Draft Experiment Teams Comparison

With the new NHL season coming up quickly, it’s time to finally take a good look at how last season’s draft experiment teams performed in comparison to each other.

Here, though, rather than simply looking at the rankings alone–which is not as relevant when comparing teams across different leagues–we shall look at the absolute numbers which were accrued over the course of the season.

As you can see from the graphic below, the two best performing teams were the defense emphasis and the goalie emphasis teams, each getting over 100 roto points in their respective leagues. The forward emphasis team did not too too badly with just under 85 points but the BPA team got pretty hammered and only was able to notch 40 standings points, which was good enough for 11th out of 12 in that league.

All four draft experiment teams’ standings. (opens in new window)

The two first place teams had pretty similar numbers even though they emphasized different positions per team. When you throw in the forward emphasis team into the mix, comparing the main offensive numbers of goals and assists, the FE team did better in goals than both of the 1st place teams and had assists in the same range or so. All three teams were in the top 3 for both categories so that was clearly a strong point across the board. Similarly for the +/- category, the two 1st place teams scored highest marks there and the FE team was right up there in the top 3 for its league. Skipping over the PIMs for a second and glancing at the power play points category, it is very interesting that both D and G emphasis teams were 1st in +/- AND also 1st in PPP. Usually the more common story is that a team with a really good +/- is not going to be as strong in PPP. Obviously not a hard and fast rule, but it does seem like a lot of times teams will sacrifice the +/- rating in favor of power play numbers because PPP has the added effect of boosting other categories such as goals and assists.

The two more middle of the road categories are PIMs and SOGs, ones that are really a function of brute force and sheer numbers a lot of the time, especially in H2H where streamers can kill you in these easy cumulative categories. Luckily, these draft experiments were done in roto leagues where the production is counted as a function of a set amount of games that are equal for every single competitor. The real difference comes when you get to the goalie stats, and this is where the FE team falls a bit flat with somewhat average stats. If the goalies were strong for the FE team, it is highly likely that this team would have also been in the top 2 or perhaps even won its league, as was the case for the defense and goalie emphasized draft teams.

The BPA team did pretty poorly across the board in absolute numbers production, so it certainly was not a matter of being handed a bad luck card and getting stuck in a rough league. It really does seem as if it was a weak team over all. Clearly the amount of injuries that the team had to withstand did not jive well with the draft strategy of taking the “best” player at each draft slot, since usually the best guy there was a forward. Taking into account the positional emphasis of the other teams, it does seem like the BPA strategy is overall weaker in the Yahoo! roto format. This is not 100% conclusive though. I personally have had pretty good teams at season’s end in past years where I had implemented somewhat of a BPA strategy in the draft, so really, the extenuating circumstances here is the admitted mismanagement of the team over the course of the season and the massive amount of man games lost due to injuries. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Perhaps the D or G emphasis team simply benefited from a weak overall league? By the same token, is it possible that the BPA team was actually pretty decent and just was stuck in a really fantastic league? That remains to be seen. It’s really tough to say if one of these teams was truly in an “easy” league, as that is rather subjective to start with. However, when comparing the absolute numbers across leagues for each team, there are seemingly more similarities than there are differences. The BPA team clearly was weak across the board and probably would’ve been dead last in some other leagues. The D and G teams were well balanced and emphasized positions where top players are more rare and thus the strategies paid off. Even the forward emphasis team did pretty well, all things considered. So, really, it seems unlikely that the main factor for the weakness or strength of any one of these teams is strictly due to the competition itself, although that is certainly one of the variables.

Expect another draft experiment to start up in the next few weeks, as services such as Yahoo! fantasy hockey open up. It will likely be another four team batch but a couple of the strategies will be switched up for hopefully more favorable ones.