This week, the Geek uses the Trade Analyzer to evaluate several trade offers.

So far throughout the season, Geek of the Week has mostly been about identifying overvalued and undervalued players in fantasy hockey. However, this week I received a private message from one of the members on the forum asking for trade advice. I began thinking about it and doing some research until I thought it would make an interesting post for this week’s Geek of the Week article. Let me know if you enjoy the article, and maybe I’ll have frequent posts analyzing people’s trade offers.

Here are the three trade offers I was asked about and how the Fantasy Hockey Geek tool can help you in deciding what moves to make.

Background

For the purposes of this exercise, the person who messaged me will have the team called Team A, while all the other offers will be from a team named Team B.

The league is a 10-team keeper league where any 10 skaters can be keepers for the following season. Each team’s roster consists of three centers, three right wings, three left wings, six defensemen, two goalies and six reserve spots. The categories counted are goals, assists, power-play points, shorthanded points, shots, hits, blocks, faceoff wins, wins, saves, and goals against. A forward goal is worth two points and a defenseman goal is worth three points, while a forward assist is worth one point and a defenseman assist is worth 1.5 points. All power-play points and shorthanded points are worth one point, while goalie wins are worth three points. Shots, hits, blocks, and saves are all worth .1 points and a faceoff win is worth 0.05 points. A goal against results in -0.5 points. His current roster is (with keepers in bold):

C: Seguin, Kopitar, Bergeron, Stepan

RW: Wheeler, Zibenajad, Backes, Nyqvist

LW: Steen, Saad, Nash, Skinner, E Kane, Perreault

D: Burns, Shattenkirk, Letang, Gostisbehere, Hamilton, Sekera, Daley, M. Mathews

G: Bishop, Crawford, Elliott, Hellebuyck

Fantasy Hockey Geek Trade Analyzer

While I usually use the rankings generated by the Fantasy Hockey Geek tool, it also has other cool features such as a trade analyzer. Shockingly, it analyzes trades, giving you information on any hypothetical trades for your specific league. All you have to do is input the league settings and it will provide a detailed breakdown (using Dobber’s projections as a guide). For the trade offers, I will be using the Trade Analyzer along with my own thoughts and opinions. Here are the abbreviations used:

POS- Position

SV- Saves

GA- Goals Against

W- Wins

G- Goals

A- Assists

SOG- Shots on goal

PPP- Powerplay points

SHP- Shorthanded points

H- Hits

B- Blocks

FO- Faceoff wins

Trade Offer #1: Corey Crawford for Dustin Byfuglien

Both Crawford and Byfuglien are really good players, but I don’t see much of a reason to make this trade. While Team A does have Bishop on his team, after Crawford and Bishop the goaltending gets a little thin. Brian Elliott has been very shaky to start the year and Connor Hellebuyck has had a bit of a rocky start. Trading away Crawford could make the goaltending vulnerable, especially if Bishop loses some of his starts to Andrei Vasilevskiy. Not to mention, Team A is already pretty stacked on defense, with Brent Burns, Kevin Shattenkirk, Kris Letang, and Shayne Gostisbehere as his keepers and Dougie Hamilton as his fifth defenseman. But let’s see what Fantasy Hockey Geek has to say.
 

Crawford has a slight edge on Byfuglien in terms of total points (Crawford is projected to score 186 points with Byfuglien only at 177), but Byfuglien has a much higher FHG value. By pure value, I could see accepting the trade as Byfuglien is ranked very high in this specific league. However, I’d personally pass on the trade as I think having two really good keeper goalies is a lot more important than Byfuglien becoming your fourth or fifth keeper defenseman.

Trade Offer #2: Shayne Gostisbehere and Tyler Johnson (and dropping a player, like Mathieu Perreault) for Ryan Getzlaf, Dylan Larkin and Sami Vatanen

This trade does sound interesting, but the one problem I see with it is giving up Gostisbehere without getting another clear-cut keeper back. Tyler Johnson isn’t a bad player but I would definitely take Getzlaf over him and Dylan Larkin does have some serious potential. However, neither Getzlaf or Larkin would be great keepers to replace Ghost, so one of Vatanen or Hamilton would (probably) be kept as his replacement. The question becomes, is the upgrade of Johnson to Getzlaf big enough where it’s worth downgrading one of your keepers from Ghost to Vatanen? I’m not totally opposed to the trade (I’m actually a big Vatanen fan), but I would think that Ghost should have more trade value. But let’s see the numbers through the Trade Analyzer.
 

Once again, it seems like a pretty fair trade. Team A does slightly better, gaining nine more points and having more FHG value, but the margins are pretty close. Team A is predicted to lose only four goals but gain only seven assists, while shorthanded and power-play points are almost exactly even. Team A is projected to only gain 32 extra shots (3.2 points over the entire season), 109 hits, and 54 blocked shots while losing about 110 faceoff wins. Overall, that comes to about a gain of nine points.

However, those calculations are with Team A hypothetical trading Mathieu Perreault. I set it up like that because if Team A acquired Vatanen, Getzlaf, and Larkin, he would need to drop a player. So in reality, it’s almost like trading Ghost, Johnson, and Perreault. If the trade were to be accepted, Team A would gain a total of nine points but would lose roster flexibility, since he’d go from Ghost, Johnson and a spot where he can stream guys from the waiver wire to three guys he couldn’t drop. I’d say no to this trade, especially when considering the keeper downgrade.

Trade Offer #3: Tyler Seguin (and dropping a player, like Mathieu Perreault) for Nicklas Backstrom and Justin Faulk

As a general rule of thumb, I usually say you should try to get the best player in any trade. So when I first looked at this offer, my initial thoughts were to pass. Seguin is a much better player than Nicklas Backstrom and in a keeper league, quality usually trumps quantity. However, you all know that I’m a big Faulk fan and when I ran the numbers through the Trade Analyzer, Team A actually does better by a significant margin.
 

Even though Seguin scores more goals and shoots the puck a lot more than Backstrom, he is only projected to register four more total points than Backstrom on the year. And Faulk actually holds tremendous value in this league, surpassing both Seguin and Backstrom in terms of FHG value. Even though Team A will have to drop a guy like Mathieu Perreault to take on both Faulk and Backstrom, both of those players would probably become keepers for him next season. Backstrom replaces Seguin and Faulk would probably be kept over Shayne Gostisbehere, allowing Team A the flexibility to trade Ghost for depth for a playoff run (sort of like Offer #2). Out of all the trade offers, I like this one the best and would accept it, with the intentions of keeping Backstrom and Faulk and shopping Gostisbehere.

Even though most fantasy drafts are done, that’s only half the battle. Managing your team and looking for trade opportunities throughout the year is just as important as the team you initially draft, so always look for value in the trade market too.