The Great Fantasy Hockey Draft Experiment of 2008

This draft season I’ve decided to try out multiple independent draft strategies and then compare them to each other and publish the analysis for all of them here as the year rolls on and also at the end of the season. I have joined and drafted four different teams in four different Yahoo! public leagues. I chose to be assigned to public rotisserie leagues with the “competitive” setting and a live draft. Each draft was done at a different time with different managers (all randomly selected by Yahoo!) and I tried to get the best players available while still sticking to the specific strategy selected for that particular draft. There is some player overlap, where I have some of the same players across the different teams but that is mostly coincidental; although, there are certain players that I simply prefer to draft if they’re available in a specific round.

My personal draft strategy has specific structure in terms of what positions I draft first and when, depending on the categories and other factors, but I also try to keep it very modular and malleable. I do have tendencies that usually come up in every one but sometimes you have to just go with the flow because every draft is different. I normally heavily play a positional relevance and scarcity game. I’ll compare which positions have the highest quality and quantity in a given round. Then I’ll make a calculated judgment about who I feel I can grab in that round and then who I can grab in the next round and contrast the drop-offs in talents between the two. Usually the drop-off in talent is much higher at the goalie and D positions simply because there are fewer high quality players at those positions. Thus, I play the odds and try to grab forwards somewhat later in certain rounds. Sometimes it can be a very precarious strategy but it does work if you play your cards right.

Of course each draft complexion is wildly different from each other because there are so many factors that contribute, but I did try to stick to the strategy laid out for each team as much as I could while attempting to build the best team possible. To elaborate, I tried my hardest to maintain acceptable overall team depth across all positions. By this I mean I didn’t totally ignore drafting goalies in order to stick to for example, a team with a forward emphasis. I tried to get serviceable players at each position while still sticking to the focus of the team.

I will be keeping some elements constant for all four teams such as no trading, limited free agent/waiver pickups unless there is a very clear upgrade available or if there are injuries and I’ll be keeping track of each team as often as possible.

The four strategies I’ve decided to test out are as follows:

Goalie Emphasis

Take 2 goalies early then fill up other positions evenly
This is the draft strategy I normally employ in all of my drafts. I know how important goalies are, especially in roto leagues, and because there can be steep drop-offs in talent after the top tier is taken, and also because there are so few goalies in general because of the nature of the position and the finite amount of starters, I put a high premium on goalies in pretty much every scenario.

I frequently select two goalies within the first 5 rounds, depending on the draft pick number I am given. If I get a really high draft pick, in the top 3 or so, then I usually opt to take Ovechkin or Crosby, naturally, but otherwise, I do tent to shore up my goalie situation early so I can focus on other positions later. I have no qualms about taking a goalie in the first AND second rounds, especially if I have a late pick, for I’ll grab 2 goalies straight away and then be set at that position for good. Look at the Goalie Emphasis draft here.

Forward Emphasis

Take forwards early and often, followed by G & D
This is an average draft scheme used by many people, where you want to fill up your forward slots with the best players you can grab. As I mention above, I know because there is so much depth at the forward positions, especially such as at center, in relation to goalies and D, that I normally don’t just grab up the best forwards I can early in drafts.

Here in this draft, however, I specifically eschewed from drafting goalies and D as early as I normally would and I focused on filling up most or all of my forward slots (and even a couple bench forwards) before starting to draft some goalies and defensemen. Again, I wouldn’t normally do this because I like to have good balance, but I did obtain a very good forward group and perhaps that will be enough to offset the weakness at D and G. The point of this entire experiment is to try out a specific strategy while still getting a good team overall from the just draft itself without having to rely on trading or free agent pickups, so I didn’t just fill up every single forward spot + bench and THEN start trying to take goalies and D. Look at the Forward Emphasis draft here.

Defense Emphasis

Draft D first, then forwards and goalies
In roto leagues with max games, I’ve seen how valuable great D-men can be. However, not many people use this theoretical strategy because quantitatively it makes little sense: forwards score way more than defensemen on average, especially the top forwards. Qualitatively though, the top D can be just as valuable as some of the really good forwards. My plan here was to draft up the BEST d-men in the league consecutively before taking forwards and goalies. If successful, the strength at D will be able to make up for the lack of really high quality forwards, in theory. In conjunction with some savvy drafting of sleepers who may drop down the draft board for whatever reason, this strategy draws the most personal interest from me at this point. I really want to see if a team anchored by really strong D but only medium quality forwards can compete with other teams with better balance or a strong forward crop. Look at the Defense Emphasis draft here.

Best Player Available

Self-explanatory, to a point
The BPA strategy is probably the most common strategy used by most fantasy managers. It makes fundamental sense in most situations and doesn’t really have that many drawbacks. If done just at a decent level, you should end up with a pretty good team. At the highest skill level, it does pay to go with a more balanced approach and play the odds of positional quality and quantity, but using an average BPA strategy doesn’t usually hurt you because of its inherent nature and its straightforwardness. Simply put, in this draft, the “best” player was drafted when it was my turn to draft. I did have to maintain some discretion regarding positional relevance because it would be foolish to go and draft up a few centers right off the bat, even though a lot of the time they are the best players qualitatively on the board, but because they’re so plentiful it’s not a good big picture strategy.

The BPA strategy was somewhat modified to promote more balance across the positions, by taking the best player available based on position as well. However, overall, there was less sleeper consideration because it was not necessary in this scenario. I took the best player I thought was out there on the board every chance I got, while still controlling for position. Normally I would let some players slide by in favor of possibly a lesser player at a different position where there is less depth, but if there was a really good player out there, I felt inclined to take them. Many may be thinking, isn’t this type of strategy the most effective and/or obvious? Yeah, a lot of the time it is especially when you factor in trading away some of your depth at certain positions that you may have gotten during the draft to improve others. However, in this scenario, since I won’t be trading at all, it’s not necessarily the automatic best strategy. I guess we’ll find out at the end of the season. Look at the Best Player Available draft here.

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Obviously, this isn’t going to be an experiment with solid scientific methodology because there are so many variables involved and little overall control, but it should be an interesting project nonetheless.

Go to the overall Draft Experiment page to view links for all the associated pages.