Welcome to the inaugural Daily Deke Fantasy Hockey League.  Since IceJunkies and Nosebleed Media (Daily Deke) merged this past year, we are proud and honored to be your center of Fantasy Hockey Addiction.

If you are new to Fantasy Hockey or have never played in a Fantasy Hockey league before … come check us out, we are in for an exciting season and this will become a great learning experience.  Most everyone who is already playing in this league has been part of a Fantasy Hockey for some time, if you have questions or need help just ASK us, we want everyone to have fun playing and learning!  I am not promising we won’t make fun of you in our Fantasy Hockey League Forum … but we will give you solid advice and will help you learn the sport.  The one thing we want to provide is a fun and competitive learning experience - Trash Talking is not a suggestion, but more of a requirement!

Below are the 3 types of leagues we will be running this year … these leagues are open to everyone and are free of charge!

Head-to-Head
In a ‘Head-to-Head’ league fantasy owners are pitted against each other weekly in one on one duels. The owners attempt to win as many stat categories as possible per week, with their weekly record to be added to their cumulative record. Head-to-head leagues offer a bracket-style playoff format at the end of the regular season.

Rotisserie (Roto)
Rotisserie’ league is one in which teams are ranked in order from best to worst in certain categories and receive points corresponding to their ranking in each of those stat categories. For example, a team receives 10 points for having the highest total of goals in a 10 team league, 9 points for second most goals. The same applies across all scoring categories. In a 10 team league with 10 categories, the maximum number of points a team can earn is 100 (by finishing 1st in each category). The least is 10, by finishing last and collecting only 1 point per category. Rotisserie leagues are likely the most strategic type of fantasy pool and reward managers whose team has strong, balanced scoring across all categories. However, there is no playoff structure to this type of league as whoever is in first when the season ends wins.

Keeper Leagues
Fantasy hockey pools that “roll over” into other years are called “Keeper” or “Dynasty” leagues. The leagues can be run each year in any of the above formats with a winner declared at the end of each season. At the end of the year team managers decide which players they wish to protect (the number varies - from protecting and keeping all players, to keeping as few as three or four players). Before the NHL season opener, a fantasy draft is held to fill out the rest of the roster. This is the most in-depth type of league with multi-season strategies, draft pick trades and a focus on building a team that not only wins now but wins later as well. This league will be the deepest of all the Daily Deke leagues as the rules will encourage people to find and draft young players who they can keep for multiple seasons and rosters will be large. The goal of this league is to get down into drafting third line players and possibly even players who may not play this season but will have an impact in the future.

Clint is the commissioner of all 3 leagues - Clint has been involved in Fantasy Hockey for many many years and his knowledge of Hockey Players, Strategy and the sport as a whole is impressive and he is a wealth of information.  Clint and I started IceJunkies 2 years ago as a blog about hockey, our love of the sport and it grew from there.  Last year, Clint and I joined Grant and Alan at Dailydeke.com (along with a team of other bloggers at Nosebleed Media), since then we have grown into one big happy Hockey family.  Bottom Line - Hockey has brought us all together and how better to celebrate this sport than to see who FAILS!

The rules are being finalized and the leagues will be created soon, we will be discussing our Fantasy Hockey standings each week on The Weekly Deke (www.nosbleedtv.com) our podcast that airs every Tuesday @ 9pm ET.

If you are interested please leave a comment and I will get in touch with you!

Let the trash talking begin …

Tags: Fantasy Hockey