Sometimes you just can't help yourself. You've been sitting on a player for a year or two (an eternity in fantasy hockey), and the prospect never seems like he'll get a chance to prove himself. So you end up trading away a Nazem Kadri before his almost-point-per-game campaign, or Vladimir Tarasenko when you were worried about the Russian KHL factor during the last lockout. Heck, I once traded Erik Karlsson for Ryan Suter in a points-only pool (keep that in mind when you get to No.1). Usually, you replace these guys with even younger prospects or picks, which means you're still no further ahead. But to see those guys doing so well now makes you wonder, what if…

5. Your breakout player prediction totally sucking

Every GM has their favourite sleeper. And some fantasy owners will try to get that guy in as many different leagues as they can.  One of those guys for me was Lubomir Visnovsky, as I picked him up in three of four drafts I was involved in this summer. And it has been a great big letdown. He started off the season injured, has just six points in 17 games and is injured again. Regardless if your sleeper was Visnovsky, Martin Havlat or Christian Ehrhoff, having them spend so much time on roster can make you want to scream at times.

4. Lose a matchup by a last-minute goal

This one is for head-to-head leagues when there's a tight matchup, and one game left on the docket. Maybe your fantasy squad is leading your matchup, and the Ducks and Sharks are playing. You watch the game with great interest, and in the last minute, the Ducks score an empty net goal. Wait, your opponent has Ryan Kesler and Hampus Lindholm? And they were both on the ice for that last goal? All of a sudden, your opponent gets another plus-two for the plus-minus category, and instead of you winning 8-7, you lose the matchup. I'm of the adage that sometimes it's better to lose big early to lose a tight one late for specifically this reason.

3. Guy on bench has a huge game

Sometimes you can overthink your roster. You study lineups and matchups. You look at recent and long-term history of the players involved. After hours of deliberation, you decide to sit Brad Marchand in favour of Brendan Gallagher on Saturday. Marchand responds with two goals, a plus-two, four shots and five hits. Gallagher gets just one shot and one hit. It can take the wind out of your sails pretty quick.

2. Owning a player on your favourite team

A Blues fan owning TJ Oshie and Paul Stastny. A Colorado fan owning Matt Duchene and Semyon Varlamov. An Oilers fan owning pretty much anyone on that team. It seems doubly worse when a player on your favorite real-life hockey team struggles when you also own him on your fantasy squad. At that stage, he's not helping you anywhere, and each mistake he makes and each shot not resulting in a goal hurts twice as much.

1. Too many injured players

Maybe that team of yours would be a lot better if they weren't injured all the time. At least that's what you keep telling yourself. But injuries are easily the most frustrating aspects of fantasy hockey. In one of my points-only leagues, we have our top five defencemen count. I have only five defencemen total, and four of them (Kris Letang, Zdeno Chara, Tobias Enstrom and Visnovsky) are injured. Sometimes, the secrecy of the injury is worse than the injury itself (lower-body injury? Maintenance day?). When injuries start piling on your team, you feel like you feel the same pain the athletes are experiencing.