The fantasy twist I alluded to is, does your league have IR spots and if so how many spots are you allowed?

A fantasy league IR spot is similar to the real LTIR. It gives temporary relief to those owners who have had the unfortunate luck to have the injured player on their roster.

In the three pools I am in this year, two have defined IR spots. So far in Yahoo pool #1 a total of 180 players were selected and five have been placed on IR. In the Dobber Experts pool, 286 players were selected and also five are on IR as of Oct 10^th, 20124.

In each league there are limits of how many players can be on IR but even if there were an unlimited number of IR slots I don't see how this hurts the other teams in the league. It only provides temporary relief to the owner who is hurting.

It doesn't seem to me that this is unfair in fantasy pools or real life. This is just playing within the rules of the system. In the Dobber Experts pool, we have established that there be a maximum of 25 acquisitions for the entire season with some owners already having made three moves and it is only day three of the new season. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Although not hockey related, one thing that I did this past baseball season was draft a complete team of players that were injured (on the DL) as an experiment since there was no money at stake and I found out something interesting.

Regarding pitching, don't be afraid to draft injured players, at least the ones that you know are not out for the whole season. My pitching staff not only fulfilled their entire maximum number of games but they were very strong in most categories.

Regarding batters, avoid drafting players on the DL as much as possible. You get too far behind in almost all the categories and it becomes very hard to catch up. I flirted with not ending up in dead last but alas my pitchers could not make up the deficit that my batters produced.

I do not think there is a direct correlation between my baseball experiment and hockey but the point being, like the NHL, do not be afraid of a Prong-ed like attitude. You never know what you will discover.