When it comes to winning fantasy hockey, there is one thing every player needs to remember to create a sound fantasy hockey strategy before the draft. Study your league’s fantasy hockey rankings before the draft and know who the best players are on every team, not just your favorite team. There is more to a successful fantasy hockey strategy than just that, of course. In the following steps, we will talk about different aspects of the fantasy hockey game and how they can help you develop a winning strategy.
- Fantasy Hockey Mock Drafts: Mock drafts are a great way to hone your skills and tactics before the real thing. Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey offers a top-notch draft simulator for you to run through a few times, helping you adapt to the twists and turns your real fantasy hockey draft is likely to take. Try out a few practice runs and find out who you’ll be prioritizing, and who’d be a good last-minute backup should your number one pick be snatched away.
- Fantasy Hockey Draft: Once fantasy hockey draft day starts, the real work begins. Nailing your squad from day one will stand you in the best stead to go the distance, so do your research in advance. Make sure you’ve gone through a few mock drafts so you can think on your feet. Fantasy hockey drafts usually work along the Snake format, like most other fantasy sports drafts. Say you have 10 teams and 30 picks: in the Snake format, each team gets one pick, all the way to the 10th draft, before the order of drafting is reversed, and the team who got the last first-round pick gets the first second-round pick.
- Understanding Goaltending: The goaltender position is one of the most important in your roster and one that you should be willing to spend a large portion of your salary cap on. A reliable goaltender will accumulate more game time than a player in any other position. Checking a goalie’s appearances per season and save percentage is key to ensuring you have a net-minder who’ll earn fantasy points consistently.
- League Player Injuries: Injuries are a sad reality in all sports and an even sadder one for fantasy hockey leagues. While you dread even the thought of your superstar going down with an injury, you must be prepared for the possibility. If you can, stash his backup on your bench. He will probably be available late in the draft or maybe even in free agency. That way, you can replace your injured star with someone who will play every day. He will not score as many fantasy points for your team, of course. But he will have the opportunity and may play well enough to keep your team afloat until the superstar comes back.
- Average Draft Position: If a player has an ADP lower than the selection you are thinking of using on him, then that player has value. Every other draft had selected him sooner. But if the number is higher, then he was drafted in the later rounds in every other draft your site has hosted. That means you can probably wait to pick him up. You are not going to pay attention to the ADP in the first few rounds of the draft. But it is something you should be aware of in the later rounds. It can be a useful tool in helping you decide when or if you should take someone.