League Scoring Format

Overview: What this formula accomplishes
The main objective to this format is to create a league where the NHL's dominant players are dominant fantasy players while keeping things simple. Most fantasy formats lack proper scoring balance due to lack of research and statistics utilized to determine a correct balance. I have spent a countless amount of time creating scenarios and analyzing statistics to compare stat impact. In this format the best players in the NHL are much more consistently valued relative to their real value. In the following paragraphs I will break down key advantages to this format.

TOI
This is an underused stat in many leagues for various reasons. The biggest reason outside of simply being overlooked is because of the difficulty of balancing this category in the popularly used fantasy point scoring leagues. TOI is one of the most consistent and accurate stats to use in fantasy leagues. The best players in the NHL play the most minutes, it’s that simple. Bad players do not get a lot of ice time on a consistent basis. Sure the stat can fluctuate as some teams play their top lines more heavily and some teams tend to rely more on rolling 4 lines. The same can be said about goals and assists, some teams focus on offense and some teams focus on defense.

Defensemen value
The next key factor here is defensemen value, after all defensemen are some of the most complete players in the league, right? In the majority of league settings any defensemen who doesn't score near a top six forward rate is virtually a second rate player. It has helped a small amount that over the past few years leagues have been more regularly incorporating blocks/hits, but that still doesn't cut it. TOI being a highly valuable stat in this format is a big component to increasing defense value. Some of the best defenders in the league (ex: Suter) typically don't score a staggering amount of points, but he certainly is one the better defenders in the league. In this format TOI is worth the same amount of points as goals or assists, which makes premier NHL defenders like Suter a highly valuable asset in earning these points and certainly makes defensemen more valuable than forwards regarding this stat. It is about time defenders are the true king of a category.

Why is +/- eliminated
This has to be the worst fantasy category leagues regularly use. We aren't picking NHL teams to earn our points we are picking players to build our own teams. It was one thing to use this stat in one year leagues where you could make informative decisions on players +/- probability by analyzing the quality of their teams, but in dynasty leagues it doesn't always work that way over the long-term. Why should you be punished two seasons from now over selecting a great player because the team dynamics change? It certainly isn't a critical enough stat to where you would ever consider dropping great players over to correct, so why should you suffer negative consequences. If it isn't even a critical stat to begin with, why clutter the league up with it at all.

Goal value vs assist
Many leagues have a goal value rated higher than assists. Not only would this further decrease the value of defenders but valuing goals over assists is subject to debate. Many great players have played in the NHL who were dominantly set-up guys. This league is balanced well without requiring the need to spike up a stat like goals.

Goalie vs player value
I find that too many leagues value goaltenders at a very high ratio vs skaters. I am not a fan of having to manage 20+ forwards on a roster who are marginally more valuable to my team than two goaltenders. Especially considering the fact that only handful of goaltenders in the league dominate creating an unrecoverable deficit for GM's who weren't lucky enough to draft one of these rare gems. With that said I do believe they are important and should rightfully carry some weight. In this format goaltenders are responsible for roughly 1/3 of the leagues points which is a very fairly balanced ratio.

Primary skater vs secondary stat categories
This is one the biggest issues leagues have balancing out. I regularly see leagues that score secondary stats like Blocks/Hits/FO/SOG so low that they might as well not exist or so high that they have too much impact on scoring. The primary stats such as G/A/PPP/TOI are unarguably far superior categories in terms of value and consistency thus the proper weight of these categories is critical.

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Scoring stats breakdown
The Weight determines the importance of each scoring category relative to the other scoring categories. For example, if your league only used the Goals category with a weight of 3, the Assists category with a weight of 1, and the +/- category with a weight of 1, and Team A won the Goals category while Team B won the Assists and +/- categories, then Team A's record would be 3-2-0 (3 wins for winning Goals, and 2 losses for losing Assists and +/-), and Team B's record would be conversely 2-3-0 at the end of the matchup/Scoring Period.

Skater vs Goalie Balance / Target Ratio
Skater Value: 2/3 or (66.66%) = 12 win categories
Goalie Value: 1/3 or (33.33%) = 5 win categories

Skater Balance / Target Ratio
Primary Stats (G, A, PPP, TOI) = 2/3 or (66.66%)
Secondary Stats (SOG, Hits, Blocks, FO%) = 1/3 or (33.33%)

Skaters: Primary (8 stats) Secondary (4 stats)
G = 2 win
A = 2 win
PPP = 2 win
TOI = 2 win
SOG = 1 win
Hits = 1 win
Blocks = 1 win
FO% = 1 win

Gaolies: (5 stats)
W = 2 win
GAA = 1 win
SV% = 1 win
SO = 1 win