Late Night Update: Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey is now open for business (for real this time, it looks like)!

Ok, so as you may know, Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey was actually launched briefly by accident by a staff member last week. They jumped the gun and subsequently, so did I because I wrote about it here: Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey Is Up.

This time, though, it looks like this is the real thing. As far as I’m concerned, Yahoo! is the best free fantasy hockey service out there and since so many people online utilize their service and follow it, it signals the beginning of the fantasy hockey season and the nearing of NHL opening night.

Keeper Functionality

The nicest new feature this year on Yahoo! is for SURE the keeper functionality. They also polished the interface and added a couple different items but I think the most useful and interesting new feature is the ability to set keepers for the draft.

I’ve taken a screenshot you can access here: Yahoo! Keeper Selection Screenshot

To get to this section, you must be the commissioner of your league. You go to Commish Tools at the very right of your main league nav bar and then you scroll to the last box, with the first option being “Edit Draft Order & Assign Keeper Players”.

Your first order of business is to take care of the drafting order itself. You have to set it to “Custom Order and Keeper League Players” as shown in the image below.

In the example league I set up, the teams had 20 players total, thus 20 rounds and 20 draft picks available. You select a team and then a round and then a player per round, per team. Since there was only one team in the league, me, I could just go through the rounds and select any player.

You select the players from a list on the right. You can choose them by scrolling up and down the list and selecting or typing in their name and searching. After you have selected your player, make sure you’re in the right round and have the right team selected. Then you add the selected player to the team’s keeper list and you move on to the next team and/or next round. It’s all pretty intuitive so you should have zero problems getting it all done.

Quick Glance at Y! Rankings

Yahoo! uses O-Rank as their primary ranking system for their leagues. O-Rank is based on standard, Yahoo! public leagues. This means leagues of usually 12 managers with certain team characteristics: 2 centers, 2 left wingers, 2 right wingers, 4 defensemen, 2 goalies, 4 bench spots, and 1 injured reserve spot. Also, the standard categories for Yahoo! are G (goals), A (assists), +/-, PIMs (penalty minutes), PPP (power play points), SOG (shots on goal), W (goalie wins), GAA (goals against average), SV% (save percentage), and SHO (shutouts). Remember that categories and the general scoring format that your league uses are very important for player rankings, especially for the draft. I’m not the biggest fan of Yahoo! public league setups because I find there is way too much emphasis on the goalies, with a 6:4 ratio of skater:goalie categories. You would do well to remember though, that the O-Rank is based mostly on this format for Yahoo! public leagues.

Yahoo! Top 10 O-Rank Players

1. Ovechkin
2. Iginla
3. Malkin
4. Datsyuk
5. Zetterberg
6. Heatley
7. Phaneuf
8. Thornton
9. Getzlaf
10. Spezza

As you can see from the images above, Sidney Crosby is listed at O-Rank 20, which is definitely off. See if you can take advantage of any of your fellow managers’ reliance on Yahoo’s default ranks, because you can really snag some quality players with astute drafting as it stands right now. My guess is they’ll tweak the ranks as time goes on. If you do get a chance to draft early, be ready to utilize the awkward ranks, so make sure you calculate well and you can really clean up early on.

League Names and IDs

Last year, Yahoo! introduced league names/ids that you can use to carry over info from previous years. This is especially useful for keeper or dynasty leagues run using Yahoo! but it’s also useful for one year leagues as well that continue with the same group of managers. It’s cool to see your progress and how things started out when you first started playing with your fellow managers.

Commissioners will have the option to carry over any leagues from last year to this year and it should be quick and painless. Also, other managers from leagues who aren’t commissioners can send a reminder email to their commish to make sure they institute the league. So get out there and pester your friends to get stuff going!

All in all, the 2008-2009 Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey season is already shaping up to be pretty solid. The new keeper functionality alone makes the service even more improved and it’s already the one of the most widely used free services out there. The new images and interface look pretty nice too. For now my single minor complaint would be that the player rankings interface/system wasn’t redone; I still find it to be a bit lacking. Overall though, things are looking nice.