'Standard' hockey pools?

[CliffFletcher]

I've been doing hockey pools, regular season and playoffs, for 30 years. I've done them with friends, with co-workers, with CP members. Virtually every one has been just straight points for skaters and wins + shutouts for goalies. A handful have included penalty minutes, or mandated a certain number of picks for each position.

But now I've learned that something much more complex is considered 'standard':

G = 3
A = 2
PPP = 1
SOG = 0.5
BLK = 0.5
+/- = 0.5

W = 3
SO = 1
SVS = 0.4
GA = -3

https://theathletic.com/514290/2018/...rce=dailyemail

So is this kind of stat-heavy pool really standard? I find it's tough enough to get 8 or 12 people face-to-face for a straight points draft. How many people really dig into stats and prepare for an NHL draft in this detail? Is this a recent trend owing to the rise of analytics? Are these a strictly online thing?

[wireframe]

I play in two pools every year. One is similar to the 'complex' version above and one is straight points. I think that it depends who you're playing with.

The change is probably because computers make it so easy to track a more advanced scoring system than was possible before.

[troutman]

Standard for accountants? That looks horrible.

[RoadGame]

My pool assigns points for G, A, GWG, SHA, SHG, +/-, Hits, Blocks, SOG and for Goalies, W, GA, SV, SO, OTL.

We're a bunch of analysts of various stripes. It's awesome. Also, leftwinglock.com offers a reasonably priced service that produces a draft kit with player ranks tailored to the specific values we assign to each of the above for our pool (i.e. and you could do the same for yours) backed by some impressive analytical depth itself, so preparing for the draft need not be a Busman's Holiday.

[Northendzone]

my favourite pool used to involve a draft/bid system on players with a $20 payroll.

the festivities were started off by throwing out the name of the prior years highest scorer, and then the bidding would start. Usually everyone's first purchased player went for around $6.

some interesting strategies emerge, throw out the name of some 3rd line guy in an attempt to start a bidding war to get rivals to spend part of their payroll. try and drive up the price of a guy to a high amount in order to get a rival to spend a larger part of their payroll. if nobody bidded on a guy whose name you therew out, then the guy became part of your team for the minimum bid amount of $0.50 or the amount you started the bidding at. We would only count top 18 on each team and at Christmas we would have a waiver draft to give guys a shot at dropping guys with injuries or who were underperforming.

We used no goalies, and a point was worth one point.

the initial draft was time consuming, but fun. and the waiver draft involved pizza

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I generally participate in two.

1. Snake draft. 10 players per team, 2 must be D. No goalies. Most points wins.

2. Fantasy by live player auction. 2C, 2LW, 2RW, 3D, 1G active, with 5 bench spots. Goalies get a point for a win and 2 more for a shutout. Everything else is straight points. No tiebreakers except in the playoffs, when it's goals.

I'm not a fan of complex point calculations based on stats that I don't really put much stock in anyway.

[SportsJunky]

What I like about Dom's projection list over at the Athletic is that, if you want to pay for the spreadsheet, it is customizable. You can have a ranked list of hundreds of players based on whatever your league gives points for. So many online pools include things like +/-, PIMs, Hits, etc that if you draft based on scoring alone, you ain't winning.


Still, for an in-person draft, I like it to be points based only. Too many things going on in a live in-person draft to be searching your lists for all the other variables.

[Jason14h]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

my favourite pool used to involve a draft/bid system on players with a $20 payroll.

the festivities were started off by throwing out the name of the prior years highest scorer, and then the bidding would start. Usually everyone's first purchased player went for around $6.

some interesting strategies emerge, throw out the name of some 3rd line guy in an attempt to start a bidding war to get rivals to spend part of their payroll. try and drive up the price of a guy to a high amount in order to get a rival to spend a larger part of their payroll. if nobody bidded on a guy whose name you therew out, then the guy became part of your team for the minimum bid amount of $0.50 or the amount you started the bidding at. We would only count top 18 on each team and at Christmas we would have a waiver draft to give guys a shot at dropping guys with injuries or who were underperforming.

We used no goalies, and a point was worth one point.

the initial draft was time consuming, but fun. and the waiver draft involved pizza

Auction drafts are by far the most fun. Anyone who hasn't done one try it! Usually its 200 pts to bid, minimum 1 pt.


Also, head to head is way better then most points for the season. You can change your lineup every week, and teams aren't out as early/keeps people interested.


We do a FA budget of 100 points, and waivers can run whenever, as long as at least once a week, to add and drop guys. Secret bid on FA's using your 100 point for the year budget.



ESPN has free pool that is decent to use for Head to head, and has snake or auction options! Give it a try! You won't regret it!

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

We just do a budget of $100mm, minimum increment of .1. So basically you've got 1000 points of bidding. It definitely takes a couple of hours but it's fun.

[FurnaceFace]

We currently run 3 types of point structures in our three leagues.
1) classic. 1 pt for a G or A. 2 pts for a goalie win + 3 points for a shutout. This is what I've always thought was the traditional league and most accessible to participants.

2) a roto league with multiple categories. Each team is assigned points depending on where they rank in each category. For example if you have 10 teams the team with the most goals gets 10 pts, 2nd most goals 9 pts, etc. Categories vary but usually include things like G, A, PP goals, PP assists, hits, PIMs and adds GAA and save % for goalies. Lots more complexity but more challenging.

3) a bit of a hybrid, 1 point for a G or A but we track hits and blocks as a single category and each one is worth .1 of a point. Goalie points is just like classic. This one is a winner to me. It adds value to defensive forwards and dmen. In a large league this adds a lot more high quality players. Guys like Gio are ranked up there with just goal scorers. As hitting and blocking shots are keys to winning games these are logical categories to track. If I were starting a large league such as our classic league (24 teams, 23 man roster) I'd include hits+blocks as a scoring category.

[snootchiebootchies]

I've been running a pool for twenty years now with mostly the same bunch of guys. Snake draft, straight points, pretty restrictive salary cap. It's the kind of pool where players like Pacioretty and Toews go undrafted almost every year because they cost too much for the amount of points they score. The unique thing about our pool is that anybody not listed on the salary lists (usually players with less than 40 NHL games under their belts who are not considered top prospects) are really cheap. So you get some really interesting draft picks in our pool -- for example, last year I drafted Jan Rutta, Tim Heed and DeBrincat (looks like a good pick now but most thought he would start the season in the minors last year around this time) because they fit under my salary cap.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I don't understand. You're using their actual NHL salary? Because if so then Pacioretty should never go undrafted.

[Jacks]

Snake draft, straight points, no caps or player restrictions.
It's hard to get people together these days so I don't like complicating it.

[Radio]

I have been running a pool for 20 years now using a ranking system similar to FF. The difference is you want to be ranked first, i.e. going for a lower score. We also use an auction format. We used to have a live auction, that was a lot of fun, but now most of my guys are all over the country and US so we use skype now. We also have a mid-season draft that lasts 3 rounds where you can cut dead weight, swap an active player for a farm player, or add a prospect from your prospect list.

I want to move to a head-to-head system, it will definitely inject some life into the pool.

btw, I have a couple of open teams if anyone is interested.

[snootchiebootchies]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I don't understand. You're using their actual NHL salary? Because if so then Pacioretty should never go undrafted.

Yes, I wasn't clear. We use fantasy league salaries. Except for the early years of the pool, we use a modified version of the one from CDM fantasy sports.

https://cdmsports.com/salaries/hocke...points-regular

We remove anyone from the list who has played less than roughly 40 career NHL games (except for top prospects). Then anyone not on the list will cost $500k. Salary cap ranges $30M to $40M depending on the number of managers in the league that particular year (the more managers in the league, the lower the salary cap), and we have to each draft 18 players. So even with actual salaries, Pacioretty is expensive relative to the salary cap we've set. Most of the guys in the pool are in other pools but there is something fun about this one because you really have to dig deep into NHL rosters to fill your team out and make it under the cap. This is why guys like Rutta and Heed get drafted.

[YYC in LAX]

Two shots on goal are as good as a shutout?

[FurnaceFace]

Oh and if I can do this without getting in trouble we have an opening in our classic league if someone wants to take over a team. A bunch of good players and the right time to jump in before the season starts.

[fleuryisgod]

I run a 16 person head to head league and we use the following...
Skaters
Goals (G)3
Assists (A)2
Power Play Points (PPP)1
Short Handed Points (SHP)2
Hat Tricks (HAT)2

Goalies
Wins (W)5
Shutouts (SO)3
Goals Against (GA)-0.1

Used these points for a while now and it works out well. We use the -0.1 to prevent ties and it works very well.

[surferguy]

is it possible to change point values in Yahoo leagues as the season goes on. we want to be able to weight things differently month to month.