It gets people more involved in the game and gives a reason to cheer and watch every game and not just your favourite team.
UPDATE! is here to give you all your fantasy updates, important news and insider information on the best fantasy choices for your NHL teams. Let's start this season off with a simple strategy to follow when drafting in your fantasy league.
LEAGUE RULES
First and foremost, make sure you understand what type of league you are involved in. Is it a Head to Head league? A keeper league? Do goals account for two points? Do goaltending stats take up a majority of the points? Do you have to fill a certain number of positions? These are the kinds of questions you have to be aware of when drafting your team.
EARLY ROUNDS
These two rounds can make or break your season. Do you draft Alexander Ovechkin with your third overall pick or do you take Roberto Luongo? In most Head-to-Head leagues goalies can garner you five-to-six points by themselves. If you are drafting five or lower overall, you have your pick of top offensive talent and one of the top three goaltenders. Pick a top offensive talent if you are one of the top 3-4 picks.
After that, it depends on who is left on the board and your own positioning. You can be assured that Martin Brodeur and Roberto Luongo will be chosen in the first round, and after that there are few top goalies left. They begin to even out into a lower grading after the second round.
Goalies can either go fairly spread out across the first four rounds or the top 15 goalies could be gone by the end of the second round.
Be very careful and pay attention to the other people in your league. Don't be caught in a feeding frenzy if there are some top names for Forwards. If you have the chance to grab a top three goalie either late in the first round or by the second round grab them, otherwise, aim for the third or fourth round to grab the next tier of starting goaltenders.
POSITION PROBLEMS
Again, this all depends on the type of league you're in but the most popular style often follows this pattern: 2 C, 2 LW, 2 RW, 4 D and 2 goaltenders. After you fill those positions you should look to fill one bench spot for each position (again, depending on your allotted room). The best players to look for in these cases are those that will give you supplementary points, such as Penalty Minutes, Game Winning/Tying goals, +/- rating, etc.
Also, there are many players who fill various positions and can be used as key bench players. Guys like Antoine Vermette, Patrick Elias and Piere-Marc Bouchard can play either wing or center and are integral to a well-balanced schedule.
There's nothing worse than not being able to start a key point producer because there are two better players ahead of him at one position.
GOALIES & SLEEPERS
The best goalies will often be gone by the end of the second/middle of the third round. You'll want to set aside a list of top goalies to keep track of within those first very important rounds. After that, it becomes a crap shoot in deciding which of the B level goalies will turn out to be a diamond in the rough.True Sleepers, like those B level goalies, are very hard to find but they can be the players who push high in the rankings near the end of the season. These players are possible risky choices, but if you choose the right guys they can really pay off. Whoever picked Paul Stastny last season was probably one of the smartest (and luckiest) people in your league last year.
Whatever you do, just make sure you make the pick you are happy with. It's hard to decide when the clock starts counting down but pay attention to whose gone and whose still on the board from your wish-list. But whatever you do, don't let that top flight goalie get away if he's in your grasp.
You can survive missing out on one of the top three goalies, but if another goalie won't survive the round and you have a chance to get him, take that chance!
J.P. Del Monte is UPDATE! National Hockey League Editor.
