Angus Audits

Are you wondering what your plan of attack should be this summer? Preparing for a draft? Upset about some trades you made in the past? I'll weigh in with my thoughts on the interesting and important issues.

I will be running these audits on a weekly basis throughout the summer. Fire me an e-mail if you want to get in line!

Today I'll be taking a look at the team submitted to me by DobberHockey reader Kody (known as tradejunkie on the forums), who just won his league, but will have to pay a price for it because of an interesting rule change this summer.

The Team

The Hoseheads

The Rules

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Standard Yahoo rotisserie league

Offensive categories: Goals, Assists, Points, Plus-minus, PPP, SHP, PIM, SOG

Goaltending categories: Wins, Save %, Shutouts

Farm rosters: up to 14 players, no player can have more than 250 games played in NHL

Number of keepers is relative to end-of-season standings

Old rule: each team kept 10 out of 22 roster players, and 10 out of 14 on the farm

New rule: first place keeps six roster players, second place keeps seven, and so on. Last place (10^th) keeps 13. I think this rule is very interesting… hard to build a dynasty this way!

The Roster

The current roster:

C	Nicklas	Backstrom
C	Brad	Richards
C	Derek	Roy
C	Jason	Spezza
D	Kevin	Bieksa
D	Brian	Campbell
D	Joe	Corvo
D	Drew	Doughty
D	Duncan	Keith
D	Nicklas	Lidstrom
D	Brian	Rafalski
D	Kimmo	Timonen
G	Mikka	Kiprusoff
G	Evgeni	Nabokov
LW	Sean	Avery
LW	Alexandre	Burrows
LW	Ilya	Kovalchuk
LW	Bobby	Ryan
LW	Ray	Whitney
RW	Dustin	Brown
RW	Joe	Pavelski
RW	Corey	Perry
RW	Teemu	Selanne

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His keeper selections (I agree with the six he selected):

C	Nicklas	Backstrom
C	Jason	Spezza
D	Duncan	Keith
LW	Ilya	Kovalchuk
LW	Bobby	Ryan
RW	Corey	Perry

I was going to suggest keeping Doughty over Spezza, but Doughty can still be kept as a farm-eligible player.

His farm team:

> RW Brandon Yip

> D Alex Goligoski

> D Jack Johnson

> C Patrik Berglund

> D Drew Doughty

> LW Nikita Filatov

> RW Ted Purcell

> C/LW Jeremy Morin

> C Logan Couture

> D Keith Yandle

> RW Sergei Shirokov

> C/RW Brayden Schenn

> G Michal Neuvirth

> G Jonas Gustavsson

His farm team keeper selection:

> Alex Goligoski

> Jack Johnson

> Patrik Berglund

> Drew Doughty

> Nikita Filatov

> Ted Purcell

> Brayden Schenn

> Michal Neuvirth

> Jonas Gustavsson

> Keith Yandle

My farm team keeper selections:

> D Alex Goligoski

> D Jack Johnson

> C Patrik Berglund

> D Drew Doughty

> LW Nikita Filatov

> C/LW Jeremy Morin

> D Keith Yandle

> C/RW Brayden Schenn

> G Michal Neuvirth

> G Jonas Gustavsson

Recent Trades

Kody is mulling over a potential trade that sees him ship out Bobby Ryan for Claude Giroux and the 12^th overall pick (he thinks he will be able to land a prospect like Nino Niederreiter at that spot).

Most of his recent trade activity has been to win in the present, which worked out well considering he won the pool this season. However, with the new keeper rule he'll be in tough to repeat.

The Breakdown

The new rule has put a wrench in Kody's plan, as he traded most of his draft picks away to build for the present. Since he won the league, he can only keep six roster players.

Kody has mentioned that he is thinking of tanking this year while building for two years from now. Tanking isn't in my fantasy hockey vocabulary, so I'll disagree with him there!

He also mentioned that it is tough to swing trades in this league. I guarantee that other teams aren't going to be dropping players like Alex Burrows, Drew Doughty, and so on. In your case, identify teams that have holes to fill, and offer your borderline non-keepers for draft picks. These players have no value to you as you aren't keeping them and probably won't be able to redraft them.

The Recommendations

1) Identify borderline non-keepers and shop them hard. You have a terrific club – time to maximize the return in a tough situation. Stock up on draft picks and farm upgrades!

2) Keep Morin over Purcell. Short-term loss, but Morin is on a team that will need cheap young rookies to fill key spots for the next while, and his upside is much higher than Purcell’s.