Fantasy Hockey Geek discusses the art of targeting specific categories for an H2H matchup.

It is the greatest time of year in fantasy hockey as most head to head leagues are now either in the middle of their league's playoff or they are about to embark on their first match tomorrow. I have had a decent year and it looks as though I will be headed to the semi-finals in my three H2H leagues, I have my points-only league on lockdown…. and hopefully the Dobber Expert League gives out "participant" ribbons.

One thing that I LOVE to do in Fantasy playoffs is take a look at my upcoming matchup and make waiver wire adds to try to account for any of my category shortcomings. In one of my yearly leagues for example, I had a bye week this week and I am fairly certain I know who I will be facing in round two. Due to one of my players going on IR, I have an open position and I know which categories my opponent will challenge me hardest in, so I want to make a wavier add now that will help me as much as possible next week. Doing a bit of digging in my league provider (Yahoo! for this league) and plugging a couple of things into Fantasy Hockey Geek – I have a great system to ensure that I am coming to battle with the roster that best players to suit my needs. Here's how I do it:

The first step is to logon to your league provider and take a look at the "Head to Head Stats – totals" for the year. This is where you will see which categories you have been better or worse at throughout the year. Here's how my forwards stack up in the upcoming match – I am "Parise Money"

For my projected matchup I look pretty good in most categories but the guy I am up against compares favorably to me in Goals, +/- and Blocked Shots. I need to mitigate the risk of losing any of these categories so I want to make a pickup that will optimally help my team, so what do I do? I could scroll one by one down the waiver wire list on Yahoo! and I could even sort by each category one at a time hoping to figure it all out. OR, I can just get FHG to do the work for me, by entering my league into FHG using all of my leagues settings with one exception: For the scoring settings, I only entered the three categories I need help in. Below are some of the more interesting results:

Every single time I run a report in FHG I learn something and today was no different as I learnt that Getzlaf and Pavelski are absolute beasts in these three categories. We all probably knew off the top of our heads that the goals and +/- were there but their blocked shots contributions are stellar for elite scoring forwards. That doesn't really help me though because I am pretty sure I am not finding these guys on the waiver wire and in fact my opponent next week actually owns Pavelski. D'oh! Looking further down the list though, there are some intriguing options.

ME Vlassic (40% owned) and Francois Beauchemin (36% owned) both provide excellent value in the categories I need for similar reasons. They both have high-end blocked shots as well as +/- while providing a goal total that is actually very solid coming from a rearguard. Unfortunately for me neither of these guys were available either or else they would be an easy pickup for me. I am only mentioning them here because they may be available in your league if you are in a similar situation. I also find it interesting how borderline players like Vlassic and Beauchemin can become extremely valuable when you narrow down your category needs. They truly demonstrate the power of using FHG to solve your category needs quickly. I found these two players in about 35 seconds.

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A little further down the list I find Ben Lovejoy who –at least for these three categories– is almost the same as the aforementioned Beauchemin but Lovejoy is only 7% owned and IS available in my league. I like it. If I can manage 1G, +3 and 5Bks out of this guy in my match it may actually go a long way.

Further still down the list I see Tommy Wingles who is 19% owned but somewhat surprisingly available in my league. FHG calculates him as the 81^st most valuable in the categories I need help in. He isn't going to provide the overall value to my three category needs that Lovejoy will, but Wingels has some other things working for him:

2. 1)He has a good schedule. In Bob Fisher's Looking Ahead article, he does an amazing job of laying out which teams have beneficial schedules in the upcoming week and San Jose is astutely identified as a "target" for next week. Thanks, Fisher!
3. 2)Wingels is actually good in the other categories in my league as well which I never lose sight of. Running the three category report the way I did is amazing to help me identify guys like Wingels and Lovejoy but in the back of my head I still know that Wingels' SHP and SOG will help me as well and of course I have the FHG report for my FULL league cats at the ready which tell me that Wingels has no business being on the waiver wire.
4. 3)I need a forward more than a defenseman and Wingels fits right into my lineup.

All in all it took me about ten minutes to go through this exercise to ensure that I am well equipped for my matchup next week. So what did I do in the end? I took them both. I had the free roster spot from my IR player so I added Lovejoy for nothing but I was so compelled by Wingels' schedule and contributions to my need-categories that I dumped Tim Thomas to fit Wingels in. It's a one year league and my goaltending is fairly strong so I thought I was better off rolling an additional forward who fills my need categories and who I could fit in for four favorable games than a 1b goalie.

Quick troubleshooting like this is what makes Fantasy Hockey Geek an invaluable tool to me. You may be able to come to the same conclusions as I did above by combing through Yahoo! or NHL.com but by customizing your exact needs on FHG as I have done, you can save yourself tons of time and the quality of information you get is much better. Drilling this deep into your matchup like I have may seem like overkill and if I had to go through box scores to do it then I would say that it is, but with FHG you can do a focused analysis like this in a very short period of time and gain a significant advantage over your opponent. I would encourage you to do the same in your league!