The Worst Moves

In light of the Chicago Blackhawks wheeling and dealing to sign three very good players to build a franchise around (though, what kind of franchise you can build with how little money they have left is a contentious debate), I figured it was time to look at the moves made up to this point in the Puck You fantasy league.  Specifically, the shitty moves.  The task was simple.  Each GM would submit, in order, their top (or bottom?) three worst moves of the year.  Each selection would get points based on their rating, (3 for being the 1st pick, 2 for the second pick and 1 for a third pick), and the results are compiled here.  Thanks to the 8 managers that responded to the pole and a big go fuck yourself to the rest.  Without further adieu, I present the top 3 moves considered to be the worst…

3.  People Know Me drops Jimmy Howard right before he becomes a stud – Since being dropped by People Know Me, Jimmy has won 8 games on 12 starts, boasted a 2.40 GAA and a .914 save percentage.  Luckily, GM Jesse Cook has filled the gaping void left by Paymon’s cock in his ass Jimmy with the phenom know as Brian Elliot, who sports a 3.09 GAA. 2 wins on 7 starts and a .891 save percentage.  Moves like this are good for the entire league, save People Know Me.

2.  Kanucks drafting Pavel Datsyuk over Sidney Crosby - Even with Sidney sitting out because his penis is sore from banging all the lovely ladies of Steel town, when you have the chance to take potentially the GREATEST PLAYER OF ALL TIME vs. anyone a very, very good Russian, you draft him.  Even worse, Kanucks later dealt Datsyuk for Joe Pavelski and Devon Setoguchi.  Is there anyone out there that would take those two butt pirates and give up Crosby?  Bert doesn’t count.

1.  Drafting Jimmy Howard in the first round – We all saw it, we all dropped our jaws in shock, and we all pointed and laughed.  As GM Steve McIntyre observed, “that was the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life.  How he can make fun of me for not knowing how to use a computer after that stunt is beyond me.  Jesse is a joke, or an idiot, or both.  Yeah, he is a joke idiot.”  Goalie management is the only reason this team isn’t in first by a country mile (and is also the only reason Cole Ballard’s team is currently in first…goalies do matter a lot) and while People Know Me has taken advantage of the Kanucks dropping the starting goalie for Anaheim and keeping the backup in Boston, it may not be enough, since the rest of his goalies suck the balls.

House Special: OverCooked Roster

Slash to the top of the helmet of Red McIntyre for the initial observation

Six weeks into the season, something we may never, ever see again has occurred. YTD, one team has 9 offensive players ranked in the top 78, and 10 ranked in the top 105. This is unheard of, and of course this team has a comfy lead sitting atop the standi..wait, what? 8th?!?!

People Know Me has a dynamite team this year, which we know from the debacle during the first round of the draft where GM Jesse Cook drafted Jimmy Howard, has zero to do with Cook’s drafting skills. Clearly, it has to be complete, dumb, blind luck. But what about his standings in the league? Is that luck? A quick analysis, which involves pulling my thumb out of my ass, licking it and holding it up to the screen (known in the statistical analysis community as “Cooking the books”), gives me a 95% confidence level that there is no luck involved. With a r-squared of 0.98, I can confidently conclude that the reason People Know Me sits in 8th has to do with the idiocy team mismanagement of GM Jesse Cook. Lets take a look at 5 possible reasons for his poor mismanagement, with input from various GMs from the league contributing thoughts (anonymous, of course).

1) He consults with Paymon on roster changes, but often times mishears him because Paymon’s cock is on one of his ears, and a tube of toothpaste is in the other. “Very, very plausible. Most likely true,” says one GM, named Ryan Schauble. “He may even consult on roster changes with Paymon as well…oh, I thought you were just asking me about the cock in ear thing.” Indeed.

2) He is fighting with his lover Paymon, which is why he has been distracted in the league. “Nah, the fighting just make the sex better,” says $0.20 Kane GM Red McIntyre. “What Jesse really likes is when Paymon brings a friend and they both try to wrestle him, one gets his upper body, one gets his legs, and the whole time his pet gerbil Hansel is in his ass.” Wow, TMI.

3) He is dumb. Montreal Wanderers GM Court Watson: “Yup”

4) He has trouble using a mouse and keyboard. “That big, dumb white, fuck says he has the best hands in Richmond, but they are such gorilla hands he has no touch on a computer at all, what a buffoon.” Old Swedish Balls GM Bert Fong

5) He is a cock-blocker. “Heck yeah he is.” This response was actually unanimous, coming from all GMs.

So there you have it, I don’t know about you, but after this analysis I walked away getting a pretty good understanding of why Cook sucks.

UPDATE: After reading this post, GM Steve McIntyre pointed out that Jesse’s goalies suck even worse than he does. This further supports the notion that Cook is an idiot; anyone with that many players ranked that highly who has been able to translate them into zero trades for better goaltending clearly doesn’t know what he is doing. Even Bert Fong has made a trade this year.

The Rain Man Approach

Fantasy leagues are supposed to be all about numbers. You put up the best, you win the most, and you take home the trophy. But a recent look at Puck Yourself’s statistics shows that this isn’t necessarily true. This could be because of the format; weekly head to head matchups as opposed to the standard rotisserie league. In head to head, stats reset weekly, which means you have to be lucky to be good (and not necessarily good to be lucky). After 19 weeks of play, the list below shows the teams’ average ranking overall, based on their position in each fantasy scoring category in total production.

1) GM Anze Backup	4.06
2) Steve Shankopotamous	4.35
3) Reggie ‘Reg’ Dunlop	5.00
4) Mystery Eskimos	5.12
5) Western WA Capitals	5.24
6) HANK’S AUTOSHOP	5.29
7) Andre Poodle Lussier	5.88
8) Bizzarohawks	6.18
T-9) Ottawa HC	6.24
T-9) RoBERTo LuFONGo	6.24

As you can see, for the most part this table is consistent with the league standings, with the exception of 2 outliers…GM Anze Backup and Ottawa HC, whose rank in the table above have been swapped in the actual league standings. This anomaly is concerning to GM Anze Backup GM Red McIntyre, who assessed his chances of making the playoff’s last week as “slim to none, unless I get my head out of my ass.” As for Ottawa HC GM Court Watson, all he could do is smile and take a nice sip of rye as he watched his team this week from the owner’s box. One interesting note is that the Western WA Caps are the perfect blend of the top ranked offensive stats vs. the worst ranked goalies stats. To much of that blend for GM Cole Ballard will probably leave him similar to Bizzarohawks GM Scott Freeland after too much of any blend of Johnnie Walker; alone, in the cold, miserable, and passed out on the deep freeze (or out of the playoffs).

SAY IT AIN’T SO

Daniel Alfredsson is out for at least a week with a broken jaw. No word on how it happened, but it may have been in the showers.

Patrick Kane is out 3-4 weeks with a knee sprain. Yup, he slipped giving GM Jesse Cook the business.

Chris Osgood has been sent home by Detroit and they have called up Jimmy Howard from the AHL to replace him. Wouldn’t you mail it in if you were traded to Steve Shankopotamous? Speaking of which, GM Jesse Cook’s most recent two trades have resulted in a goalie who is benched, a goalie on injured reserve, and the 2008-09 potential Vezina winner possibly being the missing link to get RoBERTo LuFONGo into the playoffs…nice one.

Carey Price is a partying vagina who RoBERTo LuFONGo drafted way to high, probably the worst draft pick of the year next to Steve Shankopotamous’ drafting of Anze Kopitar. Luckily, GM Bert Fong suckered GM Jesse Cook into dealing Tim Thomas for junk.

Bert-metrics

First off a Merry Christmas to all and I wish you and your families much happiness this holiday season.

With the release of Moneyball, sabermetrics became a household term of baseball enthusiasts, and Billy Beane’s low cost yet high winning percent management style of the Oakland A’s became a model for all sports franchises.

Recently, RoBERTo LuFONGo manager Bert Fong has attempted to introduce his own statistical analysis, attempting to show that he is smarter than Yahoo! Sports algorithms specifically designed to rate fantasy players. Problem is, while Asian on the outside, he is far from it on the inside.

“I don't such a hard look at the rankings to help make decisions,” says the linguistically challenged Asian. When arguing one player’s skills over the next, Bert-metrics includes the subjective omission of statistics that are included within league scoring. Part of Bert’s analysis also includes the philosophy “why the fuck should I care about a player's impact on their team?”

This reporter made several inquiries to respected academia. One notable interview was with Pat Watson, former gold medal winner from the University of British Columbia school of business for his studies on efficient capital markets. When Bert’s theory was explained, Pat could only conclude that because he was Asian “he probably got his driver’s license at Sears.” Indeed.

Dr. Jaghil Fuckbert, professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, analyzed Bert-metrics thoroughly. “In his models, Bert is comparing J.P. Dumont to Jiri Hudler, ranked 75 and 87 according to Yahoo! fantasy rankings. Bert-metrics only factors in G, A, P, +/-, PPG, PPA, and GWGs.” Using those numbers led Bert to ask “Does this mean Dumont is a superior player to Hudler? I would have to say no.”

But Dr. Fuckbert argues “based on the numbers he is using, Dumont beats Hudler season to date 3-2-2. Considering there are over 1000 ranked players tracked by Yahoo! Fantasy computers, it is not unreasonable for these two players to be ranked only 12 (1.2% of a field of a 1000) apart. Bert is an idiot.”

Looks like Fuckbert says it all.

SAY IT AIN’T SO

The Boston Bruins continue to dominate the Eastern Conference, buoyed by goaltender Manny Fernandez’s strong performance. Anzoolander manager Jesse Cook, who drafted Boston’s career backup netminder Tim Thomas, readily concedes that “Manny Fernandez will now be the starter for good.”

Mats Sundin has agreed to a one year pro-rated contract with the Vancouver Canucks, and initial reports suggest that Sundin will not be paired with the Sedin twins, instead he will share ice time with Pavol Demitra. Demitra owner Ottawa HC’s manager, Court Watson, noted “I liken the Sundin effect on Demitra to Steve McIntyre pissing on Jesse Cook’s trailer; while wildly entertaining, I see no long term effects, good or bad.”

Alexander Semin returned from a stint on IR only briefly and is injured again. On Semin’s return to the Cap’s, Jesse Cook justified that this made ANZ team member Nicklas Backstrom MORE valuable than Jeff Carter, the league’s leading goal scorer. Numbers show that Jesse is dead wrong, as Backstrom saw a surge in performance filling the gap left by Semin. Actions speak louder than words however, as Jesse proposed another trade to Forgot How To Win manager Cole Ballard, offering Backstom and Patrick Sharp for Jeff Carter and Pavel Datsyuk. Response from Cole: “You should have taken the Carter trade when I first offered it.” Jesse’s stands by his word that Backstrom is more valuable than Carter, Anze Kopitar and Alexander Frolov are to the NHL what Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin are the NFL, and that when Jesse is bored he likes to “suck anus at the Odyssey.” Usually it is Paymon’s.