Okay, so today I decided to dive into the world of NHL fantasy projections. I’ve been playing fantasy hockey for years, but I’ve always just kind of winged it when it comes to picking players. This year, I’m getting serious, and that means figuring out these projections.
First, I started by looking around for some free resources. I mean, who wants to pay for this stuff if you don’t have to, right? I found a few websites that offered some basic projections, but they were all pretty…meh. Nothing really jumped out at me.
Then, I remembered a buddy of mine talking about creating his own projections using spreadsheets. I figured, why not give it a shot? I’m no Excel wizard, but I can handle the basics.
Digging into the Data
So I started gathering data. I grabbed player stats from the past few seasons – you know, goals, assists, shots, power-play points, all that good stuff. I also looked at things like ice time and shooting percentage. The idea is to get a feel for how a player has performed historically and then try to predict how they’ll do this year.
It was a bit of a grind, I won’t lie. Copying and pasting all those numbers into a spreadsheet? Tedious. But I kept at it, reminding myself that this was going to give me an edge in my fantasy league.
Once I had all the data in place, I started playing around with some simple formulas. I’m basically trying to weight different stats based on their importance. Like, goals are obviously worth more than, say, hits. I’m still tweaking these weights, to be honest. It’s a lot of trial and error.
The First Projections are in
After a few hours of tinkering, I finally had some preliminary projections. It’s definitely a work in progress. There’s plenty I want to improve like adding in some of the following.
- Age: Have to account for if a player is on the upswing of their career, or over the hill.
- New Teams/Lines: Did a player switch teams and linemates? I need to find a way to account for that.
I’m also thinking about factoring in things like injury history and maybe even some advanced stats. But for now, I’ve got a decent starting point. At least I think I have the calculations part down.
I ran my projections against some of the “expert” rankings I found online, and… well, let’s just say there were some differences. It’ll be interesting to see how my homemade projections stack up against the big guys’ once the season gets going. Wish me luck!
