Hi, today I am going to be blogging about Fantasy Hockey Leagues.

I  have a league but it only has four people in it so I am hoping to get more people next year but I am learning a lot about leagues so I will share some tips and how to make a leauge. I do it all on ESPN fantasy so if you do it on something like Fantrax then not everything will sound familiar but it is still more or less the same thing.

Setting up the scoring: You can do this however you want, but most leagues follow the same scoring of having goals be worth 2 or 3 points, having assists be worth 1, shots be worth 0.5 to 0.1, and power play points be worth 1 or two extra.  You can also make defenseman points be worth points, so if you have goals worth three and assists worth 1, then set your defensemen points at 2 because that will even it out, making a goal for defenseman be worth 5 and an assist be worth 3. Goalies can be marked on points too, and the best way to set it up is around 2-3 points for a win, -1 to -2 points for a loss, and 0.1-0.2 for a save.

Drafting  In the draft you will want to start the first two rounds by drafting 2 forwards, and the next two rounds drafting top scoring defenseman, and the next two rounds drafting good goalies. You might want to get a really good goalie early but goalies go through rough patches and so having average to a bit better then average goalies will be just as good as elite goalies. You will get more points by drafting a top scoring forward or top scoring defense in the first 4 rounds then a goalie anyway. Once you have 2 forwards, 2 defense, and 2 goalies, draft the best players available, keeping in mind that you will need around 8 defense and 8 forwards at the end. Always have a list ready for who you want to take. If there is a really good player left in the 7th+ round, you can ignore drafting goalies for one round and take him instead, because there is going to be someone taking him the next round anyway probably, so you might as well take him while he is available.

Throughout the Season During the season, constantly check the free agents and waivers and see who is available. If you have a guy going hot for a while, unless he is someone expected to do that like McDavid, trade him away for another player who you is playing average or a bit above average. Guys like James Van Reimsdyk have done well early this year but they were not expected to do that well so you can either overprice him now or ride him until his streak starts to decline and quickly get rid of him. Look at the players average fantasy points per game. If their average is high, unless they have a small amount of games, pick them up and drop your players who are not doing that well. Don’t drop players who are doing bad until one month of the season  has passed though, because everyone always goes through rough patches. The biggest part of Fantasy Hockey is predicting the streaks.

That is the end of my blog for the week. Thank you for reading. Here is a link to Jayden’s blog and here is a link to Ernest’s blog.                                                           

Here is a link to the NHL website