Rotisserie aka roto and head to head aka H2H formats are two of the most common scoring methods in fantasy hockey. In Roto you have a bunch of categories that are tabulated constantly over the entire season and whoever has the highest totals across all categories combined, based on relative ranks, wins in the end. H2H is usually tabulated weekly and you play a different opponent per week, one on one, and then you get a fresh start every week. There can also be a playoff element.

Roto Pros:

1. Less luck involved than H2H
In roto format, the best manager usually ends up winning, assuming you have good settings. There is much less luck involved than in H2H because things are considerate of the entire season rather than on one singular week. A lot of times in H2H, a traditionally weaker team can upset a stronger team if they have a huge above average week statistically. It does make things interesting, as it mirrors life, and anything can happen, but it can be frustrating if you’re the first place team and have been all season long just to have a good week in the playoffs and still lose because your opponent happened to have their best week of the season, against you.

2. You’re not at the mercy of the schedule
Roto stats are tabulated over the entire season and is based on games played per position if you use max games. In this format, everyone shares a set amount of games played total and it doesn’t matter when they come and you cannot go over limit so it’s pretty fair in terms of everyone having the same potential production. This isn’t the same in H2H where sometimes your opponent will just by scheduling quirks have more games played than you in a given week, which means more potential production. Also, anyone trying to “stream,” like they would in H2H, won’t benefit by doing so in a roto league because of max games or weekly lineup changes, etc.

H2H Pros:

1. You always have a shot
H2H, unless your team is just totally awful, you always have a decent chance of pulling off a win in any given week. This is especially good when playoff time comes around and it’s do or die. If your players just happen to be hot at the end of the season, that is simply huge. It becomes more like the actual NHL, which we try to mirror as fantasy hockey managers anyway, and that makes things more exciting. Your team could get hot and you could go in and upset some top seeded teams and that’s always fun.

2. Easier to pick up and play and have fun
Any hockey fan who has good player knowledge can get into H2H and learn quickly. It’s pretty straight forward most of the time. You’re one on one vs. an opponent and it changes every week or so, keeping things fresh. For the most part, you simply start whoever you can as often as you can and hope to have more categories won by the end of the scoring period. You don’t have to worry about max games or micromanage every little detail of your team for the entire season. Also, since the stats are started anew every week, you can see your progression in the standings really easily. In rotisserie fantasy hockey sometimes standings do not change at all or barely change for long stretches at a time.

Roto Cons:

1. Higher learning curve
Now, personally, I think this is can be a good thing but in general it’s tougher for lots of people to get into it if they’re really not used to it. Roto can be tougher to manage because there are a lot of little things to keep track of over the season. For the most part, in H2H you just try to start who you can as often as you can so you can pile up the production, with the exception of goalies where sometimes it’s best to bench them in certain situations. In roto with max games, there is much more of a cost/benefit analysis with every single start and use of a game played every single day for every single player. Even if you don’t use max games and possibly weekly line up changes, the strategy is still similar because you have to think longer term.

2. Less chance for upsets/comebacks
Even early on, if you experience a large rash of injuries or some of your big time players are not producing as much as your opponents, you can find yourself down early and potentially for the rest of the season which is obviously disheartening. Unless the opposition has their own dips in production, for whatever reason, your guys are going to need to overproduce for stretches to make up for the lost production at any point in the season. This is not to say that this can’t be overcome, it’s just much tougher because roto is more of a long term numbers game and the odds can be against you in certain situations. Certainly not impossible, but it is tougher to stage a big comeback when you’re really down.

H2H Cons:

1. More luck involved than roto
When you’re playing a fresh opponent every week, the results the become less predictable. The smaller the scoring period, the more chance there are for statistical outliers in terms of production, versus a longer scoring period. If your guys have an off week or you have some injuries for a certain stretch, especially if it’s playoff time, you are pretty much screwed and your entire season can go down because of one bad week. Also, because you’re at the mercy of the schedule, a weaker team may end up barely edging you out simply because their players had a few more games played than you. You have to take it in stride and hope that it all evens out for you, but there’s a chance it won’t. If you’ve been in first the entire season and then playoff time comes around and you get upset by a much weaker team who barely made it into the playoffs because your team has an average week and they have an amazing one, it’s a tough pill to swallow for sure.

2. Underutilized categories
Because H2H is played in a shorter scoring period, usually a week, there is less of a chance of some statistically less common categories coming into play, e.g. shutouts and shorthanded points. The categories you choose for H2H are very important. It’s possible to have a couple shutouts in a single week from a goalie that gets hot but then there may be a drought of many weeks in a row where you don’t get another shutout from that same goalie. Frequently these categories end up being tied 0-0 or 1-1 or they end up being won 1-0.

Both great formats but…

I like both formats but if I had to choose between the two, I’d give roto the edge because there is much less short term luck involved when you stretch out stat tabulation over a long period and the better manager will win out in the end but you can’t deny that H2H is really fun and keeps you on the edge because anyone can win any week and in that way it mirrors the actual NHL more closely, especially when playoff time comes around. Try playing in multiple leagues with different formats and see how you fare in each one and you can compare and contrast them yourself. Maybe you’ll find out you actually like H2H better if you’re a traditional roto player or vice versa.