Analyzing the Daily Faceoff Draft Guide: Home Is Where The Rookies Are
7 years ago
Much like the real world, you don’t win at Fantasy Hockey by drafting the guy everybody expects you to in your position. After all, hit “not good or bad” 20 times in a row and you’re left with a decidedly average team. To win the game, you have to beat the market, and to beat the market, you need to be wise with your picks.
That’s where the DailyFaceoff Draft Kit comes into play. It’s loaded with projections for hundreds of your favourite NHLers, detailed analysis on why they’ve come to those conclusions, a ranking system that runs laps around the rest, and basically anything else you need to get an edge. It’s a great value at just $4.95 for over 100 pages of content, but before you dive into that, I’d like to point to point out that the kit references one of my favourite strategies, and this year, it favourites the Leafs more than any other team.
That strategy? To scoop up the youth.
If you’ve done any sort of in-depth reading in the great abyss we call the hockey analytics blogosphere, one of the things that has been noted is that scoring peaks not as you enter your thirties, but as you escape your teens and approach your mid-20’s. Some players might need some time to develop, but the best of the best prospects can step in immediately and provide value to your team so long as the coach puts them into a position to succeed.
Most fantasy players will shy away from rookie players for those reasons; most don’t know where the primes lie, and you definitely don’t know whether to trust the player’s situation. But we know that the Leafs have some awesome players coming to down this year, and that Mike Babcock will give them every opportunity to climb up a lineup that didn’t really earn their right to stay similarly structured to last season.
What the kit says
One of the very first things you’ll find when you start peeling through the digital pages is a profile of the 13 best rookies to hedge your bets on this year. Wouldn’t you know it, four of them are Leafs, and I’m sure it won’t be hard to guess which four.
Auston Matthews obviously takes the 1 seed. DFO is projecting him at 25 goals and over 50 points this year. Here’s what they had to say specifically about Toronto’s favourite adopted son:
Auston Matthews likely would have been the third overall pick in last year’s draft, but his late birthday forced him into the 2016 NHL draft class where he was the consensus top prospect. Selected by the Maple Leafs, Matthews has a very projectable NHL frame and loads of offensive upside. He put on a display while playing against men in Switzerland last year and there is no reason to expect anything less in the NHL. Toronto will give Matthews all kinds of opportunity to be an instant fantasy asset and Calder Trophy frontrunner.
One more of TLN’s Top 3 prospects finds himself in the Top 5 of this list, while the other remains in the top 10. Nikita Zaitsev also finds himself on the list as its only defenceman.
There are a ton of other great nuggets of information in the kit about the Leafs and other players, but this is definitely one that I’d take to heart. Especially if you’re in a pool with fans of other teams, there’s going to be a lot of hesitance to pick up these four players, despite the fact that three of the four have proven their salt at professional levels already and that all four will play Top 6 / Top 4 minutes.
You can buy your downloadable copy of the DailyFaceoff Draft Kit from the Nation Gear store today, for just $4.95! Like the late-round gems the DailyFaceoff Draft Kit will help you unearth, it’s a steal!
This season the DailyFaceoff Draft Kit includes: fantasy projections for over 300 skaters; in-depth analysis of the best freshmen, rookies, goalies and sleepers; player rankings of the top-275 fantasy targets and everything else you need to win your Fantasy Hockey pool this season. Buy it today!
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