Shouldn’t everyone be taking the “best player” available?
This team was drafted primarily using the typical best player available strategy, with some slight adjustments for position. Without adjustment for position, a strict best player available or BPA strategy is mostly based on stats and/or name value primarily. However, in Yahoo! public leagues, where all these experimental drafts and teams are orchestrated, position is important, especially in rotisserie scoring leagues. Also, for the duration of the experiment, I will be sticking to a no trade policy, for all the teams.
Usually, a BPA strategy in a draft is supported post-draft by the fact that you will be able to trade said ‘best player’ from a specific slot, for an upgrade or at least a somewhat lateral exchange for another player at a different position. Most of the time, the best players available in any given middle round are centers. Centers are very plentiful and there are a lot of good ones. Once people start filling up their starting C positions, after a few rounds, even though some will go ahead and take another bench C, most will go ahead and try to balance out their team at the other positions.
As you can see from the draft order, I took Zetts and Hossa with my first two picks, both Red Wings. Now, normally, I would shy away from taking two guys from the same team, as I like to have a diverse player base, but considering they’re both on one of the best teams in the league, it isn’t a problem. Also, with the first few picks I specifically sought out to grab good non-centers, even if there were “better” players available, at the center position. So although I am calling this the BPA draft, I still have adjusted a bit due to the fact that good wingers are simply harder to come by than good centers; also the fact that I won’t be trading would make it dumb for me to go and grab up two top centers and then possibly even more when I need to fill up all my starting spots evenly.
As goalies starting going quickly through the first couple rounds, I definitely had to grab a good one before it was too late. With my 3rd round choice, I grabbed Marty Turco, whose Dallas Stars team should have a really solid year. Turco was one of the last steady starting goalies on a good team left so I really had to take him, as trading to acquire a goalie post-draft is out of the question in my little experiment here. Not to mention trading for a goalie is a pain anyway.
Jokinen in round 4 was really my first true BPA pick. Point production wise, there were still several good wingers out there, but Jokinen was the best player available if you disregard position. In a traditional draft where I’m employing my own personal draft strategy, I would never take Jokinen here. More than likely I would grab another good winger and continue to hold off on centers, knowing that some good ones fall quite far, especially from what I’ve seen in the other experimental drafts.
In round 6, I had to grab a good blue liner to anchor my D group. Max games dictates that I better use my D wisely or I’ll end up wasting those games, which means lost potential production. With this in mind I take what I consider one of the last good D left at this point in the draft: Dan Boyle. At this point, besides Scott Niedermayer, all the other D were on the next tier down. So I grab Boyle to be my D anchor to start off. Next couple picks strayed a bit from the BPA strategy again. Horton in the 6th and Biron in the 7th. There was an unexpected huge run on RWs and goalies at this point in the draft so I felt compelled to participate by taking Horton as my second RW and then grabbing Biron to be my second starting goalie. With the Biron pick, my goaltender situation was set, as far as I was concerned.
The next few picks I get back to the basic best player available method. Danny Briere with the 91st overall pick was a really good value in my estimation. It shows how far he’s fallen since last year’s dip in production for the Flyers after a couple big years in Buffalo. I fully anticipate him getting back to form for the 2008-2009 season, especially with him slated to be on a line with Richards centering him and Gagne; with this comes potential dual eligibility, which is huge in roto. After Briere, I grab another C in Gomez. Normally, I would hold off on Gomez specifically, because I’ve seen him fall quite far in previous drafts (really, really far) but I figured I would stick to the BPA method anyway.
My 10th and 11th picks were both defensemen, and I played the default ranks a bit here. I definitely think Kaberle is a better player than Wideman, but because of the fact that Wideman was by actually ranked higher by Yahoo! than Kaberle at the time of this draft, I used that to my advantage a bit to grab both. Where if I grabbed Kaberle first, I probably would not have gotten Wideman on the return. This gives me a decent group of D so far with Boyle, Kaberle, and Wideman as my top 3. Nowhere near as bad as I anticipated. My last two picks were actually also D, with Spacek and Poti (who I have since dropped in favor of Letang). Looking back, I would’ve been better off taking another winger before the Wideman and Kaberle, but max games is always in the back of my mind for roto, so D is important.
My last three forward picks are Brown, Naslund, and Brunette, all somewhat of a product of their lines, as far as their production ceiling is concerned. Dustin Brown should continue to improve out in Los Angeles; he’s actually a very good player on his own but with Kopitar as his center, it’s just gravy. As for Naslund and Brunette, both guys are getting older, but they could be in potentially pretty good situations this season. Nazzy is currently primed to be playing the left side on the first line for the Rangers with Gomez and Drury being converted to RW. Brunette is slated to play on the same line as the explosive but somewhat injury-prone Gaborik. It could be a boom-bust scenario for Brunette here because if Gaborik gets traded due to his contract running out or if he gets injured, that will certainly put a hit on Brunette’s numbers. However, if Gabby sticks around and they gel quickly, Brunette could put up really solid numbers, and that would be really good value considering where I drafted him.
In the end, I guess you could make the claim that this roster is the most “balanced” in terms of all the positions having at least one really good player. However, personally, I would honestly rather take the marginal hits at the center position for example, and make sure I get really good goalies. This is especially true in a roto league where goalies are really important. Not to mention the fact that some pretty good centers fall far in drafts because there are so many of them and people have to diversify their rosters once they fill up. That’s when I normally swoop in and grab some steals. In fact, if I compare the rosters for all the draft experiment teams, this one seems to not be the strongest–in terms of “name” value, which it was originally anticipated to be–but we’ll see how it all pans out down the road.
The obvious question is why wouldn’t everyone always employ the so-called best player available strategy. Well, in truth, most people try to for the most part. But fundamentally, in a league where there are positional distinctions, you can’t really do a strict BPA strategy without crippling your team with respect to at least one position. You would most likely end up taking a bunch of good centers while sacrificing the other positions. Even in this experimental draft where I tried to use a modified BPA strategy, I still had to stray from it a bit due to the massive dropoffs at the other positions, otherwise I would’ve ended up with like 4 REALLY good centers and a bunch of crap at the other slots. Anyway, if you want to know what this whole “draft experiment” is about just go to the first draft experiment post to get the gist of how it all started.
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