Keeper fantasy leagues are a variation of traditional fantasy sports leagues where participants are allowed to keep a certain number of players from their previous season's roster onto their team for the upcoming season. The number of players that can be kept, as well as the specific rules regarding keeping players, vary from league to league and are typically determined by the league commissioner or by a set of agreed-upon rules among league members. In a keeper league, the kept players usually come with a cost, such as forfeiting a specific draft pick in the upcoming draft or having to pay a predetermined fee. This adds a strategic element to the game, as managers must decide which players to keep based on their performance, potential, and value relative to the cost of keeping them. Keeper leagues often provide a deeper level of engagement and strategy compared to standard fantasy leagues because managers need to consider long-term player development and roster management beyond just a single season.
Some common variations and considerations in keeper leagues include:
Number of Keepers: Leagues may have different limits on the number of players each team can keep, typically ranging from one to a significant portion of the roster.
Keeper Costs: Determining how much it costs to keep a player. This could be giving up a draft pick in a specific round, losing a certain amount of auction budget, or other forms of currency within the league.
Keeper Eligibility: Some leagues may have rules regarding how long a player can be kept on a team or restrictions on keeping players acquired via trades or waivers.
Keeper Contracts: In more advanced keeper leagues, managers might assign contracts to players that dictate how long they can be kept on a team before returning to the draft pool.
Dynasty Leagues: These are a more extreme version of keeper leagues where managers keep their entire roster from one season to the next, with only rookie drafts and limited waiver activity to supplement their teams.
For this blog specifically, I will be focusing on how to build a successful team in a Keeper league, which starts by deciding who to keep and what might factor into deciding who stays and who goes.
1. Number of Keepers and League size
The First to keep in mind when it comes to when it comes to deciding keepers is the Number of keepers that your league allows because let's say your league only allows 4 keepers, you don't have the luxury of making a mistake with your choice of keeper as opposed to if you are allowed to keep 6 or 8 players. The other important factor is the league size because most of the time the number of keepers you are allowed to have is determined by the league size; a 10-team league is not going to have the same number of keepers as a 20-team league.
2. Keeper Eligibility and Keeper Requirements
The next thing you need to consider is if your league has any requirements for keepers and restrictions on how long a player can be kept. Some leagues will require you to keep a certain number of Forwards, Defensemen, and goalies, while others may not have any restrictions on why players you are allowed to keep as long as you meet a certain number of players. For Keeper leagues that have been running for a long time, one thing to take into consideration is if the league allows you to keep a player for an unlimited time. For example, if a team drafted Connor McDavid during his Rookie year, a team could have a limit for how long they are allowed to keep him because if you are allowed to have a McDavid-caliber player from the ages of 18-30, that is an unfair advantage. Most leagues will need the number of forwards, defensemen, and goalies you are allowed to have because it wouldn't really be fair if everyone just kept their best forwards.
3. Age/Potential
When it comes to Keeper leagues, sometimes potential might be more important than immediate results and the age of a player could be the deciding factor if it comes down to two players that have similar stats but if player A has 70 points and is 30 years and player B is 23 years old, you are more likely to keep the 22-year-old player because he has more potential. If a player is coming off a fantastic rookies season like Connor Bedard, who currently has 22 goals and 59 points in 63 games in his rookie year. For leagues that do allow teams to keep rookie players, you can't pass up on an opportunity to keep a player like Connor Bedard, even if he's playing for a trash team.
4. Player's Resume
The last thing you need to factor in is the player's overall body of work and what they have done throughout the NHL Careers. Obviously, there are exceptions such as a rookie Connor Bedard, but besides that, you need to see what that player has done in his career compared to the other players on your team and make your decision based on that. So for a player like Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin, even though they may be old, you still expect them to be their team's best player and should be a reliable source of offense.
5. League Scoring Format and Draft Position
A League's scoring format is crucial in determining who you decide to keep as your keepers because you aren't going to end up with the same keepers if the league is a point league as opposed to if it were a head-to-head league, CAT league. Generally, forwards and goalies are going to be more important point leagues, but in CAT Leagues, defensemen can actually hold excellent value if you select the right defenseman. After knowing the league's scoring format, you should also take your draft position into account because your keeper choices could be more risky if you pick earlier in the draft as opposed to if you have the last pick in the first round. Goalies are getting trickier to draft nowadays and if you are forced by your league to keep a goalie per team, the draft pool for goalies is going to be very thin.
This is a sample Keeper scenario, you are in a 10-team Head to Head, CAT league (including FW, Hits and Blocks), and you are allowed to keep 4 players, with the restriction that you cannot draft all forwards. The K mark indicates a keeper. This is a projection of keepers for all 10 of those teams.
This team placed 10th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Nathan MacKinnon K
Kirill Kaprizov K
Mitch Marner K
Alex Debrincat
Jack Eichel
Luke Hughes
Drew Doughty
Jake Oettinger K
These are no-brainer keeper choices, as all 4 players selected as keepers have proven themselves to be consistent point producers in the league. Since MacKinnon, Marner and Kaprizov were locks, the last spot went to Oettinger because the team wasn't allow to keep 4 forwards.
This team placed 9th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Connor McDavid K
Auston Matthews K
Zach Hyman
Kevin Fiala
Quinn Hughes K
Miro Heiskanen
I.Sorokin
T.Demko K
It was tough not to keep Ilya Sorokin and Zach Hyman but since McDavid, Matthews, and Quinn Hughes were already locks, it left one spot up for grabs and I choose Demko over Hyman because I don't think he will be able to have another 50 goal campaign.
This team placed 8th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Jack Hughes K
Mika Zibanejad K
Jespar Bratt K
Alex Ovechkin
Adrian Kempe
Adam Fox K
Brent Burns
Jeremy Swayman
These are no-brainer keeper choices, as all 4 players selected as keepers have proven themselves to be consistent point producers in the league. Jeremy Swayman was an interesting option but he wasn't worth keeping over Jesper Bratt.
This team placed 7th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Mikko Rantanen K
Elias Pettersson K
Sam Reinhart
Tage Thompson K
Tim Stutzle
Cole Caufield
Charlie McAvoy
Juuse Saros K
It was tough not to keep Sam Reinhart, but Reinhart's future in Florida is uncertain and if he leaves and isn't playing with Barkov then either Thompson or Stutzle would be better options. Charlie McAvoy was an option, but you could get him much later in the draft, so I went with Juuse Saros.
This team placed 6th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Brayden Point K
Sebastian Aho K
William Nylander K
Steven Stamkos
Clayton Keller
Igor Shesterkin K
Sergei Bobrovsky
Keeping Nylander over Stamkos was a no-brainer for me because of Age and who knows if Stamkos is going to even be back in Tampa Bay next year. Clayton Keller has been underrated for a long time, but the team around him isn't quite good enough yet.
This team placed 5th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Artemi Panarin K
Sidney Crosby K
Brad Marchand
Dylan Larkin
Brock Boeser
Jake Guentzel
Erik Karlsson K
Connor Hellebucyk K
It might be questionable to some people that I choose to keep Erik Karlsson, but he was able to put up 51 points in a down year, which is better than most defensemen in the league. Another factor was that I feel like you could get equal or better-value players in the draft for Marchand, Larkin, Boeser, and Guenzel.
This team placed 4th in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Leon Draisaitl K
Nico Hischier K
Ryan O'Reilly
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
Evan Bouchard K
Andrei Vasilevskiy K
Draisaitl and Vasilevskiy were locks from the start. Hischier is only worth keeper in a league with FW, and this league does include FW. Evan Bouchard also makes sense as a keeper over the other players because of his powerplay production and how many goals and points he produces from the blueline.
This team placed 3rd in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Alexander Barkov K
Matthew Tkachuk K
Roope Hintz
Connor Bedard
Nick Suzuki
Victor Hedman K
Josh Morrissey
Alexander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, and Victor Hedman are locks as keepers, so that leaves one slot left as a keeper, and the options could be either keeping Josh Morrissey as the safe bet, or keeping Connor Bedard, and take a bit of a gamble with the hope that he becomes a Superstar in year 2.
This team placed 2nd in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
Nikita Kucherov K
Brady Tkachuk K
Jason Robertson
Robert Thomas K
Anze Kopitar
Matt Barzal
Cale Makar K
Noah Dobson
Alexandar Georgiev
With so many options to choose from on this team, there were many ways you could go but ultimately the choice goes down to between Jason Robertson and Robert Thomas. Although both had similar production, Robert Thomas is a Center and had 842 FW this year, which is the reason I would take him over Robertson.
This team placed 1st in the league, has the following players to choose from as possible keepers:
JT Miller K
David Pastrnak K
Filip Forsberg
Bo Horvat
John Tavares
Chris Kreider
Roman Josi K
Rasmus Dahlin K
Stuart Skinner
Although it was tough not to keep Filip Forsberg after the year he had this season, it is really tough to let go of either Roman Josi or Rasmus Dahlin, both are top defenseman in the league.
In a CAT league, JT Miller is an ideal player to have because he'll get every category accross the board and David Pastrnak is David Pastrnak, you know what to expect by now.
Selecting the right keepers in a keeper league goes a long way, but it is not everything, there are ways build a contending team in a keeper league through the draft even if your keepers
are weak compared to others in your league.
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