Long time, reader, first time poster, er, something like that. Kind of long this is, so bear with me.

Background, I\'ll try and keep it brief.

I am a member of and commish of a keeper league which will be entering its 3rd season this fall. We were at 10 teams this season. 9 of the 10 are returning. We\'re adding 3 more to put us at 12 where I would like to remain long-term. This is a league where all of the people are actually friends of mine in real life, so even though we host it online, we do things such as the draft and meetings (a couple a year) in person. This also means that I kind of bend over backwards to make it as enjoyable as possible for as many teams as possible.

We hosted through CBS this season. It\'s H2H weekly using categories, not points. Here are the categories we used this season:

Skater Categories: G,A,PPP,GWG,SOG,PIM,+/-
Goaltender Categories: W,SO,SVS,SV PCT

A lot of different managers have brought up a lot of ideas. These fall into 2 areas. Going to a points based system and/or modifying the categories. I am adamantly opposed to points based, as I will illustrate later, but everything\'s done by vote, so it could be implemented even if I voted no.

My thought behind keeping scoring based on categories is that it keeps more teams in contention longer and just makes the whole thing far more interesting. For example, you could have a lot of guys who get A,PPP,PIM and a couple of goaltenders who get a lot of Saves but are maybe on mediocre teams and you may lose a lot of weeks 4-6-1 but you would be in contention for a lower playoff seed and as we all know, anything can happen in the playoffs. I tend to fall very much into that camp. I\'m in a baseball league (I don\'t even watch baseball and I\'m still doing quite well) with some of these people and there is a team in my division who is already 7-1 and a team that is 1-7. If I was the guy who was 1-7 I\'d be throwing in the towel. But imagine if it was 62-24 vs 40-48. Not so hopeless now, is it? Most people feel that the # of categories is about right and that it should be kept to an odd number to avoid 6-6 weeks during the playoffs. I agree. I also don\'t want the # of goaltender stats to be much more than 1/3 of the total # of categories, or a lot less.

As far as the categories go, I\'ve never been a huge fan of +/-. I don\'t think it tells a heck of a lot from a fantasy perspective.
There\'s a big desire from a lot of managers to add something, however, that rewards players who are a little bit more physical, especially defensive defenseman. I was thinking of adding Hits and/or Blocked Shots and removing +/-. Of course it appears CBS doesn\'t offer either of those categories (and they never respond to my emails) so if anyone knows of a stat service that offers those, let me know. There are also people who have said they want either faceoff wins or faceoff %. I\'m not sure if % could skew too much unless you can make a minimum # of faceoffs, and maybe wins are just kind of a pile-on stat for really good centers? Speaking of pile-on stats, I\'m not a huge fan of GWG either and I really want that gone. I mean, a lot of weeks it\'s 3-2. Big deal. I don\'t want t 3-2 advantage in GWG deciding a league title. Sorry, that\'s just me.

Here would be the new potential stat categories

Skaters: G,A,PPP,PIM,SOG,Hits or Blocked Shots,Something to Do with Faceoffs
GoaltendersL W,SO,SVS,Save PCT

The thoughts on the above being that the first 4 are kind of universal, that SOG plays to wings, Hits or Blocked Shots to D, and the Faceoff category to centers.

Also, are there any hosting sites that would allow me to run a league and would support all of those categories?

The 9 returning teams will each be keeping 14 players, only stipulation is a max of 2 goaltenders. I\'ve made a quick estimate of who I think will be kept and the 3 expansion teams should be in pretty decent shape. Plus they\'re getting the 2-4 picks in the draft so they\'ll be in good shape.

For lineups, we use F and we don\'t differentiate between C and W. I used to love that whole C/RW/LW thing but they\'re not accurate half of the time so F is fine IMO. This year we started 9 forwards, 4 d, and 1 G every day. I\'m thinking with 12 teams we may want to pare down the F
and D but up the G to 2. We\'re going to put in a roster limit so teams can carry only 3 goaltenders (we may add a stipulation that 1 can be on IR, making 4, but that they have to actually be on IR, and can\'t just be stashed). The 2 G idea is just because it\'s way too frustrating having a couple of good goaltenders who end up always starting the same night. 2 would resolve that, and the limit of carrying 3 prevents abuse. I\'m thinking maybe going to 8F/3D for daily lineups, but does it really make that big of a difference from 9/4?

So

-Thoughts/advice/comments on my scoring ideas?
-Thoughts/advice/comments on starting lineup ideas?
-Am I being way too OCD on these details?

Also, any advice on roster sizes for this league? I\'m thinking 150% of the starting lineup size plus a couple of IR spots. So if we were at 9/4/2 we\'d do maybe 22 roster, 2 or 3 IR. If we\'re at 8/3/2 we\'d do 20 roster, 2 or 3 IR.

Also, I\'m definitely adding the last 2 trades being reviewed thing to the rules regarding non-returning managers. The 1 manager who isn\'t returning tried to swing a couple of questionable deals that got horribly vetoed and that\'s one of the reasons he\'s leaving as far as I can tell. He basically said the league was \"too serious\" but it\'s really that he was going to leave anyway and we didn\'t allow him to do dump trades right before the deadline.

Thanks for any thoughts/advice/comments. I\'ll post a thread some other time with my keepers and ask for some advice.

Post edited by: blindedbyfear, at: 2007/06/01 14:36

Take a Look at my rules for my keeper lg

http://jason-banks-fantsay-hockey-le...cr=4&rfm=y

Im very extensive with 15 Stat catigorys but I see things the same as u except +/-... that is a great stat cause The players you have should make a differance... its all fine and dandy to get 120 PTS... but a minus 10 doesnt exactly make you a huge asset.. I for one Picked up Christoph Schubert to offset my +/-... he has little to offer everywhere else... but hes fantasy gold with +30...

Also Yahoo.com has been the best and most interactive site ive ever found for Fantasy hockey... chek it out... join a mid season Baseball lg to get the idea of how they operate thier system even if ya dont like baseball...

theres a contact addy for me on my page give me a shout if ya wanna know anything... I\'ve run Yahoo lgs for a good 7-8 years

Post edited by: Jason_Banks, at: 2007/06/01 15:10

__________________
Current Roster:

F: H Sedin, Plekanec, Kovalchuck, Perry, Cammalleri, Oshie, Stepan, Anisimov, Kunitz, Justin Williams, Little, Baertchi, Huberdeau, Olli Jokinen, Eberle, Rattie, Alfredsson

D: Boumeester, Green, Carlson, Vlasic, Del Zotto, Myers, Scandella

G: Niemi, Varlamov, Neuvirth, Harding, Ramo, Vasilevski

We used Yahoo for our first season and the reason we didn\'t go back was because (as far as I can remember) you couldn\'t customize the H2H schedule. We have divisions and I like to be able to set a custom (weighted) schedule in addition to being able to specify exactly who plays each other each week in the playoffs and to make rounds longer or shorter if I desire. If I\'m wrong and it would support the extended stat categories I would maybe consider going back. We really like CBS, though, I just wish they had Hits or Blocked Shots as categories.

Thank you for your thoughts and advice. It looks like you have quite the competitive league.