So I’ve been having a pretty good season in my keeper pool this year.
Chris Kunitz is jumping for joy about joining my keeper pool team.
Thanks to some moves and okay drafting, I managed to be in first place for most of the season. I had a 25-point lead at one point last week, but I was a little worried.
So I made a trade, and I think it worked out well.
I traded Matt Duchene, Bobby Ryan, Ryan Miller and my first round pick this year for Chris Kunitz and Antti Niemi.
Overpayment? It may seem like it, but it actually makes a lot of sense for four main reasons:
1) Before the deal, my forward keepers (we’re allowed to keep eight) were Malkin, Stamkos, Getzlaf, Hall, Zetterberg, Duchene, Purcell and Evander Kane. Which meant I was going to lose Ryan for nothing. So I figured I could use him as part of a deal that either improves my keepers or gets me points. I now replace Kunitz with Duchene, and there’s my top eight.
2) The deal gave me about 15 points. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it brought me from around a 27-point lead to around a 42-point lead. In a points-only pool, that’s huge. Kunitz was the key part of this, as he got me about nine points with this deal. And I figure he’s in a good position to keep having success, playing with Sidney Crosby in Pittsburgh.
3) The deal was actually with the guy who is in second. He’s still in second (around a couple of points of third, depending on the night). So it pushed him further back, which was a bonus.
4) And this is the crucial part: Kunitz wasn’t the key piece in this deal for me. It was Niemi. My two goalies are Carey Price and Martin Brodeur. I was doing great with Brodeur, and then he got injured. Fine, I thought. It’s only supposed to be a week. I can ride it out. But now it’s been more than two weeks, and this was a report I saw from Rotoworld one day last week:
Martin Brodeur won’t suit up Thursday and although coach Pete DeBoer said the veteran goalie is “feeling better,” he isn’t believed to be close to returning.
“He’s feeling better but I wouldn’t classify it as day to day,” DeBoer said. “When I say day to day I mean he’s not going to play on Thursday. I don’t mean it’s going to be a month. Sometime in between Thursday and a month. I don’t have a timetable yet but it’s heading in the right direction.” Brodeur is still dealing with a back issue so Johan Hedberg, who hasn’t looked good at all in his place, will continue to start for the Devils.
So that’s not good. Miller isn’t having the greatest season, so I’ve been trying to upgrade my goaltending. Most of the other GMs with goalies with more points than Brodeur weren’t trading them. So I had to up the ante a little bit, and managed to get Niemi.
I will admit that it hurt to trade Duchene. I love the guy, and wanted to keep him on my team. But I really needed to make a move to get a goalie.
So in the end, I traded a goalie having a bad year, a player I couldn’t keep, a draft pick and a great player for an upgrade in nets, more points, and a guy having a great year playing with Crosby (and since then, has eight points in three games, including a five-point night last night).
I think the deal worked out quite well for me.
The Ryan Coke Experience 