I wanted to present two images as my argument against 2 active goalie slots. Both images come from the Free Agent pool of a Yahoo! fantasy league I'm playing in this year. The league is of high-end owners (like us) recruited through a Fantasy Hockey advice website. It has 12 owners, 20 player rosters of which 11 skaters and two goalies can be active each week. It is very similar to us, where we have 22 man rosters and 13 active skaters. There are 8 scoring categories for skaters and 4 for goalies.
Shots below.
The first image below is a screen shot from just after my draft:
The second image below is a screen shot from today, December 5th:
Personally this just makes me annoyed. Goalies rule the day even though it makes almost no sense to have goalies who don't play. It's not a keeper league, and yet goalies like Jonathan Bernier and Markstrom have been on rosters at various times. It's a weekly rotation and yet many backups are on a roster (I count at least 9). Both Nabokov and Montoya are on a team! Two goalies on one bad team that plays Dipietro a third of time! I've had trade offers of Jaro Halak or Nik Backstrom (the goalie) for Shea Weber.
I think I can grow accustomed to having a mandatory two goalies on each team (no more, no fewer), but I am concerned at a scenario like this in which we have two active goalie slots and suddenly the whole league revolves around them. Moreover, while the scarcity has driven up demand, the value of goalies is so insane as to make trading for them impossible.
I officially advocate one of two plans:
1) We table the discussion until after our first season with 14 teams to see if expansion is enough to increase demand on goalies. OR
2) We make our rosters similar to the real NHL by mandating two goalies must be held, but only one can be played each week.
Sound off.
Kevin: While I understand your frustration with goalie valuation in your Yahoo league, I would suggest that we are a long way from that in ours, even if we were to add another G slot today with no other changes. I would also refer back to our previous discussions where we talked about the link between the value of goalies and our scoring system. Goalie value is not just a question of scarcity (or lack thereof) but of the feast or famine nature of the position, the inability of managers to rely on the slot as they would other positions.
ReplyDeleteIf, for example, we take the November performance stats you recently posted, we see that the top skaters and top goalies had very similar FPTS production. If we had two goalie slots, would the team that had Chara and Fleischmann be at a tremendous disadvantage to the team that had Smith and Thomas? Would the owner Thomas scoff at the idea of trading him for Chara?
In this world of 28 goalie slots, yes, there would be a much greater demand for point-producing goalies, and, yes, an elite goalie would rival an elite d-man in value, and, yes, the two-elite-goalie owner might be have a slight advantage over the two-elite-skater owner (given the differential output of other players at the same position). But this is also the world where goalies are still fickle performers -- some weeks stellar, other weeks invisible. It's a world where backups get extended periods of ice time, where fantasy fortunes follow team fortunes, where luck and schedule kill, where starting jobs are lost and won every season. I just don't see this scenario as a league where goalie value would trump all others. To succeed in our league you need consistency week-to-week and, with keepers, season-to-season. FPTS are FPTS. In this world, I could see a discussion about Shea Weber for Jonathan Quick not being ridiculous (as it is now, in our league and your Yahoo).
As things stand now in DO, 14 goalies are in the top fifty FPTS getters so far this season. How many managers would trade a top-50 skater for a top-15 goalie? Erik Karlsson (49.7) for MA Fleury (48.7)?
I'm leaning more and more toward just having two goalie slots and seeing how it goes. I don't think we need to worry about the same sort of valuation problem you have in your Yahoo league (how is it scored, btw?). We can even talk about tweaking the goalie scoring a bit to try to preempt a big balance problem.
With two more teams coming into the league -- almost 50 players deeper into the pool -- I think it also makes sense to have more G's on rosters -- backups, fill-ins, prospects.
As I mentioned before, the only reason I brought this issue up in the first place is that I think we're missing an opportunity with the way goalies currently work for us. I think the long term robustness and vitality of league (and hence its enjoyability) could be improved by making a change.
I don't think we are far off my Yahoo! league, Matt. That's why I use it as an example. It's 12 teams, just like us, with slightly smaller rosters (20 instead of 22), so there is less incentive to own bad goalies as better skaters are on the waiver wire than in our league. The only 'real' difference is that there are two goalie slots. They count 8 skater categories and only 4 goalie categories (not like the old Yahoo! days of five skater vs four goalie stats). Nevertheless, the result is the mayhem shown above.
ReplyDeleteYour point about trading is a solid one - no one in their right mind would trade an elite skater for an elite goalie and that is a problem. But I wonder if expanding goalie slots won't create the opposite scenario.
You're right that goalies are fickle. By nature, their scoring is in bigger blocks that often compound, so it is definitely more feast or famine in a given game. Also, they are perhaps more fickle than skaters in a relative sense. If only 3 goalies change fortune, it's 25% of the league starters. You're right - that's one of the central reasons that goalies are not highly sought after.
However, this uncertain nature is also why goalies so easily take over a league. The simple truth is that there are not enough elite goalies to share in a league, and there is a continental shelf between the good ones and the bad ones in fantasy. A few teams are going to get the goalies who can repeat their stats every year, a few more will get lucky and land on a good goalie having a good year, and a few teams won't be lucky and will have either a good goalie having a bad year, or just a plain old bad goalie. My intuition/inductive research tells me that balance is at around 16 goalies each year (though probably 8-12 of them change from one year to the next). Once you have more than 16 goalies starting in a league, goalies become the defining feature of who wins and who loses precisely because they are fickle.
(To be continued)
What makes a good goalie rather than a bad one is total points, but those total points are always arrived at in an up and down manner for goalies. They don't play every game, first of all, but then no matter the scoring system, it can feel feast or famine. If you measure wins then those tend to matter a lot. If you don't, then goals matter a lot (whether as goals against, GAA, save%, or shutouts). The better goalies are just less often 'famine' and more often 'feast.' In sum, 'consistency' is just a proxy for 'good.' And the difference between the top 8 goalies and those that fall after that magical ~16 mark is so dramatic as to make a massive difference in the likelihood of winning. Should a team get two goalies from that top 8, or two goalies after that 16 mark, their team is bound to have constant feast or famine. Sure, that means more predictability, but less competition.
ReplyDeleteJust as important is that the unpredictable nature of goalies convinces owners to take as many as possible in case they suck. Guys hold backups, prospects, 'shoulda-beens' and 'could-bes' throughout the league because they are so valuable and so unpredictable. 41 goalies are currently held in that Yahoo! league by 12 teams with two playable goalie slots each. 41! That's almost 3-1/2 goalies each! It's crazy! If we went to two goalie slots each and 14 teams, we'd have 28 starters. I would bet a lot of money that we actually hold over 40 on our collective rosters. I wouldn't be surprised if we got to 45 because as a keeper league, some prospects will be more appealing than in my Yahoo! league. If I'm right, the market is even More dead on goalies. Trading for one is next to impossible because they can't be replaced in any other way, certainly not on waivers. And if my experience holds out, there will be no way to recover from bad goalies (because of injury or slump), or to challenge a team with two good goalies. Teams with good goalies are going to get goalie points every week, where teams with bad goalies are only going to get them once in a while.
And what happens when a few teams take 3 or 4 NHL starters? That means another team is forced to start a goalie who isn't actually a starter on an NHL team. Ben's analysis of goalie games effecting wins has shown exactly what that will do to a team. And that's without going into platoon situations and the fact that many teams will end up with at least one goalie who doesn't play 60 games (of which there were 13 last year). And yet, some teams will end up with two goalies (or maybe more) that do play a lot. In my opinion, those teams become unstoppable.
If that's the case - and I understand there are lots of things to take issue with in this statement - then no one will be able to trade for high-end goalies at all. Everyone will keep the top 16 goalies every year, and while a few will change hands because of injury, slump, or mismanagement, the truly elite ones will likely stay in place. I feel like there's enough chance of that happening that it's not worth trying just yet.
What about a system in which we temper the scoring of goalies to more carefully match player totals, then allow teams to play goalies in stead of skaters? That is, you could play 14 total players of any variety. Would that solve any of our problems?
I just want to reiterate my suggested compromise - the goalie bench slot. It creates the scarcity that some owners desire, by ensuring that everyone will carry at least two goalies on their roster. It also helps cover for the volatility of goaltending. With everyone having two goalies, there will be no reason to play goalies who have lost their starting jobs or only have two games in a week. And, finally, it won't change our scoring system.
ReplyDeleteAlso, am I missing something, or don't these numbers already show that goalies are valuable? And thus, isn't the fact that people don't want to trade for them/aren't valuing them enough just a tactical mistake by them? Can someone explain to me why this is not accurate?
Anyway, I still like the compromise. Especially when combined with one of the more radical expansion ideas (it is true that the autodraft still haunts our league).
Mercs