Five tips for trading in your fantasy hockey league.

With the 2016-17 campaign officially starting today, nearly all poolies have already drafted their teams for the season. Thus, although most leagues allow free agent moves, it’s trades that will often have the greatest impact in the standings because by definition they involve more than one fantasy squad.

In making trades, poolies have to compare players in order to position themselves get the better end of a deal. Sound familiar? It should, since that kind of analysis and decision-making is central to this Cage Match column, which regularly determines who’s the better of two players to own in fantasy.

So I figured I’d dispense with Cage Match this week and next, but borrow from it in listing 10 tips to help make winning fantasy hockey trades. Today is part one – featuring five of the tips. The remaining five will be published in part two next week.

Before you dive in, I want to emphasize that these tips are comparable to “one size fits all” clothing. By that I mean they’ll likely apply to most poolies in most leagues, but perhaps not to some of those in outlying leagues, which in turn might have their own tips that wouldn’t apply to the broader range of poolies. Nevertheless, I believe these are worth consideration for all poolies, as even if some tips aren’t specifically applicable to your particular league they should still give you useful insight or at least help you think of variations on them which would apply to your league.

Where possible, try to make trades with GMs who’ve boxed themselves into corners

Most poolies head into their draft with a mantra of “best player available” and a master plan of how to ensure they emerge with the top roster in the league. But guess what – best laid plans can go out the window during the stress of the draft, causing poolies to resort to bad habits, whether in failing to correctly take forward positional eligibility into account, overvaluing multi-cat players to an extent that their team is lacking when it comes to basic categories goals and assists, assembling teams that skew too young or perhaps too old. I could go on and on……

This is where you can come in. You bought your DobberHockey Fantasy Guide and of course assembled a great team from top to bottom. But even great teams have room to improve. And you can go about that via targeting these unfortunate GMs who dug themselves into a hole from which – especially in deep pools where there aren’t many free agents on the waiver wire – they can only emerge via trades.

Fantasy hockey is a survival of the fittest environment, where, just as in nature, the strong should prey upon the weak. So when it’s time for you to seek out trading partners, look for handcuffed teams. Or when they’re behind the eight ball due to their own tendencies/mistakes, and approach you desperate for a lifeline via a trade, you can negotiate from a position of strength where you hold the cards.

Most everyone knows about “Buy Low, Sell High,” so focus instead on Cost vs. Value

Good luck trying to trade Patrick Kane for 106-point value right now, as even the biggest Blackhawk homer won’t see him as a likely candidate for comparable production in 2016-17. Obviously that’s an extreme example; however, the truth is most any GM in your league will be astute enough to sniff out the more clear-cut cases of you trying to buy low or to sell high. The good news though, is many fantasy GMs still aren’t well versed in the arguably more important concept of cost vs. value. Either that or they don’t fully understand when it matters or how to apply it properly.

Here too is where you can come in. The most important aspect of cost vs. value is recognizing players who are overvalued (i.e. whose cost is higher than the fantasy value they actually provide), whether due to name recognition, past high profile success that’s no longer applicable, prospect hype, ownership percentage, and/or average draft position. The reality is players who are most widely known or owned, or drafted the earliest, will often have an undeservedly higher associated “cost.” The flip side is also true, in that lower profile, less widely owned, under the radar players are more likely to be undervalued.

Of course the exact cost vs. value factors involved in a trade will vary based on specific circumstances; however, here are two categories of players more likely to be overvalued: (1) those on Original Six teams, plus squads from the biggest non-Western cities, like Pittsburgh, Washington, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, are more likely to have a higher associated cost than comparable players from teams not located in hockey hotbeds (I call this the “Habs Factor”); and (2) those who appear on the annual list of top ten players in NHL jersey sales, because they’re more omnipresent than other players.

Long story short – whenever possible, try to win trades by targeting players who have hidden or well disguised value or by trading away players whom those in your leagues might – wrongly – think are worth more than they actually are.

Age matters, but don’t be too rigid about it

Hockey is a young man’s game……..except when it isn’t. Players tend to produce best from age 24 to age 28; but does that mean all players peak in that range? Of course not, especially goalies. Also, some will begin to see their production drop despite still being in what should be their prime, while still others will defy father time well into their 30s. So how should you approach older players when making trades?

In one-year leagues, be wary of trading for a well performing older player around the holidays, since his production might slow as the campaign further unfolds. Then again, older players on playoff bubble teams might regain value in the spring as their teams lean on them more when the season is on the line.

In keepers, tolerance for older players should correlate to the extent your team is in win now mode. If you’re poised to challenge for the title this season or next, you should be more amenable to adding a grey beard or two. And the good news is you can often find a rebuilding team who’d like nothing more than to unload its older players in exchange for less proven assets whom they hope will pay dividends down the road. And as much as it might pain you to trade away a highly touted teen prospect for a 32-year-old, remember that you’re doing so to win, and far from every young phenom ultimately pans out. Even in keepers, a bird in the hand is generally better that two in the bush.

If, however, you’re not in the title hunt for your keeper but also not in full rebuild mode, you should look more closely at the specific players. Maybe a player who relied on skating speed is one to avoid as he gets older, whereas one who plays more of a pass first finesse game could stay viable well into his 30s? Here’s one example – if you’re in a league with emphasis on PPGs, older players might provide hidden value. After all, those who bought the DobberHockey Fantasy Guide for 2016-17 saw my Digging Deep article, which noted that of the 28 forwards who potted 30-plus goals in 2015-16, only two were aged 31 or older; however, of the 21 forwards who had 10 or more PPGs in 2015-16, seven were aged 31-plus.

In the end, no trade should be made without considering the ages of the players involved. But keep in mind it’s one factor among many and a player’s age is not in and of itself determinative of his value.

Don’t be afraid to trade away players who are set to be UFAs

When I started playing fantasy hockey in the 1990s, everyone wanted to draft or trade for UFAs to be, since they felt those players would be especially motivated to do well in order to line their pockets, plus might be traded to a top team during the season. Fast forward to now, and it’s an entirely new situation. While upcoming UFAs are still as motivated as ever to succeed, the reality is nowadays most top players simply don’t make it to UFA status in their prime, with teams instead locking up key talent early and, if anything, keeping them under contract past their prime. As a result, UFAs to be often are not the cream of the crop. Yet due to the 24-hour news cycle, Twitter, social media, and the like, these upcoming UFAs nevertheless get massively hyped all season long, inflating their perceived value.

If you own a player who is set to be a UFA, especially in a one-year league, more often than not you should look for an excuse to trade him during the season, as chances are you’ll be able to get more in return that you rightfully deserve. In keepers, however, you have to assess the situation more carefully.

Take Keith Yandle for example. Forward thinking poolies saw that based on his ice time and utilization in New York, he wasn’t put in a position to truly succeed there, and they jumped at the chance to buy low based on his artificially suboptimal stats. And now that he’s out of the misfit of New York and with the young and up tempo Panthers, he should produce vastly better, rewarding the poolies who bought low.

Contrast him with Mikkel Boedker, who excelled with the anemic Coyotes thanks largely to abundant PP1 time that led to 31 of his last 79 points coming with the man advantage. But astute poolies moved him in the offseason because his cost was inflated as a high profile UFA and knowing that wherever he landed he’d likely have a much tougher time producing comparably without prime PP time gifted to him.

In fantasy, opportunity – and other circumstances – can often trump talent

All too often poolies look at stats in a vacuum, rather than assessing both the circumstances that were involved and what that player’s role actually projects to be. Take Eric Haula for example. He’s still only 25 years old and ended 2015-16 with 21 points in his last 19 games. Time to jump on the bandwagon, right? Not in most leagues. The problem is for the time being Haula still projects to be a bottom six player who’ll receive virtually no PP Time. In other words, talent arguably is there, but opportunity isn’t.

On the other side of the coin, Sean Couturier was a top scorer in juniors and taken with the eighth overall pick in the 2011 entry draft. Yet prior to last season he’d been used almost exclusively in a bottom six role and, not surprisingly, had never finished a season with even a point per every other game. But then new Flyer coach Dave Hakstol let him loose a bit, upping his PP Time and lowering his SH Time while increasing his OZ% from 40.2% to 43.8%. And voila – Couturier tallies 39 points in only 63 games, including 31 in his final 39 contests. Yet most poolies still see him only as what he was; and in doing so, they fail to recognize that his opportunity now finally is allowing his talent to manifest.

When you make trades, think of how that player fits into his team’s big picture both now and in the likely near future. Details like what position he plays, whether he shoots right or left, how he meshes with other players, how one-dimensional his game is, how much he’s being paid, if he has a one-way or two-way contract, and what the depth is at his position are just some of the factors which – often as much, if not more so than talent – will influence whether a player is able to produce well for your fantasy team.

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Hopefully you found this first batch of tips useful. Either way, there are five more tips still to come, so be sure to stop back next week to see those unveiled!