I decided to take the opposite approach this year, inspired by the early career of Eric Staal. He entered the NHL with high expectations after being drafted 2nd overall behind Marc-Andre Fleury. He didn’t live up to the hype, though few rookies do, and he finished with a lowly 31 points. After a season in the AHL during the NHL lockout, Staal exploded for 100 points, finishing 7th in league scoring. Jonathon Cheechoo also exploded that year for 93 points, the beneficiary of San Jose acquiring Joe Thornton early in the year. Both would have been incredible steals for poolies that year. One big difference though: people who drafted Cheechoo got lucky; people who drafted Staal were being astute.
Then again, other top draft picks from Staal’s draft year include Nathan Horton and Nikolai Zherdev. Horton had 47 points in his sophomore year while Zherdev had 54. Respectable numbers, but not the type that will elevate someone into first place in a hockey pool.
Picking players involves a consideration of risk and reward. The risk of the all-too-common “Sophomore Jinx” is well known. And reaping the rewards of a young superstar coming into his own early in his career after a shaky rookie season, like Staal managed to do, might be too rare an occurrence to bother trying to chase, like the moron who spends $500 a month on lottery tickets instead of saving for retirement.
But, goddamnit, I certainly chased Staal this year. Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, Peter Mueller, Dave Bolland, Michael Frolik… all had decent rookie campaigns with occasional flashes of brilliance and all were strong prospects. Like my old farts from the year before, though, they may not have all played too bad for me, but none of them have been that great, either. I’m going to finish near the bottom of the pack again this year, let down by a very different though equally misguided strategy as the year before. (It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t able to draft Steven Stamkos, or I would have resisted the idea that drafting sophomores isn’t a good strategy.) Not that this strategy is the sole reason I'm stinking up the place -- most of my veterans have been just as disappointing as the sophomores -- but it certainly wasn't a winning strategy.
Much like my Edmonton Oilers, even though there’s 15-17 games left, I’m already looking towards next season and I’ll be using this summer to retool. I haven’t given up on the concept that there’s a winning formula to picking players for pools, one that can be applied from year-to-year and will give me an edge. I just have yet to solve it.
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4 comments:
I don't know that there is a definitive "winning" strategy that will win it every year. There is a lot of luck involved.
Injuries can just write off a pool entirely. Most times you can survive one injury, but usually if you have more than one significant injury during the year, there is a very slim chance of winning.
There is usually one or two players that catch fire and can win a pool for you. This happened for me when cheechoo and thornton teamed up. By the way Staal wasn't drafted that year. Often times you have to take some sort of risk with the hope that it pays off ie Gaborik/Havlat. point per game players but could play 20 games could play 60 games. There is that chance they could play the whole season which will often get people to draft them higher than they should. This year it paid off for gaborik, last year it payed off for havlat. I tried to play it safe and pick guys with limited injuries through there careers, they all got hurt.
There is too much chance involved for there to be a perennial winning strategy.
Yeah, one thing I've learned the last two years is that injuries will kill any chances you have. Last year, I had the third highest points per game but finished near last place. (This year I've had injuries but my team was poorly picked, anyways.)
I'm not so much looking for a strategy that will guarantee a win... that's just not going to happen, too many variables involved. What I'm looking for is a strategy that will give me an edge. I think it's all pattern recognition. The last two years, I based my strategies on assumptions. This year, I'm going to do it analytically. Break the code. I'm an analyst by trade. Time to put those skills to work where it really matters: hockey pools.
I don't follow general strategies, I try to look at each players situation. Regardless if they are young, old, on a good team, whatever, I try to use what I think are the most important factors to decide if the player in question will have a big increase in points, stay the same, or have a big decrease from the previous season. I think doing this will help you draft a solid team, but you also can't ignore trying to get a big breakthrough player because most drafts are won by a solid team with one or two players that had way more points than expected. These players usually (but not always) have a big risk factor associated with them, so you need to balance picking a lot of players with small edges and try for one or two home run picks.
I think when you run a draft, it's too hard to chase a few key players who you want, because you might not get them. And if you are going to specifically target players, even when they perform well you might draft them too early. I think the key to drafting well is to have small edges for each pick relative to the other players in the round, and drafting targeted players too early negates that small edge.
Ranking players gets really difficult in the 60-50 point range because there are so many of them and so little to set them apart. Ranking these players you could have two players ranked 40 spots different on your list, with very little to separate them. So I always put more focus on players who will score 60+ points and try to draft the best possible players in this range.
I think your post motivated me to start writing in my blog and to publish my list next year, along with my rational on each players ranking and see if I get any worthwhile feedback.
Sportsnet's Mike Brophy says I simply suck at picking which sophomores will avoid the slump:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2010/03/22/brophy_sophomores/
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