Before getting into the bulk of the article, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who took the time to congratulate me on the new opportunity that I have been given here at DobberHockey. The kind words and interactions mean the world to me, and it only makes the passion grow that much larger.

The trade deadline in your fantasy league is probably approaching within the next month approximately, this is when you can decide to 'double-down' on your team's stance and 'buy-in' at the deadline. The other option is that you can realize your team probably isn't going to win this year and now you can sell off all of your non-core players to the highest bidder.

As I said, the trade deadline probably isn't happening in your league for the next month or so. This is the most crucial part of the season. This is when you should be seeing if your team is performing to the level that they should, or if they're floundering. You can now start to see where you may finish in the standings within your league, we're quickly approaching the halfway mark of the fantasy year. With this many games played so far, you have a good enough sample size as to what your team is, whether you're a 'pretender' or a 'contender'. Which basically means is my team not cut out to win this year or am I legitimate threat to take home that glorious first-place trophy.

Being able to understand where your team is at is the most important part of analyzing what sort of actions you should take at the trade deadline. If your team is within the bottom 20% of the standings for example, you probably shouldn't be looking at spending draft picks and other valuable resources to try and make a push for the playoffs. At that point you should be selling off the players that you either can't keep going into next year or can't afford to give a pay-raise to. Remember, you're playing with a salary cap and that means you must manage your roster's production and their finances.

From my experience over the years, it's always better to try and get your trade deadline buying and selling done a little bit before the deadline. This way you avoid paying the premium prices that fantasy general managers charge for their assets on the day of the trade deadline. When it comes to selling assets before the trade deadline, if you're one of the early-birds when it comes to selling off your players you are the one who is setting the 'price standards' across the league. You are the one creating the market price for the rest to follow for the most part.

As we've covered, the trade deadline in your fantasy league may not be approaching for some time but this is the time when you can start understanding what you need to trade away, or what you need to add to your team in order to make that playoff push and come home with the championship. For category scoring leagues you can go back and look through previous matchups and see what categories you've lost and what ones you've won. Doing your homework in that regard is always a tip that I will recommend to everybody. Another approach that you can take when assessing what areas your team is weak/strong in for these leagues is looking at your league's standings and sorting the categories that way. When you take this approach to assessing your team's strengths and weaknesses, you're also viewing stats from across the league too. You begin to see how your team is stacking up against the competition in those areas, you can see if you need to add somebody who produces a lot of shots and gets assists meanwhile adding to your hits category for example. Being able to get an overview of your team's production to date is critical, without that knowledge you don't really have a great picture as to what you need to add to your team.

If you're a team who is a 'seller' at the trade deadline, being able to value what players you need to keep going into the next year is crucial. Doing this allows you to understand what you consider to be a core piece of your team, and what can become expendable. If you have a player under contract for the next handful of years who is still producing at a solid rate, then they would be a piece I would keep in your possession as you're not forced to move on from them. When you have a player, whose contract doesn't expire for another three seasons for example, you then in theory have another three years to win a championship with that player. A player with a contract that expires at the end of the year and is a little bit on the older side is someone you should start looking at trading. Their production may start declining sooner rather than later, and you do not want to re-sign them in fear of their production dropping off. If you must re-sign them for a lot of money (based on their NHL contract amount) and they're on the older side and you feel they may start to lose their fantasy relevance going into next year. That is what I like to call 'dead-cap', and that means you're paying someone a lot of money to produce at an $8-millon salary while they're producing like someone who makes half of that. Spending excess salary-cap space on someone who isn't producing to the level of their contact is someone that I consider to be 'dead-cap'.

A player who is executing poorly and making a lot of money is a very hard asset to trade. When that arises, you run the risk of having to retain salary-cap to make the player more appealing to another team, or you may have to start adding draft compensation or additional players or prospects to get the trade done. Whenever your hand is forced in that way in order to get a player off your roster, you're never going to be happy with what you end up acquiring as you paid a lot more than what you probably wanted in the first place.

The key to having a successful trade deadline is being able to figure out whether you should be adding or selling some of your assets and conducting your buying and selling at a reasonable time prior to the trade deadline day to get the best prices and trade returns possible. With salary-cap leagues it can become a little bit more complex to get these trades done because you and your trade partner must stay below the salary-cap which means you may not be able to get the exact pieces that you want from them given the restraints that you may face. Therefore, acquiring players who provide the things that you are looking to add with regards to stats for the best possible price and contract term is key as it allows the trade process to be easier most times and allows you to have a better salary-cap situation than your opponents. While having the best roster is always the goal in fantasy sports, when it comes to salary-cap leagues having players who play above their contract price is what separates you from the competition. Having flexibility with your roster due to having extra salary-cap space is always going to make your life easier in the long-run in these leagues.

Doing your research and analyzing your team's strengths and weaknesses a few weeks prior to the trade deadline is never a bad thing and it can only help as it prepares you for what can end up being lengthy trade negotiations. Getting ahead of the rush and acquiring the players that you believe will set you apart from the other competitors and selling your assets ahead of time gives you the ability to just do minor tweaks come deadline day.

Hopefully you've learned something that you can take to your fantasy league and help you get closer to your goal, whatever that may be this season.

Twitter: JamieMolloy_DH