…Roman Josi is -21 right now. And he’s injured? Are you kidding me?! Zero-G? How about Zero-D?
As is the custom, this is not the place to come for your waiver wire pickups or under the hood analysis. For that, and as I have continually (insert more eye rolling emojis here students) admonished, please listen to the Apples & Ginos Podcast. Nate and Blake and Gugzy and…put in the hard work for all of us. I’ve been listening for three years now and my profile continues to level up.
…it’s been a grueling past two weeks in fantasy hockey for me. Yeah, I know. The struggle is real. But (so for real) it’s been pretty much the same sort of thing amongst my three teams.
Namely, underachieving teams projected to win by large margins with more games played and going right to the bitter end on Sunday nights with a squeaky win or a bitter loss. Not a fan.
As someone mentioned in the Discord server, I’d rather get blown out or win big. Sort of like what I want from my real life teams as well.
I’m no Brock Boeser, Blake, but I would like to at least maintain some semblance of my remaining coiffure.
When Less Can Be More?
Posted this question on the server: What’s the best strategy, if any, when you have no way of matching your opponent’s games played in any given week?
Short of “blowing up your team” in an attempt to gain games played, the best we could come up with was to rely on your team’s quality to overcome the fewer games played dilemma.
Sorry.
Not what I was looking for (and I’m not that much of a control freak…Wait, maybe I am more of a control freak than I thought…). Nevertheless, as I began to reflect on the season so far, there have been weeks when I had significant games played advantages only to underachieve and lose. So annoying.
Conversely, there have been weeks when I had fewer games played and was projected to lose only to have my team over perform (this never seems to happen enough though, right?) and win.
So what’s the lesson?
That maybe when you’re dealing with a roundish rubber disk flying through the air through bodies and sticks, this whole proposition is pretty much a nightmare to predict.
Plus (minus) Fors
Not sure how many articles ago I talked about the whole plus/minus thing. This is, after all, the same guy who never makes his lunch the night before but did so last night because I needed a break from trying to figure out what to put in this article all the while pacing the floors wondering out loud if JJ Peterka was ever gonna score again! and left that same sandwich in the refrigerator and forgot to take it to work today…But I digress…
I know, I know honey. I just remembered that I forgot…
If you’re in a league with plus/minus as a scoring category (either a point or categories league), you’ve probably been playing fantasy hockey for a long time (me) or are just used to using the Yahoo default settings. Whatever the case, probably no other topic, with the exception of goalies, causes as much consternation. You either hate or loathe plus/minus. I kind of just hate it. In a sort of having to caddy in the rain kind of way.
Anyway, like most dysfunctional relationships, I’ve grown numb to the pain it causes. I mean, you just know that if you have star players on the ice playing for teams that are losing late in a game and their teams pull their goalies, you’re staring down the barrel of the minus sewer pipe. It’s the worst.
And yet, as I’ve said before, while having plus/minus does add an additional layer to your daily and nightly over thinking, it also in my view, serves as a sort of “leveler” of the playing field. In other words, in an uncomfortable endeavor such as this, plus/minus makes it even more so.
Side Bar One: Leaning hard into D at the draft and afterward has been a mixed bag for a nut so far. I drafted Werenski, Dobson, Dahlin, and Josi and later added Letang, Seider, and Chychrun through trades and the waiver wire. Ah, the machinations of a floor guy. Still a ways to go, but…”it’s getting later earlier…”
Sleepless in Seattle
Two of my three grown children live in Seattle. As a consequence, I don’t get to see them much.
SideBar Two: Vancouver is drivable from Seattle, right…?
However, for the past few days, my wife and I have been fortunate to have them in town for a pre-holiday visit. My time in front of this computer and the Yahoo Stat Tracker has been limited and somewhat liberating. Even so, frequent trips to the powder room have reinforced the reality that my fantasy hockey teams continue to underperform.
Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem to matter quite as much…
Musical Interlude Which Doesn’t Seem to Have any Connection With The Topic At Hand But Just Might
…I’ve been walking the streets at night,
The Rock
A funny thing can happen when you spend as much time as I do obsessing over fantasy hockey teams and players and then you get to go to an actual real-life hockey game as I’m about to do tomorrow.
Those two grown children of mine mentioned above will meet up with my third grown child and me at Prudential Center for the game between the New Jersey Devils and the Chicago Blackhawks. To say I’m looking forward to it would obviously be an understatement. But when you couple that up with the fact that a friend who works for the Devils is talking about potential upgrades and VIP pre-game festivities, IPPs and Corsi Fors fade away just a tad. Now you’re talking.
So with fingers crossed, and my phone put away, this self-appointed president of the Timo Time Fan Club will venture off to watch an actual hockey game. Imagine that?!
At this time of year, emotions run a bit higher than usual for me. The opportunity to spend time with my kids doing something that has become such an important part of my later days and earlier nights is one that I hope is never lost on me. I hope too that my readers who I’d guess are of an earlier gen than me, feel the same way.
And now what would one of these articles be without some sort of parting attempt at a thematic connection (for me?).
So maybe, just maybe, we could all just take a second or two, to slow down a touch and watch.
For everyone who’s taken the time; a heart-felt thank you.
Hopefully through these words you’ve found some humor, some perspective with regard to your individual fantasy hockey experiences, and some context for this exercise which has and continues to connect all of us in so many distant and close corners.
Have you been half asleep
And have you heard voices,
I’ve heard them calling my name
Are these the sweet sounds that called
The young sailors
I think they’re one and the same
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it
It’s something that I’m supposed to be
A toast to innocence.
And another Auld Lang Syne.
Apples and Ginos 