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Sean Allen, Special to ESPN.comSep 30, 2024, 11:00 AM ET
CloseSean Allen is a fantasy analyst for ESPN.com. He was the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hockey Writer of the Year. You can tweet him @seanard.
There is a reason they are called power plays.
For the top 150 skaters in fantasy scoring last season, power-play points accounted for 30.8% of their total points (regular points, not fantasy). That percentage has ebbed and flowed between 28.0% and 32.3% across the past 10 years. So saying one-third of the points the skaters on your fantasy team will score will come on the power play is pretty close to an accurate statement. For reference, power-play points accounted for 22.2% of all points league-wide last season.
If you look at forwards and defense separately, the results change a little. The top 60 D scored 27.1% of their points on the advantage, while the top 100 forwards collected 31.6%.
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The takeaway here is that power-play points are exceedingly important when it comes to fantasy value. To maximize your team’s scoring potential, you need to prioritize players who not only play on the power play but are crucial to their team’s top unit.
Take the top five players in power-play ice time for every team last season and call them the “first units,” while calling players ranked No. 6 through 10 the “second units.” (No, this isn’t exactly accurate, but a quick way to make a point.) The “first units” accounted for 3,396 power-play points, while the “second units” managed just 905 power-play points. That’s a massive disparity and a reason why the top unit is so important.
Shifts in power-play roles can create opportunities to draft undervalued players. Identifying these power-play producers early can be the difference between a good fantasy season and a championship-winning one.
Let’s give a quick snapshot of how each team’s man…
Source link : https://www.espn.com/fantasy/hockey/story/_/id/41498241/espn-nhl-fantasy-hockey-power-play-scorers-forwards-defensemen
Author : Sean Allen
Publish date : 2024-09-30 17:10:41
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