0.5
Half a point.
That was the difference between winning and losing last season in my keeper league. Despite trailing by large totals most of the year, I clawed my way back and had first place for one of the days of the final weekend. By the time the final buzzer sounded on the final game, I had fallen short by half of a stinking point.
If the eighth place team, of all people, had one more goalie win that would have taken that half-point away from the first place team and there would have been a tie. The ninth place team was one save percentage point back of first as well and there was one goal against him in the third period of the final game that prevented him from staying at .914 instead of the .913 he barely fell into. I saw the whole thing unfold on the live stat tracker and it was heart-breaking, as you can imagine.
That’s how close it was. My run of back-to-back championships had been ended and I had the whole summer to stew on it.
’08-9
Fast forward to the start of this season.
Having traded for Martin Brodeur late in the prior campaign, I was fully looking forward to pairing him with Henrik Lundqvist for a full season. I had picked up Ty Conklin at the supplemental draft as a third goalie, confident that he would get a healthy number of starts as the back-up on the defending Stanley Cup champs.
Fast forward to November 1st. It was a busy 13-game schedule on a Saturday night. I was in the midst of another night of live blogging and I happened to be tuned into the New Jersey/Atlanta tilt. It was almost halfway through the game and it looks like Brodeur was going to be pitching his third shutout of the young season.
SNAP
And then it happened.
You’ve seen the highlights. It was a completely innocuous play. In fact, based on what the MSG broadcasters said at the time I wrote, “The legend left this game with a bruised elbow, giving Weekes his first taste of action this season” in the live blog that night. Little did I know.
So you now know what happened to Brodeur in terms of missing most of the season due to that torn bicep. The aftermath on my team was that I eventually traded for Chris Osgood (December 7th) to complement my Ty Conklin as a tandem to work with Henrik Lundqvist.
It sounded like a good idea at the time.
Miraculously, I still somehow ended up with a decent 2.56 GAA and .910 SV% overall. Those numbers were good enough for a 6/10 and 6/10 in those categories and I finished tied with the second-most wins at 90, which was five behind first place in that category. The best GAA in our league was only a 2.43 (and that guy finished dead-last in each goalie category the prior season), while the top SV% was .921.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Soon-to-be Calder winner Steve Mason is a part of my farm system, but because he didn’t even get his first NHL start until early November I wasn’t able to use him at all this season. He was a part of my junior system, which meant I would have had to call him up by October 31st (our version of the 10-game rule used for juniors in real life) to use him on my active roster. Timing is everything.
I traded for Henrik Zetterberg, Daniel Carcillo, Brian Rafalski, Scott Niedermayer, Zdeno Chara and Daniel Alfredsson (which finally completed the Pizza Line for me after years of trying) during the season. I gave up key farm assets like Pekka Rinne (who, in hindsight, sure would have been better than Chris Osgood for this season), Mikkel Boedker, Kris Versteeg, Alex Goligoski, Kris Russell, Kyle Quincey, Brian Elliott and Ville Leino as parts of those deals. I also parted ways with Ryan Malone, Ed Jovanovski, Wade Redden and Kari Lehtonen. Remember, my league is a 10-team roto format with 15 active keepers and 40 farmers per team.
October 21st I needed to bolster my blueline (I had lost Sergei Gonchar) so I dealt Teemu Selanne for Sergei Zubov in a move that didn’t work out so well. It happens. Even though Zubov ended up being hurt most of this season it really didn’t cost me anything because Selanne was a bench player for me.
I also dealt for Alexander Radulov after he bolted (I gave up a first round pick, which we now know will be the 10th pick for this summer’s entry draft) because he still has farm eligibility for more than a year after he eventually returns to the NHL. I still like that deal for my particular situation.
Coming into this season, my team had won the +/- category in three of four years and was second the other time. This year only three teams had a worse result in that category (I was +28 compared with +116 the year before, which gives you an idea of how many of my stars had off-years) and one of those teams was only two +/- points away from passing me.
THIS { } CLOSE TO LOSING
Aside from the first few weeks of the season, I spent most of the year looking up at the leaders. In mid-February, I trailed by as many as 15 roto points despite having a fairly star-studded line-up. Too many of them were having sub-par years, from Olli Jokinen to Dion Phaneuf. 15 points is a hugely discouraging deficit, but being the stats geek I am I had carefully studied where those points were coming from and I knew I still had a chance to come back.
I pulled into first place with about two weeks to go and then it was a see-saw battle the rest of the way.
When all was said and done, our league went down to the final games of the final weekend – again – for the fifth time in six years. We’ve actually been around for seven years, but lost a season due to the lockout.
I finished with 70.5 points. Second place had 69 and third spot (last year’s champ) had 67.
So how close was it? Very.
Team Nichols’ perspective: one win back of gaining 0.5, which would have cost third place 0.5 as well; six wins back of gaining 1.5, which would have cost second place 1.0 and third place that 0.5; a few goals back of gaining 0.5 in GAA; one bad game away from losing 1.0 in SV% (which is why sitting Henrik Lundqvist in the final Philly game ensured the win for me); -2 combined from losing 1.0 in +/-; +7 away from gaining 1.0 in +/-; 10 goals away from gaining 1.0 in goals; 23 shots fewer would have meant -1.0.
Second place team’s perspective: five assists away from +1.0; four assists away from losing 1.0; +5 away from gaining 1.0 in +/-; 22 PIM away from gaining 1.0; one SV% point from tying two teams, which would have meant +1.0; two teams just five goalie wins back.
Third place team’s perspective: it was all about goaltending. He finished with 8.5/ 10 in wins, 4/10 in GAA and 4.5/10 in SV%. His offensive line-up features Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin.
VALUABLE LESSONS
Fight hard to the end. If you’ve left everything out on the proverbial ice, there’ll be no regrets at the end of the season. Cliche? Sure. It’s no less true though.
Scouting pays off. In our deep keeper format, it truly pays to spend extra time finding potential prospect gems. My team’s main strength is being able to trade tangible non-active roster assets to make my core group stronger and that process never ends. I’ve got Lundqvist, Brodeur and Mason in net for me but that still didn’t stop me from snagging emerging Swedish star Jonas Gustavsson a month ago. You can never have enough depth.
Reputation matters. The better a name you make for yourself in your group’s trade community in terms of being able to identify those gems and then deal them, the more likely you are to get deals done in the future with those same owners. Try to trade a handful of magic dust instead and you may win in the short run, but you’ll just be burning yourself over the long haul. Trades that truly work for both teams dramatically increase your chances of repeat business.
Every start counts. You never know going into a season if you’ll be involved in a race that goes down to the final weekend, so make sure you’re smart with who you start at any given position throughout the entire season. If you’re in a roto format, as an example, remember that if you lose a defenceman to injury you can save his starts until you have a good replacement; rather than just sticking in the first available schmuck and wasting valuable starts in the process.
Depth matters. Headed into this season I was set in net and on the blueline in terms of starting positions, but I still drafted Conklin and Filip Kuba as back-ups and they ended up contributing key numbers to the team when others got hurt.
So now the process of defending the championship begins. The level of competition in this league just seems to get stronger each season thanks to how well most teams are using the deep farm system, so winning championship number four is going to be no easy task.
Win or lose though, there’ll be a lot of fun along the way.