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.

Transactions

Three transactions to announce:

2013-Nov-6
The Milan Micahleks add Charlie Coyle and drop Matt Frattin

Frattin's 4 points in 15 games weren't going to endear him to the Micahlek's GM in any event, but Charlie Coyle only has 2. Coyle, however, is an premiere prospect.


This one is a little different as it takes advantage of a weird wrinkle in the rules (the same wrinkle that allowed me to pick up Shattenkirk a couple years back). Normally a player born in 1992 would be ineligible as a free agent -- except where they have been previously dropped by another team. As the Quebec Rordiques dropped Coyle previously, the Micahleks wisely snapped him up.

2013-Nov-6
The Vanrooser Canicks add Jake Muzzin and drop Jonathan Ericksson

2013-Nov-7
The Mackhawks add Tommy Wingels and drop Wayne Simmonds 

Not much say about either of these. Muzzin has 8 points, Ericksson has 3 and is on the IR. Same goes for the Mackhawks - Wayne Simmonds is playing on the worst team in recent memory and has 5 points to Tommy Wingels' 12. 

Good pickups gentlemen. 

Dear Joshfrey Krupuls:

Transaction

11/6/2013 The Powder Rangers add Josh Harding and drop "Sugar" Ray Emery.

A noted pacifist, the Powder Rangers GM has no patience for the antics of amateur pugilist and occasional goaltender Ray Emery. 

Also, Harding has proven to be a pretty good goaltender, having seized the starting job in Minnesota, with 8 wins, 2 shutouts, a 1.09 GAA and a .951 Sv%.

October Awards

I've decided to start handing out some monthly awards. We've just completed October so its time to recognize some early gems and interesting GM moves. 

Offensive Player of the Month
The criteria for this is not simply the player with the most points, but rather the player who has most significantly impacted their GM's roster by playing above expectations, being incredibly hot, etc. 

With that in mind, it is hard to imagine choosing anyone other than Alexander Steen. He has 18 points in 12 games. Stick tap to the Dicklas Lidstroms for snapping him up in the 2nd round, 25th overall (for reference, I chose David "1 point" Desharnais 16th overall).

HMs: Kyle Okposo, who is proving us all wrong for grinding J-Kru's gears with 17 points in 14 games. Also Frans Nielsen, chosen in the 4th round by the Mackhawks and currently sitting 8th in NHL scoring.

Defensive Player of the Month
As above, the criteria is not merely the most points, but the player with the biggest impact relative to expectations.


Marc-Edouard Vlasic.  His best offensive season was 2008-09 with 36 points and he looks poised to smash that this year. He was snagged off the waiver wire by the Winter Claassics, who have continued to enjoy steady, high production from this guy.

HMs: Oliver Ekman-Larsson. He is highly touted and was expected to develop in to a premiere defenceman, but it looks like he is finally coming into his own offensively. The Stefans have done well to remain patient with him, and his 11 points in 15 games is good for 4th in NHL scoring. Also I am going to pat myself on the back for weathering Erik Karlsson's injury last year and staying firm this year after a slow start. Karlsson leads all d-men in points and shows no signs of slowing down.

Goaltender of the Month
While the same criteria as above applies, it is impossible to give this award to anyone but the Los Samjawors Kings Antti Niemi. He has been outright dominant in this league format. 

HMs: Marc-Andre Fleury, and the Fylanders for continuing to believe in him. Ben Bishop for seizing the starting reins. A special mention to both the Los Samjawors Kings and the Teeyotes for recognizing his upside and making a trade that is still paying dividends as Bishop continues to produce.

GM of the Month
This is a subjective award based not so much on activity, but on a general sense of how the moves (or in some cases, the lack of moves) made during the month benefits the team both now and in the future. 

Congratulations to the Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers. In particular, they managed to obtain a wonderful goaltender in Mike Smith as well as some good future pieces in Nikita Nikitin and Tomas Tatar in their October 23rd trade with the Fylanders, and made a shrewd move to pick up the Defensive Player of the Month in M-E Vlasic. 

HMs: The Los Samjawors Kings, who have certainly been the busiest, but how FA aquisitions Santorelli and Derek Morris will turn out is still up in the air. They did manage to extract Brent Seabrook from the Teeyotes, who is a clear upgrade on Tyler Myers in this format.

KL Week in Review: Week 5

After 5 weeks of play, our standings look like this:

Separation Anxiety?

The In-the-Money Teams (highlighted in yellow)
9 points separate 1st-4th and that race is as close as ever. Somewhat remarkably, the same 4 teams have been holding the top 4 (though not once in the same position from week to week) since week 2.

The Playoff Teams (highlighted in green)
 However, 9 more points separate 4th from 5th, which is the biggest single gap between teams until we get down to 15th place. There are a lot of teams in that 5th to 11th bracket (again, coincidentally separated by 9 points).

The Toronto Maple Leafs Not Good Enough For the Playoffs, Not Bad Enough for 1st Overall Teams (highlighted in red)
The 12-14 spots are an island unto themselves with a mere 2 points separating them. They are, however, 6 points out of the playoff grouping but 11 points out of the final 2 spots. 

The Rebuilders (Highlighted in blue)
These teams are here for two different reasons - the Canicks were forced to rebuild after losing their franchise forward to the KHL. The Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers (now the second best name in the KL after the Los Samjawors Kings) were never supposed to be competitive and are exactly where they want to be - in 1st overall territory.

Other Thoughts

The Injury Bug
Every team but the Joshfrey Krupuls have at least one injured player. Most have multiple injuries. I seem to recall this being an early-season theme but still, it is frustrating for all involved. So far most GMs are standing pat with their injured players as most of the injuries appear to be relatively mild in nature.

The Schizzarks have been awful lately - and for good reason: they have injuries to Tanguay, Lecavalier, Selanne, Nash, Visnovsky and Booth.  I don't have any way to verify but I am pretty confident that this is the most injuries at one time in this history of the KL. A dubious record to hold.

 A Return to Form
When you take a look at the "Man Games" tab, we are finally starting to see most of the high flyers come back down to Earth (and some underachievers start to pick up their pace).  As soon as Alex Steen stops scoring points (on pace for 123) all will be right with the world again.

Goaltending at the top
Interestingly, both of the current top 2 (the Powder Rangers and the G-Phil's Flyers) are holding those positions with two of the lowest goalie point totals in the league:

8 points - G-Phil's Flyers
10 points - WBS Parkers
11 points - (tie) Powder Rangers and the Joshfrey Krupuls

On the flipside, the 3rd place team, the Fylanders, have 23 points, second only to Antti Niemi's league-leading 26.

The average points from that position (scoring roster only) currently is 15.81. The 4th place Mackhawks are right there, with 16 points from Quick.

Transactions

One time in high school, me and my buddies went to the Laughing Llama, a local convenience/grocery store and decided to rent a porno. We picked the weirdest one possible. It was called "Transactions 2" and it featured, as expected, various transsexuals engaged in various actions. We put it on the TV at the top of the stairs which was our usual in-school hangout (for those who don't know, I went to a self-paced high school and this is why I took 6 years to graduate a 4 year high school program). Mrs. MacLeod was some upset when she came up the stairs that day!

Anyways, every time I type that headline, I think of that story and it makes me chuckle.

Two transaction to announce:

11/3/2013
The Los Samjawors Kings drop Eric Gudbranson and add Derek Morris.

11/3/2013
The Winter Claassics drop Olli Jokinen and add Andrew Shaw

Gudbranson has 1 point in 14 games, which hilariously puts him more or less on his usual career pace. The Kings needed some offence from their blue line and took a gamble on Derek Morris. Morris's best season was more than a decade ago when he scored 48 points with the Avalanche. In recent years he as been much more subdued, but is currently one of the hottest d-men in the league. Even if he reverts back to his usual pace, he is clearly a better point-getter than Gudbranson. 

The Claassics similarly identified some dead weight (Jokinen's 6 points in 15 games would put him at a career low 34 points) and the hot hand (Andrew Shaw has 9 points in 15 games, but 7 of those points have come in the last 9 games). 

If either or both of these guys defy expectations they will be great pickups, but given the players they are replacing, it is a win-win for both the Kings and the Claassics.