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Toronto Media / Friday Fantasy Fireworks |
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What a wild week in the Nation Hockey League, seriously! A few storms blowing through Southern Ontario but mostly into Buffalo where they received 6 feet of snow in 24 hours; only to be hit with another couple feet just a day or two after. They even cancelled the Sabres vs Rangers game tonight.
It’s amazing the ups and downs that a team goes through in a season. There are 82 games of regular season hockey, pre-season and hopefully playoffs. You can’t expect your team to show up and play lights out for every single game, and every player to be giving 110% every shift. Sorry, that’s not how it works; for any sport. Don’t let the media blow things up and make you even more fired up, that’s what these guys are paid for.
Media in Toronto:
Toronto is the worst for this, as the media/writers will enjoy writing about how bad the team is and what us fans should be thinking. Sorry, that’s now how it should be….these guys literally make a living writing negatively about a team they likely don’t care for. There are a lot of Maple Leaf fans, we all know that…but there are just as many haters; if not more! So these guys like Simmonds, Cox, and so on will write in a negative manner to please all of the haters, which of course brings out the true fans to go against what they are writing and thus gets the attention of more people. It’s actually pathetic how they take away the light from other writers who are in it for more than just getting attention. When Brian Burke was fired from the Toronto Maple Leafs he said one thing that I loved..
Steve Simmonds thought he would ask Brian Burke a question while he gave his final press conference while giving his good byes…it was something along the lines of what he will miss most in Toronto. Burke said something along the lines of “I won't miss having to answer your questions, next!” To me, that was the perfect answer. What I would really like to know is what Burke really wanted to say/do with Simmonds.
The media is allowed to have access to interview players, ask questions to the coach and staff and there isn’t a whole lot teams can do to avoid the whole debacle. The NHL has this setup for each and every team and its part of how the media and NHL work together. Which is fine, but if I had any say in this; I would simply not allow specimens like Simmonds to enter the rink… I would tell his employers they are more than welcome to send someone else to get their information through questions. What are they going to do? That’s one way of starting to take care of the problem, simply don’t allow access to these negative nancy “pukes” as Brian Burke refers to them as; and that’s one way to start ‘change’.
After a few terrible losses the media tried to talk to Leafs sniper Phil Kessel after a game; he told the media to “get away from me”. I get it, why would he want to talk to someone about the worst game of the season just minutes after the loss? Randy Carlyle on the other hand feels “It’s the player’s responsibility to make sure everybody’s available to the media” and that “When you are called upon, you are to be made available.” Personally, I think Carlyle is a horrible coach and if he had his players more prepared and not doing hoolahoops before the game instead of focusing on the task at hand, the players wouldn’t have to be talking to the media as often because they would be winning more games.
Ok that was my rant on the media, of course it’s different everywhere and it has bigger and smaller impacts around the league; it’s just horrible in Toronto and I don’t see that changing in the near future unless they kibosh these sad sacs of crap who call themselves writers for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Upgrading your fantasy roster:
Be sure that you are constantly looking at the action going on in your fantasy pools. Who is being dropped, who is being picked up, and of course what trades are taking place. Sometimes I will even go as far as looking at the others team’s rosters in my pool(s) and see who’s in need of an upgrade. Someone may have a weakness on forward, defense or goaltending.
Because you have been following the free agents so closely you may have an idea of a player or two that has stood out and could find a home on your roster…what better way to pick them up then by trading away 2 players from your roster, for the best player in the trade and then picking up the player off the wire who you feel will keep the production up.
If you have IR slots open on your roster; why not consider dropping your worst player. You can pick up the IR player, put them in the injured reserve slot and then still have the option to pick someone else up from the free agency in that slot until your player is back and healthy. Sometimes you can find a gem in there because someone may have 3 players on the IR and they can’t hold onto all of them.
Here is an example: I just picked up Ryan McDonagh from the IR (who just started skating again). I have 4 defense slots in my pool; but I already have 4 defensemen…which means I would either roll with an extra defenseman or have to drop one..
Why do that? I am going to look deep into the teams in my fantasy and see if anyone could use an upgrade on defense. I will then add in a quality forward with my defenseman I pick to move and try to upgrade those two players in a package for a better forward. Then I can move McDonagh into my D slot and I just upgraded the forward. Overall I feel my team will be better; and at the same time the person I made the trade with will feel good knowing they improved their defense and lost just a slight bit of points from moving the forward. You may have to overpay slightly, but keep in mind that you have that IR player coming in; so you can afford to.
This is a bit different than the buy low sell high method I have gone over in the past….But that doesn’t mean it still can’t be implemented into the trade. Always go for the biggest player you feel you could acquire without insulting the person you are trying to trade with, this way when you do “settle” with a lesser player; they will feel like they still got a good deal. If you go in looking for what you feel is a legit fair trade, good chance they won’t feel the same way and will want to give you a lesser fantasy player in return. It’s not mind games or tricking the person, but more so simple negotiating skills like when buying a house.
Have you made any big trades lately? Found any gems on the free agency list? Please, feel free to discuss in the comments section as I would love to hear some action that has been going on!
There are four games lined up tonight:
(NYR) Lundqvist VS (BUF) Enroth
(NYI) Halak VS (PIT) Fleury
(BOS) Rask VS (CLB) Bobrovsky
(NJ) Schnieder VS (EDM) Scrivens
I will bold who the starters are as the day goes on.
Have a great weekend and thanks again for reading.
I hope everyone who has been following has improved this season in their fantasy.
Cheers!
Blogger •Fantasy Hockey Expert • 
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