Hi everyone,
Andrew's comment on the Campbell Conference Prospectus, as well as the great discussion between Kevin and the Bealls, made me wonder if we are all working towards the same goals in this goalie issue. What makes this worse is the comment Sean placed on an earlier piece, in which he indicated that I had failed to explain this debate to him at the time. It seems clear that we don't all agree on why we want to reform the goalie position.
Could people who have an opinion on this issue place the reasons they want to reform the goalie slot in the comments below? You don't necessarily have to offer a model of how to reform it - we are working through that - but just to specify what you want to be different.
Possible options might include a desire for positional scarcity; a desire for the gap between the best and worst goalies to be greater, so that playing a bottom rung goalie hurts your fortunes more; a desire to make goalies' points a larger part of the pie, and thus to make them more important to the results each week; or a desire to try to avoid the common issue of goalies playing fewer games than expected, resulting in uneven performance from week to week. Or anything that I am missing.
Thanks everyone,
The Mercs.
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ReplyDeleteMy main thought -- and the whole reason I brought up this issue -- is that I think we are missing an opportunity with the way goalies are currently handled in the league. Would it not be more fun, more satisfying if the best goalies ranked among the best players in the league? As it stands, an elite goalie barely ranks as a keeper (and many don't). Goalies are rarely traded for or sought after. Kinda too bad, no?
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts are the same as Matt's.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Biceps and Dieseverycampaign that we need to increase the importance of goalies as keepers. I assume that since there is only one playable slot people discard the position. The easiest way to correct this is to make two slots for the goalie mandatory without an increase in bench size. Yes I realize this is the opposite of my opinion during the draft.
ReplyDeleteBen, can you lay out your concern as well? I feel like it is a little different than the one expressed above.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Dale
I don't think my concern is that different than the ones already expressed, at least in a general sense. I think we can improve the current system.
ReplyDeleteI assert the problems with the current system are seen in a few ways. The first is disproportionate effect of goalie-games. According to my analysis of the 2010-2011 season, teams that a had goalie-game in hand (i.e. one more goalie start in a match-up) had double (twice, +100%) the odds of winning the matchup. I think scheduling vagaries are a crappy variable to manage against (and for). I think Kevin's analyses even reinforces this point – looking at goalies in a fpts-per-game does not show a big difference between goalies and skaters. But when you consider it matchup to matchup, rather than per game, the goalie-game effect rears its head.
Secondly, and I don't have a quantitative basis for this yet, the value (or just perceived value?) of goalies in the league is screwed up. I think the valuation problem, with the subsequent distorted market at the draft and during the season, is tied to my first point. Fp-per-game as a method of valuation does not capture all the information about goalie performance. As we all know, markets fail when information is flawed.
How do we change the scoring and roster system to fix these issues? I don't know. Adding a second goalie slot will completely change the market, and perhaps help with the goalie-game problem. But then again, maybe we shouldn't mess. Maybe part of fantasy sports is to give advantages to those who do the thinking and run the numbers.
Ben