Hey fellas,
Over the years some of the teams in our hockey pool (me) have built incredible fantasy hockey teams stacked to unbelief. There has always been complaining...but now its reached a point where maybe I do need to make major changes to challenge myself and keep others happy. (I actually voluntarily gave away Alex Ovechkin after his 62 goal season and right before his downfall) (we have also added forward positions this last year) What I want to do is to make easier for bottom teams to compete every year. What I don't want to do is royally penalize the "good active" owners just because they work at their teams. The big suggestion I keep hearing now is lower the amount of keepers. We currently keep 8. Six seems to be the popular number. There was mention of only the top 6 of 14 teams keep only 6 and the rest remain keeping 8. Lately its just been everyone keep 6.
ALL along a few of us have wanted to RAISE the amount of keepers....no not to stack our team even more but to have guys like Kyle Turris, Gilbert Brulet, Derrick Brassard (all back in the day) on our rosters for taking a chance. Makes it interesting.

I know it is possible for bottom teams to make a turn around quickly (at least in our baseball pool) The owner that had the 1st pick overall by finishing at the bottom, turned around the next year and won his division and the championship. I'm sure thats rare but you get what I'm saying.

So the point of this long email is in hope that the dobber community can share their setup's with me and or opinion on our league on what we can do to improve it. This will be the 4th year of existance....I've won the league 3 years but its close with roughly the same 4or5 other owners. A few of us have been doing this similar setup for close to 8 years with a different bunch.

What can we do that would make it fun for both the "good active smart owners" and the "try little but whine a lot bottom owners". *sorry sarcasm was irresistable.

thanks for your time

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Contract Fantrax 14 teams, 8 keepers. 4 max lifers +/-
3C, 3LW, 3RW, 1F. 5D,2G....5Reserves.
Goal heavy. G=3.5 A=2 Add 0.5pts for D.
Goalies:W=3,SO=4,start=2,Save=.1
Shootout Save=.2
C:CROSBY,STAMKOS,TAVARES,
LW:Sedin,MARCHAND,TLUSTY,ELIAS,Whitney
RW:MALKIN,YAKUPOV,Jagr,Brunner
D: BYFUGLIEN,YANDLE,VOYNOV,Carlson,Visnovsky
G:Lundqvist,lehtonen,Pavelec
Minors: Granlund
Baseball
Votto,Cano,hanley,longoria
McCutchen,Stanton,Bautista.
Verlander,Cain,Felix

My league has a "prospect keeper" position that is an additional keeper slot. It was meant for people to use in rebuilding their teams, and has the following restrictions. Maybe you can slot a keeper like this somewhere.

1) Must have 4 years or less experience in the NHL (only counts as a year if 15 or more games are played)
2) F must have scored less than 45 points in any NHL season, D less than 30 in any NHL season.
3) Must have less than 85pims in any NHL season.
4) G must have played less than 32 games in a season.
5) If no prospect player is kept, you make up your pick in the XX round.

1) keeps the prospect to young nhlers
2) meant to keep the prospect as a player you think will break out next year
3) prevent using this keeper for goons
4) prevent using this for young goalies that have established themselves as the starter
5) round of draft your pick comes in depends on the prospect restrictions and league depth.

So the goal was that bottom teams would then trade the old guns (Whitney, Jagr, Doan, etc) for young guns (Turris, Granlund, etc) at some point since they are out of the running but can bring in a potential breakout star for next year.

Maybe you can fit something like this in for bottom teams only, or reduce the top teams to 6 non restricted keepers and have 2 prospect keepers, while bottom teams can have 8 non restricted keepers.

My first prospect was Jamie Benn, worked out great. Next was Taylor Hall, got lucky with the injury stopping him just before the point cutoff. This year Brendan Smith is my prospect, as we are adding Hits next year. Just an idea for you to ponder.

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10 Team Yahoo Roto
Keep 6F, 3D, 1G (to max 4 years)
4C,4LW,4RW,6D,2G,5BN,2IR Roto-play 90games/position
Player: G, A, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, GWG, SOG, FW
Goalie: W, GAA, SV, SV%, SHO

C: 3-Backstrom, 1-Getzlaf, Kesler, Ribiero, Stepan
LW: 2-Zetterberg(c), 1-Hall, 2-Benn(c), Pacioretty,
RW: 1-P.Kane(c), Wheeler, Burrows, Brunner, Silfverberg
D: 2-Edler, 1-Yandle, 1-Subban, Carlson, Zidlicky, J.Faulk, Souray
G: 2-Quick, Brodeur, Dubnyk, Emery
IR: Malone

#- denotes number of years I have kept a player.

Another possibility for you that my league also uses is that we have a keeper time limit (sort of like 5 year contract). Once you have kept that guy for 4 years, then in his 5th year with your team, you can use him during the season. However at the end of the season you can no longer keep the player, which means he will either be draft eligible in the next season or you have to trade him away.

This way people can't stack their teams forever, there is a time window within when you can have you super stacked team win.

We placed the time limit rule to encourage trading.. but this is another possible benefit of it.

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10 Team Yahoo Roto
Keep 6F, 3D, 1G (to max 4 years)
4C,4LW,4RW,6D,2G,5BN,2IR Roto-play 90games/position
Player: G, A, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, GWG, SOG, FW
Goalie: W, GAA, SV, SV%, SHO

C: 3-Backstrom, 1-Getzlaf, Kesler, Ribiero, Stepan
LW: 2-Zetterberg(c), 1-Hall, 2-Benn(c), Pacioretty,
RW: 1-P.Kane(c), Wheeler, Burrows, Brunner, Silfverberg
D: 2-Edler, 1-Yandle, 1-Subban, Carlson, Zidlicky, J.Faulk, Souray
G: 2-Quick, Brodeur, Dubnyk, Emery
IR: Malone

#- denotes number of years I have kept a player.

The league I commish is an auction style, partial keeper with 30 percent salary increases. We have had 5 different winners. We have guys that have been a part of Dobber Community for years, and guys that have never been here. Family guys and single guys. Guys that know there prospects, guys that don't care about them. It works really well for all levels of Fantasy GM's. You can concentrate on young guys, or you can buy the higher end guys. It helps create trades as salaries are always in play.

I don't know how you could possibly incorprate this into your league. Maybe based on player rankings? It would be a large undertaking and you are limited to what site you can use to track your salaries for you as well.

Probably not much help as it would be a massive undertaking. But I thought I would throw it out there.

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"Add Your Voice" - mindcheck.ca
D.I.F.D. - www.difd.com/

If the top teams need to be challenged more, implement a keeper quantity that varies by finish.

1st place team: Keeps 5.
2nd & 3rd place team: Keeps 6.
4th-6th place team: Keeps 7.
7th-12th place team: Keeps 8.

Upper teams make up their picks at the END of the draft.

Also, consider a slow-draft for the league - this will give the crappier teams more time to research their picks.

A few thoughts:

1) The UHL (league in my sig) has 24 teams, 23-man pro rosters, 27-man farm rosters. There are two keys that help this league in terms of being bottom-feeder-friendly: waiver wire access (2 signings per week) and a salary cap using NHL cap hits. The cap limits growth and complacency while the waiver wire allows teams to find hidden gems at their own convenience. I have found tons of useful players and was able to obtain them without negotiating a trade with a rival.

2) No matter what the system, some people will figure it out while others will dig themselves into a hole. Not much you can do about that.

3) the UHL league actually rewards the winning teams (late 1st and late 3rd round picks) which gives incentive to all teams to try to get better. I won the Presidents trophy in that league and was awarded the 26th overall pick and also a 3rd rounder for being a division champion. My philosophy became "Winning for the future."

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UHL Calgary Flames
24-team H2H (roto G, A, GWG, SHP, PPP, PIM, +/, SOG, Hits, Blks, FOW, W, SV, SV%, GAA, SO)

Capped article archive

Montreal Canadiens coverage

Twitter:@DH_EricDaoust.

It's hard to make a more equitable league after it has been going on for years and obviously you've built quite the dynasty with your current set of keepers. If it was agreed upon from the majority of the league to revisit it's structure to ensure a more equitable/fun league I'd advise the following:

1. restrict number of keepers to 5
2. With those 5 keepers, restrict the number of F keepers to 3. So basically you have to keep a D/G or some combination of it.

In your particular case, you'd keep Crosby, Stamkos, Malkin, D, and Lundqvist. Great set of keepers. BUT the pool would then get a chance to acquire Tavares, Sedin, Parise, Yakupov, etc.

This would immediately change the face of your league and make it easier for those bottom feeding teams to compete.

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10-team Auction League, $160 team salary, weekly H2H, start: 6F, 4D, 1G and 5 Bench

Scoring structure: (F : 1pt G / 1pt A / 0.15pts SOG / 0.15pts Hits / 0.15pts BlkS), (G : 5 pts W / 3 pts SO / 0.01 pts Saves)

Forwards : Ovechkin ($41), Kovalchuk ($24), Kessel ($18), E. Kane ($13), Benn ($5), Sharp ($11), Pominville ($1), Dupuis ($2), Whitney ($2)

Defenses : Letang ($24), Byfuglien ($6), Markov ($1), Bogosian ($1), McDonagh ($2)

Goalies : Schneider ($7), Bobrovsky ($1)

Run a dispersal draft. Declare your eight keepers but run a three round dispersal draft where in the first round you can only protect two keepers and the remaining six are up for grabs. Once you lose one of your skaters to any team you can then protect two more, leaving you with seven players, four protected. Once you lose a second skater to dispersal you can then protect one more leaving you with six skaters, five of whom are protected. Once your team is targeted for the third time you're done and can't have any more skaters drafted from your team. Net net you lose up to three players from your current keepers but get to draft up to three from other rosters. Teams at the bottom of the standings get to poach your best players and vice versa.

There may be better ways to implement idea but it could be a good way to swap talent around and level out the league.

Also, and I apologize in advance but I really can't help myself, maybe the other owners in the league should stop trading you the best players in all of hockey?

I'm of the opinion that nothing should be done to make a team more fair and create parity. The only reason the actual NHL does this is to generate more fan interest and buzz. Obviously, fan interest is not an issue in the league. My league has a keep 17 out of a 24 man roster (possible 27 including IR spots). Last year I finished last in our league due to injuries, and I was at the head of the charge pushing for it to be a keep all. The issue I see is, why should I put all the time and energy in to researching all the breakouts, rookies, and sleepers when really it doesn't matter. Most of the teams in my league that are bad are bad because they made legitimately stupid trades. I don't think it's fair to punish good owners who make smart pickups and trades to get punished because a guy traded Daniel Sedin in a slump for Stephen Weiss after a 4 point game (not an actual trade, but there have been some just as bad). My opinion, is don't feel bad, don't try to balance, dominate your league and tell the rest of the whiners in your league to dominate and do better. Draft well, research their trades before they make them, actually follow hockey so they can make those smart pickups. Don't punish yourself because you already do that.

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12 Team Keeper, Keep 17, Keepers
Roster: 4C, 3RW, 3LW, 5D, 2U, 3B, 3IR, 4G (Start 2)
Stats: G(3), A(2), +/-, PIM(0.5), PPP(2), SHP(3), GWG(2), HITS(0.1), BLKS(0.2), W(3), L(-1), OTL (1), GA(-1), SV(0.2), SO(3)

C: Crosby, Tavares, Nugent-Hopkins, Johansson
LW: Hall, Parise, Silfverberg, Skinner, Conacher, Jokinen
RW: Seguin, Hossa, Wheeler, Burns, Pavelski, Yakupov
D: Doughty, Fowler, J. Johnson
G: Schneider, Hiller, Fasth, Nabokov

this could work nicely.


making a pool deeper tends to help the teams without as many superstars too.

ive found that whatever happens the managers that work the most at it get the best teams.the teams that finnish in the bottom of our league are managers that dont put a lot of time into the league. they also seem to trade away their first round picks which are always good ones as they continue to be bottom dwellers.

the only way to make it more competitive imo is to penalize the better teams which is clearly not that fair.

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10 team Keeper Roto League
4C-4LW-4RW-6D-2G-5bench-unlimited farm.

C= crosby,m.koivu,malkin,zajak,grabovski,j.jokinen,
LW= ovechkin,nash,s.gagner,dubinsky
RW= downie,hemsky,callahan,voracek,perry,mueller
D= green,doughty,phaneuf,wisniewski,girardi,karlsson
G= rask,lundqvist,ward,price

FARM=kreider,grachev,petrov,enroth,kuznetsov,ennis ,rundblad,bjugstad,radulov,montoya, adam,t.erixon,cowan,s.elliot,j.faulk,cormier,petro v,orlov,stone,eakin,grigorenko,silfverberg,brodin, atkinson

--G,A,P,PPP,SHP,GWG,PIMS,+/-,SOG,hits,FOW,blocks-Wins,GAA,SV%,saves,SO