Fantasy Hockey: How to Conduct Your Own Due Diligence
Introduction
Gallagher for Kapanen? Dahlin for Yandle? Bobby Ryan for Batherson? Mantha for Bertuzzi?
As a frequent resident of r/fantasyhockey, these are some of the questions I see daily, and trust me, we probably both feel the same way about these questions. As someone who is trying to become a content creator, I think the best way to engage with your fanbase is to build connections, and what better way to do that than to respond to their questions. So that's what I did last night. After responding to about 90% of the comments on my previous threads, I didn't realize that an hour went by. After all that, I thought it would be best if I teach some of you how I evaluate players. I might have mini rants throughout this post but you'll know how to conduct your own research and due diligence, so it's a win-win! It's so easy that I'll break it down into three steps.
Step 1: Primary Research
This step is straightforward. The easiest way to conduct your research is by looking at the statistic of the player in question. NaturalStatTrick, Hockey Reference, Daily FaceOff, Dobber’s Frozen Tools, Quant Hockey, and Puckbase are five of the websites I use the most. You shouldn't always rely on other people for their opinion. I, myself, am in my second season of fantasy hockey. Last year was my first season and with the shortened season, I have less than a season's worth of cumulative experience under my belt. Chances are, the majority of you guys have more experience under your belt than I. If someone tells you to invest in the Toronto housing market because prices are going up, you won't just buy the first listing you see. You conduct your own research. You look at the neighborhood of the house, the foundation of the house, mold, water damage, etc. My point is, don't always rely on other people.
Step 2: Conducting Your Own Research
Natural Stat Trick is probably the site I use the most. You guys have probably seen all the tables with shooting percentages, individual percentage points (IPP), and secondary assists. Well, Natural Stat Trick is where I grab these stats and it's a great way to determine if your playing is either over or underperforming. For example, I was offered Jakub Voráček for Oliver Bjorkstrand in a trade last night. Voráček has more points than Bjorktrand but guess what? I said no. A quick search on Voráček stats tells me that 5 of his 8 points have come from 5v5. He's currently shooting 20%, while his career average is 9.2%. Moreover, his IPP is 100 which is a big no-no and his shot pace has dropped by almost half from the previous season, from 6.04 to 3.39. A quick two-minute search on Voráček gave me the answer I needed. I don't need to say anything about Bjorkstrand. If you're reading this, then you probably saw my thread on him already.
Hockey Reference is a great site if you want to look at the scoring logs of players or a goalie's historic performance against a specific team. For example, the Florida Panthers have a back-to-back against the Detroit Red Wings this weekend. A quick glance at Sergei Bobrovsky's career split tells me that he is 15-5-1 against them with a 1.96 GAA and .935%. This makes him an attractive target for this weekend if you need wins.
Daily FaceOff is one of the best fantasy hockey sites out there, if not the best. It tells you the matchups for each team for the week, the lines each team is rolling out, who's the starting goalie tonight, roster changes, team news, injuries, etc. Heck, they even have their own projections and put out amazing articles regularly.
Dobber's Frozen Tool is a great way to view line combinations, advanced player statistics, and analytic reports. For example, we can see here that Bjorkstrand has spent 29.3% of his even-strength ice time with Pierre-Luc Dubois and Mikhail Grigorenko. It's a neat tool to see who your player spends the most time with. You can also view player usage and depth charts. The report option allows you to generate any type of relevant fantasy reports, such as ice time, power-play usage, or even penalty minutes.
Quant Hockey is a great resource if you want to see the league scoring leaders. I mainly use this site to look at who's leading the league X category in the last X season. For example, Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid are ranked #1 and #2 in the last three seasons when it comes to scoring.
Puckbase is a site that I love to use since I'm in a league that counts faceoff wins. Under their face-off stats page, I get to see who takes the most faceoffs per game, who's winning the most faceoffs, and who has the best faceoff win percentage. You get the gist.
Step 3: Supplementing Your Primary Search With Secondary Sources
Now this is where you can go out there and look for other people's opinions. Fantasy hockey websites, podcasts, videos, and Twitter are all great secondary sources that you can use to supplement your primary research.
Fantasy Hockey Websites
Dobber Hockey, Daily FaceOff, Yahoo, ESPN, Rotoworld, The Athletic, CBS, The Hockey Writer are all great mainstream fantasy hockey websites to check for information. Note, the only website I really use is Dobber Hockey, Yahoo, and Daily FaceOff. I usually just read Dobber's articles when I'm eating breakfast or on the toilet, while Yahoo have articles integrated on their fantasy app and Daily FaceOff for the reasons in step 1.
There are other fantasy hockey websites that are making themselves a name and flying under the radar. u/FantasyHockeyNetwork has been pumping out content on their website, Fantasy Hockey Network which includes content such as articles, player rankings, draft guide, and a podcast. u/FantazyHockeyNewz has a website, Fantazy Hockey Newz that puts out similar content as well but they also do post-game articles. Five Hole Fantasy Hockey is run by our very own u/tjsusername and they also put out amazing content. While u/WAOST has a site called My Wide Array of Sport Takes which pumps out content on not ONLY fantasy hockey but League of Legends too, so go check it out you eleague nerds. Seriously guys, go check them out.
These guys barely get any traction for their content and it's a f-cking joke considering the effort they put in. Fantasy Hockey Network put up an article detailing waiver pickups for week 2 here. 91% upvoted with comments from 6 unique users. Fantazy Hockey Newz has their own version of Elliot Friedman's 31 Thoughts. Here's a thread of it with 0 comments and 75% upvoted. Here's an article by u/UsidoreElAzul, who is a part of Five Hole Fantasy Hockey, with 0 comments and 92% upvoted. u/WAOST puts out content such as daily injury reports and Buffalo Sabres game previews. Here's a thread of them with users saying "this is super helpful" and "this is so helpful, thank you. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for these updates," and guess what? It's 78% upvoted. All these people put out content on a DAILY basis and their stuff gets downvoted? Why? For what? So that your "Should I drop Petterson for Farabee?" post can get more traction because you couldn't do your own research? These guys put in a ton of effort for their content, and trust me, you guys don't know how long it takes to put content like this together. If you're not going to view their content, don't downvote it then. Just skip ahead and move onto the next thread lmao.
Podcasts
Off the top of my head, there are four big fantasy hockey podcasts. Our very own u/tjsusername runs the Five Hole Fantasy Hockey Podcast. u/daveedgamboa runs the Fantasy Hockey Podcast along with his mate Brandon. There's also the Keeping Karlsson Podcat run by u/briankk and Scott Cullen who runs the Locked On Fantasy Hockey Podcast.
Videos
Fantasy Hockey Podcast is probably my favorite fantasy hockey YouTube channel and puts out amazing series like Weekly Preview and Pickup Suggestions and Unsustainable Wednesdays. Weekly Preview and Pickup Suggestions is self-explanatory while Unsustainable Wednesdays single players who are either under or over performing.
The Hockey Guy is also another great channel that happens to have over 175k subscribers. I saw this channel earlier on in the season and had to dig a bit deeper to find it again He uploads a daily video that ranges from player and team discussions to game preview. His channels cover a lot of topics so go check it out!
This is probably where I get my main source of information. Dobber runs a Twitter account called Goalie Post which tweets out information on goalies, such as goalie starts and injuries. The Goalie Project is another account that serves the same purpose.
Dom Luszczyszyn, JFresh, Sean Tierney, Dimitri Filipovic, and EvolvingWild are all great accounts to follow if you love stats or if you want to use stats to supplement your research.
Give Elliotte Friedman and Bob McKenzie a follow if you want to stay up to date with the latest player acquisitions.
Following beat reporters is also another great way of staying onto of your favorite teams' lines. I'm not going to list out all +31 reporters and it's really easier to find them. To do so, just type in the names of your players like this, "Atkitson - Domi." The search results brings up two tweets from two CBJ beat reports, Jeff Svoboda and Brian Hedger.
Last but not least, all the people I've mentioned above have their own Twitter accounts. When I playing fantasy hockey last year, I found that @FantasyHockeyPD and @FNTSYHCKYTRADE were two accounts that were the most responsive to my tweets. @FantasyHockeyPD is great if you have any general fantasy hockey questions while @FNTSYHCKYTRADES is great if you have any questions regarding player trades. @FNTSYHCKYTRADES will retweet your tweet, allowing other fantasy hockey Twitter users to see and answer your trade questions, and not to mention, they'll chip in with their own opinion too. But this doesn't mean that you can take your Reddit trash and spam them on Twitter with "can i trade crosby for phil kessel and a pack of glizzy" garbage. Do your own research first!!!
Step 4: Arsenal
Hopefully this post has taught you guys how you can do your own due diligence. If you have any questions regarding any of the research steps, just comment down below or tag me if I don't respond. You also find me on Twitter @vizionsnaps or on my website. Cheers and best of luck!
P.S. you keep Gallagher, Dahlin, Batherson, and Mantha for those who don’t who the answers