Category: A Commissioner’s Manifesto

Musing on some basic principles of setting up a fantasy hockey league

Advanced Fantasy Hockey

By Johnny Fantasy

I’ve made plenty of criticisms of fantasy hockey setups.  Indeed, the whole inspiration for this blog was to start a conversation about how we choose the rules for our fantasy hockey leagues and ways to improve those choices.  But I’ve been thinking: what if, rather than just making adjustments within the established fantasy hockey system, we might do better by tearing down the fantasy hockey model and starting from scratch in a way that better reflects the sport as a whole?  Continue reading “Advanced Fantasy Hockey” →

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)” →

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)” →

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)” →