Fantasy Hockey Draft Experiment: Defense Emphasis

How much does the blue line matter in fantasy hockey?

This team was drafted using a defense first emphasis. It’ll be interesting to see if a strong defensive core can make up for the lack of depth in terms of top notch forwards. In a roto league with max games, strong D-men can be highly coveted because they are very good qualitatively. They are in short supply overall and while they may produce much less than the very best forwards, everyone needs to utilize their D games, otherwise they go to waste, and that’s bad for overall production.

As you can see from the draft results image, I had pick #2 overall. First overall was Ovechkin and with #2 I really had to take Crosby, even though this was a defense first draft strategy. The production dropoff at the very top is really high. Now, if I had a lower pick like 10th, then I probably would’ve stuck to my D strategy and maybe taken Lidstrom or something, but that’s a different story. Anyway, with Crosby selected, that already assures me solid production from at least one forward. Really solid production.

After Crosby comes the real deal, in terms of drafting D. I took Gonchar, Rafalski, Green, and Boyle with my next four picks. Very obviously some of the best offensive defensemen in the entire NHL. With this really solid starting 4, I’ve already fulfilled the primary part of the draft strategy here. However, because I did use up my first few picks on D, aside from Crosby, obviously, I will be a bit weaker at the other forward positions.

With my group of D, and also the draft strategy goal, already full up, it was time to grab goalies before they all ran out. I took Ward and Huet with my 6th and 7th picks, which were close together. These two were pretty much the best goalies still left out there and I did not want to be stuck with even worse goalies. All in all, though, Ward and the ‘Canes should have a pretty good year. As for Huet and the young, up and coming Chicago Blackhawks, it’s a bit more complicated. Huet is a pretty solid goalie, but he’s playing in an improving division, especially with the defending champion Red Wings and the other teams also getting better year by year. My main concern, here, though, is that Khabibulin may end up stealing some starts from Huet. Worst case scenario, Huet may end up platooning with Khabibulin, or even end up being relegated to backup. While this scenario is unlikely, it is ultimately possible. Khabibulin did have some decent stretches last season and perhaps he himself will do better with the Hawks’ young guns having one more year of experience and also having a new piece in Campbell on the blue line. Campbell may not be the best defensive blue liner out there, but he can put up some points and that’ll surely help in the win category in the long run.

With all my starting D and goalies set, it’s time to get some forwards. Luckily, the talent dropoff at forward isn’t as precipitous as in goalie or even D, so there are still plenty of serviceable forwards still left at this point in the draft. I took Tanguay as my first left winger and then Erik Cole, who currently has LW/RW already. Tanguay should have a pretty good season with Montreal’s high scoring offense. As for Cole, he may end up on a really good line in Edmonton with Horcoff and Hemsky. With these two picks, that takes care of the left side; now with the next couple picks I shore up my right side with Bouchard and Dustin Brown. At this point, it doesn’t seem like Bouchard will be playing with Gabby up in Minny. However, Bouchard is a talented player and can make things happen on his own. Brown, on the other hand, is also a talented player himself, but plays with Kopitar and thus, has a really good player to be able to lean on for production.

So, after the first 11 rounds, I’ve already got all the starting D, both goalies, starting wingers, and Crosby anchoring my C position. As everyone knows, centers are a very deep position. Lots of good centers fall to late spots, purely because there are so many good ones out there. Every other position has less quality and depth than C, so even though I still didn’t have a second starting center, I decided to hold off a couple more rounds and grab backups at other positions. With the 12th pick, I grabbed Simon Gagne, who had simply went completely under the radar because of Yahoo O-Rank underrating him at the time. They have since updated their O-Ranks and Gagne is ranked at a much more reasonable position, but at the time of the draft, he was buried deep enough so that I could wait to grab him late. In fact, I probably could’ve waited longer, but I didn’t want to risk it. After the Gagne value pick, I went with another goalie in Martin Gerber. Although Gerber isn’t exactly the best goalie out there, he does still play for a pretty good Ottawa Sens team, whose demise has been exaggerated a bit lately and should be good for some scattered spot starts throughout the season. Now, with a 3rd LW, and even a 3rd goalie, I went back and took a second center finally. Luckily, my patience was did not backfire because there were still good centers still left out there, including Shawn Horcoff who I grabbed in the 14th round. Similar to Gagne, Yahoo! had Horcoff ranked much lower than he should’ve been, most likely because injuries and lost production due to it.

With the final 2 picks, I took a 3rd RW with Martin Erat, who is underrated. Then I followed up with Boucher was also underranked due to injury last season. However, in the time since the draft occurred, there have been lots of player and team updates around the league. Including the fact that Boucher has had a foot injury and will miss the start of training camp. Also, out in Pittsburgh, they’ve had their own injury problems as well, with Sergei Gonchar recently getting injured, which really hits my D core hard because Gonchar is the anchor there. By the same token, with Whitney being out for a few months to start the season, the Pens point position on the top power play unit is up for grabs and the leading candidate is Kris Letang and thus I have since dropped Boucher for Letang, so hopefully that can alleviate some of the loss that I will take due to Gonchar being out.

Now, with 4 of the first 5 rounds being dedicated to drafting D-men, I surely have worse overall forwards and goalies than other teams in the league. However, I know for a fact that I have the best D group in the league by far. Hopefully, the fact that everyone has to use up their D slots, and most of them will have mediocre D, the big picture production of my team with strong D can offset the relative lack of production from some of the positions. Check out the initial draft experiment post for information about this whole experiment and how it started.