Speaker 1: Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by fan Tracks. Here's
your source of information and analysis to help you win
your fantasy hockey league. Block off, hot a stem, hit on,
stay lock.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Jesse souvi here and Victor Nunio.
Speaker 3: Fanna Hockey Live once again. It's Jesse's Severe, It's Victor
Nuno Ready to talk a little bit of fantasy hockey.
How you doing fantasy hockey?
Speaker 2: Doctor?
Speaker 4: Hi, I'm doing awesome, Jesse. Yeah, thanks so much and
looking forward to having a discussion today. How are you doing,
my friend?
Speaker 3: Yeah, doctor, give me the news. I got a bad
case of loving the Blues. No, I really don't. The
Blues are what they are. They're not having a particularly
good season at recording time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, man, just having a good time.
Speaker 3: I've been watching a lot of hockey, obviously, OUs as
one does, and really enjoying myself so far this year.
It's been a great one so far. Yeah, we're getting
in and out of these intros quicker and I'll tell you, folks,
I'm not going to be with you for most of
this episode, just the beginning and the end, because I
am out of town and Victor is doing cool things
that you will hear today. But you can always find
the Fantasy Hockey Life crew if you miss us over
at Fantasy Hockey Life on Discord, and all you have
to do to get in there is shoot us an
email Fantasy HOCKEYLFE at gmail dot com and we'll get
you link. You pop in there and talk fantasy hockey. Victor,
you rate a role man. Are you fired up and
ready to do the rest of the talking here today?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I gotta put myself up to just like it's
so loloquy for the entire time.
Speaker 3: Victor's trying to get this YouTube thing going, and he
was doing it by giving us a visual. He was
given some pump up breasts and I love it. After this,
you'll hear from Victor.
Speaker 4: All right, welcome back, everyone, and I'm excited to be
talking to you about Dynasty one oh one Thinking for
the long game. This is an episode for anyone interested
in getting into Dynasty. Maybe you're new to Dynasty or
even seasoned Dynasty players who maybe are still a little
bit more tuned to redraft.
Speaker 2: Or keeper leagues.
Speaker 4: This is all about thinking about Dynasty, how to go
about planning, drafting, creating, competing, all of those things. We'll
get all into it. Hopefully you find it really useful
and happy to have some further discussions, but hopefully this
can be a reference tool for.
Speaker 2: Anyone who wants to get into it.
Speaker 4: So the first thing to think about is that dynasty
hockey is all about the long game. It isn't about
streaming the flavor of the week. It's about team building.
It's about thinking who is the best player, what's the
best team, or what's the best roster I can put
together for years to come. If you've been playing redraft primarily,
this might be really difficult because you're thinking about this week,
or you're used to thinking about this week, or who's
hot right now, who's on the top line this practice,
or whatever, and that's typically not the view that you're
gonna want. It also means you might be really willing
to cycle off of players too quickly, and in dynasty,
you're not going to want to do that. You're gonna
want to be thinking about years down the road. Is
this a player who is just going to be getting
a quick turn on that top line, or is this
someone who actually has some staying power. It's about figuring
out who to roster, who you need to be patient with,
who you don't want to be patient with, Who is
just having a rough go of it for a few weeks,
half a season, whatever the case may be, Are there
legitimate reasons to expect to turn around all those things
to think about In redraft you think about days, weeks, maybe,
but not too much beyond that. Maybe you planned for
the end of the season, if you're sure your team's
going to be good. Maybe you planned for playoffs. But
typically you're really fighting week by week. Hey, and that's fun,
I love it too. But if you're thinking of dynasty,
you really got to think about a whole arc of
that player's trajectory for years to come.
Speaker 2: So what are we going to talk about. Here's a
bit of a preview.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about understanding your settings, evaluating players,
trading strategy, team building and drafting, prospect management, and exploiting
market inefficiencies.
Speaker 2: Before you even.
Speaker 4: Think about player values, you have to understand what kind
of game you're actually playing. This is the next part.
Know you're set the rules, define the reality, master your
settings before you master your league. Know exactly what kind
of league you're in. This is not like fantasy football.
In fantasy football, you know exactly what you're getting. The
settings are pretty standard, so when people talk about this
player versus that or this strategy, it's all pretty much
the same. This could not be more different. In hockey,
it is completely different. And sometimes people will ask me
standard setup or standard league or standard this, and I
just my response is always, there is no such thing.
There's no such thing as a standard hockey league.
Speaker 2: And maybe what you're.
Speaker 4: Used to, and maybe what the people in your league
are used to, and maybe that's something that they are
quite familiar with, but you are not.
Speaker 2: There is no standard league.
Speaker 4: So whenever you're asking a question, you really need to
let everyone know what is your league like, is it
points versus categories? Does it have a salary cap or not?
How many teams are in there? Is it fourteen? Is
it thirty two. That's a completely different answer depending on
the depth of the league, depending on the setup. Whether
it's a salary cap, you could be asking about trading
Carill Caprice off with his new NHL record breaking deal.
If that's a cap league, that's a completely different valuation
than in a non cap league. So you definitely need
to be conveying that information. If you're in a category league,
know how many skater categories there are and how many
goalie categories there are. Most tend to have a slant
towards skater categories. Typically I like to have roughly seven
skater categories and four goalie categories so that you have
an uneven number so that a team can actually win
have the majority of the category wins. Of course, ties
can happen, but that's how I like to set up
my eye leagues. But there's lots of combinations. Hits, blocks,
shots are pretty common, power play points, but there's variations
with penalty minutes, face off wins.
Speaker 2: All of those exist.
Speaker 4: There's also wins, there's shutouts, save percentage, all kinds of
different categories. Know what categories are consistent and what are
more random. An example is don't chase shutouts. Shutouts are
extremely random. In fact, in my opinion, a categories league
should not have shutouts as a category. It's too infrequent
and it's too random to really be meaningful.
Speaker 2: It's really just luck.
Speaker 4: We know a lot of fantasy sports are luck, but
you want to be able to have some predictability to it.
And one of the most reproducible categories after a year. Hits, shots,
penalty minutes. As much as I disagree with the philosophy
on it, are pretty repeatable. Players who get those categories
tend to do it again and again, so you want
to be able to repeat that. Shorthanded points is an
example of a pretty random and uncommon, non predictable category.
There are ways and fan tracks to combine rare categories.
You can combine shutouts into goalie points so that you're
not just looking at shutouts, but you're combining them with wins,
You're combining them with overtime losses. Now these combinations fit
into one category and it doesn't matter if you get
a shutout. It just adds to your goalie points. That's
something that I would favor, But again, it's all about
knowing your league and what the situation is. If it's
a points league, is it a points league? Is that
gives the same amount of points for a shot and
a hit. If that's the case, then get your guys
that hit a lot that increase this is their value tremendously.
Some give a little less for a hit versus a shot.
Our power play points extra. Then you definitely want all
your power play players. So it's really important to know
exactly where your guys get value and where they don't.
One of the best things you can do when you're
asking this player versus that, or how much should I
value this player? Simply go to your fan track settings
or whatever league you're in, should be fan tracks, by
the way, but go to your league settings and look
at the settings for that player for last week, last month,
last year, the season before. See where they rank. If
they were a top ten player consistently over the years,
you know your answer. You know how valuable that player is.
If they were a top three hundred player two years
ago and now they're a top twenty five player.
Speaker 2: That may be random.
Speaker 4: That may be a random string of luck that is
not going to continue, or maybe this player's burk out.
If you're not sure, that's exactly the type of question
you should be asking in a fantasy hockey discord like
fantasy hockey life, as people who have been doing it before.
This is why we have discussions to bounce ideas off
someone key for sure. What is a classic example of
someone who popped off last year? Is it real? I
don't know, we still know, but it sure seems like
it's continuing. Those hits are for sure consistent. Can he
score as much as he's been scoring, maybe, but his
value probably isn't going to change once he's getting the
ice time and he's shown that his hits and peripheral
floor is dependable. We do tend to talk about peripherals,
so what does that mean. Peripherals are basically your non
scoring categories. Some leagues are strictly points only goals assists.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 4: That's pretty straightforward. A lot of leagues give value to
peripherals like shots, blocks, hits, and then sometimes they add
extra things like penalty minutes or face off wins or
takeaways or any number of other things. So it really
depends on what your league values. A really good thing
to do when you take over a league or you're
evaluating your team in a league, look at last season
and standings by category. Where do you fit category by category?
Are you near the top and hits, locks and shots,
but near the bottom and power play points and goals?
That's pretty clear. What the strengths of your team are.
You have good peripherles but not good scoring. It's just
really important to know where you stand.
Speaker 2: Maybe you've been.
Speaker 4: Unlucky in certain categories. If you have players who maybe
didn't hit the score sheet as much as they should,
maybe you have more assists this year than the team
did previously, and you had more goals previously, maybe some
of those shots turned into assists and not goals. Really
do a deep analysis of how your team is fared
this season previous seasons, and where your weaknesses are and
whether you think you can increase that. One of the
hardest things to improve upon are power play points and goals,
some of the hardest things to find. Most people will
trade you someone who has good value in your league,
but that value comes from peripherals because those players tend
not to have the name value a cachet. But they're
less likely to trade a player who is known for
their goal scoring or power play points even if they're
not having a particularly good season.
Speaker 2: And that's an important tip.
Speaker 3: Is no.
Speaker 4: Who has value based on their name or based on
what's actually in their production. So real life versus fantasy
value is a really important thing. You're not building a
team that's out there competing on the ice. You're building
a team that's gonna win a fantasy hockey championship. In
real life excellence does not always mean fantasy relevance. Avoid
name bias. That's a big thing that you can do
early on to improve your success. One strategy often till
people cover up the name of your player, look at
their numbers, look at their ranks, look at how they
perform in your league, and see if that's real. Rock
Faber is a classic example of someone who burst onto
the scene, had a lot of points his rookie year,
was running the power play, was getting tons of minutes,
and he was pretty valuable. He was never someone who
was really known as a big score, but he was
getting all the opportunity and it was hard to ignore
the success that he was having. So it was really
hard to say that he wouldn't do it again. But
the reality is that was never really his And I
remember people saying at the time, we wouldn't be surprised
if this was the high watermark for his career, and
I still think that might be true. He had forty
seven points in eighty two games so far in a
season and a quarter. Since then, he hasn't really come
close to that type of production, and he's never really
been a big peripheral player, So a lot of his
value came from those points that were maybe a little
bit inflated. He's an awesome real life player, top line
shut down defenceman, the kind of guy you definitely want
patrolling your blue line. But is he someone that's going
to be a really great fantasy asset. Probably not, certainly,
not as your first defenseman, probably not as your second either,
but maybe as your third and fourth depending on the
deep depth of your league. It isn't always the case
that the name value matches the value in your league.
It can be highly variable. Another example is some of
these players who score but don't really have a lot
of peripheral contributions. Matt Barzal as an example, Dylan Strome.
These are players who, if they're scoring well, it's great,
but if they hit a bit of a rough patch,
all of a sudden, there's not much production there. Assuming
your league counts peripherals. So again, cover up the name,
look at the deployment, look at the production, look at
the historical production. And I'll give you some advice later
of some other things to look at in terms of
determining whether they're actually a valuable player or not. But
in general, shut down d Selkie centers strong two way
guys tend not to be very good at fantasy. In fact,
a lot of fantasy gms, maybe almost to a fault,
suggests that if you hear two way attributed to a
player on your team, that you should drop them right
away or have less interest in them. And that's that
can be true. But also some of these great two
way guys can certainly be valuable. Look at Sasha Barkoff.
He's an awesome defensive forward but also a good fantasy
asset because he scores enough to make it worthwhile. Just
something to consider. Trading. Trading is fun, right, This is
supposed to be fun, but there's an art to trading.
In my opinion, there's no better trade than a dynasty trade,
because the best kinds of trades are a win win
for both sides. If you flee somebody, if you absolutely
take their lunch in a trade, everybody's gonna know it.
Speaker 2: Everybody's gonna talk.
Speaker 4: About it, and you're gonna get a reputation as a wolf,
and that person's gonna get the reputation as a sucker.
They're gonna have bad feelings, and it's not the kind
of thing that has a good lasting impression. In my opinion,
you want to be in leagues for a long time
where you have respect for your league mates and you
really want to be able to cultivate win win trades.
It's good for the league, it's good fun for everyone.
And in redraft leagues, I just find that's incredibly hard.
Everyone's trying to win right now every week. The only way,
in my opinion, you can really do good trades in
redraft is if someone's struggling, if someone's not doing too well.
A good example right now is our Timmy Paneren who's
on one of my teams, and he's struggling mightily. I'm
getting not much from him on a day to day basis.
Sure you could imagine trading him for someone who's actually
producing right now. That's a reasonable idea, but I find
it really hard to do because I know the value
of that player. I know that he's the kind of
player that can win me my week. I'm not going
to trade him for some scrub who's just having a
good couple of weeks. So I can bet on the
fact that maybe he's going to be terrible the rest
of the season and take a flyer on some up
and comer. But that is unlikely to pan out because
I know the value of this player, and I know
that he should rebound. He's just having a rough patch.
So it's hard to imagine a win win there. Sometimes
you can do a two for two. Maybe I have
too many good defensemen, or maybe I have too many
left wings, and I can trade for a center, or
I can trade for a left wing for a right wing,
or a center for a d sure back can work,
but it's a lot harder because in general, you tend
not to have too much shirtplusteric struggling.
Speaker 2: Week to week.
Speaker 4: You're trying to get as many wins as you can.
But in Dynasty, each team is in a different spot
in their trajectory. You have a few teams that are
clearly competitors. You have some teams that are in the
playoff picture but maybe not favorites to win. He has
some teams that are on the bubble trying to get in,
or maybe they're not good enough to get in, but
they're close. And then you have teams that are clearly
near the bottom potentially rebuilding. So you have all sorts
of different varieties of what's going on, and that provides
the ripest opportunity for even trades the win win. You
look for teams at the top who are trying to
gather pieces to win now. You look at teams at
the bottom that might have some good contributors now, but
they're not really using them, so why not pass them
over to the competitive teams. That competitive team might have
some good prospects or good young players who aren't quite
contributing yet. And this therein lies the genesis of the
win win. It's perfect. You can win. You can win
the trade now, or you can win the trade later.
It really does work out pretty well often. So when
you do this, you really have to think about a
lot of different factors. I tend to not favor the
one for one deals. I like having more pieces involved
because it's easier to equate value two for two or
But in general, people say, you always want to get
the best player in the deal. Sure, that's generally true.
But let's say, for example, you're a rebuilding team and
you have an absolute megastar in your team, like a
Nikia Kutrov or a Austin Matthews or something like that.
A lot of people I've heard say, I don't really
need this guy. He's not helping me right now, anyways,
I might as well just get what I can get,
and they'll trade that player for an underwhelming return. That
is a terrible idea. What you really have to think
about is not just what that player means to you,
but what they mean to the other competitors in your league.
And a player like that is an absolute league winner.
Right If you take a competitive team and they add
a top five, top ten player in the format, that
can push them over the edge, that can win them
the championship. So you have to think about that, and
you have to value them appropriately based on how other
people are going to see that player. And it's also
about timing, because if you're thinking about making a trade
like that in October or November, you're not going to get.
Speaker 2: The best value.
Speaker 4: One of the hardest things that I've had to do
is just wait, just wait and wait until the timing
is right, which is generally close to the trade deadline,
whether it's a few matchups before, when some teams might
get desperate or push their chips in decide that it's time.
You figure out what the value is, and you hold
to that and you make sure you get it easier
said than done, and I have definitely just sat on
my players and not traded them because I am stubborn
about what I want. And you have to really decide
is it better to get nothing or to get a
little less than what you deserve. Will that asset depreciate
is the question someone like Austin Matthews.
Speaker 2: Is he really going to.
Speaker 4: Depreciate next year the year after that? I don't think so.
You could hold him for years probably and still Ben.
Could you get more for him now than you can
in a few years, Maybe, but it's probably not a
huge difference. There are some examples of maybe making the
trades sooner then later is a good idea, but in general,
I think it's best to wait until the time is
best to maximize your return, and that generally isn't when
it's most convenient for you. It's when the market is
right and when the other teams see it as the
best time. So really think about that, and really think
about how everyone else is going to view your players,
not just what you think of them, and be absolutely
willing to just hold them through the end of the season,
through the next season, through the offseason, through the next season,
whatever it takes to get the value that is appropriate.
And in that example, if you're trading and Austin Matthews
from a rebuilding team to a contender, you better get
an absolute blue chip stud probably more than one, probably
at least one first round pick, probably another use full
roster player. You should get an absolute haul for him
because that's what he's worth.
Speaker 2: That's what he's worth.
Speaker 4: That team to win the league, and you need to
get multiple assets moving forward to kickstart your rebuild because
no one player you're going to get back is probably
going to have the same value at least for now,
at least probably for two or three years as Austin Matthews.
So you better get several pieces to make it worthwhile.
So there's a lot of things to think about when
you're thinking about trading. Look at the deployment and usage,
look at the pedigree and the opportunity. Look at the contract.
This is a good caveat here. Even if you're not
in a salary cap league, you better be looking at
their salary because money dictates opportunity. In fact, one of
the best things you can do in a non salary
cap league is follow the salary cap. If you're trying
to figure out who's going to get the best deployment,
who's going to get time on the top line, who's
going to be the start goal. The salary is going
to tell you pretty much all of that. Now, does
it happen that a cheaper player on an entry level
contract or a bridge deal ends up being one of
the top producers. Certainly that does happen, But in general,
the top paid players are the ones who get the
best opportunity, and they have to prove that they can't
hack it before they'll get demoted. So that's where you
should put a lot of your value to is in
the contract. When you're thinking about trading for or or
to move on from someone. There's a few really important
stats to look at. Some people call them advanced stats
IPP individual points participation that can be at even strength
or on the power play, which is the power play
IPP or PPIPP. Those stats indicate the player's involvement. Generally,
players who are elite offensive players have a seventy plus
percent IPP that means they're almost always involved the majority
of the time and a goal.
Speaker 2: That is scored while they're on the ice.
Speaker 4: For more average players, think you're talking about fifty percent
for forwards, for defenseman, having an IPP over fifty or
sixty is generally really good if you're a strong offensive player,
and forty or lower if you're not. So if you
have a top fantasy asset who's been a top player
for years and all of a sudden they're forward and
their IPP is down in the fifties, you know that's
not going to continue. You know that they're going to
move back up to seventy percent, so they're hitting a
bit of a cold patch. On the other hand, if
they're scoring on ninety plus percent of the if their
IPP is ninety plus percent, they're getting on way too
many goals.
Speaker 2: That they're due.
Speaker 4: So they're probably going to regress in the other way,
and that's really important to know. Also shooting percentage. Shooting
percentage is fairly consistent over a player's career, especially once
they have an established baseline. If they're a career ten
percent shooter and they're shooting twenty plus percent, there have
twice a number of goals or more than they should have,
that number is gonna come down. Also, on the other hand,
if they're a career ten percent shooter and they're shooting
two or three percent, hey, they're gonna regress positively to
the mean, and they're gonna and they're gonna get some
more points. The last thing is PDO, which is a
combination of shooting percentage and save percentage. On I shooting
percentage and save percentage. It's people often call it the
luck metric. How lucky is someone. Typically that number is
around one hundred or sometimes you'll see it written as
a thousand. If it's around one thousand, that means they're
shooting percentage on a shooting percentage in save percentage is
roughly where it should be. If it's below, that means
they're getting a little unlucky, either with their own shooting
percentage not being high enough or they're getting too many
goals saved on the other end. So they're gonna get
a little positive regression, a little bit more points. If
they're cooking a little hot, there may be like ten forty,
ten fifty or more, they're probably gonna regress and lose
some points. So these are all things you can look at.
And if you go to Dabber Hockey Frozen Tools, they
actually has a meter right there on advanced stats and
it'll tell you is this player cooking hot or not,
and if everything is lit up red, you know that
player is way too hot and is going to come
down to earth. Or if all those numbers are literally
highlighted in blue, that means they're ice cold and they're
going to improve. So just be careful trading a player
away who's super cold and it's probably going to positively
regress to get more points. Just make sure you're valuing
them appropriately. And that's where you want to run by
trade ideas in our trade channel and Fantasy Hockey Life
or all my Fantasy Hockey Life can DM me for
personal advice, and there are times where people send me
some trade ideas that they have and it's just no,
don't do that, Please, don't do that. So that's a
good way to get some personalized advice. But a lot
of people in the you can tweet at me on
Twitter x, or you can go on the Fantasy Cacolate
discord and ask questions in the trade review channel and
you'll get a lot of good input. And that's the
next thing is just get unbiased opinion from people who
aren't the person you're trying to trade with, because honest
obviously they're not going to give you the best advice,
and that brings me up another point. I love, love,
love having co managers. Co gms are one of the
best things. First of all, it's just fun having someone
else to talk to about your league and your team,
which isn't always the case based on who else you
talk about this. Maybe you have some friends who do,
but it's really good to get an unbiased opinion. And
in general, we all have biases towards one player, towards situation,
towards teams. Maybe you're a homer for a certain team.
It's really good to have someone else who's not a
homer for the same team and probably has some different
blind spots or biases, and you can keep each other
in check. You can discuss the team, the situation, the players,
and you're going to have different ideas, and that's really
good to run by those because sometimes I'll be chatting
with my COGM and something will come up and the
question will be, why do you think that, and it's
why do I think that? To me, it's just a
natural assumption that what I think about this player is right.
But when someone else challenges that or you discuss it,
you start to really look into it more and say
why do I think that is this actually real? Or
maybe this is based on something I saw, Maybe this
was on one game or one bad mistake, or maybe
it's based on a past experience I had rostering this player.
But really, be really honest and objective about what you're thinking.
And there's nothing better than having another set of eyes
to be able to discuss it. So I really enjoy
having the COGM, and I would reckon end it. So
think about your underperformers, think about your overperformers and your
hot strikes, and think about how you can come up
with a win win. One of the most frustrating things
is when I get a trade offer for a player
that I don't need or want and it doesn't really
help my team, And it's like, what is this guy
thinking other than it helps them, That isn't really something
that I'm interested in. I don't want to just help them.
If it helps them and it helps me, great, But
the bottom line is, do your research on the other team,
figure out what might help them. Offer them something that
is reasonable, that's a good starting off point. Maybe you
can make something work from there, even if the original
offer isn't great. But when someone comes at me with
a terrible offer that is not something I'm even remotely
interested and don't really need that type of player.
Speaker 2: Why would it go anywhere? More So, you can.
Speaker 4: Spam people with your offers and maybe you'll get something accepted,
but that isn't really a good way to foster good
trade Relationshipsigure out what you need, maybe what you have
too much of. Look at some trade partners. If you're
a top team, look at the bottom teams and see
something that they might need that you have, or vice versa.
Figure out what some top teams might need that you have,
and some assts that they have that would work for you.
Do a little bit of homework. It goes a long way.
We're going to take a quick break and come back
and talk about some more Dynasty one on one tips.
Speaker 2: We're back.
Speaker 4: We're talking Dynasty one on one. We're talking all about
getting into Dynasty and winning your leagues. Before we do that,
I want to talk to you a little bit about
the Patreon. Patreon through Fantasy Hockey Life is an awesome
feature that we have where you can get a bunch
of bonus content. You can get access to our Fantasy
Hockey Life player cards where you can look up all
kinds of hard to find stats and hits in minor
league formats, faced off wins, transition data, play driving, all
kinds of cool stuff like that. Plus you can access
to my ranks, tiers and lists, and you can get
access to DM advice about trades and about other roster
doctor construction issues with your team. You can get access
to patroncasts and Patreon Priority Channel in the discord. Check
all that out at over at Fantasy Hockeylife dot com
for the website and Patreon dot com slash Fantasy Hockey
Life to get access. Okay, next thing we're going to
talk about is knowing where you are when you evaluate
your team. You've got to be brutally honest about where
you are. Look at the standings, look at the team,
how old they are, your prospect pool, all of that.
You're either a contender, a retooler, or a rebuilder. If
you're a contender, you absolutely owe it to yourself to
push your chips in, sell off your prospects, sell off
your young players who aren't producing yet, and go for it.
Sure have I done this and it not worked out, absolutely,
But more times than not, when I push my chips
in it's worked out. You got to just be bold
and go for it. You only live once, and if
you really do push your chips in and have the
right assets to make some trades, then it can really
work out. One thing that I like to do is evaluate,
and once I decide I'm going to push my chips in,
I don't do it right away. I start reaching out. Okay,
I'm looking for this type of player, I'm looking to
bolster my defensive scoring. I'm looking for this type of player,
whatever the case may be, and talk to some of
the teams at the bottom and figure out what you
can get, and then I'll try to make a bunch
of trades simultaneously. That also will deceptively not tip off
your competition, because if some of the teams around you
that are competitive know that you're pushing your chips in,
they're going to go to those same teams and try
to snatch as many players away from you as they can.
So you can preemptively talk to a bunch of teams
at once, make all the deals go through around the
same time. That limits your opponent's opportunity from doing the
same thing. But really push your chips in. Remember championship
flags fly forever, So go ahead and do that if
you're ready. If you're really not ready and you're on
the fringe, there's nothing worse than being in the middle.
Sometimes you can do the retool. The Washington Capitals did
this in the NHL recently, where it looked like they
were going to have to rebuild, and they just retooled,
trim some things around the edges, and now they're a
competitive team again. Wouldn't have thought that a couple of
years ago. It's hard to do. You have to make
some very shrewd moves. Trade some maybe not your best
young players, but some young players. So some people who
maybe I've had some bad year or two, maybe they've
regressed a bit, but there's reason to believe that there
might be some opportunity to regain some of that production.
Maybe they're going to a new team or a new situation.
That can often be a very good thing. So it's
hard because you can't completely sell everything off and you're
still trying to be competitive, but trying to do it
in a year or two. I've only done this a
couple of times. It's really hard. It's really hard because
you're trying to make some moves where you get a
little worse now to get a little better later. It's
just really hard to project how well that's gonna work out.
I think I only did it well once in one league,
where it trimmed some things around the edges, some guys
that were injured for the full season. I traded for
those players, knowing they weren't gonna help me this year,
but they helped me in future years. And it did
end and ended up in a championship the following season.
But it was a lot of uncertainty because I didn't
really know how those players are going to do coming
off those use lending injuries. But they had enough of
a track record. Dougie Hamilton was one of those players
that I can remember off the top of my head.
Speaker 2: So it can work out.
Speaker 4: But the more common option is the rebuild, tear it down,
trade away all your old players, get your young players
your draft picks, and draft and develop well. It can
be a long road. I tend to not want to
think about it more than a few years in advance.
Dynasty leagues don't last forever, so unless you're really sure
that your commission is strong and that you're going to
be able to see the fruits of your labor. You
want to make sure that your strongly considering whether a
rebuild is a good idea. We'll talk about that a
little bit more later. I want to talk a little
bit about the value of old guys in most dynasty leagues.
GMS love the young guys. That's what we love talking
about prospects. We love the new and exciting players, the
Kevin McKenna's, the land and DuPonts, the celebraines, the Badards,
these type of players.
Speaker 2: It's awesome.
Speaker 4: It's really fun to imagine how great they can be,
how generational they can be. I remember hearing about fifteen
year old Connor McDavid. He turned out to be pretty good, right,
But it's never for certain, right, So you have to
make sure that you're not over hyping them. And on
the other hand, older players get completely devalued in a
lot of leagues, and that's because of this infatuation with
the youth. A lot of teams they're rebuilding, retooling. They'll
sell off anyone over thirty. I don't need them. They're
not going to be in my competitive window, which is
an important thing to think about. But I think that
a lot of teams dismiss some of these older players.
You can get a great value for some of these
that are older. I got Sidney Crosby in the league
when he was thirty four thirty five, and I think
that GM probably thought he was cooked after another year
or two, and it's been years later he's been on
my team, still a point per game player, Sam with
Doanjre Copetar, Drew Dowdy, and some of these players Brent
Burns still playing as of this recording, not super relevant,
but still out there. So you can get a ton
of great value for older players, and sometimes that's a
great way to go about it, especially if you're drafting
a new league. A lot of times people will just
go for the young players instead of the older players
who are producing now. A seventy point forward who's producing
now versus a B rated prospect who might be that someday.
If I'm going to win now, I know which one
I'm taking. I'm taking the for sure, guaranteed production. I've
won several championships by focusing on washed up stars and
trading for those older players who a lot of other
GMS thought they were past their prime. It can be
a super helpful thing to do. So when you're retooling
or rebuilding, think about this. Those older vets are worth.
Speaker 2: Maybe more than you think.
Speaker 4: There's certainly more than worth more than a bag of
magic beans, which a lot of people tend to think
about that. Let's move on to team building and drafting philosophy.
If you're drafting a brand new league, you got to
think about what's your philosophy. Are you going forward are
you not? If you're competing now, make sure you target
prospects that are closer to being NH already rather than
have the highest upside, So the high floor versus the
high ceiling, and the that are closer to being in
the leagues. Maybe they're nineteen twenty twenty one, maybe they're
playing in the AHL or the NCAA or in euro leagues.
All of that is something to think about. You want
to swing for upside, but you want to understand risk
and you want to invest in some of these older
players with known production. You also really need to think
about league stability. If you're at all considering drafting a
team that is going to be really good in three
or four years, you better know that that league is
going to survive I've seen and heard of and been
a part of many leagues that seemed like they would
last and fold it after a year or two. Those
teams that drafted for the future got screwed.
Speaker 2: That's just the.
Speaker 4: Reality, and a lot of teams, a lot of leagues
fold for various reasons, for infighting, for lack of interest,
for poor setup. I was a part of a league
that the teams just wanted to get to drafting, and
they hadn't really hammered out their rules, and I remember thinking, like,
this is crazy. We need to know what the rules are.
We need to know what we're going to expect. And
some of the players just waved their hands and said, oh,
we'll figure it out, we'll agree on it soon. I
was like, no, I'm out. I can't do that. I
need to know what to expect. And sure enough, some
of the players in that league messaged me later and
said it was total chaos. After they drafted some players
they decided. They argued about.
Speaker 2: How much.
Speaker 4: Certain things should be worth, how much power play points
should be worth, whether they should count this stat or
that stat or all these different arguments, and that's just
not something that you need. You have to establish good
rules beforehand. You have to have a good commissioner. You
have to have good by laws. You have to have
a set of expectations that people can depend on and
that can be adjudicated fairly, which brings me to the
commission issue. You need to know that your commissioner is
dedicated to being fair, to being honest, to being reputable,
and in my opinion, it's better that to have a
team than just one person. And all the leagues that
I run to have a board of governors because it's
hard to be just one impartial person. So I like
to run league decisions by other people, and I think
that's the best, But I don't think it's necessarily required
as long as you have a really fair commissioner. A
lot of leagues I've seen the commissioner is just someone
who maybe has been in leagues before, who has some experience,
but sometimes they're not necessarily interested in being fair. They
just want to do what's best for them, and that's
really not a league you want to be in. If
they're just doing what's best for them, they're not going
to rule fairly, or they might not be able to
decide something if it affects them. They might lean towards
the side that favors them, and that's really no way
to make a decision, right. So in all the leagues
that I'm in, if the decision about to be made
affects me or anyone on the board, we abstain and
we let other people who aren't involved make the decision,
because that's the most fair thing to do. You can't
be making decisions that directly affect you and pretend that
you can be unbiased about it. It just doesn't work
that way. So you really want to have a good,
strong team or person leading the league. A really unfortunate
example recently. You all know Ryan Downey, the tidy Admiral.
He and I were in a league together. We really
liked this team, liked a lot of things about the
league and the settings, and it was great fun and
we were building rebuilding our team, which really was not
very good. We made some really good decisions, I think,
and we're building towards a competitive window. But the commission
in that league was just not great. Was really chaotic,
like to stir up a lot of nonsense, like to
call people out and just make decisions that were a
little bit more selfish or not really in the best
interest of the whole league, and that's just not something
that is sustainable, and so we'd put up with it
for a while, but it came to a head and
ultimately we had to leave that league because it wasn't
what was best for everyone, and several other people left
as well. And I think those kinds of things happen,
and it's unfortunate. And we knew a little bit about
that when we joined the league, but we thought it
wouldn't rise that level, and it did. Everyone can make
mistakes and read things poorly, and I think that it
was unfortunate. But we really wanted to work out and
it didn't, so I think you have to when you
join a league. The advice I would give is before
you do, really get to know the commission and talk
to some of the other people in the league. If
the commissioner doesn't want to give you the contact info
of people that are in the league to discuss how
much they like it or whether it's a good league,
that's a red flag right any league I'm in, If
someone has that, I would say, sure, talk to any
of these people, because I don't want someone in here
who doesn't feel comfortable or doesn't feel like they're going
to be respected and be part of a good community,
and any commissioner should be okay with passing.
Speaker 2: That information along. And if they're not, I would run
away from that league.
Speaker 4: I think that's something that you should stay away from
for sure. So not all leagues are created equals. Some
are more stable than an other. Some have very clear rules.
All of the rules should be easily accessible and clearly
stated and not changing all the time. That's another red flag.
If someone's changing the rules constantly, that is not a
good league. You should have stable rules. You should vote
on them, or the bord of governors of the whole
league should vote on them periodically based on issues that
have come up, not just because I feel like I
want to change this. And in general, I don't favor
in season rule changes. It should be happening in the
off season. You should go into the season knowing the
expectations of the rules. It shouldn't be changing throughout the season.
You set your roster, and in dynasty, you built your
rosters and prepared for this for years, months, years, and
all of a sudden you're gonna change at mid season.
That's not fair. It really should be expected for a
long time. In terms of team building, you want to
have a diversification of scoring sources. You don't want to
just have Tom Wilson key for Sherwood types, but you
want to have some of those guys who had peripheral value.
You want to have some scorers who can get you
power play points you want, and shots and goals you want,
maybe some playmakers. Just like on an actual NHL team,
you want a diversification of skills and talents. In a
points league, you can get your points from different places
and it doesn't necessarily matter. But in a categories league,
you absolutely need to diversify and not just have players
who are good at one category. My favorite way to
build a team is to have players who have broad
coverage of the categories. To me, that's the best, but
you can certainly see a case for Jeremy Lasan or
players who fill one or two categories that can be
really helpful. But you need to have a balance of youth,
of veterans, of prospects, of picks. You want to be
careful of just having nothing but old guys or nothing
raw talent and prospects. You want to have diversification when
you're drafting, you want to have a clear vision. You
want to win, be going for win now or win later. Generally,
having a mix of floor and ceiling players are good.
You don't want to have just safe picks. You don't
want to have too many lottery tickets or upside picks.
You want to have a mixture that's really best in
my opinion, You certainly want to take some swings on guys,
but you also don't want to have a prospect pull
full of just swings. You also, on your main roster,
don't want to have a bunch of guys who you're
betting on to improve from the previous season. It's good
to take a chance on one or two of those guys,
but not to have too many. You don't want to
have such a risky portfolio. So there's a whole lot
more that we could say about drafting new leagues, but
I'll leave that for another episode. Let's move on to
some prospect strategy again. I think the key here is
diversify and be patient. Your prospect pool should look like
an investment portfolio. Let's say, for example, you have twenty
or thirty minor league slots. That might be a lot
depending on what league you're in. But just as an example,
you want to do a third, and a third of
those players would be high upside, possibly blue chippers, guys
that have super high potential. Maybe some of them don't
have the highest floor, but if they hit, they could
be absolute stars. You want to have some players that
are for sure NHLers, guys that you know are gonna
make it, but maybe they don't have the highest upside.
And then you want some in between, maybe some guys
who's vast value has depressed a little bit, maybe some
guys that you're not sure about. Basically, you want to
have a mix of high floor, high ceiling, maybe some uncertainty.
Maybe I'm taking a risk on taking a shot on
this guy who may or may not pan out. You
just don't want to have all your prospects be of
the same type. You don't want to have You can't
make a cake with just icing, right. You need to
have different components there to make sure it all works out,
avoid just one archetype. Sometimes we're drawn to a certain
type of player, a goal scorer.
Speaker 2: Goal scorers are.
Speaker 4: Great, they're often pretty valuable. You don't want to have
an entire prospect pull of just goal scorers. You want
to have a mixture of goal scorers, playmakers, maybe some
peripheral contributors, some defensemend forwards, goalies, all these kinds of things.
You want to have diversification there. Sometimes people will draft
or avoid players based on their opportunity. I would be
careful with that. Just because someone is blocking them from
the current NHL roster doesn't mean that player can't be
valuable on another team. All it takes is when trade
and all of a sudden completely unlocks your potential. Right
We've seen this many times. High end of prospect gets traded,
goes a different team. You thought he was blocked and
not going to have an opportunity for a long time,
and all of a sudden, boom, he's right there in
the NHL the next year and producing. I tend to
value more based on what the actual player can do,
not necessarily what the opportunity. We've also seen this in
places like Pittsburgh, who's been bad for a while now,
and people would say things like, oh, this player, he's
their best prospect, so I'm gonna invest in them because
who else do they have. We've seen what happened some
of those high end prospects that we thought years ago
never made it, And what did they do they reached, Well,
they got different draft picks, they got different young players,
and some of those players are in the league now
and those other players like Stammy pool On Killan Addison
nowhere to be found. So don't look at it just
based on this. I'm gonna he's They're the only good
player in their prospect pool, so I'm going to invest
heavily in them. It's more about investing in the best players,
even for teams that have stacked prospect pools. I'd rather
take the third or fourth best player on a stacked
prospect pool team than the loan good prospect on a
terrible prospect pool. And we can get more into that
later in other discussions. I'm also a big fan of
analytical tools. PNHL E Mason Black's ranking app great for
looking at potential. You can also track the trajectory of
those players, which is really fun to see who's trending up,
who's trending down. That's a really useful tool. You can
also look at Hockey Prospecting who has an NHL model.
It's a little bit different, and you can see how
they project and there's some other anec little models out
there too. There's NHL models like Hockey Viz and Evolving Hockey.
In fantasy Hockey life, I have my prospect ranks and
my puck stud Score, which is really a rank of
how good this player is supposed to be on your
fantasy team. It's one of the few that's really fantasy related,
and it gives you a percentage one out of ten.
Ten is Connor McDavid, Five is an average roster player.
Six is a little bit above average, seven a little
bit more, eight is really good, and nine is a
star but maybe not quite Connor McDavid, maybe like your
super high end player, like a William n Lander something
like that. And then the second number that I give
is the percentage that they're going to hit that. So
a seven point seven five is a seventy five percent
chance of being a seven out of ten. A five
point two five is twenty five percent chance of being
an average roster player. So there are ways you can
look at different models. So there's a Twitter question that
I got that I wanted to mention from Mason Richie.
Any tips on rebuilding other than trading established players, picks prospects,
what is a strategy? Yeah, I mentioned this above, but rebuilding,
I think it's really looking an honest look at your team.
What do you have, What are you going for? Getting
fair return, being patient, maybe waiting for the right time.
I think sometimes we get in a hurry. We want
to start the rebuild off in October when we decided
we're not going to be good this year, But that
may not be the time. So being patient, getting good
feedback on what your players are worth, really analyzing your
team the league, figuring out which players are really good
for other teams. Hopefully all that was covered previously part
of your question, big, But how can one be confident
they've rebuilt successfully other than prospects progressing? What markers would
you look for when exiting the rear build? That's a
really hard question. How to know when you're really competitive? Again, again,
I think it's looking at those season stats. Where do
you stack up in terms of goal shots, blocks, power
play points, wins, say percentage. I look at those ranks
in my league, and then I look at have my
players performed to their utmost potential. For example, on one
of my teams, I have some very good young players.
They haven't quite fully taken the next step yet. But
my team is pretty competitive. I think I finished fourth
last year, But I look at how am I really
there yet? Am I in this competitive window? I have
Coroll Capriso Off on this team, I have Nikita Kutrov
kil mccarr, so I have some really good star players.
But I also have Connor Berdard Logan Cooley. So some
of these players clearly haven't hit their full potential yet.
We're seeing Logan Cooley breakout now. We saw Connor Berdard
had an off seat half off year last year. We've
seen Bran Clark not fully get the reins in LA.
So it's a little bit tricky. And I look at
this and I say, I'm not really sure right I
look at my season stats and it shows me where
I am in these different categories, and in some of
them I'm really good, and in some of them I'm
really not. But it also tells me I think that
my guys are trending towards a point where they're going
to be a lot better than they are right now.
So that gives me some hope that right now I'm
actually first in goals, I'm third in assists, I'm first
in shots great special teams. I'm fourth. My perpheral coverage
of hits and blocks are really low, as well as
face off wins, so it tells me that I probably
need some more bangers. But my scoring is really good,
and I think that it can get even better because
some of those guys haven't even hit their full potential yet.
So I think you look at some of those factors
and say, Okay, this is where I'm at, this is
where I think I can be, this is where I'm
trending to be, and some of these players I think
can still take another step. So I think I'm close.
So in closing to recap. In dynasty, play the long game.
Know your settings, separate real life from fantasy. Trade smart,
know your timeline, exploit the old guy market, build and
draft with intention, diversify your prospects, and remember that dynasty
isn't luck. It's a process. There's a reason some players
win year after year. It's not luck. It's careful planning.
It's precision, it's understanding. It's bouncing ideas off each other.
It's getting good input from places like Fantasy Hockey Life
and other smart people on Twitter, discords and listening to
great podcasts who give you lots of great inform. There's
tons of them out there, not just ours. Be deliberate,
stay flexible, keep learning. It's a great fun to put
together these teams and to get input from lots of
different people. And it should be fun. It should be
a good time. It's obviously more fun when you win,
but to me, there's nothing more satisfying than winning a
league that you've spent years preparing for. One of my
early successes, I planned to win a league in three years.
I drafted some players that were really good at the time,
but I thought could be even better in two or
three years, and that led to my competitive windows staying
open for years. And I won three championships in four
years and my team's still competitive. Lost out last year,
I think in the semi finals, but my team's right there.
That's a whole different type of skill to keep a
team competitive that long. But it's really fun, and but
I planned for it. I planned to be in that position,
and there's nothing better than that coming true after years
of careful planning and meticulous.
Speaker 2: Maneuvering.
Speaker 4: With that, I'll sign up for this episode. Maybe we'll
do another one of these Dynasty two to one. If
there's an interest, and feel free to reach out with
any questions or topic ideas for the future.
Speaker 2: Take care.
Speaker 3: Our show is brought to you by vancrex dot com.
Speaker 5: That's the place to play fantasy sports any type of
game you're looking to play over there, including hockey, but
including many other things. Fan Tracks has fantasy content for days,
articles on fantasy hockey throughout the season. FHL's team, our
FHL crew deserves respect every episode. The tidy Leagues, the
Tiered Dynasty that are affiliated with our show. Tim Ryance Simon,
and Craftzer make those happen. Tony and Patrick wrangle all
of our scouting reports and get people working on them.
We have a lot of people who prepare those scouting
reports for us. Victor has gathered those over the years
and we feature some of them in our content. Brandon
helps with the website, prospect ranks and visualizations, and if
you have skills you'd like to lend the show. We're
always looking to do new, cool things. Victor would love
to hear from you in the discord, email, social media.
We're also brought to you by Dauber Hockey. Dauber Prospects,
Victors and editor writes to call him the journey. You
heard some of that content recently, Andy writes, overt McKean's
and you've heard some of that content recently. I do
solo show called Dynasty Sports Life. I talk about four
different dynasty sports. Not sure there'll be an episode this week.
I'm tied up doing some stuff, but it is a
good time frequently talking about different dynasty sports. Follow on
so social media at fan Hockey Life, at Victor newn
Your twelve on x and over on Blue Sky, Jesse
Severe the One, Victor Rate and Review, Spotify, Apple Pods.
Speaker 3: Wherever else you get podcasts. Thank you for listening once again,
and until next time, keep living that fantasy hockey like