Transaction

Two related transactions to announce:

 

The Fylanders send Kimmo Timonen + a 2nd round pick in 2014 

To the Quebec Rordiques for Dan Boyle + a 7th round pick in 2014 + FA add/drop

 

Condition:  Boyle must OUTSCORE Timonen the rest of the way otherwise the 7th turns into a 4th.

 

Then the Fylanders:

Add Colton Orr and drop Sean Monahan

Add Sean Monahan and drop Brent Burns

Add Brent Burns and drop Colton Orr (using their newly acquired FA add/drop).

Conditional trades are pains in my ass and don't get commentary.

The Case for Goalie OTL/SOL Points

The authors of this post support a minor Keeper League rule change that would give goalies one point for overtime and shootout losses, similar to the way NHL teams are given the "loser point."  Before accusing us of being out to lunch, or insisting that sometimes goalies are simply shit out of luck, we encourage you to read our discussion below.

In addition to being closer to NHL rules, this change would also have the advantage of reducing the effect of chance. Shootouts are essentially random and the difference between zero points and two points [or occasionally five points if it's a 0-0 game] for your team should never be a Mason Raymond spin-o-rama).*

One concern that comes to mind is that loser points would result in slightly increased point totals for the goalie, who is already typically the highest scorer on about half the teams in our format. However, it will not be a lot of points. In 2011-12, the goalie with the most OTL/SOLs would have gained an additional 13 points. On average we would expect a five-to-10 point bump. Moreover, as Greg pointed out in a previous post, he and Eric are sitting pretty at the top despite having few points from their goaltenders. In fact we would argue that our league significantly undervalues goaltenders at just one slot out of 14. 

On that note, we have three other goalie suggestions for consideration:

1) We should consider having two goaltender slots on the scoring roster, thus expanding the scoring roster to 15 and the in-season roster to 23, but retaining the keeper roster at 10+2. 

2) Goalie goals should be worth more than one point. We propose somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten points. The goalie goal is so rare that it should be truly exciting for the GM who owns that goalie, although it shouldn't make or break a season.

3) A statistic which reflects save percentage and adds points for every x decimal points a goalie is above some save percentage value (perhaps .915 which Kelly Hrudey remarked on HNIC last night was the league average) per y amount of shots (perhaps 100).  This would be similar to the statistic that Fy came up with for his Auction Keeper League, and one we were particularly reminded of when we saw that Ben Bishop stopped 41 of 42 shots in his 1-0 OT loss to LA on Friday night.  Ben Scrivens followed that up with a 32 for 33 night for the same outcome last night against the Avalanche.  These great goaltending performances, we submit, should be rewarded in some form.  If there is interest in learning more about this stat, we can provide some sample calculations for some various possible values.

For reference, below is a list of KL goalies and their "loser points" as of November 24, 2013.

G-Phil's Fylers

Halak - 2

Rinne - 1

Powder Rangers
Anderson - 2

Harding - 2

Mackhawks

Quick - 0

Backstrom - 2

Milan Micahleks

Rask - 2

Fylanders

Fleury - 0

Thomas - 1

Winter Claassens

Hiller - 2

Bobrovsky - 2 

Dicklas Lidstroms

Lundqvist - 0

Ramo - 1

Schizzarks

Price - 2

Markkstrom - 3

Moilers

Luongo - 4

Crawford - 3

Teeyotes

Bishop - 1

Ward - 4

Joshfrey Krupuls

Lehtonen - 2 

Miller - 0

Los Amjawors Kings

Niemi - 5

Nabokov - 3

Patrik Stefans

Pavelec - 3

Schneider - 3

Quebec Rordiques

Holtby - 1

Varlamov - 0

Vanrooser Canicks

Howard - 6

Bernier - 1

Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers

Smith - 4

Dubnyk - 1

[Commissioner edit:

Since this may come up for vote, the "loser point" will have a minor effect on the standings. Everyone stays where they are except the:
Patrik Stefans move up to 8th from 9th
Dicklas Lidstroms move down to 9th from 8th
Joshfrey Krupuls move down to 11th from 10th
The Los Amjawors Kings move up from 13th to 14th
The Quebec Rordiques move down to 14th from 13th

Thanks - G]

This has been a joint post by the GMs of the Milan Micahleks and the Patrik Stefans. We invite your comments.

*Since the initial draft of this post, we have made the following observations regarding Mason Raymond: he has actually picked up his scoring pace, currently at the 60 pt mark adjusted for 82 games; he is an unremarkable 1 for 4 in the shoutout this year; his spin-o-rama is no longer a legal move in the shootout. Additionally, we note that a goalie does indeed get awarded for a shutout in the event of a 1-0 shootout loss, BUT NOT for an overtime loss (as was the case for Bishop and Scrivens, mentioned in the sv pct stat suggestions).

KL Week in Review: Week 8

The standings right now:

The G-Phil's Flyers have stormed back from a disappointing week, putting up 44 points. They have had the best week and best month to date by a significant margin. The upstart Micahleks, who have been jockeying with the Flyers for 1st place for the last two weeks, have fallen flat but remain within striking distance.

A few observations:

• The 4th place Mackhawks are closer to 15th place than they are to 1st. They are also as close to being out of the playoffs as they are to 3rd place. This is going to be a wild ride to see who makes the playoffs. 
• Tense days in the Aikenhead/Schissel household as both teams are continuing to  struggle. I had the Moilers in 2nd and the Shizzarks in 4th at the outset of the season.
• As Commissioner I am supposed to remain unbiased, but I'm really rooting for the Patrik Stefans to make the playoffs after finishing in the worst possible positions the last 3 seasons (11th-13th-11th - too high for the best draft picks, but out of the playoffs). 
• In the same vein I am really happy to see the Winter Claassics cementing themselves a position in the top 8 over the last few weeks. 
• The best team this week (the Flyers) have more than three times as many points in that period as the worst team (The Vanrooser Canicks). The ratio approximates π and in fact the use of 44/14 (or 22/7) as a stand-in for pi dates back to both Greek (Archimedes) and Chinese (Zu Chongzhi) antiquity
• Speaking of the Vanrooser Canicks, they can no longer use the absence of Kovalchuk as an excuse for sitting at the bottom of the standings - if Kovy was leading the league with 30 points, the Canicks would still be no higher than 15th place.

Transactions

A couple minor transactions to report:

Nov-15-2013
The Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers add Danny Dekeyser and drop Matt Irwin

Nov-19-2013
The Teeyotes add Kris Russell and drop Marc Staal

Danny Dekeyser has 9 points in 21 games. Matt Irwin has been a benchwarmer for parts of this season, with 3 points in 14 games.  

Kris Russell as 11 points in 21 games. Marc Staal has 3 points in 20. 

These analyses don't always write themselves, but sometimes they totally do.

KL Week in Review: Week 7

As noted, I've changed the date of this update to reflect the end of competition on Saturday. Saturdays are typically the busiest days in the NHL, so it makes sense. 

Here are the standings as the morning after Saturday, November 17: 

As the Patrik Stefan's GM pointed out, he was in 5th place after Friday's contests. Funnily, the day he posted his video he was actually back down to 8th, as above. 

What this illustrates is not so much the Stefan's acumen as a GM, but how tight this league remains, especially though the middle. A mere 14 points separate 10th and 4th place, or put another way, a non-playoff team with a money spot. As the Micahleks have shown, a good week (41 points) coupled with a poor week by a competitor (the G-Phil's Flyers 28 points) can result in big leaps up (or down) the board. 

Worst week: The Shizzarks and the Vanrooser Canicks, both with 17. 
Best week: The Milan Micahleks, with 41 points.
League average: 27.75. 

Does anyone else see the Teeyotes sitting in 5th right now?

Back in the mix

Granted, I had a much anticipated set-back last night with only 1 point in 5 man games, but the Patrik Stefans have steadily climbed their way from the bottom of the pack back a playoff spot over the last 3 weeks.  There was much to celebrate as I checked the standings yesterday morning to find myself in 5th!

(Belated) 2013 Keeper League Awards Ceremony!

I know, its a bit late and the new season is upon us, but in fairness, last season was a shit-show. It is also kind of fun to look at how some of these award-winners are faring thus far into our new season. 

Thanks to the other members of the Awards Committee (Past-Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner) for your assistance in putting your thoughts together on this like, months ago.

So without further ado, here are the award winners for the 2013 season!

Calder: 

The best fantasy player drafted for the first time in the Keeper League.

This year's trophy goes to Braden Holtby and the team that drafted him, the Powder Rangers. Holtby put up 60 points as a goaltender, which was good for 2nd in the league (behind only Antti Niemi's 61). 

HM: The Mackhawks' Justin Schultz, with 27 pts - not only was that good for 12th in the league in defensive scoring, but put him within 4 points of the rookie scoring lead (as a defenceman).

Doug Wilson:  

Awarded to the most active GM.

In perhaps the least surprising result in this entire ceremony, Fy Virani wins this one by a landslide, with 15 discrete transactions entered. 

I have to share an email I got that describes, perfectly and hilariously, the stages Fy's trading partners go through (I'll leave it anonymous but if the author wants to take credit, step forward):

1. Denial ("No, I won't even consider it."); 
2. Anger ("How can he insult me with an offer like that?"); 
3. Bargaining ("He's right, swapping my 9th for his 8th does make this fair."); 
4. Depression ("OMG everyone is laughing at me. I suck at GMing"); 
5. Acceptance ("Write it off. Fy got me this time, but next year will be different!")

HM: The Columbus Blue Jaworskis (before their relocation to sunnier climes) were very busy as well, with 9 entered transactions. 

Ken Holland:  

Best draft pick.

This one is was very hard as there were a LOT of candidates and the Awards Committee struggled mightily. At the end of the day:

The Teeyotes with Evgeni Nabokov (drafted in the 10th round, 159th overall). Nabokov earned 59 points for the Teeyotes, good for the 3rd best goalie in this format.

HMs: Many, but of note, the G-Phil's Flyers got 211 points out of players drafted between 149th and 195th overall. The Mackhawks snagged Brendan Gallagher 194th overall and got 28 points out of him. Relatedly, the Powder Rangers drafted Lars Eller in 189th, earning 30 points. The Powder Rangers actually ended up dropping Eller, but it doesn't change the fact that the selection itself was inspired.

Rick DiPietro: 

Worst draft pick.

No competition - Chris Krieder, chosen 6th overall by the Winter Claassics. Krieder earned three points in his 2013 campaign. Hilariously chosen AGAIN by the Claassics at the most recent draft, it is worth pointing out that he has 10 points in 11 games so far.   

HMs: None.

George McPhee:  

Best Free Agent signing.

Jiri Tlusty may be the most added/dropped player in the league, but in 2012, the Patrik Stefans dumped Craig Smith for him, earning 18 points in the process. 

HMs:  Milan Micahleks' Jonathan Blum for Paul Martin (a difference of 13 points).

Glen Sather:  

Worst free agent signing.

There was no one even close - the Vanrooser Canicks used their first FA add/drop to dump Toffoli for Kovalev. Then they used their last FA add/drop to dump Kovalev and add Toffoli. 

HM: Hard not to mention the Powder Rangers, who picked up Damien Brunner (26 points) and dropped Lars Eller (30 points). As noted by the Powder Rangers GM, if he had have dropped Latendresse instead of Eller, he would have won last year. Oops.

Mike Milbury:  

Biggest fleecing.

On February 6, 2013, the Fylanders sent Nikita Nikitin and a 6th round draft pick to the Columbus Blue Jaworskis for Dion Phaneuf and a 9th round pick. Phaneuf, a one-time 60 point defenceman, coming off a 44 point season and scoring at a similar pace at the time, in exchange for Nikita "healthy scratch" Nikitin. The return - a 3 round bump at the draft - is statistically negligible.Welcome to the big leagues, rookie. 

GM of the Year

 

The G-Phil's Flyers. As noted above, Bobrovsky, Boyes, Conacher, Eakin, Brouwer were all late-round steals that produced all season-long. There was no panic moves after a season-ending injury to Karlsson and slow starts with Malkin and Ovechkin, thought the vultures were indeed circling. Though this team probably had the best protected roster to start the season, a combination of very good drafting and patience won the Flyers their first championship. 

HMs: The Powder Rangers exceeded expectations and continued to improve (8th-5th-2nd). Keepers coming into this season included five forwards that we probably all considered borderline keepers (of those guys, Kunitz has proven himself a fantasy powerhouse and Fleischmann and Ryder also made the top six). His Holtby gamble paid off. Wrote an impassioned concession speech.

The Moilers - Showed steady improvement - 10th to 6th to 3rd. Actually made one trade this year, Luongo for Crawford, but otherwise steadfastly sticks by her men. 

The Fylanders continue to get excellent value in trades, and are consistently a threat. The Fylanders GM takes the opposite approach to the league than the Moilers, in that their team rarely looks anything like the team that starts the season.

STAMKOS MOVES

... to the bottom of the Powder Rangers roster. 

Two separate but related deals today:

The Powder Rangers trade their 2014 2nd round pick to the Joshfrey Krupuls for their two remaining FA add/drops + 2014 5th round pick.

Then: 

The Powder Rangers drop Stamkos and add Carl Hagelin.
The Powder Rangers drop Stalberg and add Stamkos.

Winners: Well, the Krusells got a 3 round bump at the draft for free, since the FA list is pretty slim at this time of the year. The Powder Rangers have replaced Stamkos with Carl Hagelin, so it is difficult to call that a "win" in the conventional sense, but they will probably stay in the hunt for at least a playoff spot. Hagelin has 8 points in 8 games and may well stay on the top line on Nash's return so there is some hope there. Also, with one of the deepest forward corps in the league, the Powder Rangers still have some potential trading juice to take a run for the top if they can find any sellers.

Losers: KL Headquarters is all about reaction gifs right now, so everyone out there who had been salivating at the prospect of trading for Stamkos:

  

Transaction (and thoughts about goalie/D-man importance)

November 12, 2013

The Milan Micahleks send Dan "one-point" Girardi + 2014 first round selection

to the Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers for Brian Campbell

Obviously this is a first round draft pick for Campbell. There is no doubt that Campbell has been an excellent fantasy option for many years - even in his injury-shortened "down" season in 2010, his 27 points would have been good to make many scoring rosters. Last year he scored 46 points pro-rated and had 53 the year before. Clearly, the Micahleks, tasting 1st place after a stunning leap from 15th, are going all-in early to win it this year.

However, Campbell is getting older and showed signs of slowing last year. His 9 points in 18 games is actually below his career average, and well off his high water marks. For the WBS Parkers, this is a classic and well-timed rebuild move.

November 9, 2013

The G-Phil's Flyers send Ondrej Pavelec, Brandon Saad, 2014 6th round draft pick + 1 FA add/drop 

to the Patrik Stefans for:Jaroslav Halak + Kris Versteeg

The G-Phil's Flyers need a goalie to replace injured starter Pekka Rinne. 

Rinne is a goalie who, despite playing behind a pretty bad team, manages to be one of the top point-getters in the Keeper League year-to-year. However, with his hip issues, his trade value is at an all-time low. The vultures were circling Rinne's rotting hip, but at the end of the day, the Flyers opted to hold on to him. 

Halak has been off to a hot start, and while he tends to find himself either a) in a tandem situation or b) hurt, he is clearly a better option for the Flyers than Pavelec, at least on a stop-gap basis.

The Stefans, in turn, get a promising young forward in Brandon Saad, and the FA add/drop flexibility to pull a still-legal Fy Gambit depending on how Pavelec/Schneider plays out. Given how good Schneider is going to be moving forward, it was likely that Halak would have faced the chopping block, and Stefan managed to get much better value than goalies traditionally get in the off-season.

Counterpoint to Stefan's Post?  

I think these trades provides a sort-of counterpoint to Stefan's excellent post earlier. Goalies and defencemen may not correlate strongly with championships, but the difference between first and second place in each of our years has been 15, 11, and 9 points (and is currently at 11 points). The average difference between rankings last year was a mere 9.33 points. This is a surprisingly competitive league, and 10 extra points can mean moving up into playoff position, or into the money, or into 1st place.

As Stefan's post indicated, the Micahleks have one of the strongest forward groups in the league thus far, and one of the strongest goalies. The also have one of the weakest defences in the league. A mere 10 extra points from Brian Campbell might mean the difference between 1st and 2nd for that team. 

The same is true of the Flyers who do not feel safe at all at present.

KL Week in Review: Week 6

Stick-tap to both Micah and Stefan, who both made excellent blog posts this past weekend. Keep it up boys, the KL is more fun because of it. 

Also, this is sort of touching - Steven Stamkos grabbing the hand of Sami Salo after breaking his leg. If there is anyone alive who understands pain, its Salo:

If anyone wants to hold the Powder Rangers GM's hand through the next 3-4 months, I understand it would be appreciated.

Onto the week in review:

Two of the hottest teams in the league, the G-Phil's Flyers and the Milan Micahleks, are in the #1 and #2 spots, which just goes to show that this league is still pretty fluid. The Micahleks, remarkably, have gone from 15th place in week 2, to second place in week 6.

On the flipside, the perennially-competitive Fylanders have slowed considerably. This is the first week since the start of the season that the Fylanders have not been in the top 3. They currently sit 14 points out of a money spot. 

The Los Samjawors Kings have been the coldest team in the league. After sitting in 9th, 9th, 7th, 6th, and 8th in each of the last 5 weeks, they currently sit at 14th.

Also note: I think I am going to start posting these updates after Saturday, which corresponds with the Pickuphockey week. I have been posting on Tuesday merely because the season started on a Monday. I doubt anyone much cares.

#PS1 - Defence Does Not Always Win Championships

In this first instalment of Hardly a Stat Holiday for the Patrik Stefans ("#PS"), I look at a breakdown of GM points by positional contribution.  In truth, this analysis was motivated by a suspicion that I had the worst scoring roster offence and the best defence in the Krusell Cup Keeper League.  Well, as the graph below shows, that is almost the case.  The Flyers and the Claassics are narrowly edging me out for back-end production, while I sit squarely in last place for forward contributions.

The graph reflects points as of Saturday, Nov 9.  The large blue segments at the base of each column represent forward contributions to each team's scoring roster; the red represents defence, while the green represents the scoring roster goalies.  The KL standings as of Nov 9 are accordingly the high mark of the green sections of each column.  The top purple segments represent non-scoring roster points, or "dead-weight", if you will.

I decided to do a quick pair-wise regression analysis for each positional contribution against KL rank to see which positions are most responsible for systematic variance.  The Spearman Correlations (these have nothing to do with Phil Kessel) are as follows:

Position	Spearman rho	Coefficient of Determination	Interpretation of Effect
FW	-0.8527	0.7271	strong
D	-0.4466	0.1995	low-moderate
G	0.0705	0.0050	insignificant
NSR	-0.2653	0.0704	insignificant

The numbers above are likely meaningless to most of you, even though there's a good chance all of you have performed these calculations on some second year stats class test in undergrad.  The important takeaway is the interpretation of effect column.  Only forward contribution is seen to show a strong correlation with overall rank in the KL.  Defence scoring has a very minor effect, while goaltending is pretty much completely uncorrelated.  It is actually interesting to note that the dead-weight of non-scoring roster points are actually more correlated with rank than scoring roster goalie points.

So what does this all really mean?  Should KL GMs sell the farm between the pipes and snap up some depth scoring frontmen?  I'm not sure that's the implicit message in this, but it could certainly be worth considering further.  At the end of the day, there are many ways to skin a cat (aside: I encourage each of you to ask Bruce Harrison to attest to this notion), and we're really just talking about simple arithmetic of guys you think will put up more points than others.  But, given our positional requirements of 9, 4, and 1 for forwards, defenders, and goalies, respectively, it is not surprising that there is such a premium on forward production, as borne out by the numbers above.  And for that reason, defence does not appear to be the key to winning this championship, a reality I have become all too well acquainted with. 

Power Wheels: Assessing the long-term strength of our teams

This is the Power Wheel (tm). It is a visual representation of the respective strength of our rosters, with a long-term perspective. The wheel above shows how many of the top 140 skaters are on each team. Here "top" skaters is defined not by current performance, but by Dobber's ranking of players to own in a points-only keeper league (e.g., the KCKL). Factors taken into account: "predicted points for the current season; age; upside; proven/unproven; team bonus; proneness to injury; 'name' factor" (Dobber's rankings are publically available, I assume you are all aware of them and if not, can make use of google).

Dobber provides a few different lists - one is a top 300 that includes defencemen but does not factor position into the rankings; another is a defence-only list. I removed the defencemen from his top 300 and took the top 100 forwards, roughly representing "keepers" - i.e., 6-7 forwards per team, guys who should score 50+ points. I then added the top 40 defencemen, i.e., 2-3 per team, guys who should score 30+ points. 

Cutting off at 140 is arbitrary. It both omits many of our players, and it hides a lot of information by being too broad: G-Phil's Flyers and the Quebec Rordiques both have 10 players in the top 140, but we know that many of G-Phil's players are clustered towards the top end of the 140.

Here is a chart where we focus more on the elite end: the top 20 forwards and 10 defencemen (I did not have time to fill the pie chart with faces, honestly that took forever):

Now the disparity is more evident. Note that two teams do not appear on this chart because they lack any of the top 20 forwards and top 10 defencemen: the Vanrooser Canicks and the Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers. Also worth reminding everyone that a pie chart showing the top five players in the league would probably be three-fifths G-Phil's Flyers: Karlsson, Ovechkin and Malkin.

To better illustrate the power skew, you could look at the numerical value Dobber assigns to each player instead of the ranking (e.g., #1 Crosby 275; #20 Duchene 128), but I started to do that and it was a lot of work and kind of depressing.  

The good news for the Vanrooser Canicks is when you look at prospects. 

(Note colours assigned to teams in this graph do not match those in the previous graph). 

For prospects, Dobber takes into account upside as well as how many years away the player is from the NHL. Some are already in the NHL - those are generally the highest on the list. The Canicks feature two of the top five in Valeri Nichushkin and Tyler Toffoli (who looked excellent tearing apart the Canucks last night). The G-Phil's Flyers (gasp!) and Patrik Stefans (uh-oh) are the only teams with no prospects in the top 30. 

Keen observers may note that only 29 of the top 30 prospects are shown above. Can anyone guess without looking who the top NHL-drafted but KL-undrafted prospect is? 

In conclusion, these graphs should be taken with a grain of salt, but hopefully they provide a bit of information for each of us take stock of our team and its future. 

Free Agent Frenzy!

Just a reminder, since its come up recently, free agent add/drops are tradeable assets. You have two of them to start the season. 9 GMs have used at least one of their add/drops, with 3 of you having used both already.

This is especially important this year as, since the start of the season, there have been a significant number of free agent add/drops (12 of a possible 32). In other words,  more than 1/3rd of the possible add/drops in this league have been used by the 1/6th point of the season.

How have these add/drops fared so far (excluding the last four as they have only had a day of gameplay or so)?

Date	Team	Dropped	Pts since	Added	Pts since	Diff
10/8/2013	Winter Claassics	Erat	5	Raymond	7	2
10/18/2013	Quebec Rordiques	Coyle	2	Higgins	6	4
10/19/2013	WBS  Parkers	Lovejoy	0	Vlasic	5	5
10/19/2013	Patrik Stefans	Tlusty	5	Arcobello	4	-1
10/20/2013	Powder Rangers	K. Palmieri	5	Tlusty	3	-2
10/26/2013	Los Samjawors Kings	Clowe	1	Santorelli	3	2
11/3/2013	Los Samjawors Kings	Gudbranson	0	Morris	0	0
11/3/2013	Winter Claassics	Jokinen	3	Shaw	0	-3
					Total	7

In general, our GMs have been savvy enough to come out, in total, ahead of the game so far. The biggest win goes to the Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers, who are up 5 points since dropping Ben No-love/no-joy.

Higgins was also a good pickup this year for the Quebec Rordiques - however, I wonder if they will come to regret that move in future years, if Coyle becomes a star in this league?

The Winter Claassics continue to display a stunning degree of bad luck, with Olli Jokinen putting up a 3 point game like the day after being dropped for Andrew Shaw. Shaw, in turn, has gone quiet.

The Los Samjawors Kings gave up one offensive black hole in Gudbranson for another in Morris. In fairness, though, Morris was red hot at the time of the pickup. He had to cool off some time, but it was Winter Claassic-level bad luck that it happened to be the day the Kings used their final FA add/drop.

I'd be remiss without pointing out the fact that Tlusty, after being drafted, dropped, and then picked up again, has actually managed to lose TWO teams points. Both the Patrik Stefans and the Powder Rangers, hilariously, would have been better keeping Tlusty on and off their respective rosters so far.

I'm going to do this again in a couple of months and I look forward to seeing how these adds/drops have worked out in the longer term.