If you’re in the middle of the pack or even perhaps lower, you should already be in preparation for the beginning of your playoff push, assuming you’re capable of one. If you’re in a keeper league, it’s around now that you make your decisions about if you’re capable of making the playoffs and if you are not then you can start to think about next season and build your prospects and trade accordingly. You don’t want to trade off good long term assets for short term boosts if you don’t even make the playoffs or have a legitimate shot at winning your league’s championship.
Make An Honest Assessment of Your Team
Middle of the pack standings-wise is where the tougher decisions will have to be made. Why is your team where it is in the standings? Is it because your roster simply is not that strong? Have you had a lot of injuries? Do you have legitimately underperforming players (Ovechkin owners out there)? Be brutally honest in your assessment of your team. If you had a bad draft and all your players simply are not that good then maybe it’s time to start thinking about future seasons if you’re in a keeper or dynasty league (or focus on other leagues where you can win).
If you’re in a one-year league and you have no other teams/leagues to worry about, then now is the time to start making massive changes, if necessary. Again, make sure you have made a solid assessment of your team. Perhaps get a second opinion or two, maybe even from your fellow league competitors, if you know them well. If you do take the competition’s opinions on your team, be wary of them acting in their own self-interest, as everyone does. When you make the assessment of your roster, it has to be in comparison to the leaders and especially the other teams which you’re hoping to leapfrog in the standings to make the h2h playoffs or get up to the top of your roto standings.
Look at your weak stat categories and focus on ones that you can actually improve with some effort and don’t dwell on ones that are too far gone. Although there is still plenty of time left in the season and you should NOT be writing off categories so easily, you should be brutally realistic in terms of what can be improved and what is not worth the effort. An example of a category that would not be worth attempting to improve on is +/- if you are WAY behind and your best players are traditionally power play scorers but on somewhat weak defensive teams that give up a lot of even-strength goals. If it’s a roto league and you’re in last place by far, then even if you improve significantly, it may only mean a single point or two in the standings, which is not good bang for your buck, time and effort wise.
Picking Up Free Agents
Depending on how deep your league rosters are and the number of teams, decent free agents at this time may be few and far between. However, in smaller leagues like Yahoo! public leagues and such, there are still some hidden gems out there. Look for players who were (or still are) underperforming and were dropped by competitors earlier in the season. Also look for solid players who may have been injured and are returning soon.
Some wild cards are young players such as rookies that may catch fire down the stretch. Many championship teams out there are buttressed by strong pick ups over the course of the season that really pick up the slack when the stars underperform or even get injured. Not only that, young up-and-comers make for excellent trade bait in keeper leagues and those who go on hot streaks can still be dealt in one year leagues for more proven players. Depending on if you feel they will keep it up or cool off, streaky players can be very high risk but garner high rewards whether or not you trade them. If they go ice cold, you can simply drop them back into the free agent pool, no harm, no foul. This simply comes down to timing and is mostly subjective. Just watch the overall trends and keep up with the NHL in general and the opportunities will be there.
In addition to looking at key stat categories, start sorting free agent lists using different time parameters. For example: on Yahoo! you can select from 7, 14, and also 30 day totals as well as averages, not to mention the full season stats thus far. It’s better to look for trends over longer periods of time, otherwise you get suckered into picking up flash in the pan type false-positives. An easy heuristic to follow is to check players’ performances in the past 3-4 games and then compare them to their 30 day totals and averages and also to the full season totals.
For veterans, take a look at their career stats and see where their current stats fall with respect to previous years. Don’t bother picking up really old guys who are not doing well overall, as they may simply be losing their touch. There are obvious exceptions, such as the Teemu Selannes of the world, but usually it will be pretty obvious if an older player is still good or not. Really young players is where the gambling man’s attitude comes into play. You can never be too sure who will have their so-called sophomore slump or who will breakout and live up to their hype. Very dedicated managers will do research into juniors or college stats but even those don’t necessarily mean much when it comes to a player in the pros. Make your decisions here on a case by case basis.
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