just didn't even have a full
roster a lot of times because.
Speaker 3: We literally didn't.
Speaker 2: We didn't have enough guys on the roster because we
were we refused to just and a lot of people
do this, Oh I just I need another guy, so
they just add someone, and they'll add like a five
million dollar Alex Wendberg or something who's just so empty
calories for a lot of these formats, Guys that don't
do necessarily a lot, but is available potentially in certain formats.
So we just refused to do that until we realized that, hey,
we're in some of these matchups, maybe we should leverage
our cap space, which I think is a huge deal.
A lot of people don't realize that one of your
biggest weapons in cap leagues is your cap space. You
can weaponize that, but you have to have space. We
had something I forget how much. It was, like thirty
five million or something. We had a massive amount of
cap space because we were just very frugal in the
and so that left us a ton of opportunity to
make a bunch of trades, and so that's what we
decided to do. It was beginning of the new year
when we decided, okay, let's go ahead, and let's go
ahead and make some trades. Once we were finally in
that competitive window, and we acquired a bunch of players
that made a huge difference for us.
Speaker 3: And so that's really what it was.
Speaker 2: It was some smart drafting leaving ourselves a cap space.
When we realized that we had potential. It was when
you put out that initial power ranking. We were at
the bottom. And then I think towards the beginning of
the year we were I forget, how many teams make
the playoffs?
Speaker 3: Is it sixteen? So I think we were like seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 2: We were like just outside and we literally, I don't
want to say we hadn't tried, but we we were
just going based on our limited roster guys, which we
didn't have a full roster, and we hadn't really made
any moves. And so that's when I realized if we
actually made some moves, I think we could in the
top ten. I didn't know if we could win, but
we acquired and we had some decent prospects. We were
actually doing decently well in the prospect.
Speaker 5: He made the playoffs, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, which I don't know if that's rare or not, but.
Speaker 5: Those in the first year it's not as hard to do.
By year two and three, most of the contenders have
traded off all of their good prospects, so you don't
see a lot of contenders make the prospect lead playoffs
by year two and three. But you guys are actually
just hanging on right now. So maybe.
Speaker 2: I give all that credit to Mason, because he's really
good at finding those really deep values. So we ended
up trading and getting Mattias k Holm, we got getting Malkin,
Mark Schreifeley, Morgan Riley, those were some of our big acquisitions,
and then we also got actually.
Speaker 3: Those were the main guys that we got, and we
gave up just a ton of prospects.
Speaker 2: In fact, that Schifley Malkin Riley deal, that was the
one that got vetoed and we had to rework it,
which is the other thing that really annoys me.
Speaker 3: You work really hard on these trades.
Speaker 2: You spend hours going back and forth, and I thought,
we give up a lot. We gave up a lot
of prospects and picks, and we ended up having to
add more. We ended up having to add Kevin Korchinsky
to that deal, in addition to a bunch of picks,
Frank Nazzar, Charlie Stramwol Shakiromocamadolan and some lower level players
we want to add to that stream. All.
Speaker 5: At the time, his value wasn't that high because he
was playing at I think Wisconsin if I'm not mistaking,
And then he transferred to Michigan State and now he's
back on track, is looking like a first round pick,
and you're like, okay, See, this is why in dynasty
you can't veto trades that have top prospects because it's
you don't know where they're going to be in like
a year or two.
Speaker 2: So it's and Nazar was hurt and not and he
didn't he wasn't looking that exciting and now look at
him now he was already in the NHL and and producing.
This is why it's so hard to track these things.
And Jesper Bokefist was part of that deal too, and
he's having a great season. The Quebec Nordik's who we
traded with, I think they did okay, And Malkin is
pretty much seems like he's almost cooked.
Speaker 3: He's injured.
Speaker 2: Now Riley isn't as exciting as maybe some people have thought.
But Shifeley really did help.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we and I think all the other thing
about all.
Speaker 2: Those guys is they're all really expensive, so you have
to take that into account too. It's not just that
they're high producers, but they have a big cap and
so we like we were one of the few teams
that could actually accept however much that is like almost
twenty million in cap or no more than that. Yeah,
so that was rare that we could actually do that,
and a lot of teams were jealous of that deal,
but they literally couldn't have made it because they didn't
have the cap space.
Speaker 3: And so that's I think one of the biggest things,
the biggest.
Speaker 2: Lessons I would say with any kind of league is
just make sure you have cap space. If you're filled
to the brim, you have no options, you can't really
do much. And so unless your team is amazing super stacked,
you got to leave yourself some space to make moves.
Otherwise you're gonna you're gonna miss out on some options.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I've I run a team with the thirty six
as the fronto maple Leafs, and I wanted it to
be realistic, so I made us really heavy, and I'm
running into the same problem where I have no money.
So it's it's a really tough spot to be in
when you're a top five team and you're like, you've
got seventy five thousand dollars in cap space and you're like,
all right, I'm stuck. So's I can switch over Nathan
Walker for someone of basically the same value.
Speaker 2: It's tough, yeah, exactly, and you you work in that situation.
Now we're one of the top teams and people are
asking us like, hey, do you want to buy at
the deadline?
Speaker 3: It's yeah, but you got to take someone on to
do that.
Speaker 2: And then the issue for us is that people are saying, Okay,
give us a cap dump and we'll make it work,
and it's like, we don't really have In my opinion,
maybe someone else would disagree. I don't think we have
any bad contracts because we purposely did not want to
take on any bad contracts. I guess you could say
maybe Malkin is because he's overpaid, and maybe some of
our top guys, but they're also producing a lot, so
we don't really have any of those bad contracts. So
it's hard to make those deals because we try not
to roster those players since but we're also running into
that now where it's yeah, I don't. We would love
to make a trade and make ourselves better, but we
don't really have a lot of financial flexibility to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah it's tough. You made a trade, and I give
you credit for it because you won the league with
that trade, and the i CO home deal was also big,
So he was a league winner last year for you
for sure. But yeah, I was. I was really happy
when I got you to join because I'd only been
running the format for a year and I didn't really
know anyone within Fantasy Hockey other than Mason Black because
he gave me a little bit of help with my
database when I first started out. It wasn't really a database,
it was more or less just a spreadsheet, but he
was really nice to help out, and I got to
give Mason some credit because he's been so helpful ever since.
And yeah, I was really I was just really happy
to have you both joined because I did not know
anyone within Fantasy Hockey, so you guys were like the
first Fantasy Hockey analyst to join, so I was really
I was honored.
Speaker 2: So yeah, of course, you build a good thing and
people are going to be excited about it. Congratulations to
you for doing that and keeping up, and you certainly
learn a lot.
Speaker 3: As you go.
Speaker 2: I think that's the biggest thing to lessons learn for
commissions is that you're always going to make mistakes.
Speaker 3: You're never going to be perfect. We're all human.
Speaker 2: But it's how you adapt and react to those changes
and move forward. That's all we can do is move
forward and trying to make the best decisions as we
move on and evolve.
Speaker 3: So I think you've done I think you've done a
good job at that. And it's a constant process.
Speaker 2: You just keep trying to improve things, make things better,
expand and as you expand, there's more complexity and more
issues too. And just doing one or two leagues is
one thing, but now that you have so many, it's
also a struggle to keep every everything in line as well.
Speaker 5: I agree one percent. And it's why I think a
board of governors might not be the worst idea. That
something I'm going to be looking into implementing once again,
because I think I can do a better job of
getting a more complete board of governors together than I
did the first time. I think the first one had
too many friends because it was like a home league
and it was a bunch of people I knew, and
because I just I wanted guys that I could get
a hold of quickly, and I knew these were guys
I could get in contact with. So probably a lot
of my fault the first time I implemented it. But
I appreciate all your advice and your wisdom today because yeah,
I'm really new to this and I'm still learning, but
I hope the product I've created is something that it's
worth people's time and it's I just love the community
that I'm in and it's a pleasure to be here.
So thanks for taking the time to talk to me.
I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, But if you guys want, it's super deep.
These are all thirty two team cap Dynasty, which to
me is the pure form. But you mimic the NHL.
You have the same number of teams. I love the
way you set it up. So if you're interested in
a really fun format like that, definitely check it out.
Why don't you tell everyone where they can find you
on socials and how they can get into these leagues,
because unfortunately there are often spots available. People might abandon
their teams and as you said you're such a massive
is that you continue to add more leagues.
Speaker 3: So why do you tell people where they can find this?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you can find me. I'm on x or
Twitter as a Windmill Dynasty Windmill Dynasty Hockey, that's what
I am on the discord. I am true North Jed.
I don't always know what my handles are anymore. It's
hard to keep track of them all. And I'm not
really a social media guy, like I don't post too
many podcasts, but I'm going to try to do more
as the draft goals along. But yeah, you can find
me as a Windmill Dynasty Hockey, and I will be starting.
I've got Dynasty League thirty eight filled up. Dynasty League
thirty nine will be started pretty much right after. I'm
trying to get to around maybe ten twelve max. I
don't know what my max will be, but I want
there to be two hundred and fifty three hundred teams
every year vuying for a Champions League title because I
love the idea of getting all of the best hockey
minds in the world to say who's the best at
being a GM. I think my format is a great
way to do it because you can you can truly
build a dynasty and you can be patient with it,
and you can actually enjoy being patient in my format
because there's something to compete in, there's something to there's
always something to compute it. The best way to put it,
you got the Prospects League and you got the NHL,
So no matter what your team is, you've got something.
Speaker 3: I love it and I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 2: And even if we don't win and we need to rebuild,
I think it's a great format. So definitely appreciate having
you on, Kevin, and thanks so much for all your insights.
Speaker 5: Thanks, how do they want the book? We're out of here.
Speaker 4: A couple of mentions for you. You can listen or you
could play all your fantasy leagues on fan tracks or
they sponsor the show. You can move leagues over there,
start your new leagues, ten different sports you can be playing.
I play nothing but fan tracks leagues. I commission a
whole bunch of them. I am all as happy to
talk with people who are also trying to get their
settings right because there's just amazing customization. That's how we
can play these leagues with salaries and contracts and rookie eligibility.
You want your rookies to stay eligible for minor spots
through ten games, one hundred games, one thousand games, whatever
you want, it's going to be possible for you, and
you'll be able to start up your legs the day
after the regular season ends, so there's no multi month
weight in the offseason. Fantracs HQ has a lot of
fantasy content articles in Fantasy Hockey all the other fantasy sports.
FHL has a team and craftser Ryan Simon and Tim
are the commission team with the Tidy leagues. There's a
lot of tidiness that needs to be constantly implemented with
the tidy and one of those four gentlemen may just
be on the next episode. I believe you've heard three
of these four on Fantasy Hockey Life, and I once
got some moan on Dynasty Sports Life. And Tony are
the lead scouts. We've been doing some scouting reports lately,
and thank goodness for those two gentlemen. Brandon is a
website guru. He's a scout. He helps with prospect ranks
and visualizations like the famous Fantasy Hockey Live player cards.
You see Victor post them sometimes on the internet. If
you've got skills you'd like to lend to the show.
We're always looking for more help. Victor is available to
you in the discord, email or on social media. We're
also brought to you by Daber Hockey Dabber Prospects. Victor's
an editor there. Follow his work there, as well as
this other podcast, Dauber Prospects Report with the Great Peter Harling.
Check out Victor's articles at Elite Prospects. He's part of
the Fantasy team with Cam Robinson, Mike Clifford and other
such dignitaries. I do a solo show called Dynasty Sports Life.
I talk about all the different Dynasty sports on there,
or the four that I happen to care about. And
this week it's going to be a look back at
this year's NBA trade deadline with Costas Economu of Greece.
Who is he of Greek? Just a nice Greek guy.
I love cost Us. You should listen to him. He's
on Raspball, follow us on social media. On x It's
Fan Hockey Life. It's Victor Nuno twelve on Blue Sky.
The one Victor h with the number one is Victor
and Jesse Severe is me Rate and review us on
Apple Pods, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast.
Thanks for listening once again everybody, and until next time,
keep living that fantasy hockey like