Author: johnnyfantasy

A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 5 – In Search of the Perfect Points System)

by Johnny Fantasy

Setting up a fantasy hockey league is no easy task if you want to do things right.  While it’s impossible for fantasy to exactly track reality, I always wanted to find a league setup that did the fairest job of approximating reality and that would provide the best experience of managing a hockey team of NHL players.  To that end, there are the some basic principles I’ve settled on over the years.  In part 4, we tried to find the best balance of categories for a stat-categories league.  Here in part 5, we’ll try to figure out the best way to weight the stat categories for a Yahoo fantasy-points league. Continue reading “A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 5 – In Search of the Perfect Points System)” →

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Week 3 in Review

by Johnny Fantasy

This week we got a peek into Edmonton’s developing reserve of talent, we learned to laugh with (at?) the Ducks and we’re starting to think that maybe certain unexpected accomplishments last season can be repeated.   Continue reading “Week 3 in Review” →

A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 4 – Finding the Right Balance of Stat Categories)

by Johnny Fantasy

Setting up a fantasy hockey league is no easy task if you want to do things right.  While it’s impossible for fantasy to exactly track reality, I always wanted to find a league setup that did the fairest job of approximating reality and that would provide the best experience of managing a hockey team of NHL players.  To that end, there are the some basic principles I’ve settled on over the years.  Judging each stat category as we did in part 3 is an important first step, but how good a league will be will depend on what the chosen categories look like as a whole.  Here in part 4, we’ll try to figure out the right balance for choosing categories in a stat-categories league.  Continue reading “A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 4 – Finding the Right Balance of Stat Categories)” →

Week 2 in Review

by Johnny Fantasy
Another fantasy week is in the books.   While we are still very much in “start off on a streak” territory, we are getting a little bit more colour on whether some players are actually breaking out this year or not. Continue reading “Week 2 in Review” →

Week 1 in Review

by Johnny Fantasy

Today marks the final day of the first week of the fantasy hockey season.   Half of you are anticipating a well-earned victory, the other half are either mourning the impending loss or desperately trying to mount a futile comeback (or are completely oblivious because they haven’t looked at their team since they half-heartedly reviewed the results of their auto-draft[1]).  So, what have we learned, and what can this first week tell us about the rest of the season? Continue reading “Week 1 in Review” →

A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 3 – Stat Categories)

by Johnny Fantasy

Setting up a fantasy hockey league is no easy task if you want to do things right.  While it’s impossible for fantasy to exactly track reality, I always wanted to find a league setup that did the fairest job of approximating reality and that would provide the best experience of managing a hockey team of NHL players.   To that end, there are the some basic principles I’ve settled on over the years.  In part 1, we looked at the different platforms available (we settled on Yahoo and the rest of our discussion will focus on that); in part 2 we looked at the different league formats.  Here in part 3, we’ll look at stat categories. Continue reading “A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 3 – Stat Categories)” →

A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 2 – Formats)

by Johnny Fantasy

Setting up a fantasy hockey league is no easy task if you want to do things right.  While it’s impossible for fantasy to exactly track reality, I always wanted to find a league setup that did the fairest job of approximating reality and that would provide the best experience of managing a hockey team of NHL players.   To that end, there are the some basic principles I’ve settled on over the years.  In part 1, we looked at the different platforms available (we settled on Yahoo and the rest of our discussion will focus on that).  Here in part 2, we’ll look at league formats. Continue reading “A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 2 – Formats)” →

A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 1 – Platforms)

by Johnny Fantasy

Setting up a fantasy hockey league is no easy task if you want to do things right.  A lot of leagues just use the default settings, which is unfortunate because those may not be particularly well balanced or do the best job of reflecting real-life hockey value.  As a result, a lot of fantasy managers have become accustomed to using a lot of statistical categories that don’t make a lot of sense.   While it’s impossible for fantasy to exactly track reality (e.g., I’m not sure fantasy will ever be able to capture the intangibles that make elite two-way players like Jonathan Toews and Patrice Bergeron so valuable in real-life, and thus they will always be a bit undervalued from a fantasy perspective), I always wanted to find a league setup that did the fairest job of approximating reality and that would provide the best experience of managing a hockey team of NHL players.   To that end, there are the some basic principles I’ve settled on over the years.  Here in part 1, we’ll look at platforms.

Continue reading “A Commissioner’s Manifesto (Part 1 – Platforms)” →

A blog about (fantasy) hockey

Hello internet,

This is a blog about hockey.  Not just any kind of hockey, but fantasy hockey.  The game that allows us, the no-experience arm-chair GMs, to run a team of all-stars that could only ever possibly exist in a dream (or if the NHL somehow fell apart and reconstituted itself as 10 teams, with 2 or 3 GMs blatantly asleep at the wheel).

Fantasy sports are a lot of fun.  They’re free (unless you’re a compulsive gambler that can’t say ‘no’ to a bet) and allow us to enjoy the sport on levels we never previously considered.  Our allegiances bend and expand beyond our hometown teams; we become fans of new and random players on teams that barely come to our cities once a year.  But we are still hockey fans, and therefore we want rant about the players on our minds even though our local hockey fanbases have no idea why we care so much about whether Arizona’s young prospects can make the team and drag them out of the bottom of the standings (in this example, our local fanbase does not reside in Arizona, because we’re talking about hockey and five people does not qualify as a fanbase).

And so, where can we have these extremely nuanced conversations and debates without alienating all of our family and friends?  Ah, thank you internet.  This is the outlet we need to connect with all of those anonymous acquaintances whose faces we’ll never see, but who share our fervor.  So, I’m excited to start this blog to contribute to the conversation and the fantasy hockey internet community.

It’s been a long summer, but hockey season has finally returned, and with it a new fantasy season to obsess over.   So, a few posts are ready here, the comments sections are open – let’s talk fantasy hockey!