Using LWL's Draft Kit

[mbr311]

Okay, so I need some advice. I'm in a 10 team H2H category league. There are 15 categories - 10 for skating, 5 for goalies. There are no max starts. You can start 9 forwards, 5 defenders and 2 utility guys. You can also start 2 goalies a night and there are no max starts, only minimum to accrue points.

My theory is, draft goalies early. Goalie scoring categories make up 1/3 of your point value, and 2-3 guys can make or break you week in, week out. You can't find a better investment. It gets even better if the total FSI index that I got from LWL in my custom draft kit works as its intended.

But let me get to the real point - using that draft kit. Now I"ve poured over this information and formulated a pretty good draft strategy - or so I thought. It's easy to see how a guy is projected to do in each category, but what happens when you combine every scoring category and assign it a total value? Shouldn't that in theory give you the best guys that are going to contribute in EVERY category? Well it made sense to me, until I did the calculations and these are the top 10 guys according to total FSI:

1. Jamie Benn (DAL) = 176.9
2. Frans Nielsen (NYI) = 175.1
3. Ryan Callahan (NYR) = 170.5
4. Claude Giroux (PHI) = 169.7
5. Mike Richards (LAK) = 166.7
6. Corey Perry (ANH) = 161.7
7. Ryan Whitney (EDM) = 161.6
8. Mike Green (WASH) = 158.6
9. Ryan Kessler (VAN) = 158.5
10. David Perron (STL) = 153.2

Where do the traditional TOP picks land in all of this you might ask?

18. Crosby = 134.9
25. Ovechkin = 127.2
68 Stamkos = 104.1
74. Kopitar = 100.5
87. St. Louis = 95.5
111. Malkin = 87
131. D. Sedin = 80.5
159. H. Sedin = 72.6

Now, are these guys like the Sedins, Malkin and St. Louis really that over valued? And obviously if I took Jamie Benn with the #1 pick I'd get laughed out of the draft board. So how do you approach things with this type of information? Guys are landing way higher than I'd ever anticipate and the studs much lower than I'd ever anticipate. In the end, you want "roto-killers" as I call them -guys that can contribute across all categories. That will win you a title. But there's no freakin' way..I mean I'm having trouble digesting this information. I could use a little help in differentiating the total FSI from "reality" if you will, as in how much stock do you really put into a total FSI score? I'm really hoping someone else used the draft kit and can help me out here (someone else HAD to). Sorry for the long post!

[flubber]

LOL

You and I think alike-- see my team in the rate my team thread to see what I built -- all while I have guys emailing me and asking if I am crazy-- I think many many managers undervalue the peripheral stats like Hits, shots on goal, PIMS. Time will tell if I am right. If I am not a playoff team I guess I will find out that my own valuations were a little off LOL.


One of my leagues had G ,A, +/-, PIM, SOG,PPP, SHP and Hits-- I generated my own rankings based on a similar methodology as you did. Based on last years actuals Corey Perry and Ovie were 1 and 2 but then came Chara, Letang, Weber and Byfuglien in the top 10 with folks like Prust , Cook , Ott and Hartnell in the top 25.

No way would I draft those folks that early. The key for me was estimating when others might draft them and getting them slightly earlier. I bet some were shocked to see Steve Ott drafted Even on some that I missed, my valuations of the player was still higher that the party that held them so it wasn't that hard to swing a deal.

The otehr key for me was swooping down the rankings to find the guy whose overall score was lower because he was poor in one or two categories. I play H2H so a guy that helps win me 4 categories is a winner in my book even if he does only have 3 goals

I will say that your FSI seems a bit skewed in that I have a hard time understanding how a with 367 shots, 241 hits , 24 PPP , 85 points and a plus 24 could EVER not be near the very top. I ran my own rankings in 3 different leagues with different settings and Ovie was ALWAYS top 3

[Mike]

I will say that your FSI seems a bit skewed in that I have a hard time understanding how a with 367 shots, 241 hits , 24 PPP , 85 points and a plus 24 could EVER not be near the very top. I ran my own rankings in 3 different leagues with different settings and Ovie was ALWAYS top 3

Just a quick note here: mbr311 and I looked over his numbers and he has revised his FSI totals. He still has some very interesting players to pursue, but the actual rankings don't looked so skewed anymore.

[flubber]

That makes better sense. I don't know what Mbr311's 10 skater categories were, but in my 8 ( G ,A, +/-, PIM, SOG,PPP, SHP and Hits) Ovie is moderately to extremely strong in everything except SHP-- Even if you added faceoff wins and Blocked shots he would still be monsterously strong in 7 of 10 categories.

But Ovie is the obvious one that gets drafted so early anyway that our rankings would be moot.

Of his top 10 list I have frequently picked up Frans Nielson (word with the Rangers is they plan to give him more PP time) Benn and in my leagues Prust, Ott, Weber etc. Perry and Giroux seem to go early.

Oh and I was surprised by Mike Green being so high in his rankings (but again that would depend on the stats involved-- If there are more PPG and PPP stats I could definitely see that ranking

[mbr311]

First off I just wanna say that mike is an amazing guy. I can't thank him enough for everything he did for me. He helped me work up a total FSI and even more importantly a standard deviation formula to determine guys that were way over valued because of 1 or 2 categories (Frans Nielsen for example had a top 15 FSI because of his SHP production for one). It also had David Perron as the #1 ranked player but once the STDEV formula was applied it brought things back to earth. But it did allow me to target guys in later rounds that were very strong in say hits or blocks. Such an amazing draft kit and even more, Mike is just a top notch guy. We literally had a 30-email chain going on working with me on formulas and improving my understanding of everything to maximize my drafting. And I must say after computing my total scores I think I built a very strong team. I'll put it up in the proper section.


But I saw the value of goalies and stacked up hard to hopefully dominate those 5 categories (which represent 1/3 of my points...I mean talk about return on investment 3 guys making up 1/3 of the total points vs 16 sisters making up the rest). I am in the same boat as flubber...I think people were left s catching their heads at what i was doing lol. I was so bummed that someone else saw the immense value of perry and took him super early (I went goalie round 1, pick 5. I think perry got taken at 7 or 8). And I was able to just load up on defense though Whitney and Markov are on IR. I thought Whitney would be ready to go same for Markov things were looking up for him but apparently he had a set back.

Anyway really looking forward to this season and once again to mike...I can't thank you enough man I've always been a supporter but thus us above and beyond. If you ever need ANYTHING please let me know!!

[flubber]

Sounds like I will have to sign up next year since I was doing by hand or by instinct a bit of "reranking" of the one-category wonders. In my 3 leagues Nielson was always top 100 in my numerical ranking (all had SHP) but I then used the yahoo default rankings to see where others would likely put him. The result is that I have Nielson in all 3 leagues and drafted him 233, 183 and 257. (difference where I drafted him was based on the stats involved and how I saw others drafting). Nielson was a nice to have for me but I wanted him less than say Brandon Prust in leagues with PIMS and Hits and Shorties

I like numerical rankings based on formulas but I find they only take you so far. I think you do far better in a draft by considering where others might take players. Even if I have a guy ranked top 20, I feel I would be an idiot to take him that early if I have a fair certainty that everyone else ranks them far far worse (and in a keeper league you have soem of that certainty as you can see how people have drafted before

[mbr311]

Flubber - Definitely man if you can figure out others draft strategy you will have a huge keg up. For me it was a guy like Callahan whom I saw immense value in fir things like blocks and hits amongst other things. But I didn't think it justified a top 12 round pick or so and I was pretty confident he wasn't on too many peoples radars to rank high.

Like you I spent quite a bit of time pre-ranking so I could develop a good draft strategy. Obviously LWLs kit helped out a ton. I knew right away that I could dictate the draft my way simply because my rankings were so different than the default ones. Sure people in my league spent time pre-ranking but nit as in depth as me and nit changing about 300 positions lol. Hopefully all the hard work pays off.

It's really too bad that Whitney and Markiv are on IR right now. You can see above how strong my defense is at full strength. I got an offer to get Backes for Edler. If my defense was heathly I probably would have made the move. Backes I had ranked extremely high based on the info extrapolated from LWLs draft kit.

[flubber]

Flubber - Definitely man if you can figure out others draft strategy you will have a huge keg up. .

I couldn't exactly figure out people's strategy but coming as as a replacement I did look at prior years and get a sense for where certain types of players went. It was a big assumption but most drafts, most people will largely follow some set of fairly standard rankings (like yahoo)-- knowing that and also knowing that no one previously took Clutterbuck before round x or a pure PIMS guy before round y helped me know how late I could wait on some of my desired folks

[mbr311]

Well we actually had a huge error in our first draft so everyone autodrafted and then we re-set the league and re-drafted a few nights later so I had the opportunity to at least see how people were leaning in regards to ranking their players and if they were targeting goalies or skaters early on.

I did the same as you - there were guys like Callahan that I really wanted because of his production outside of simple goals and assists (he lays out a lot of hits and blocks for example). I knew he was on no one's radar, he was someone I really wanted...but its not like I wanted to draft him in round 8-10 or something. So like you I was able to wait and I think I got him around round 15 or so. Interesting anyway

[SirJesto]

I did something a bit radical this year. I didn't draft anyone in the consensus top 15 with my first pick. I targeted certain players, some of whom were ranked a bit lower than your standard choice for that rounds pick, so by round 3 I was getting everyone I wanted from there on in because I was effectively picking a couple rounds ahead of everyone else. Believe it or not, I sent my friend an email before the draft listing the exact players I would get (in a 23 round autodraft) and got 22 out of 23.

[BZoods]

Could someone explain what functions were all used in relation to standard deviations to normalize the FSI numbers?

I'm looking to analyze my team for statistically weak performers because I need to clear a couple of spots for returning IR players..

[mbr311]

Do you have the information on an excel spreadsheet like LWLs draft kit? If so we simply used this formula: =STDEV(a1:a9).

Obviously the a1-a9 will depend based on the scoring categories you are comparing but that's the formula we used.

[BZoods]

I already knew how to use STDEV, you just made it seem as if there was more to it than just throwing in that.

I was trying to find a way to use STDEV to produce a new data set that gives each player a value between 1-100 depending on how well they did compared to the average, the stdev, and the rest of the field.

In my preseason rankings I just did =percentrank(C2,C:C,4)*100 to do this (only compared to the rest of the league at a particular position). But it hit a major fault when I came to SHG/SHA. because the majority of the league had neither of these, any player who did had significantly heightened overall percentrank.
I was hoping that using STDEV or a similar formula might be able to normalize this result for me.

[BZoods]

Also: instead of a1:a9, unless you have something in a10:a9999999999999, you can just use a:a and it will take all data from that column. It makes it easier when copying formulas between cells.

[mbr311]

I'm not sure I understand why you think I made more of it than simply applying a STDEV formula in order to truly assess a players final FSI ranking..not sure where I made it out to be more to it than just throwing that in.

I used it simply to show why some players final FSI ranking was inflated - because of one category in my particular case. I didn't want a guy ranked too high because he had a very high FSI rating in SHPs for instance which was inflating his total FSI ranking.

It sounds like you are a whiz with math so I'm sure you'll figure it out. I just used it as another tool to figure out a "true" ranking of a player across all categories as well as using it to score how I drafted or as another tool during the draft - when i drafted a player I would dump him into a spread sheet to see what areas I was doing well in (my scoring categories) so as the draft moved into the later rounds I could target say a guy with high hits because that's where I was lacking. I think you've got it all figured out though, let us know if you find anything interesting!

[BZoods]

"He helped me work up a total FSI and even more importantly a standard deviation formula to determine guys that were way over valued because of 1 or 2 categories"

somehow I just thought that he helped you work out a more specific formula that showed through when taking FSI totals/averages rather than just using STDEV to highlight abnormalities. I'm hoping to find a way to reward players for SHG/SHA (those two categories make for a big difference in my roto league), while not punishing the vast majority of those without them. I'm working on a few other projects as well right now, and I'll share some of my ideas once I refine them.

[mbr311]

Hmm...I see what you're saying BZoods. The standard deviation formula that we used resulted in another number (say 38.8) that I then used in relation to the total FSI ranking. Do you know what I mean by FSI ranking BTW, I never even thought to ask. It's the specific index formula that left wing lock used to judge each players worth relative to your specific scoring format. This was a large part of the draft kit they sent out to those of us that paid.

The STDEV formula unfortunately did not get into specifics if you will - it did not highlight say SHP/SHG as a specific category - rather it highlighted a player being "over valued" in terms of his FSI index score because of inflated numbers in 1 or 2 categories. Now I could go back into the players FSI scores once the STDEV formula was applied and figure out what category caused him to be "inflated." That was rather easy, but time consuming obviously.

It just gave me the ability to look at say Frans Nielson is a different light - the total FSI ranking had him as a top 5 skater..but that was HEAVILY inflated because of his SHPs last year. he had pretty much the maximum FSI score in that category. You take that out of the equation, and he fell into a more "natural" place in my rankings.

I hope that all made sense. I really am not a math whiz lol which is why I was talking with Mike so freqently about this stuff. I am good with stats though. And this was a way for me to better assess a players true worth other than just taking his FSI score into account, and also gave me the ability as I was drafting or as I am still building a team to plug in a players FSI scores for each category and see where I need help in. For example it helped me assess that I wasn't drafting enough guys with hits, so I was able to grab a guy like Callahan. I wasn't drafting enough guys with high PIMs...so that's another way I found it useful.

I'd be very interested to see what you come up with, when you figure out how to reward players for specific categories. The more information the better!

[BZoods]

I did buy the LWL draft kit, so I do know what you mean by the FSI. I found that omitting SHG/SHA from every player produced fairly accurate rankings across the board, but I still want to find a way to implement them.

[mbr311]

I did buy the LWL draft kit, so I do know what you mean by the FSI. I found that omitting SHG/SHA from every player produced fairly accurate rankings across the board, but I still want to find a way to implement them.

Then why not just look at them independently from the rest of the FSI score?

Or are you trying to assess ACTUAL SHP/SHG this season (which of course the FSI is built off projections and last years stats)?

I mean if you just pull out the FSI score for SHP you should be able to find out which guys did well last year and are projected to do well this year. But as we all know, SHP/SHG is probably by far the most difficult category to address with any sort of certainty. I mean not only is it highly situational, but it just doesn't happen a ton.