Pens Through My Lens via Own Work cc
Get Pucks Deep is committed to helping you achieve fantasy hockey success this year. You might have some money on the line. Maybe you want to steal money from friends or do it for bragging rights, Or, maybe, you do it simply for the love of the game. Whatever your reason, they’re all valid. So, let’s find out what you need to do to win your fantasy league this year.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The #1 key to success is staying on top of your fantasy hockey team all year. The people who win the leagues are the ones paying attention. They check boxscores every morning, keeping tabs on who performed and who didn’t. They also log in daily, noticing other teams’ trades and which players are on the waiver wire. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is pivotal to becoming the best.
For example, if you’re already an offensive juggernaut and you lack hits and blocks, why not replace a bench regular substitute offensive player for an Ilya Lyubushkin? This big defender is probably in the free agent pool or waiver wire because his only value is those two categories and other league GMs won’t consider him since he isn’t well-rounded enough. For the last three years, Garnet Hathaway has been a top-10 hitter in the league and there’s a good chance that after draft day Garnet Hathaway will remain unselected. Hathaway is a prime candidate if you are in the later rounds of the draft and need hits.
After draft day comes and goes, and you still don’t know the type of team you are and what categories you excel in, the answer will become clear within the next few weeks. You will notice quickly what you’re good at and what you’re not. From there, you can decide if you want to change your team identity or not. There are generally two ways to construct your team and build an identity. The first is to be well-balanced and assemble a good roster in all categories. Or construct a team that is only good in particular categories and essentially forget the rest of them.
The vast majority of fantasy teams out there are well-rounded. It’s quick to figure out, which is why most fantasy GMs are aware of the types of league categories (goals, assists, goalie wins, blocks, etc.) and know if they’re a good team in that category or not. This type of team is essentially the league average in all categories. Some weeks they will win their offensive categories, other weeks they win their goaltending categories. It more or less flip-flops each week.
If this is the type of team you decide to be, you must have a holistic team approach and realize right away what players contribute to which categories. If unforeseen circumstances occur, such as injuries, you will need to realize right away what that player was good at and utilize trades or the waiver wire and make up ground in that space.
A common saying. The 80-20 rule can be manipulated and applied to many aspects of life such as business, relationships and even fantasy hockey. The 80-20 rule states that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. In other words, this means that a small percentage of causes lead to profound changes/outcomes. This is an important concept to understand because as a fantasy hockey GM, it can help determine where to focus your time and energy to deliver the most impact.
From a fantasy hockey perspective, you don’t NEED to build a well-rounded team. Most leagues operate in a head-to-head format based on several player categories such as goals, PP points, shots, hits, goalie wins, etc. And the team that wins is the team who wins more categories than the other. If you can identify the categories you excel in and only focus on those and forget the rest, you will be building a championship-calibre team.
For example, if you’re an offensive-heavy team with good goalie win amounts, but struggle in other categories such as save percentage, hits, blocks and +/-. Instead of reconstructing your roster and swapping your least effective offensive players for better goalies, hitters and shot blockers to become a more well-rounded team, you could just forget the other categories and build the best offensive team in the league. In hopes that your team positives outweigh the negatives week in and week out.
On draft day, there are plenty of resources at your disposal. Sites like Yahoo Hockey, ESPN, TSN and even yours truly: Get Pucks Deep have fantasy draft rankings readily available in a nice listicle format. Check out our version here. Most of them include output estimates for the year which are helpful for on-the-spot decision making which is exactly what draft day is like.
On the flip side, these lists have one great flaw, they’re essentially mirror images of the prior year’s leaderboards. The best indicator of future output is past output so these pre-draft rankings aren’t inherently doing anything wrong, but they tend to ignore every other indicator about future output and only focus on what the player did last year.
A good example for this year is Artemi Panarin. He had a career year last year with 49 goals and 120 points in 82 games. His prior career best was 96 points in a single season, a 24-point differential. I’m putting my money on Artemi Panarin not repeating last year. He is 32 years old and most players don’t have career years at this stage in their career. I’m expecting the Breadman to not cross the 100-point threshold this year. ESPN and NHL.com are predicting Panarin to cross the 100-point threshold again which I think is unwise.
Similar to the above point, do your research and notice players who have the potential to have career years and those who will not outperform their prior year results. There are several key indicators of this. Most notably they’re age, team opportunity and team dynamic.
The NHL has changed. Players used to most commonly peak at ages 27 to 29. Now, the game is faster and much more skilled so players peak typically between the ages of 24 to 26. So, please consider this when choosing players on draft day and beyond.
Tim Stutzle is a prime candidate for this year. He is 22 years old and will turn 23 in January 2025. He is entering the early stages of his prime and in a down year last year, he had 70 points in 75 games played. I think he has a better chance of having 90 points than 70 points this year because he is on the right side of age, and his abundance of skill doesn’t hurt. If you expect anything less than a point-per-game pace you’re taking his prior year numbers too much into consideration and are ignoring other factors.
A player’s skill and prior statistics are important criteria in determining future output but I’ve discovered that most fantasy rankings don’t consider opportunity. A player on one team might be a first-line forward, who earns PP1 time and skates on a team’s top two lines and earns 18+ minutes a night, while the same forward on a different team, will skate on one of the team’s top three lines, earn 14 minutes a night and spend no time on PP1 because there are players more offensively gifted than him.
Let’s look at Adrian Kempe. These past two years have been amazing for him. Having back-to-back career years. 67 points in 2022-23 and 75 points in 2023-24. How come? It’s because the opportunity is there for him. He has averaged 18+ minutes a game in the past two years, which are top-line minutes and he is fourth on the LA Kings when it comes to time on ice per game on the powerplay, so he is clearly a member of PP1. If I look at the LA Kings this year, he is going to get every opportunity to play lots of hockey again. The Kings didn’t have any major off-season star forward additions and no one in the Kings pipeline is going to replace Kempe this year, so it would be unwise to expect a major differential from him, good or bad.
Moritz Seider is a prime breakout candidate for this year and the number 1 reason is opportunity. Shayne Gostisbehere manned Detroit’s PP1 unit last year, but he is now a member of the Hurricanes and Seider who is fresh off a 7-year $59.85 million contract is a prime candidate to take over that role and the 2022 Calder Trophy winner has all the skills and tools to do it. He scored 9 goals and 42 points last year, and I expect a 50+ point output from him this year. Why? Because the opportunity is there for him.
Someone who doesn’t have that ice-time opportunity is Max Domi. Two years ago, in the 2022-23 season, Max signed a one-year contract with the basement-dwelling Chicago Blackhawks where he scored 18 goals, 49 points and averaged 18+ minutes in 60 games. Fast forward to last year, where he scored 9 goals, 47 points and averaged 13+ minutes in 80 games. What happened? The answer is quite simple and it’s opportunity. On a bad NHL team, Max Domi is a top-line offensive threat, but on an offensively-stacked NHL team, Max’s offensive abilities aren’t top-end. He is no longer going to earn PP1 time. His skills don’t surpass the likes of Matthews, Marner or Nylander so he gets relegated down the roster and his numbers reflect that. Max just signed a 4-year $15 million contract with the Maple Leafs so if you’re expecting a return to his Chicago form it won’t happen because the opportunity isn’t there for him.
Joining a fantasy hockey pool or league is something that most hockey lovers go through at one point or another. If you’re able to stay consistent and pay attention to what’s happening in the NHL today, can formalize and stick to a team strategy, can notice potential opportunities, and outliers among players in the league today, you’re primed for fantasy hockey success.
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