There’s a frequent saying in fantasy circles, especially on forums, to “Always Start Your Studs” also known as ASYS. Basically, this means you should always be starting your best players, the ones you drafted high, regardless of situation.

In order to always start your studs, it’s important to know who is a stud in the first place and what constitutes a stud player. Again, referring back to the draft, pretty much any player drafted in the first 2-3 rounds, should be considered a stud player. This makeshift definition becomes even more accurate the shallower your league is because the draft rounds will be that much shorter and that means you’re taking better players. Also, if you look at averages of many drafts, then the picture becomes clearer.

Some examples of stud players at each position are as follows:
C: Crosby, Thornton, Datsyuk
LW: Ovechkin, Heatley, Kovalchuk
RW: Iginla, Hossa, Alfredsson
D: Lidstrom, Phaneuf, Pronger
G: Luongo, Lundqvist, Nabokov

Always slotting in your best players will give you the best production on average, over a long period of time. If it’s a busy schedule night and you have 3 centers to start but only 2 starting slots, then this is where you’re usually going to want to utilize the ASYS rule. A lot of times you’ll have to do a quick pro and con to starting one player over another. If it’s a true toss up then you’ll just have to go with your gut. Usually it’ll be a crude cost/benefit analysis in relation to the matchups for each player, more specifically, what team and what goalie they’re playing against; the stronger the opposing team and goalie tandem, the easier it is to rationalize benching a player. If you’re fortunate enough to have 3 legitimate studs who are relatively equal overall and need to bench one, then you’ll have to play the best matchup, or go with your gut.

ASYS frequently pertains to goalies. Goalies are benched purposely much more often than skaters because if they get lit up and/or pulled, depending on the categories used in your particular league, they can really hurt you big time. Contrast this to skaters where one of the few widely used categories where skaters can have a negative night is in the +/- stat category. If you always start your stud goalie, then over the long haul, you’re going to get pretty good stats overall, assuming of course that the goalie is an actual stud and not one you just have a mancrush on.

Obviously, this is just a rule of thumb. It’s a very good method to utilize when you’re a beginner and up into intermediate skill and knowledge level. However, if you fancy yourself as an advanced level manager, then you can start to deviate from the rule just a bit. If you have some inside info or a really solid hunch, then sometimes it can pay off to bench your stars once in a while. This is most often the case for a star goalie facing a very hot team. If you just have that feeling your netminder may get lit up, then you may just bench them. Honestly, most of the time your hunch will be wrong if it’s a true stud player, but the rare times that you’re right, you’ll definitely feel good about yourself.

So, while ASYS is a very good rule of thumb, there are of course exceptions to every rule. A lot of fantasy hockey is played with a short term and long term strategy, in concert with each other. In the long run, if you’re always starting your studs, probability should dictate that your best players will on average be your best players, and that plays out and becomes more clear as more time goes on. So, really, ASYS is a pretty solid rule to live by.