I won my fantasy hockey league without watching a minute of hockey

So glory to me as a vanquish my foes in fantasy hockey. I was a rookie in fantasy hockey but still I came to triumph in a public season long roto league. And I didn't it without watching a minute of hockey.

To be fair, I probably watched close to a minute if you count all the times when I flipped through the channel and surfed past it or when sports highlight showed hockey. Also hockey being in the background of bar doesn't count in my total. I went to no games and watched no games.

It all started when I wanted to get to know more of hockey. I have no favorite team and no favorite player. I love playing fantasy football , fantasy baseball and even fantasy basketball. But hockey was missing from my portfolio.

So I asked my brother-in-law who was a St. Louis Blues die hard if he wanted to play and he said yes. He was also a fantasy hockey veteran so at least I had someone to ask questions to.

One of the rules of fantasy sports should be: "Offer no help to anyone you play against, even family members." That must have been a rule my brother-in-law knew as when came time of the draft on ESPN, I forgot the time and missed out.  However, my brother-in-law didn't and he drafted the players he wanted while I got all default rankings. When I asked him later how come he didn't call me when he saw that I wasn't logged in, he just stated: "Oh, I didn't think you wanted to be bothered." Thank you, brother in law.

John Tavares

I was so much of novice at it that when I looked at my roster, I didn't recognize any names. At the end of the draft, ESPN must had something wrong with its %OWN stat at the time while leagues were still drafting. I saw my first round pick of John Tavares had a %OWN of 63% while others on the waiver wire had much higher than that. I thought: well I got dropped this loser. However, research overcome haste and I kept this John Tavares guy.

I am also use to the fantasy sports game having a lot more testing and being more robust. My default rankings got me Tyler Johnson with a 15th round pick. But apparently ESPN had a bug and this Tyler Johnson was a FA and not the real Tyler Johnson who was a Tampa Bay forward. I lost out on 29 goals this season a plus-minus of +33. Which would have been a huge stat for my team.  I talk about this in another post (I don't like plus-minus stat in hockey and here's why)

So Tyler Johnson went the way of the waiver wire while some other team in the league picked up the real Tyler Johnson post draft.



As the season went on, I was middle of the pack. I would consistently check where I was in relation to my brother-in-law as now it was personal to beat him. One of the features I like from Yahoo! fantasy games is that they provide charts to show progress through out the season on where you rank. You can see final progression after the season. In ESPN, you can't see that. You can only see final ranking. So you can't see my steady rise to the top.

Nashville Predators

It was the plus-minus stat that was killing me. I was dead last in the league on that stat. It got so bad I had a -40 at one point when my nearest competitors was at 10. I figure I could give up on this stat but decided to try something. There was a potential of 9 more points I could earn in that roto category if I played smartly. I tried a bundle strategy. I picked up players of league leading plus-minus teams such as Nashville. I plucked Mike Riberio, Mike Fisher, and Colin Wilson. They seemed to be more readily available in my league.  If they did well that would at least improve that category. I stacked players with high plus-minus teams when they were against the lowly Edmonton, Buffalo or Arizona. Any playing that team were my mercenaries.

After several months, it started to work and I had pulled my rank to about 7th or 8th in the league in the plus-minus category. That allowed me to be second in my league. The first team was running too hot with the amount of games he was allowed so I felt confident that if I continued to not go to shallow and play my allotment of games I was fine. The only problem I had was my goalie. I was going shallow and was about -10 games off pace. Then I made the trade that probably saved my team. I swapped my Jason Spezza -7 plus-minus for New York Islander goalie Jaroslav Halak from my own brother-in-law. That moved allowed me to win the Wins and SV% category to seal the league.

The plus-minus stat eventually plummeted as my high risk-high reward strategy of bundling collapses at the end.  But as you can see my brother-in-law came in second. Ha, ha, ha.

I suppose that ESPN and the NHL would have liked me to watch more games of hockey. That is one of the benefits of fantasy sports in that it attracts more fans to the game. Well that wasn't the case for me. My win came down to game management and had nothing to do with my viewership. So what benefit does ESPN and NHL get if their fantasy games don't attract more fans. Although I just won the league, I have to ask myself is there something with the game of fantasy hockey itself?