Goaltending and Overpaying

One thing I have never been able to understand is drafting a goaltender very high. In Roto leagues it certainly makes more sense than H2H but I always feel you can get goal tending in later rounds. The stud scores go fast and they generally carry more categories than your goalie. I have had very good luck each season finding a dark horse in net to help fill the void. In years past it was Andrew Raycroft when he was a rookie in Boston, Last year Ryan Miller. This year it was Backstrom. Sadly for me I traded Backstrom to our eventual keeper league champ. He won H2H over the team who had Kiprusoff. He won based on a guy who was a FA pick up (though he did trade for him) over a guy who took goaltending #1 and #2.

When entering a draft, especially a keeper draft, please don't take a goalie first. Especially in H2H leagues. Goalie stats are usually pretty random week to week to count on. This past season was strong proof of that. I was able to win a lot of goalie stats H2H by using match ups of backup goalies off the FA wire. Granted this is not possible in leagues that have limits on wire moves but it is a good supplement if you want to bulk up on scoring in early rounds. Stay away from leagues with wire moves if you plan to be an active manager. I always enjoy the freedom to manage and freewheel over just locking in a set number of guys and waiting to see what they do.

My next key advice on entering your draft is know what Goal tending stats your league is going to use and how they are weighted. A common mistake I see are guys taking a goalie early in the draft when their net stats account for four out of the eight categories. Sure, you might dominate net stats if you get a great 1-2 punch but if you miss a guy like Crosbey, Ovechkin, or Thornton you are going to have a huge hole to overcome on offense. To many times a manager will draft what he thinks is a sure fire 1-2 punch in net and draft them high to lock it in. Then what happens? One of the goalies has a rocky start or bad season and it cripples the season overall GAA/SV%. We see this time and time again. I counted on Kari Lehtonen this season in my roto, and I should have traded him after the first two weeks. On the other hand if someone like Zetterberg starts out slow, as proved this year, he can rebound to give you the numbers you need without having hurt you to badly.

Another thing we should learn, never be affraid to sell a goalie while they are hot. I had insane offers for Kari Lehtonen early, but his fast 2 shut outs and my deep offense made me laugh at the offers and reject them. I should have taken the depth in scoring and used it to trade for holes I had later in the season. We also saw the same thing from Luongo last season. His shut outs to tart the year were fantasy gold, but we all know how it ended up for poolies in the end. So, if your goaltender starts out to good to be true, it probably is. Sell high and load up. Managers are always willing to overpay for a goaltender. In my main H2H keeper league this year we had a manager trade Datsyuk for Roloson. At the time Rolo was hot and Dats was cold, by the end of the year, and given it was a keeper and Rolo's age it looks pretty one sided.

Locking up a top prospect in net in a keeper league can be risky, especially if you don't have a farm team system. Examples of recent draft picks this last season were Danis in MTL, Racine in TOR. No matter how good a kid is in net, you just can't be sure until you see him in the NHL. So don't draft away your future to get a kid early. Danis and Racine are no longer the #1 prospects in their team's system and they barely sniffed the NHL. While hot names like Rask and Price seem can't miss #1 goalies of the future, remember the hot names of years past who never even saw the NHL for more than a season.