Dobber Fantasy Guide 2007-08 Post-Mortem

Hi Guys,

Been a while since I posted but I was wondering how we all felt Dobber did with his guide this year. (Fear not Dobb, I've purchased my 2008 Guide, and the Prospect Guide, and the Mid-Season Guide and would encourage everyone NOT in my pool to do the same .) Still, a healthy and dispassionate review is always in order.

Injuries to Crosby and taking Kipprusoff over Lundquist (contrary to Dobber's rankings - d'oh) cost me a back-to-back championship. But in my post-mortem I was surprised that Dobber's guide didn't wipe the floor with the other big guides this year as happened last year. In fact, I'm not sure that he "beat" the other mags this year.

What is everyone else's sense? Strengths, weaknesses in Dobber's predictions? Those of the other mags?

send it to me and i will let you know my opinion hahaha

Would definitely be interesting to see a breakdown. This was actually the first year I didn't purchase a guide (besides this one). I used used the old brain + some other brains around these parts.

i think he did about par for all of the magizines as far as a single guide. Each year most will be similar and every few years one will really do well vs everyone else.

The thing that makes his guide better than most is the commuity that will discuss the little differences.

I can't wait for the prospects guide. I am very excited..

ditto, Z. I have my draft coming up in one of my FHL leagues (we always do it before the NHL draft, makes it more interesting), and Bugg/Dobber's work should help tremendously.

I did better this year than last, but all guide predictors are within a few percent of each other: 78% to 85% of players are within 20 points of what was predicted, in pretty much all magazines. Last year I was 79%. This year I was 80%, and my 32% within 5 points is my best ever (!!).

On average I was 12.6 points off per player, which was my best in four seasons.

But that's not the reason you should buy the guides. After all, did it really kill your pool if I said Player A would get 68 points, and another magazine said Player A would get 73 points and he ended up getting 71 points?
I think it's the dark horses, and the % I assigned on each of the guys to look at. It's the prospects and what to expect from them. It's the notes underneath the predictions that could not be found in other magazines. I'm writing for the Forecaster as we speak - and all the stars get 85 words, the lesser guys get 45 words and the prospects get 35 words.
In my opinion...that's backwards.
The stars - we already know about them. Do you need me to tell you in 85 words about Derek Roy? Or are you comfortable with your Roy knowledge...and you would rather I use that wording on Clarke MacArthur?
In my guide, I spend the time and effort on the players you don't know about. I don't waste your time explaining to you, using the biggest sections, how good Ovechkin and Crosby are. I try and help you in your league by expanding more on the unknowns.
Anyway, this year I didn't do too bad statistically, I did pretty good actually, but last year I had my worst year in 12 years of doing this...and I would hate to have lost people/fans/customers/whathaveyou because my accuracy was down mildly. As I said...it's about the other stuff more.

I like how notoriousjim put things. Thanks NJ!!

all the guides are as solid as oak. you take the information you obtain from them and apply your own hockey instincts for a winning recipe.

Hey Dobber,

Thanks for the numerical breakdown. Out of curiosity, does that 80% w/in 20pts include injuries (say Crosby) or not. If you have not extracted the injured players from the mix, how do you feel you did on a ppg basis? (I know that for some players - let's call him Havlat - the prediction already factors in a slew of missed games, but it's hard to predict the freak accident - say Boyle - and it would seem odd to judge a predictive method focused on talent assessment, age, development curve, line-mates, etc against acts of fate. Having said that, fate no doubt plays a big role. I know that last year I must have hit a few more breakout players than usual that it seemed you exceeded the "others" more than my use of your list did this year. Still, please don't take this as any sort of complaint. The main guide, the prospects guide, the mid-season guide, the Forums and now the radio-show. I think the empire is building nicely and I know I won it all last season because of the Dobber advantage.

I'm curious though, have you found any trends in your prediction accuracy? Is it easier to be more accurate with d-men? Or worse? Is the rush of new players into the league at younger years impacting their expected "breakout" year? I know that we are seeing fewer Russians because of the transfer agreement issues, is that making the ones that do come over easier or harder to predict?

I know that you are constantly seeking to improve (hard to do, to be sure) so, where do you feel you would be most able to improve on your predictions?

I can't improve my predictions and I don't look to. Where the work goes is analysis on a player's role with the team, which players will join the team (rookies), trends to finish last season, trends when certain players are out of the lineup, etc.

My high within 20 points is 86.1% (05-06) and my low is 78.8% (06-07). All mags are pretty much in that range. But think about that. 600 players: 86% is 516. 79% is 474. So 40 players are outside that range between the worst magazines and the best? That's not significant. Not really, anyway. In a draft, it may effect one player that you pick.

As I said, it's the other things in my mag that help more than the other mags.

I took nobody out of my calculations, which means for Crosby I was....what, 60 points or so off?


If I take this year's Top 100 players in the NHL, 84% of them I had predicted within 20 points, 62% within 10 points, 36% within 5 points, and one player right on (3 Karma to whoever can guess which player).

My worst was Crosby, then Kovalev, then Hossa, then Ribeiro. All four were either hurt or tough to predict such a surge.