Hockey is not too far off with free agency kicking off and rosters getting set. With that in mind, I wanted to give everyone an idea of what’s in the pipeline for the upcoming season.
I ran a poll at the end of last fantasy season to gauge interest in producing more content under a paid Patreon monthly subscription model. The response was both eye-opening and heartwarming, and I am pleased to announce that I am going to go live with a Patreon on September 1st this year. I don’t expect it to make me wealthy by any stretch, but I do sink a solid amount of time and cash into obtaining the best possible information to relay to you all and it would go a long way towards making my wife happier with me if I were to recoup some of that outlay (:
The Patreon will have two tiers as follows:
$5/month tier:
– Additional patron-only Discord channel (all questions guaranteed to be answered)
– Patron-only league vs Nate
– Early access to player projections
– Exclusive weekly waiver pickup article
$10/month tier:
– everything in the $5 tier
– monthly team reviews with trade targets, positional analysis, etc.
I will also be offering a personalized “draft kit” for a one-time fee of $25 per team. This would entail you sending me all of the league settings and draft position, and I would provide a settings evaluation, note which types of players and which positions increase or decrease in value due to those settings, player rankings for the first round, and a rough sketch of how I would attack roster composition by round (e.g. 3 F/1 D after 4 rounds, 5 F/3 D after 8 rounds). I will provide an example of this so you will have a better idea of if this will be worth the money to you or not.
Patreon Perks Explanation
I want to explain the Patreon perks a little more. Because I have confidence that the Discord community is going to continue to grow significantly over the next season, I anticipate that there will come a time when I won’t be able to answer every question asked in the main channels. I fully encourage everyone in the community to help each other out with these questions – it has and always will be my aim to educate (as opposed to prescribe) and I think those of you who have been following my work over the past year are certainly well-versed enough to offer quality fantasy advice to fellow community members based on tangible circumstances and statistics that actually matter. I will absolutely try my best to get to everyone’s questions in all channels, but I am also aware that I will be testing my limits in many ways over the next season and I do not want to make a promise to the community that I may not be able to keep. To that end, I will only guarantee replies to the Patron-only channel for the upcoming season.
The patron-only league will be pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a free league for patrons to test themselves against me (and probably beat me). If the league doesn’t fill completely I will recruit from the broader community, and if it fills and there are still more people wanting to play I will set up best ball leagues so that everyone gets into a best ball at the very least.
Early access to player projections should be very helpful for people with early drafts. I anticipate once again making them available to the public eventually and donating money to Hockey Fights Cancer for every download, but I wanted to provide that exclusive early access for patrons. Depending how things go I may even give access as I build them so you can view however many players I have completed projections for at any given time this offseason.
I am very excited to add a third weekly article this season exclusively available to Patreon subscribers. The format will be a little different as at this point in time I’m leaning towards sending it out as an email rather than publishing it to the site, but regardless of what it looks like this is an option that was highly requested in the aforementioned poll and I will always try to supply the kind of content that you as the community want/deem valuable. This article will focus on waiver pickups, identifying for you which teams have favourable schedules in the upcoming week and identifying the best pickups for weekly streaming as well as potential long term holds. I ran a similar style article through the fantasy playoffs this past season if you’re looking for an idea of what this article might look like and whether or not it will be valuable for you.
The monthly team review (the only upgrade in the $10 tier) is just one more way to take your season to the next level. By Zoom or by chat, I will take time every month to give you a review of your team, tell you which players you should trade away or hold, tell you which positions you might need to upgrade, give you trade targets/suggestions specific to your league, and some specific strategy advice where possible. One of the best parts of the Discord community so far has been getting to know the regulars and I would love to get the chance to put some faces to names and give you some detailed fantasy advice tailored exactly to your team context in this way.
What It Means for the General Community
One thing that all this change does NOT mean is that my commitment to the general population of the Discord community will be reduced in any way. I will still be putting out the two articles a week you’re used to, one deep diving puzzling players suggested by the community and another looking into trade targets. The player deep dives you will all recall from last season as they were a big hit (plus a great way to interact with everyone). I expect that article to remain on a Tuesday or Wednesday schedule each week. The trade targets article will again be a weekend affair. You might remember that last year my weekend articles followed a different format, tracking players who were hot and cold and projecting whether they would maintain their pace, improve, or regress. I don’t view the trade targets article as being much different; I will still be looking at hot and cold players and making calls on whether you should trade for them or trade them away. I do anticipate that the “trade target” moniker will drive more eyeballs to the articles which is the main reason for the change.
Lastly, I want to thank each and every one of you for making this possible. When I started writing articles in March 2020 I didn’t really know if anyone would read them, but I have made friends and developed a community that I am truly proud of and I could not have done that without you. If you choose not to subscribe as a patron it will not change my view of you or my willingness to help you create and refine your process as a fantasy hockey manager; I wanted to build this option for people who wanted even more than I was already giving them (and yes, make back a portion of my financial investment). Whether or not you choose to become a patron I will still be here talking hockey with you all and trying to help you make sense of Andre Burakovsky’s shooting percentage.
Much love,
Nate
Apples and Ginos 