ESPN TBL Fantasy Hockey 2009/10

[batdad]

Nice battle Stinson. A valiant effort, but Luongo vs Hawks saved my bacon!!!

[B. Stinson]

That was such a lucky win. I led that thing all week, and you come in at at the last second and take it!

[batdad]

Not lucky...just good goaltending. Won 3 of the goalie categories, ppg, g, pim, gwg. You were winning ,but you lost. Never that far ahead of me except in assists and +/-. I knew you only had 2 wins for sure, and that I may not catch you in one other...But it was always tight.

In fact IMHO--IT was a slugfest. As far as I was concerned both our teams sucked last week.

[Manimal]

I was just thinking, do we get any advantages from finishing high in the standings when the play-offs come around? Other than meeting a lower-ranked team

[B. Stinson]

I was just thinking, do we get any advantages from finishing high in the standings when the play-offs come around? Other than meeting a lower-ranked team

I don't think we do.

[batdad]

As far as I can tell, just play the lower ranked team. And I have a feeling that EVERY SINGLE player I have will play 2 games in my first playoff week. Why do I feel that?

Maybe not..this week Manimal and his Killers get lucky...My Sharks (pavelski,marleau, blake)and my Flyers (Richards, Fartnell) only play 2 games.


Fartnell is peeing me off. RIchards is starting to.

[B. Stinson]

I'm currently making my master spreadsheet for the league, so I figured I'd post this for everyone's reference:

Official Promotion Standings
1. Danny, 608 posts (guaranteed promotion, due to prior technical difficulties)
2. watts555, 132 posts
3. bobmcgoo, 75 posts (0.11 posts per day)
--------------
4. rottamies, 75 posts (0.04 posts per day)
5. bossman, 65 posts
6. Starcrasher, 18 posts

[CatchUp]

Nice, even trade MARS.

[eric1985]

Anyone got a LW. I;m looking for a keeper. im open to most trades but i would prefer to give up a RW or D

[kuulapaa]

I've been trying to figure out ABU's keepers. Some of them are obvious, like Ovechkin, but on some positions it's gonna be a tough call.

C - I've thought that Toews is the man, but lately I've started to hesitate, since M.Koivu looks pretty good too. Gotta check out his contract situation...

LW - Ovechkin.

RW - The position in which my team has been struggling most. Setoguchi's whole season has been a plain disappointment, he hasn't produced even nearly enough to be the #1 RW of the team. Gionta hasn't been much better than Setoguchi and it starts to look like I found my keeper from FA just couple of weeks ago, when I picked up Alex Kovalev. But before the final decision I have to check their contracts too.

D - Two of the threesome of Ehrhoff, Streit and Weber. Or maybe one of the duo of Ehrhoff and Streit. Contracts. Luckily don't have to make the decision yet.

G - Kiprusoff. Even though he has (and/or the Flames have) struggled badly, he is our starting goalie.

Rest of the bunch is merchandise. But because of the possibility of getting in the playoffs, ABU won't do deals that weaken the team.

[batdad]

Pavelski is available for a deal which takes one of my dmen, for a keeper D (read good) and A C who is not necessarily a keeper...or a LW keeper.

But I am happy with my team...I think i had ten less games to play than my good friend Manimal last week....and still managed to beat him. But that was one heck of a nervous week.

[batdad]

So based on the 22 week regular season....

5 teams (Burnaby, Mustangs, Karlstad, Corinthians and Vasteras) have clinched playoff spots.

Interestingly noone is yet mathematically eliminated although one more loss for Caerphilly will eliminate them (or one more win for Philadelphia, Marsac AND Chillwack) will eliminate them.

Basically Caerphilly--YOu have to win all 4 of your games and hope that one of the other three loses all 4 of theirs.

Burnaby needs one more victory to clinch the President's Trophy for this season.

Lake Alajarvi needs one more win to clinch his playoff spot, leaving only 7th and 8th up for grabs.

And those two spots are anybody's guess. One team 7-10-1, two teams 7-11, one team 6-10 and two 5-11....Wow...anyone could pull that out.

Someone should look at strength of schedule for last 4 games and see who has the easiest, and who has the hardest. I know that mine after this week is actually considered easy by the standings...as I have Chicago, Kent and Boston left after this week....

However...I will not be taking those matches easy!!

[batdad]

BTW--Trade Deadline is 2 days away

[B. Stinson]

Poll results:

Which team is most likely to end up relegated for next season?

|------------------------------------|
Kent Mighty Turnips, 36% (4/11 votes)

|---------------------------|
Caerphilly Saints, 27% (3/11 votes)

|------------------|
Boston Irish, 18% (2/11 votes)

|---------|
Chicago Sun Bears, 9% (1/11 votes)

|---------|
Phaneuf Is Enough, 9% (1/11 votes)

[batdad]

Bored--read as procrastinating on things I need to get done, so I thought I would look at how the standings would be if we were a ROTISSERIE league instead of Head to Head.

Take the numbers for what they are worth, we all would do things differently with trades/adds/drops if this were rotisserie for sure to shore up our weaker areas. (Example--I am 9th in assists in the league, a category I kind of do not care about in the H2H, but would in rotisserie). So just for fun...Based on same system as last year--14 points for first in category...down to 1 for last. Ties split with averages.

Rotisserie Standings

1. Karlstad Killers 138
2. Vasteras Vikings 132
3 Burnaby Black Ice 127.5
4. Corinthians R Army 112.5
5. Marsac's Newbies 102.5
6. Phaneuf is Enough 101
7. The Mustangs 94
8. Lake Alajarvi BE 89.5
9. Chilliwack Maraud 78
10. Philadelphia FHC 70.5
11. Chicago S Bears 68.5
12. Boston Irish 67.5
13. Kent M Turnips 47
14. Caerphilly Saints 31.5


Thought it was interesting......some of the changes in standing, which I have noted...

Karlstad would be 2 positions higher 3rd in H2H, 1st in Rot
Burnaby would be 2 positions lower 1st in H2H, 3rd in Rot
Vasteras would be 3 positions higher 5th in H2hH, 2nd in Rot
Marsac would be 4 positions higher 9th in H2H, 4th in Rot Out of playoffs in our format, a home ice team in Rot.
Phaneuf would be 5 positions higher, 11th and relegation danger in H2H, 6th in Rot.
The Mustangs would be 5 positions LOWER, and in danger of missing playoffs. 2nd in H2H, 7th in Rot
Lake Alajarvi-would be 2 positions lower 6th in H2H, 8th in Rot
Chilliwack would be 2 positions lower, and out of playoffs--7th H2H, 9th Rot
Philadelphia--is 2 positions higher in H2H, 8th and in playoffs, whereas in Rot--Out of playoffs in 10th
Chicago--1 position lower in Rotisserie--10th in H2H, 11th in Rot
Boston---no change, 12th and 12th
Kent--no change, 13th, 13th
Caerphilly--no change, 14th 14th...

Again take these numbers for what they are worth...but it is interesting.

In rotisserie the playoffs would be pretty much set already for sure. But in our situation we have a bigger battle for a playoff spots than we would have.

So as we had hoped...H2H has kept people in the HUNT for longer than would have happened in Rotisserie. Kind of like Overtime and Shootout games being worth 3 points.

[Marsac]

That is indeed interesting but I'm warming up to this format. Waking up Monday morning and checking the boxscore (except when Red Wings players were involved and I want to watch the game when I get home from work) is exciting in those even matchups.

I feel like I've learned alot and if I make it to next season I'll probably be doing a few things differently right from the draft.

[getzlaf15]

Why do you hate my team batdad. All these stats you come up with keep telling me i should be rubbish.

[batdad]

Heh. Just because the team must be rubbish. Just been lucky so far Getz, I guess.


So how much have you harrassed the poor guy who has Ryan on his team this season?

[getzlaf15]

Haha! I made an offer earlier in the season during Getzlaf's cold period, hoping to buy low on him. But tbh. The Sun Bears have been dissappointingly inactive. They still have Alex Semin on IR from years ago.

[batdad]

True. And Archi missed a chance to get Marleau and Iginla for Avery and Ott from me because he was sooooo inactive before the deadline!!


But this site is gonna look awesome in the future because of him.

[Manimal]

So, the commish' decides to scratch his goalies after getting a shutout in game one. Too bad the rest of his team wasn't as perfect

[B. Stinson]

So, the commish' decides to scratch his goalies after getting a shutout in game one. Too bad the rest of his team wasn't as perfect

Yeah, it was a pretty bad week for my team.

As for scratching my goalies: I'm open to suggestions on how to stop that for next year. I've been using it, but it's a lame tactic, in my opinion.

Currently, ESPN doesn't have any rule that would directly penalize a team who doesn't meet X goalie starts, and unless they add that for next year, we have to think of some other way to counter it. The best I can think of is to add scoring categories for the goalies to lessen the effect of guaranteeing GAA and SV%... but then I think goalies will have too much of a share in our teams' scoring, despite being a very small portion of our rosters. Other than that, the only thing I can think of is to simply send a request to ESPN, and hope they listen. Their competitor, Yahoo, already has a way of dealing with this, so maybe that'll be a good selling point.

[batdad]

On this goalie thing...if ESPN does not change it, it needs to be a rule we just follow, if not there has to be some kind of internal punishment outside of ESPN. IE...boot the guy or whatever....

And boy my team sucked rocks this week...

[Manimal]

I tried to go to the league site by clicking the 'Fantasy pick em' on the top of the header on here but it links to last season and the referral link does not work. Can someone change this?

[corinthian]

Finally I beat Batdad Team up. Good Effort by Rask who deserves starting more games.