Basic Playoff Fantasy Tips
By KB
6 years agoFantasy hockey is a wonderful thing. There are many ups and downs throughout the season all culminating in the final few weeks as teams vie for the championship trophy.
Friendships will be ruined, rivalries will be formed, and people will refuse to pay their share with cries of outrage. Once this settles down for the regular season, it all begins again for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This is a quick primer on fantasy playoff hockey and how to draft your team for success.
Fantasy playoff hockey is very different than fantasy hockey in the regular season. First of all, McDavid is unavailable to be drafted.
Seriously though, there are some key differences between the two. Most playoff leagues only keep base stats. This means the focus is on goals and assists for players, while the focus is on wins and shutouts for the netminders.
Secondly, not everyone will play the same number of games. In the regular season even the Buffalo Sabres will play 82 games and that makes Jack Eichel, and Evander Kane worth drafting. During the playoffs, some teams will be eliminated in four or five games, while others could be playing upwards of twenty.
Third, there are no trades or free agents to be picked up in playoff fantasy hockey. Once the team is picked, it remains the same until the playoffs are over. If a team is picked poorly from the start, there is no recovering.
Another key point is that most leagues allow players to be drafted by multiple teams.
Lastly, each league has an entirely different set of rules. In regular season fantasy hockey, most leagues are governed by a large sports website and use very similar rules, scoring, and regulations. In playoff fantasy hockey, the format entirely depends on the league. Some leagues count each goal and assist as one point while other may give two points for a goal. Some leagues may give bonus points when a defensemen scores and some leagues may not even include goaltenders.
Make sure the rules are clear before entering a pool.
There are two basic playoff fantasy formats. The most common format is where individual players can be selected by multiple teams. In this format, the league commissioner will tell each person to pick a certain number of players regardless of position or who else picks them. In this format defenders and forwards are both categorized as generic players and count equally towards the total number of points. Goaltenders are obviously their own category. In this type of league, players can be selected multiple times.
For example, last season, Crosby could have been taken by every single team in the league. While there is a chance that two people will choose the exact same players, it is extremely unlikely due to the vast number of combinations.
The second playoff fantasy format is a draft style similar to a regular season fantasy league. In this type of league, once a player is taken, he becomes unavailable to be drafted by anyone else. For example, the number one pick would be Crosby, and he becomes property of that team and cannot be picked by any other team. This type of format offers its own unique challenges as there are fewer high end scorers in the playoffs. Deciding whether or not to draft a skilled player or take a risk on a goaltender also presents some tough decisions.
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