Speaker 1: Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life, presented by fan Tracks.
Speaker 2: Here sits.
Speaker 1: Your source of information and analysis to help you win
your fantasy hockey league.
Speaker 3: Block off, hats, a step hit on, stay lock. Here's
your hosts, Jesse Sovier and Victor Nun.
Speaker 2: You hope you're gonna see Hockey Live back once again
to talk fanta see hockey. This is Jesse Severe fan Tracks.
That over there is Victor Nuno of E P Rings side. Victor,
how you doing today, buddy.
Speaker 3: I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. I had
some time off recently and so it's been really nice
to be able to do that. It's also a great
time to connect and take some time with the family,
but also to slow things down a little bit. So
it's been nice and enjoying the hockey. How about you?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, man, I believe when this airs, because we're going
a little bit ahead here. I may be off in Arizona.
Actually maybe I'll be back by then, Lord knows, Victor.
Speaker 3: Time is.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to see time as a flat circle
because everybody says that, but that kind of is what
it is. Victor. That's all right, because wherever we are
we can watch hockey. I missed my chance. A couple
of years ago. I was down in Arizona in Mesa
and there was a game at the Mullet Mullet Arena
just next door in Tempe, and I thought about going,
but it just it contradicted with an event that I
was going to be going to. So I did not
get the opportunity to see the Arizona Coyotes play at
Mullet Arena, and now that opportunity will never return. It's
very sad. It's the sort of thing that makes me
want to hop on to the Fantasy Hockey Life discord
and just bare my soul, rend my garments and talk
about that incredible missed opportunity. I'm sure others feel the
same way, and we'll also post thoughts along those lines.
They can just get a link to pop in their
Fantasy HOCKEYLFE at gmail dot com, at Victor Nuno twelve
on X at Fanhockey Life on X Victory. There's other
things that people would like. Why don't you tell people
how they can find them?
Speaker 3: If you like some of the stats that we reference,
some of the perperal coverage, especially that we talk about
for prospects, which can be really hard to find. You
can get access to all that on the website. Patreon
dot com slash Fantacy Hockey Life gets you access as
an ultralifer, and then Fantasy Hockeylife dot com is the website,
but some of those parts are restricted unless you have
that access, so that's one thing. Certainly. Patreon casts one
on one help all kinds of cool bonus content that
you can check out at Patreon dot com slash Fantasy
Hockey Life.
Speaker 2: The show will be back in get one minute dots
Fancy Hockey.
Speaker 3: I'm very pleased to welcome one of the smartest voices
in our discord. You've heard our tidy Admiral Ryan and
discuss Kraft's takes on his trades. You've heard us reference
thoughts and discussion from him, and now you get to
hear straight from the horse's mouth and a new feature
we're calling Krafts's Corner. Mark, mister kraftser How you doing,
my friend?
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm doing great. I'm looking forward to this. I
really appreciate the invitation, Victor, and yeah, I think looking
forward to some nuanced discussion about fantasy hockey in general
and some players as well, and even more excited after
you and Jesse had that recent strategy episode. It seemed
like that went ever really well on discord, and I
think we'll have a lot of overlap with some of
those concepts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope so too. And I think that when
I propose this segment to you, I think I said
something to the effect of a nuanced discussion, which I
think kind of was the hook that sold you on it.
And I do think that's a nice thing to have.
Sometimes we kind of go back and forth throwing out
some numbers, and sometimes it's just nice to have a
deep conversation where you're really trying to take all this
into account and trying to have some of these nuanced discussions,
I think is really the key because it isn't always
one single indicator. It's usually a bunch of different things.
So on that note, I wanted to hear a little
bit more about your strategy when you evaluate players, how
do you go about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you ask my friends whether it's a good
decision to invite me to have a nuanced discussion, they
may believe that you're in for a treat with a
lot of words, as Ryan has alluded to before. But
now I'm really excited to jump in, And yeah, I think,
I guess I think it's important to give everyone an
idea of where how I'm coming at things, just because
I'm not necessarily the most savvy eye test scout or
relying upon any one metric. But you have been at
this for quite a while, and when you gave me
the invitation, I thought, geez, now I got to like
actually figure out what is the system that I use.
And I think if you stop and think about it,
we're all using systems and have little habits and little patterns.
Maybe we don't necessar sarily realize it, but those are
informing our decisions. And yeah, for me, I think if
there's one thing I feel like I do well with
fantasy hockey specifically, it's just assimilating all the sources of
information they're out there and just over the years developing
an intuition about how to weigh various things. And so
for me, I guess I would break it into a
few different categories of information that it has some utility
for fantasy hockey. So you've got scouting reports and that
from all the pros that we probably all know and
have talked about the athletic guys Scott Wheeler, Corey Brahman
of course ep rnk Side and everything that ep rnkside
puts out. And then you guys have turned me on
to some of these independent scouts like Will Scouch and
Mason Black and just the sort of week to week
and season long coverage here on the podcast. It would
be one bucket of information. And then you've got stats
and advanced stats, and we can all look at those
and now we can rely upon models like Jfresh or
Byron Vader to Hockey Prospecting to have those stats organized
a little bit more usefully for us. Of course, the
eye test, I figure if any of us were exceptional scouts,
we'd be doing more than playing fantasy hockey with it.
That for me is like I'll come in at the
end and use that eye test based upon what I've
already learned about these players. But I think the other
two categories that I lean on quite heavily would be
community valuation and then this sort of miscellaneous magic dust
that we'll talk a little bit about here on the
podcast today. But community valuation I think is important. There's
the concept of the wisdom of crowds, and if you
get a consensus among a large group, you're going to
tend to be a little bit more accurate. So yeah,
for me, those are the things that I keep in mind,
and when it comes to a player specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. I think, like you said, it's
really interesting to take a step back and just ask yourself,
how do I do this? What do I do? What
do I lean on? And I think probably all of
us maybe lean more heavily on certain resources or certain guides,
or maybe someone said one time one thing that we
really liked and so we think their opinion is more
valid or whatnot. Those kinds of things all that we
all have our biases and those things can happen. But yeah,
really trying to take into account a lot of different factors.
I think this to me is part of what makes
it really fun because there is no If it was
one simple number that just made all this make sense,
this wouldn't be fun at all. It would be very simple,
and it wouldn't be any randomness or variation. It would
just be like, Okay, just get the guy with the
highest total number whatever and that's it. And so that
would be very boring. But this is why we play
because it's a little bit random and chaotic and sometimes
fun and sometimes agonizing and miserable, but it definitely keeps
it interesting for sure. There's no question about that. Yeah,
that's really interesting to think about, and I encourage everyone
to think about their own processes and biases. But tell
us a little bit about how you build your team
and how kind of player management takes into account here.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, I guess I definitely sign on to the
players's assets concept that you and Jesse covered in that
last episode. And I actually think what's going to be
really fun about our conversation today is even if the
few players that we've chosen to dive into aren't of
interest to folks, I think this is a really deep
dive into how to put into practice this players's asset.
So for me, I guess, like teams, I'm always looking
at players through a different lens depending upon the team
or the league that I'm thinking about, and so it's
teamed down evaluation of players. I think you want as
much as possible to be all in or all out
avoid that mushy middle. I think you've referenced that mushy
middle and episodes before, and never a pleasant place to
be and actually I think when you have a direction
for your team, it actually makes a lot of decisions
easier for you. If you know you're targeting twenty twenty
five twenty twenty seven. There are players that suddenly you
might like, but if you really commit to the plan,
they come become immediately expendable, and so then it's a
matter of trying to figure out when's the best time
to ship them out. And so for players, I think
I think about it in two broad tiers, like your
cornerstone guys that you're gonna get and you're going to hold,
and there's not a lot of those, so if you
get them, it's rare where you're going to be looking
to trade them away. And then everyone else obviously that's
a huge bucket. But those everyone else guys are going
to have variability from year to year. But your sort
of dream goal is always to turn those everyone else
players into cornerstone players if there's a way to make
that happen. And so those that second tier of guys,
that's where for me, like the fun and the opportunity
is when it comes to trades, player valuation and just
monitoring the community to look for the opportunity to take
this asset, this player as an asset, and turn that
piece into something that can help you for your broader
team goals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many interesting things there. Obviously, the players
that we're a little unsure about are really interesting that
everyone else, as you said, because you can have different
opinions on that. But there's also you can broadly say
the ones everyone knows is good, the ones everyone knows
are bad, and then the guys in between. The guys
in between are interesting. But also there's a lot of
people wrong about who everyone thinks is good, and there's
people who are wrong about everyone thinks are bad. So
sometimes those can be interesting ones too. But we're gonna
try and look at those ones that are in the
middle where we're a little bit unsure of what's going on.
And the other thing you said there that I really
love too, is it every situation is so different. People
always come and they ask what I do with this guy,
and it's I don't know. Man depends on your team
and like the settings and everything about your league. Because
it's easy to say we'll just trade him. Maybe you can't.
Maybe the market in that league is not good, or
sometimes people say like, I literally can't. And sometimes they
come with really good players and say I cannot trade
this guy, and I'm like, why can't you? It seems
like you should be able to. But hey, if that's
the situation, then you to deal with what's in front
of you, and so maybe you just can't. And so yeah,
you definitely have to think about it in terms of
your team context. Some people find this frustrating about fantasy hockey.
I think it's one of the most fun parts because
every league is so unique with the managers you have
in the league, from the different settings to obviously the
way that everything is set up. It's just it's really fun.
Everyone everything is like its own unique little story, and
I think that makes it really fun. But I think Mark,
there's a little bit more to this story that I
think we need to talk about here, and that is
the fact that you are a lawyer by trade, as
far as I understand, and I'm sure that color is
your perspective. I think all of us, no matter what
our vocation is, have something that allows us to view
what we do through as a certain lens. And maybe
it's a certain predilection to numbers or to trusting your
instincts or to any number of things, and so I
think that's fun to always think about what it is
for you and every individual. It also allows me to
refer and one of my favorite old movies. I don't
know how many people out there know the movie Clueless,
but it's one of my absolute favorite and there's a
part in there where Alisha Silverstone talks about her father
as a litigator. Daddy's a litigator. Those are the scariest
kinds of lawyers. I understand that might be the case
for you. So CRASSLERD, do you just intimidate your trading
partners by litigating them and litigating your case? Is that
how you go about it?
Speaker 1: I can't say that it plays no part in how
I approach discussions with other managers. But I think the
biggest thing that being a litigator that I've realized applies
broadly to every facet of life, even outside my professional life,
is that we're all storytelling all the time. In the
same way that a case at trial is basically telling
the story to a bunch of strangers sitting in the
room on borrowed attention, we are telling ourselves stories. We're
telling other managers' stories in fantasy hockey all the time,
and I think that's an air area where get into
some of that today. But it's I think a place
that folks don't examine enough. And if you think back
the decisions you've made with trades, acquisitions, direction of your team,
I think you'll see that there's like some underlying implicit
story that you're telling yourself. And so I think we're
going to look at that at the individual player level
and just think about what's the specific story of a player.
And it's a pretty malleable thing, I think, as we'll cover,
but how might a player's story lead to overvaluation or
undervaluation by r other gms in a league? How is
a player's story affect does it fit into some type
of classic archetype. Everyone loves a comeback or an underdog story,
and these are places where this sort of like miscellaneous
magic dust that I've mentioned fits in. And don't ignore
a human interest story on a player because it actually
gives you something to work with to tell a story
to yourself or to others that might have some value
in it might feel a little bit like vibes. But
I think if when we start to talk about some
individual players. We'll see the power of this storytelling concept. No.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think that there are times where you
might want to do something or think about doing something,
adding a player, trading a player, whatever the case may be,
dropping someone, but it may not fit the narrative of
your team. And that is basically what you're saying, does
it fit the story you're telling yourself or you're believing,
or the trajectory of the team you're trying to write
the story towards the championship or maybe towards the rebuild,
or whatever the case may be. And so all of
that has to fit a little bit. And I love that.
I love that. That's really interesting. Also, I just thought
of that. Did we explain where your name comes from?
Where does craft? Do you want to tell that story?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I was this was its Milan Craft, former
Pittsburgh Penguins prospect who never really panned out. He was
a check pick, a first round pick. I'm a Pittsburgh
and lifelong Pens fan. And this was like early days
of internet handles, and I think it was actually there
was a site. I don't know if many people remember.
Actually Dauber. I think the first Dauber sighting was on
this site. It was called Hockeytrade Rumors dot com, and
I needed an Internet handle for Hockeytrade Roomors dot com.
It was basically like a single home page message board
type thing, and it stuck, and multiple people complimented over
the years. I was like, yeah, that's a pretty cool name,
and so it's I've run with it for I guess
it's been geez twenty five years now.
Speaker 3: I love it, my longcraft. I just looked him up
twenty third overall pick in nineteen ninety eight, sixty four
two hundred and twenty pounds center, and back in nineteen
ninety eight he was killing it in the U twenty
League in check Ya, and then he came over to
the WHL and he definitely played some NHL games, but yeah,
it didn't quite translate, and then he went back to
check yet had a pretty long career.
Speaker 1: Yeah he actually he had some cement in his skates,
it turns out, and whenever, after the lockout and the
league got a little bit faster. I don't even know
that he got qualified after a pretty I think he
had like a twenty goal season before the lockout, and
then just the game got faster and that was it
for him.
Speaker 3: So nice. All right. I love all that background and
all that information. It's good stuff. Let's talk about some
specific examples, and I will give you the floor, a counselor,
to make your case on Conor McMichael. I think a
lot of people are interested in him. I've actually had
a few people interested talk about him ask about him
recently and I said, well, wait, we're going to talk
about him on the show, so let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a good pick. I think I was.
I said, he scored again last night, so I was like,
all right, he's gonna stay relevant and everyone was going
to be anxious to hear what we have to say
about him. He's the guy I was completely out for
the last few years. He for me, And this is again,
this is like already getting into this storytelling. I've got this.
Call it a bias. Maybe sometimes it's helpful. He's taken
to me in this sort of like dead zone of
the late first round. I think he was like a
twenty fifth overall, twenty nineteen and those mid twenties guys.
For me, that's like a red flag. It's almost like
the sweet spot for these low ceiling middle six short
of being in the league, but not high upside type guys,
and so I have that in my mind when I'm
looking at him this first couple of years, and he
really had like a non existent D minus one year,
so a draft year skating concern I think was the
big knock on him and all of that. He did
have a big D plus one season, but in my mind,
I was like, all right, that's the high watermark for
this guy. He's not a great skater. He's a mid
twenties first round pick. I was if I had any
shares of him like that. I was seeing that as
the opportune time to maybe get a mid first round
pick type of prospect for him. I guess looking at
him after that, he had the dreaded first professional seasons,
second pressure, the season decline in his equivalency, so you
get that Bader model that looks like the greater Lan sign,
and Bader has commented I think a few times on Twitter,
that's just not a good sign that really creators a
guy's chances. I was out and and I this summer
in the tidy Lord Stanley dispersal. I actually drafted him
relatively early for where I took him, I think, and
even prompted a message from a friend in the division saying,
what the heck you been out on this guy? What's
up with that pick? And so there were a couple
of things on my mind. One was just what Spencer
Carberry did last year with Washington pretty amazing for the
group of players that he had, and McMichael did seem
to like force his way into a relevant place on
that team as the season went on. And then really
the other big piece for me was hearing Corey I
think it's Schneider, Corey Schneider on Apples and Genos this
summer and he mentioned that McMichael stood out as having
excellent zone entry numbers, and I know that's something that
Corey's identified as like a possible indicator for a potential breakout.
I think yes, for Bratt is a name where he
was early on Brat just because of those zone entry numbers.
And of course we're all looking for tidbits where it's
is there a can you find get in on a
guy early? Like what's an indicator that would be super valuable?
I think Corey does good work. So I was like,
all right, that really caught my eye. And then took
a closer look at this guy, and I was like
really impressed with the film. Looking at his goals last year,
you can really see quickly that he's a dangerous player
off the rush, and that fits right with sort of
Corey's tracking data. And that's in spite of this skating
concern that seemed to be plaguing him as a prospect.
I'm looking at these highlights and consistently these goal highlights
for McMichael, the puck is in the Washington zone at
the start of the highlight. It just amazed me how
much and over again that was the case. Looking at
some of his goals from last season, his goals from
this season, and then looking a bit at the advanced
stats his individual high danger chances, which I know favors
slot opportunities, which is where he seems to drive on
these zone entries. He really ranked quite well, right around
some other guys that I think going into the season
we all would have had well ahead of Michael, Owen, Tippett,
Seth Jarvis or right around those guys ahead of like
Tima Meyer, Alex Inner Barkov, Mason McTavish, Still and cousins
like in that territory where I think he would have
comfortably been at the bottom of the list of all
of those names. So the highlight reel was also showing
some real puck skills, which I think, again has been
a consistent part of his game that he's always been
considered to have. So I was pretty surprised given how
much I had written him off. And he's obviously started
this season unsustainably hot but pretty impressive. The numbers all
look pretty good, I think, and he won't keep up
the shooting percentage, but he's really pushing the ice time
now he's on the power play one that wasn't the
case beginning of the year. So I don't know. I
think I'm a convert and I'm now a believer. Victor.
Where are you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And that dispersal draft was super fun. You and I
were in that with a couple other people, and it
was really interesting just to see who took, who win,
And yeah, I don't necessarily remember you taking that. I
was probably thinking the same thing that you had been
in the past with McMichael, in a sense of yeah,
not super sure how much this is going to continue.
I remember really liking McMichael in his draft season. One
of the biggest things that always stood out to me
about him was just how smart he was. Like watching him,
he always seemed to identify not just a good play,
but the best play and really made not just safe decisions,
but really good play opening play, driving maneuvers and passes.
It's always a little tricky, I think when you're thinking
about when you're looking at someone who plays in London,
because that can be a really tricky development path because
we know they tend to push guys down the lineup.
They tend to really favor their nineteen and twenty year olds.
I really wonder how that's going to change with the
new nhln Cuba rules. As we're recording this, we just
got the news that they're allowing CHL players next year,
So that's going to really shift some things potentially, well
though maybe London will still do London things, but that
was certainly the case to some extent. I think for McMichael,
you mentioned his muted Draft minus one production, and he
was with London only half the year, and then in
his draft season it was a little modest seventy two
points and sixty seven games, and then he really exploded
in that deplus one season, which you could write off
in various ways. But also we tend to see that
in a lot of London players, just because they get
more opportunity, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going
to be great. You just do tend to see a
big sort of pop off in that draft plus one season,
whether or not they end up being big NHL contributors
or not. But I thought the smarts showed a clear
path to being an NHL er. But I definitely thought
of him as a high floor guy. I wasn't so
sure that he'd be a top of the lineup guy.
Certainly didn't seem like a for sure top line or
even a top sixer. And then, as you said, the
last couple of years, it was looking real dicey for him,
especially as Washington started to koreem towards the cliff that
we all saw coming. Oh God, who's even going to
be here? And then we started thinking. I started thinking
about McMichael, as he's going to be around when nobody's
there and all the top producers have left, So how
is that going to work? He started to get a
little bit of an opportunity in twenty twenty one to
twenty two and nothing, not too much came of it.
He actually seemed to really struggle that year, and then
he spent the entire twenty two to twenty three season
down in Hershey. Was probably really, quite frankly, the best
thing for him because he was down there and got
to really dominate and got to really get his confidence back.
And he did pretty well there thirty nine points of
fifty seven games, didn't play a single NHL game that season,
which I said is probably good. And then in twenty
three twenty four you saw a little bit of improvement,
but I still was like, not sure what was going
to happen here, and he was getting a little closer
to that two hundred game played threshold, which he's still
not at. He's still at one sixty seven, so you know,
maybe we're seeing that breakout as it's approaching. But I
definitely remember thinking, Okay, if you can hold him, there's
still maybe potential here. Because Washington was so bad for
a lot of that time too. They just really struggled
to drive play. Even last year when they made the playoffs,
it was a mess in terms of some of their
underlying metrics and expected goals. But looking at him this year,
it's like a completely different story. I was looking at
these replacement charts on Hockey Viz and he basically there
is with or without you, and without McMichael, pretty much
everyone gets shoved to the left, to the bad region.
Even some of the top players like Dylan Strom is
quite a bit worse without McMichael. You look at ivn
Ovechkin and Manjiapani and Nick Daoud, and some of these
guys are quite a bit worse pro de let's say, protests,
and then with him, he's pretty much dragging everyone into
the positive range, both in expected goals against and expected
goals for, so in both ways he's really helping everyone out.
And I also put in the notes the Korey Schneider
graph that you were alluding to, or that he was
alluding to on the podcast, and looking at some of
these zone entries with zone entry percent with control, a
lot of these transition numbers are really excellent, including not
just offensively but defensively. Some of the overall offensive generation
wasn't quite there and some of the passing wasn't there,
but the transition data, zone exits and retrievals looked really good,
which as he said, sometimes can be the precursor to
the breakout coming because you're actually able to get in
the zone and get out of the zone with the puck,
which helps when you're trying to create offense. I think
the other thing that really is interesting to me I
looked at some hockey viz graphs and with McMichael at
even strength, the caps are plus forty percent, which is
a massive number. I can't remember the last time I
saw that big of an increase with the player. That
is so ridiculous. How much he's improving things when he's
on the ice and on the power play. We should
mention right now as a recording is he has thirteen
points in twelve games, zero on the power play. Zero
power play points. I think that's pretty ridiculous. So right
now his offensive numbers, he's plus eleven on the power
play in terms of his expected goals four per sixty,
so he's definitely helping on the power play. It's not
as dramatic, but also he hasn't scored a single point,
so even though he's helping, none of those are reflected.
So you could certainly make the argument that he deserves
at least a few power play points by now, and
he doesn't have any and maybe even doesn't quite deserve
as many even strength points, which I think you could
argue maybe he doesn't because his shooting percentage is a
little bit high, but the rest of his numbers are
pretty in line. His ipp is nothing too crazy, and
I think overall his pdo suggests he's actually getting a
bit unlucky, which is crazy to think that could be
the case, because he's sitting at an eighty nine point pace.
I don't think he's a ninety point player, but I
also don't I'm fairly confident he is not a thirty
four point player, which is what he was last year,
so I think it's somewhere in between. You pair all
that with his play driving numbers, and it's ridiculous. In
case you're wondering, he's been playing primarily with Tom Wilson
and Pierre Luke Dubois, who are plus twenty five and
plus thirty six. Wilson's thirty six and Duba's twenty five.
McMichael is clearly the highest of the three, and he
seems to be driving it more than anyone. I do
think that Dubois has looked a lot better and I
don't think it's just he's playing with but clearly that
line is clicking. And I also looked at money Puck
to see. I was like looking at which lines are
doing well, and that line of Dubois, Wilson and McMichael
is currently the twelfth best in the entire league in
terms of expected goals for sixty. That's ridiculous. We're talking
like the best twelve lines in the entire league, which
usually is some combination of the guys you would think of,
like the mcdavids and the McKinnon's and those kinds of things,
but some other guys mixed in there too. That's really high.
So yeah, there are definitely some things that have turned
around for McMichael, and that hope that I think some
of us were holding on to is starting to materialize.
So I think the question here crafts are is what
do we do with him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm gonna buyer right now. Actually, after
we exchanged those on him, I did acquire him in
a dynasty league. I don't know if we had a
chance to talk about that trade, but for me, he
falls into and I believe the trade that I made
was of this sort. It's this story category I've been
exploring the last couple of years where it's like a
good by high opportunity, if that makes sense, And so
it's the idea is to capitalize on the other owners
feeling that he's getting to sell high on a player
that's not going to sustain the production. So you believe
and there's reason in the past with this player or
circumstances to think maybe this is peak asset value. But
you're a believer, you can still I think, get a
discount there and obviously got the crazy at least before
last night's game, he was around twenty percent shooting percentage
that's not going to hold. There's I think reason to
believe that owners might be thinking, boy, this is now
is the time to trade this guy. So I guess
because of the rocky history to get to this point,
there's a little bit of risk not to this by
high gambit because you're not going to be able to
do it. If the player is a you know, a
blue chain stud. It's someone who's got some reason to believe,
some reason for the other owner to believe this guy
might be at his all time high value. But to me,
like what everything you just said Victor. It just only
supports how he's already feeling about this guy. And so
let's say he cools off and finishes the year with
sixty sixty five points. I think he's going to have
more value in the offseason at coming off a sixty
point year than he does right now, because it's taken
him so long to put it all together and the
shooting percentage is so high. So if you don't have
he has someone who's not looking at those underlying numbers,
they may see it as the time to make the move.
I think I'm a buyer, and I guess I would say, though,
in spite of all that this, we're still talking about
a secondary asset, not a cornerstone player. He's in that
everyone else category for me, that middle pack of guys,
And so that means the goal is to scoop this
guy up now, look for an opportunity to maybe flip
him again in the future. And unless you're going forward
and he holds this together and he can be a
key piece to your contention for a title. But if
you're anywhere other than that, I think you're just thinking,
is can this guy get to sixty points? And in
the offseason is a Connor McMichael coming off with sixty
points worth more than I pay to get him now?
And I think in a lot of leagues the answer
is going to be yes. And then who knows, maybe
there's a seventy point season in him this year, and
then you can either keep him or pocket even more
of a gain in the offseason. So that's where I'm
at as far as dynasty goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one thing is for sure is that
there's probably gonna be a lot of movement of Connor
McMichael in the next nine months or so, maybe a year,
and I think that that's right. I think a lot
of it just depends on what you can get both
or what you have to pay, because if you can
buy high and not sell the farm, then that makes sense.
I think if assume, like you said, that he's going
to maybe be that sixty to seven point player, if
he lives in that range, then I think you can
sell him for that and maybe someone will buy what
he's doing now. I do think a lot of it
is sustainable, but I don't really think that he's a
point per game player. I think he's just a notch
below that, and so that's where the assessment comes in.
My biggest concern is who's he playing with and who
do the Capitals have moving forward. Even though it looks
pretty good right now, we have seen I don't trust
Pier Luc Dubo or anything. We have seen that guy
just completely fall off and lose interest, and there's so
many potential issues with that. We know Obi's pushing going
to be forty. Tom Wilson is for a bigger guy
getting on the passing thirty, and they have some other
decent players. Strome is one of the most underrated players
in the league. Lexai protest looks great, so they have
a little bit coming around, but I'm just not sure
that it's going to be enough to sustain a super
high producer for a long time. So that's part of
why nothing really against McMichael. I think if he was
like when Edmonton or colorad or something like that, I said, say,
for sure, he could be a point per game player
playing with some other talented players, But I just think
he's more in that sixty to seventy maybe sixty five
to seventy five. I think he might be the guy
you want on Washington in a couple of years. I
don't know if he's quite right currently during the streak,
he is, but I'm not sure that how long that's
going to continue. There's a league where I have him.
I drafted him, and I've held him the entire time,
and that league has a two hundred and forty games
played limit, And if you have a higher limit, you
probably held him this whole time. But if your limit
was like eighty or one hundred games, you might have
dropped him and then scrambling to reacquire him right now.
And in that case, you have to think about what
you want to pay. I'm not selling him in that
league where the minor limits to forty because the value
is just so high because of what he's doing. And
it's a contract league, and obviously he's making nothing, so
that's just fantastic for now. Although he is gonna he
is going to get paid. He's making two point one million.
It's not nothing, but he's going to be an RFA
at the end of next season, and if he continues up,
he's certainly going to get a pretty decent raid. That's
something to think about. Yeah, I think just trying to
figure out where he settles is part of it. And
one thing that came to mind for me that I
want to ask you about Kraftzer is Jason Robertson. And
Jason Robertson he's been a really funky evaluation for a
lot of us too. And he broke out in twenty
twenty twenty one with that seventy two point pace, and
then he had a couple seasons in the eighties and
he had that outlier season looks like an outlier of
one hundred and nine point pace, but he hasn't really
come close to that since, and this season he's down
in the fifty point pace range. He's still shooting a
fair amount, the shooting percents, a lot of the numbers
look the same, He's just not producing as much. And
so I'm starting to wonder if that one hundred point
season is the outlier and maybe he's just more of
a seventy to eighty point guy, in which case, maybe
you could get Jason Robertson for coonor MacMichael. I don't
know if you could, but that thought occurred to me.
Would you have the guts to do that? Would you
do that?
Speaker 1: I would probably still take Robertson in that deal, Yet
what I deal Robertson for McMichael, I don't think. I
think it would be very unique circumstance contract league. I
think that's a huge difference there. But yeah, it's interesting.
The other thing I'd be curious about is I did
see looking at some of the stats on advanced stats
on McMichael, I did see a few other Caps players.
I think Manja Pane was up there high in rush
shots for sixty. I don't watch enough Caps to really
know how Carberry's like playing this team and system wise
like what their approach is, but it seems like it
might be the case where this is just a great
fit for McMichael and what he does and Dallas. Obviously
there hasn't been a regime change, but the ice time
that's being spread out in Dallas is I think frustrating
probably all of us. Maybe Stankoven's the only exception of
a player that is about where we would have all
hoped coming into the season, but everyone else is just
a little bit muted based upon expectations. I think think
just because the ice is being spread so widely there.
But yeah, I don't know Robertson, he seems like he's
clearly a hash marks and in type of guy, like,
he's not going to be your driver, but it's less
surprising to see him have some ups and downs because
it's not as dependable because he's gonna need the help.
But yeah, I don't know that's a good one.
Speaker 3: If anyone managed to pull that off, let me know.
I think I would still stick with Robertson too, but
I am also concerned with some of the things they're
doing in Dallas. It's just a little weird. But I
certainly I haven't seen enough for McMichael to pull the
trigger on that one though, But I think that's the
level just a little bit below a Jason Robertson type
is someone you might be able to get right now
with McMichael because he is really exciting and interesting. So
let us know what you think about your evaluation if
you'd make any trades with McMichael. But let's move on
to our next one, Drake Batherson. He's also been an
interesting one. What are your thoughts on him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's obviously off to I'd say for him a
bit of hot start here point per game so far
this year, Maybe a good time to check in on him,
But I also had him in mind because I think
it's a good opportunity to kind of put my storytelling
to the test here and see and just be willing
to expose for everyone some biases and some of the
little things that if you don't reflect on it, you
might not realize are playing into your valuation of guys.
So I'm a big bothersome believer. I think I have
him in almost all my leagues, and he's been let
me down a little bit in terms of the high
hopes I had the last couple of seasons. So I'm gonna,
I guess see if I can see how my story
that this guy is a point per game player holds
up to the scrutiny of your eye, Victor. So I
guess for him, he's a guy after my heart. You know,
started playing Fantasy twenty plus years ago, Fantasy Hockey and
the era of the Bangers, and when the option to
have leagues that counted peripheral stats opened up, you had
your Dustin Brown, Brendan Morrow, David Bachis, Ryan Clote type
guys that were just monsters, and you got Tom Wilson. Now,
who's your envy? But guys that are true like two
hundred plus hit threats and I miss those guys. They're
harder to find these days. And Batherston had as good
a profile as you're really going to find at a
two hit per game type of guy with some pop
to score. So I was immediately interested in him in
that regard. But and I guess because of his lack
of pedigree, he didn't really pop up on my radar,
and I'm sure it's probably true for most folks until
he had that end of the season with thirty four
points at fifty six games, hitting that two hits per
game number, and I was cooked at that point. The
Baiter model checking in on him, it's he started really
behind the eight ball because his early production was poor.
But the shape of his progression actually looks fantastic. It's
exactly what you want to see. It's improvement every year,
even when he's going up level. So that I think
is an exploit in the Bator model. If your league
mats use that and they're just looking at percentages, the
shape a lot of times, I think is a little
bit more important, especially and again this is just a
story I'm telling myself to convince myself on this guy.
Back when I started getting interested in him, the shape
of the model. When you've got a guy that's I
think six ' four, you're thinking, okay, notoriously, take a
little bit more time to develop. So this is actually
maybe a hidden gem here that's playing in my mind.
And then he has his real calder competitive season I believe,
where he made the All Star team and no man,
actually I guess he had exceeded the games played the
year before, but that was the year he did make
the All Star team. And then he had the Arundell
incident behind the net and broke his ankle, and so
that was a by opportunity for me because I was
interested at the time and that injury might lead to
him being a little bit Undervalu that offseason. So then
he had the two seasons since where he's been in
the sixty point range, and I was hoping for a
little bit more during that time. But during all of this,
the one thing that was playing in my mind is
Ian Mendez on keeping Carlson being asked, I think after
the the Arundell season, and this is when Stutsla is
in the picture and Kachuck is on the team, who's
the one centers player that can be a point per
game player? He said Drake Batherson, and so I was like, WHOA, Okay,
that's going to again to these biases that has never
left my mind. Comments like that tend to stick, and
sometimes they for the better and other times for the worst.
I remember Rob Scuderi, former third pairing defenseman for the Pens.
Some people might remember when he left the Penns to La.
He said, Martin Hansel, another player blast from the past
people might remember, was the hardest player in the Western
Conference to play against. So I immediately went out and
acquired Martin Hansel on every league and that didn't work
out so well. But as far as Batherston goes, that
Mendez comment was playing in my mind during this time,
and so I guess he's got this player archetype that
I like that he bangs two hits per game, he's
got a great shape to his model, just a little
bit behind, but he's a bigger guy. And then you
got the Mendez comment and the injury, and in my mind,
I'm just I'm chalking up all of these things to
why he hasn't quite gotten to that point yet. And
he's surrounded by some pretty good players, and that to
me is another sort of archetype that he that opens
the door here, which is the very good in his
own right, but overshadowed by other teammates archetype of player asset.
And I think the best example this would be Jake
Gonsel as a Penns fan, we saw early that Gensel
was much more than Crosby's linemate, and I think we've
all seen that now and so being in on that
early and flagging Batherston as okay, maybe this is one
of those guys. All these things are in my mind
probably putting a higher than most other managers value on
this guy. And what is he I still believe that
there's a point per game guy there with two hits
per game. I think he's more of a playmaker than
a scorer, but I think he can finish his chances.
You'll notice, I think most of his goals are in
and around the net, so he gets there. But he
shows out as a really good power play player on
Jay Fresh's model and withstood the threat of Claude Deru
last season. I think a lot of folks thought he
would lose his power play one spot to Drew. He's
held it, and I think everyone would say now that
there's really no one that's going to take that from him.
I'm sticking to my multiple stories that I highlighted and
believing that this guy can put it together for a
point per game season in spite of the advanced stats
that don't look especially strong over the years. What do
you think, Victor.
Speaker 3: So you presented an excellent counselor. I appreciate that man
blasts in the past, Ryan klow Man, I used to
love watching that guy. He was big and mean and
really hard to play against. But man, could the guy
barely skate. He was a rough skater, and I think
not only did he have some there were some off
ice issues, but and he had some concussion issues. But
it also seemed like the game kind of changed and
moved past him a little bit when things got faster.
But he was so fun to watch. And yeah, I
remember those guys you mentioned for sure, the definitely a
little bit of a more rare archetype. I think a
big difference between Bathurston and those guys is that Bathurston
can really move like he is not a slow guy,
and so he's got the physicality and some of the
other nice features of a score, but he also bangs
a lot. So yeah, Drake Bathurston is currently a point
per game players. So I guess we just wrap this
up and say case closed. Right seems fair? No, okay,
maybe there's some object objection, objection, your honor, Maybe that
we dig into it a little bit more. His expected
numbers are even better than what he's actually producing. If
you look at the evolving Hockey model of just xcar
he is better than what he'd expects. So that's not
just goals, but that's like his total offense, So that's interesting.
There's obviously some outliers here in his shooting percentage. He's
shooting twenty point eight percent in his average including that,
his career average including this season is twelve point eight,
and he's had several seasons below a couple seasons below ten.
But typically he seems to be living outside of those
low ball numbers. He lives more in the fourteen to
fifteen percent range, so maybe it's not as out landish
as possible that he keeps up a relatively high shooting percentage.
He also has maybe one or two too many secondary assists,
but overall, nothing is like super crazy. One of the
fun things that Micah Blake McCurdy has on Hockey Biz
is looking at dual threat players. I actually didn't realize
he had this or this a recent feature, but it's
fun looking at what you think someone is or what
they can do, and it's interesting. Claude Deru is the
main dual threat on this team. He's more of a
finisher but shows up pretty well in the playmaking, whereas
Brady Kuchuk. You might think of him as a finisher,
but he's listed much more here as a playmaker, which
is interesting. And so the only other one solidly in
the dual threat area is Drake Batherston along with Drew
so that's interesting, which I think is a good thing
unless you're just outrageously good at one thing like Joe
Thornton or Levechkin. It's nice to be a dual threat
because you have more ways to score, and primary expected
points is a really good metric, whether it's a primary
assist or a goal, those are more reproducible than secondary
assists anyway. So it's nice to be able to have
a nice to be pretty high on those numbers, those lists,
So that's good. But there's some bads here that I
might have to push back against you craft, sir, and
that is that there's this really cool feature that hockey
Viz has as well, and it's called synthetic goals, and
it's looking at all the different it takes me a
koind a bunch of different features from play driving, expected
goals for assists against, looking at some play driving numbers,
corsi and things like that, shots block shots and things
like that, and it breaks in this graphic. It breaks
it down by first line or second liner, third liner,
and fourth liner, and the best on the team of
the centers by far as claud dru which is interesting.
I guess I might have thought it was Stucchele or Kuchuk,
but it is not, and so that was surprising that
I thought Drew was good but not that good. It
also has Michael Amadio in the similar range to Brady Kuchuk,
so that makes me question everything about this graph, which
because I don't think those in the same conversation. But
it also has Bathurston as more of a second liner
near where Stutsla is, so that's maybe a little bit
of a knock against him. But again I also question
a little bit this graph considering some of the other players.
It also has Josh Norris solidly as a fourth liner,
which there are a lot of metrics that show Josh
Norris as not a great player, including there's this which
one was I looking at. I don't know if it
was this replacement gras. I think it was a different
graph that actually had Norris so bad that he looked
like one of the worst forwards on the team. So
that's interesting and neither here nor there, but just something
I noticed looking at the even strength offense. Drake Bathson
is a minus for what his impact is on the team,
which is definitely not good for someone for an offensive
forward that you're looking at. But his offensive impact on
the power play is good, and he does have four
of his twelve points on the power play, so I
guess that's good. The other graph that I really like
to look at is the Wowie with and without you,
and that's one way of looking at it. And also
you can just look at replacements. So if you just
took that player out, how does that player do in
terms of expected goals and assists? And interesting that some
of the guys that you would think of have been good,
like Stuchla kachuk Jeru is actually closer to the dull
than good, but still not on the negative side of
the ledger. Adam Goddad, who's having a crazy good season,
is on the positive David Pern which is interesting, but
it's a little not as flattering for Bathurston in this chart,
and so that's interesting where a lot of the players
are much worse. Sorry, a lot of the players without
him are much better than they are with him. And
so that's never something you want for your best players,
is for them to be without you on the ice.
And you look at some of the best players in
the league and when you look at this, that isn't
generally the case. They're pretty much always worse without someone.
So that is some reasons why I might have to
disagree with you. In terms of the point per game projection,
I think that he so he's had a couple seasons
in the sixties, he had that seventy eight point pay season.
I'm thinking that he lives in that sixty five to
seventy five point range. But with those strong piffs that
certainly can give him a little bit more value than
just a straight up point. So where do you think
he belongs in terms of his roster type?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think The evidence is probably against me on
this one, but I wanted to use as an opportunity
to just point out some of those ways that you
can explain things away. If you start to buy into
a guy and you hold out hope and suddenly a
season that's not you know what you would want to
see to have the player live up to the promise,
You justify it because there was a coaching change, or
there was an injury to alignment or some of these things.
If you happen to buy that he can be a
point per game guy, a guy who maybe when his
contract is up, he leaves and gets a bigger deal.
I think he's very reasonable contract right now, but just
given the other talent in Ottawa, if he's a guy
that's going to exit and kind of get a big
free agency deal, maybe if you believe in the player,
that gives him the opportunity to hit that point per
game level. But yeah, I think it's probably best to
treat him as he is what he is right now.
But I think there's a case out there that he's
still got a little bit more in him, but I
guess we'll have to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I definitely agree with him taking a step I'm
just not quite sure if i'd go point per game.
But again, he doesn't need to be point per game
to be super valuable. We already have an archetype on
the same team, Brady kud Chuck, who is that player
who scores a fair amount but the priffs are just
so good, and I think Bathurston falls into that range,
maybe just a step below what Brady can do. But yeah,
real interesting one. We're going to take a quick break
Crafts and then come back on the other side here
and talk about a couple other players.
Speaker 2: On double What are you going to do to get
me that selfish hockey? That's right, selfish hockey. Break it down,
skate to block, don't pass it head. It's still going
to be there when you catch.
Speaker 1: Up with taking coast to coast shots and poor angles,
they're still shots, bad balance, that's a good breakaway. Gotta
get the bounce boys perfectly. All right, welcome back.
Speaker 3: We'll continue our conversation of Kraftser's corner here and taking
into account. In this part, we're going to talk about
two defensemen from the twenty twenty drafts who are on
pretty different trajectories as of late. So why don't you
tell us a little bit about that craft surf.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think we got Jamie Drisdale and brought Favor
to finish things out. And I think it's fun to
compare these two just given the different trajectories, and it's
interesting from where they had their start at that draft
and where they seem to be headed or where they
seem to be right now. I guess taking Drysdale first
a little bit of a selfish pick because I'm trying
to figure out what the heck to do with him
in a long time league where I'm coming out of
a rebuilding a big way and he was age and promise.
He was one of those pieces that I thought would
be helping me in this step towards the playoffs and
the rest of the team's doing what it needs, but
he's certainly not. And I'm just trying to figure out
whether I can salvage anything out of him. Start with
the positive. You got the pedigree, and you've got a
team investing a big piece by trading Cutter Goat to
bring Drysdoe in. I think those are that's often worth
thinking about because it's I think Dauber's been very good
at pointing these things out over the years, money talks,
trade acquisition, cost talks when it comes to ice time,
towards might have some other ideas, but you'd think that
Philly's going to try and maximize what they have in him,
given what they gave up to get him. He was
obviously a top ten pick, the top d man on
the board that year, although of a weaker class. Statistical
profile is insane. Vader's model. Just absolutely love this guy
based upon that incredible nineteen year old season he had
in the NHL. But that's really the high water mark.
It's been all downhill from there. He's still got amazing skating,
but back to back injuries or near back to back
injuries on that same shoulder, just pretty brutal stretch of production.
Since coming back from those injuries, He's obviously changed teams.
Maybe you can try and explain it away there, but
the teams have been bad teams at that. But yeah,
so I guess looking at the tape doesn't really help
a whole lot. He's an excellent skater, but puck skills
seem just okay, not a dynamic athlete, and that's something
that I think actually is worth noting. If you're thinking
about these guys as assets. Someone who's gonna have that
dynamism to their game might be more attractive to other
managers in a trade, even at the same production they
might be making. The highlight reel and just the sex
appeal of having that dynamic player oftentimes pushes the value
up a little bit. And I just don't think he
is that. From an athletics standpoint. Everything since has been
pretty consistent with his original scouting report. It looks like
a good skater out there in the hockey sense. Is
maybe not what we all hoped and what scouts had hoped,
But if he's going to do anything, he's going to
do anything, it's going to be that his brain. A
guy he reminds me of from an asset perspective is
Alex Kologowski, smooth skater, never dynamic, but put up some
productive seasons. But just when you think about it, those
that were playing in the Goligoski days, never a guy
you were going to get another manager actually really excited
about in a trade offer if you and another one
who is not dynamic. He came in and right around
the same time as Crystal Tang, and you compare the
two in the tank, just much more dynamic guy, even
if never as smart as Gologowski was in my opinion.
But so you've got the time on ice opportunity, the
power player opportunity should be there, given that heavy investment
by Philly, some solid players around him. It just hasn't.
There's just not been much there beyond that. So I
guess in my mind, the question is do you try
and take that pedigree the acquisition costs, the ice time,
the age, and the profile and turn him into something
or is there some reclamation project here that would make
him worthwhile for rebuilding team to go out and pick
him up.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question, and no problem inserting your
own selfish reasons for wanting to talk about a player.
I think that's a lot of why we do a
lot of this anyways. But yeah, I think it's always
important to think back at that draft and that twenty
twenty draft was really weak on defense, and I think
sometimes we get a little blinded. And I think NHL
teams do this too. They want something like they want
a defenseman and this is the year that they have
a high pick, so to the game. I'm not saying
that's what Anaheim did but there was a lot of
talk of if you need an offensive defenceman this year,
it's got to be Jamie Drysdale, and I think when
you look back at this draft that he's clearly not
the best offensive defenseman in that draft. It's probably gonna
be Jake Sanderson, who was billed as more of a
two way defensive guy. But we've also we're talking about
brock Favor later, and there's even some guys that went
later than him that that might even be more offensive
than that, like Mason Lora showing some promise, and we've
seen some Justin Baron and King Gooley, So there's some
other names, but that everyone was focused on he's got
to be the offensive guy, and that may not necessarily
always be the case. There were some other offensive guys
that maybe had some promise. I mentioned Goolie, William Vallender,
Emil Andre who's kind of breaking out now, Lucash Cormier,
Jeremy Pouarrier. Both of those last two had a lot
of good offense, but the defense was a big question
and that continues to be the case. So sometimes the
best of what's around should give you pause, because that
isn't really a good way of going about it. You
really have to try to compare these guys draft to draft,
year to year, which is really hard. But I think
a lot of us who were looking at this and
just looking at Drysdale were saying, like, I don't know
how he compares with some of the other guys. It
didn't seem as good. He was really good in junior.
But the other question is like, what else is dynamic
about him? You alluded to this, the skating is really great,
but what else is there? Is there good, really good,
incredible hockey sense. Is there really good puck skills or
a really good shot or anything else? And I think
the answer even back then was nothing really stood out
aside from just being a good skater. Is that enough
to be a good fantasy asset? It's enough to be
in NHL or And I think a lot of us
thought that and that was true. But is there an
enough to be more than that? And I we're still
waiting to see the answer of that, but I don't
think so. And the other big issue with Dryzdel is
that what else does he do aside from skate around
and do a cardio session when he's out there? Because
the priffs are a real problem with Jamie Dreizel. You
mentioned Alex Goologowski, which I think is not an unreasonable
comp except that Gologowski always had good priffs and Drysdell
is not that kind of guy. So you're lucky if
you get a shot out of Jamie. He has one
hit in thirty one games this season. He has eighty
one hits in his entire one hundred and sixty NHL
game career. That's really not great a half hit per
game on average. The blocks are a little bit more
decent this season. Sorry. In his career, he has an
average of one per game to this point, but this
year has been closer to two per game, which is decent.
A lot of guys can give you two blocks per
game that do more than A big indictment is when
I look at his evolving hockey grass and holy cow,
is it bad. All of his even strength offense expected
numbers is expected and actual numbers are pretty terrible. And
this includes Anaheim and Philly. But I looked at it
both ways. I looked at Anaheim and I looked at
it just Philly, and it's pretty much bad no matter
which way you cut it. There really isn't a good
slice of pie here, unfortunately, And then looking at the
wowie you know, looking at the Philadelphia players with Drysdale
and without, now it's not terrible like that. He definitely
seems to be helping some players and not others. But
he's in the middle like where some are a little
bit better and some are not in terms of the
with or without you. So that's reasonable, especially for a
young ish player. You'd hope him to be better and
pulling players into the good, but he doesn't do that
for a lot of players. And then the synthetic got
the synthetic goals. Looking at that, he is literally the
worst defender of all the defensemen in Philly in terms
of when you incorporate all these expected goals number offense,
defense and book hanging out at all. Yeah, he's just
really bad. And a lot of the other players, even
m Landre i was on here, is much much better
cam Yorke i was funny than a similar draft. So
the analytics just suggests that he's really not good. I'm
just not sure what there is like about Drysdale other
than if you yeah, if you look back at his
hockey prospecting card when he graduated the mile the model,
he looked like a surefire star, but it clearly is
not the case. And I actually had this discussion with someone,
and this was back in yeah, twenty three, twenty four
and there, and the question was like, why we still
believe in Jimmie Dreizel, And I was like, I don't.
And he pulled up the Hockey Prospecting cards like, look,
he still looks like a ninety four percent chance of
being a star. And I was like, I think you
need to That's okay to look at that, but when
you start being presented with more and more evidence to
the contrary, you really have to change your mind. And
the more he was playing in the NHL, the more
he was showing us that he really wasn't that guy.
And at this point he's got one hundred and sixty
NHL games, and it's it seems like the more he's played,
the worse he's gotten as a fantasy asset, not necessarily
as an all around defender. I think he's made some
strides there, but I don't think there's any world where
he gets to the point where we thought he would
be in his OHL days. I just don't think he's
ever going to be that defenseman that we saw in
the Eerie Otters and with Hockey Canada that was so great,
and I think as he's a send of the levels,
it's become more and more challenging for him. I would
try to get an ascid for him, drop him, whatever
you need to do, craps her.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Yeah, I think that's probably the
right answer, although I did he did come back in
that Michael trade I mentioned after we picked up these players,
but before I knew your thoughts, Victor and saw just
how bad and grim the picture is. But that's okay.
I mean I knew I really had basically the same
judgment when I acquired him, and just I guess, just
to give the perspective on why I thought he was
even worth including in that deal, that's a that is
a like twenty twenty seven at best team that I
inherited this summer and basically doing a tear down. And
so I didn't see him as I didn't see the
owner who threw him in the deal as placing much
value on him. And so my thinking was there's no
obvious threat in the pipeline. Since the Flyers passed on
Zev and you've got Mischkov. His play is going to
improve and connect me and Tippett. There's some pieces there
that if he continues to get power play time, maybe
he has a moment where you know, he just it
could be an unjustified hot streak, and I will be
looking to sell. Hopefully no one in that league is listening,
but yeah, I'll be if he has any sort of
blip where you can resume this narrative that was the
trade and the injuries and look he's back. He's that
eighty four ninety four chance to be a star guy again,
I'll be looking to I'll be looking to flip him.
So it's a short term acquisition, not much cost on
a team that's going no. So all I need is
one sell moment in the next two seasons and he'll
have been something out of nothing for me. But other
than that, I just I don't see him worth the investment.
I think you're right that the evidence at this point
has to outweigh all the promise that might have been
there before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds good. We have one more guy to talk about,
and why don't you tell us your brock favor opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is like my opposite of Batherston situation.
I've been pretty vocal in the discord that he's a
very obvious sell high for me. I'm not sure if
you agree, Victor, or if you don't, maybe you can
change my mind. But on the positive side, I had
Batherson as that sort of great player. It's going to
be overlooked because he's maybe behind some other great players,
and that you can squeeze some value out of those
guys or get them maybe a little cheaper than you
should favor for me, is like this. I just think
of it as like a gravy player archetype, where it's
none of us and all likelihood paid anything to acquire
this guy. Probably didn't get drafted in three round Dynasty league,
sixteenth team dynasty leagues, so he's a waiver at and
everything you can get out of this player, whether it's
helpful production for your team or assets in a trade,
is great. And so with that type of player, I
am always thinking so high while the getting's good, when
is that moment that this is maximum value? And for me,
I think I probably would have a tough time thinking
it's anytime other than this last summer, But I guess
like other ones that we've discussed, none of these guys are,
in my opinion, cornerstone guys. That might sound a little
strange for a forty seven point rookie defenseman playing twenty
five minutes a night, but I guess the big issue
here for me is there's really nothing coming into this
that basic stats, advanced stats pedigree about this guy that
would suggest that such a season was coming. Maybe Epper,
but certainly not in his rookie season. It seemed like
top four if the puck moving comes along, was the
guy that was being drafted, and as a prospect, he
seemed to be that there was maybe a little bit
of buzz that he had some untapped offense when he
I think he got the power play role his last
year in college, but I don't think anyone had him
pegged as a power play one guy. I think if
you watch him on the ice, he's a smart player,
he's a good player. But I just again, nothing dynamic there.
And this is another thing I like to do in fantasy.
Corey Fromman does this sometimes, I think, maybe to a
fault when scouting, just for real life impact, looking for
a comparable player in the NHL and trying to find
that guy. For me, I'm like, I'm looking at favor
and looking for who's the guy that maybe you're getting here.
Let's look back like the last ten to fifteen years.
The guy that you're maybe getting where he is going
to blossom into. So he's truly going to hold this
power Play one spot even when Billiam comes up. I
just have a hard time finding anyone to compare him to.
And the opportunity in the ice time last year was massive,
but it's not like he beat out anyone that was
like especially offensive minded to get it. I think you
have to grant him that he did an amazing job
once he did get the time and got on that
power Play one, and the power play was looking very
good with him on it at the end of last season,
so to me, it was like the promise of a
full power Play one season this year for him, that
was optimum time to make a move. I guess the
best comparison it's not necessarily player type directly, but from
a fantasy assets standpoint, I think there's some rhymes with
Thomas Shabbat, another one who I think is probably would
agree is a better real life player than fantasy player
in terms of his role on the team is greater
than his role on your fantasy team. And I think
he had a crazy power play season I think his
second year in the league where the team I think
they were in the top half, and then the next
year bottomed out on the power play and he's never
really regained. That looks more like a forty point guy
that took advantage of opportunity in a season and put
up I think it was like a sixty five point
pace and got everyone really excited. But if you looked
at the player, it seemed maybe he was a little
bit miscast in that role and that has seemed to
play out. So for me, if you look at his career,
I think that after that big season. Of course now
we have benefit of hindsight with him, but after that
big season is when you could have gotten the most.
I remember trying to chase him in leagues after that season.
So I think we're there with Faber two and I
think all that's even more true with the Z pick
for the Wild this year and Victor. You can maybe
comment on the timeline for when you think he poses
a threat, whether it's as early as next year, but
that's my view on Fabor. I don't know, what do
you think, Victor.
Speaker 3: I feel personally attacked because I took Favor in our dispersal.
So in some ways this almost feels like the McMichael
versus the Favor Who's gonna win out here? But no,
I'm just kidding. I really I just love watching Brock Favor.
He's just so smart. I don't know that he's definitely
that he's super dynamic or offensive, and I think that's
part of the concern. And in so many ways, I
think Favor is the anti Drysdale. They're like so opposite
in so many ways because Drysdale had all this high
octane offense and the great skater, and there was so
much promise, and then he's really struggled to do two way,
to drive play two way and really translate his offense
and his DEFENSEI have been a bit of a struggle,
and Favor has kind of been this. Back in the
day he was at the us NTDP, no one really
thought too much about him. He didn't have too much offense.
That team in nineteen twenty was good, but not the
historic eighteen nineteen team that scored just at will. And
he was just a solid two way guy that didn't
have much offense, and it was okay, there's not much
offense there, and then they've kind of Favor and Dryzill
have flipped and become the opposite of one another in
some ways. Although I don't know the Dryzell's defense has
caught up to where Favors was, but looking at his
tracking data Favors from the NTDP time, you could see
that his transition in defense was really good. In his
draft season, the offense wasn't quite there. Then he went
to Minnesota and it flipped a little bit. His offense
got better and his defense got worse, which is really
confusing to think about, and that persisted into his second
season and then yeah, he goes to University of Minnesota,
had a bit of a difficulty with that transition, and
then he came to the NHL and I was like,
he seemed like he was just instantly so good when
it was like, WHOA, what's going on here? I think
a lot of it caught a lot of people by surprise.
I don't think it was too surprising and turn terms
of how well he could translate the two way game,
but I think there was more offense there than a
lot of people thought, and as you mentioned, there was
just a lack of opportunity for other people or a
lack of other people who could run a power play.
And I think this is a really big lesson though,
because guys who can handle heavy minutes are going to
just get gifted opportunities like this. And because brock Faber
could play twenty four to five minutes a night, there
was no problem with him being able to run the
power play, and there's some guys that just can't do that.
When I think that actually is a really important thing
to think about. Can this guy play north of twenty
minutes a night? I think we're starting to really wonder
that about Jamie Drysel. I'm not sure that he can,
you know, and that's a big concern, you know. The
other thing about his periffs, favorite prifts are a bit modest.
I think when you look at per sixty, his priffs
are actually not very good. But the time on ice
is so high that they actually look decent. But if
you regress some of that time, if that ever happened,
it would be quite worse. But I'm not sure that
he's ever going to lose time on ice. Quite frankly,
he's just so good. But one of the things that
gives me an opposite feeling about this mark is that
he was last season six and expected goals against per
sixty six of all defensemen. I did weed it out
for guys that only played one hundred and fifty minutes
or something like that, but if of all the guys
that played big minutes, he was sixth in the league.
And that's crazy, especially when you look at difficulty and matchup.
There was pretty much no one who played as difficult
a minutes as brock Favor last season twenty three twenty four,
which is really wild. He was twentieth in corsi against
last season, and he was sixteenth in terms of expected
goal differential, which includes offense and defense. Here's a list
of the names that were on that were ahead of him,
Quinn Hughes, Evan Bouchard, Roman Yosi, Drew Dougherty, Eric Carlson,
Josh Morrissey, Rasmus Dalen. I think all those guys we
would agree you're extremely fantasy relevant. Then we get a
couple that maybe aren't so much. There's a Marcus Petterson
sighting who's just really awesome defensively, Dylan Demello as well
Travis sein Sanheim, but then there's John Carlson, Davontave's, Noah Dobson,
Jacob Chicker, Candra Miller, and then Brock Favor. Some of
these aren't like the other. So the question in my
head is he more Marcus Petterson, Travis Sinheim and Dylan Demelo,
Caandra Miller or is he more like some of these
offensive guys? And to me, he definitely reminds me more
of Josh Morrisey, whose skills aren't maybe so insane offensively,
but just so dependable in all situations that you can
just leave him out there and he's a really safe
power play quarterback and that he's not going to do
something really stupid and cost you, and he's still pretty
good enough at moving the puck that he provides some
pretty good opportunity and some pretty good offense. It's just
not he's not Eric Carlson walking the line. He's not
dynamic like Dras Mustelin. He's not an insane incredible passer
like Quinn Hughes or have the bomb that Evan Bouchard has.
But he's just so solid in every situation. That's part
of what to me helps me feel like he's going
to retain a lot of this value. I don't know
that he's going to I don't think that he's going
to be like a sixty point guy, but I think
he can easily live in that forty five to fifty
five point range just because he's going to be out
there all the time. And in terms of the Zev situation,
I think it's really interesting because in many ways, I
think Zev William is just like Brock Favor in a
lot of ways that he's just really good at everything.
I think Zev probably is a bit more offensive, but
I think they're similar in the sense that they're both
just really good at in putting them in any situation.
I think z will also be able to handle a
lot of minutes. I think that you wouldn't worry about
him defensively, and maybe he's a little bit more offensive.
So yeah, sure, maybe he takes the power play from Brock,
but I think Brock is still going to be a
twenty five plus minute guy who gets around forty eight
to fifty points, which is still going to be pretty
valuable if you're in a league that counts time on ice.
Then I don't think that's going to change. But if
you're really depending on some of those periffs and power
play points to continue, then I certainly would be a
little bit concerned. So that's my thought on that. What
do you think, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Think I think that makes sense. I guess there is
that you mentioned that he's safe out there in the
power play, and I guess, unlike some other players where
you're maybe looking to sell, his value is probably fairly
safe in the short term. I don't think Declan Chisholm's
taking Line one or powerplay one you've got as in
terms of just thinking about him as an asset. You
can point to the contract I think as a very
good thing that that's every indication he's going to continue
to be a twenty five minute piece to this team.
You've got Caprisov, who I think is like next level
superstar this year, you got Boldies Rise. You can sight
to those guys being linemates on the power play. So yeah,
I think he's probably not going to dip significantly in
this short term. But again I still come back to
who's the who do you hope you're getting from a
comparatur standpoint by holding favor for let's say the next
five years and look at what your team's going to
do during that time and analyze whether what he tracks
to do is going to really make a difference for
your team, or can you trade him now for someone
who does have special skills offensively and can be that
sixty five plus type of d man sixty sixty five
plus as opposed to the forty five to fifty five
that you see favor as Victor. So that's where I'm
at on him. But yeah, some of those stats are
convincing that maybe it's not there's no urgency around selling him.
Maybe you can wait to get really what you're looking
for if you do think that he's in a high
value time right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't necessarily I think that the Shabbat comparison
is a bad one either, because I think in many
ways Zeve could be like a Jake Sanderson who comes
in and just takes a lot of even strength minutes
and some of the offensive zone starts and power play.
And I still I think that you're going to see
some value there from Shabbat, but it certainly has diminished
over the years, and you haven't quite seen a return
to what we saw in his really high watermark season,
So I think that there's probably some analogy there. But
I do think that Faber is a better all around
player than Shabbat, and I think that there's a little
bit more, there's better instincts, and we have seen Schabbat's
power play time meander a little bit, but he's pretty
consistently been in that forty to fifty point range. And
so aside from the uptick and power play points which
has definitely moved around, we have seen regardless of that,
we have seen relatively similar production throughout the years, and
I think that's something that we could maintain to see
with favor as well. Awesome, this was really fun, Mark.
I really appreciate you having this discussion with me and
hopefully people liked it. Let us know what you think
and maybe we can entice you to come on again
and have another nuanced discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bet, it was a great time. Thanks Victor.
Speaker 3: We'll be our back to close up the show.
Speaker 2: Well, hey, folks, I'll tell you what I learned something there.
I learned something there. You didn't hear my voice. I
had this week off as we kind of try to
get everything together. But that was a good episode and
thank you to Craftter for being around for it. A reminder,
our show is brought to you by fan Tracks. You
can move leagues over there, ten different sports. You can
be playing, probably a little bit late to start your
hockey leagues, but you could. You still can. That's possible.
They've got the most options for scoring, salaries, tracks, rookie eligibility.
You can start up leagues. Whatever you can think of,
you can probably do it. As far as customizing the league,
I know I'm helping with the startup Baseball league right now,
and boy, we're gonna do some really cool and innovative
things with the options there. Fantracks HQ has lots of
fantasy content. There's articles on fantasy hockey. You'll see him
over there on the right hand column as you set
your lineups, and of course every other fantasy sport you
can imagine, there's content. FHL is a whole team. You
heard Crafter. He is one of the co commissioners of
the Tidy Leagues, along with Admiral Ryan, who you've heard
on the show, plus Simon and Tim May you've heard
Timmy on the show too. That's quite a team to
put things together. We've got lead scouts because we do
scouting reports here, very detailed film based scouting reports. Jeremy
Vee and Tony wrangle all that there are lead scouts.
Brandon is the website guru. He's a scout. He's helping
to prospect ranks and ualizations. We're going to get him
on one of these days to describe how all that works,
because I know we get questions on those FHL player cards,
which are amazing. If you have skills, you'd like to
lend a show, Victor is all ears, hit them up
in the discord email or on x. We're also brought
to you by Dauber Hockey Dauber Prospects. Victor is an
editor at Daber Prospects. You can follow all Victor's work
and Dabber Prospects Report with Peter Harlan. You can find
our episodes posted up by the way on Daber Hockey
if you ever are looking for them. You can check
out Victor's articles at ep Ring Society's part of the
Fantasy Team with Cam Robinson and Mike Clifford. I do
a solo show. It's called Dynasty Sports Life. I talk
for different Dynasty sports Baseball, football, basketball.
Speaker 3: And occasionally hockey.
Speaker 2: I keep most of my hockey takes here, but sometimes
we get to the philosophical or we get to the
multi sport because I do lead a four sport league
over there, and so hockey gets involved sometime. But you
know what, the philosophy sometimes carries over. Follow us on
x at fan Hockey Life at Victor Nunno twelve v
I C T O R and U n O one two,
Rate and review us on Apple Pods, Spotify, wherever else
you get podcasts, and until next time, keep living that
FANTASYE hockey life