Regarding the first blog and the whole notion of picking Stamkos over Crosby, I cannot necessarily disagree with your choice as Stamkos is an excellent player who will almost certainly do well for you. But I would not be able to take a pass on Crosby for anyone. For me, Crosby is the best player in the league and the potential for what he can do over a complete and healthy season would be impossible for me to disregard. Crosby has missed time with injury issues but I don't consider him soft or injury prone, he's just been a victim of bad luck. Crosby is a better player, is on a deeper team with a better supporting cast, and I simply would not have been able to let him go. But as I said, time will tell.
This is why sports are fun, especially when you add in the fantasy element: your arguments for why you'd take Crosby are just the optimistic spin as opposed to my pessimistic spin.
For drafting purposes, I have two two main rules I follow. In the early rounds, I want to minimize risk. High draft picks lose more leagues than they win because of injury, bad performance, etc. That's where I shoot for stability.
In later rounds, I target upside, like with Vladimir Tarasenko last season. He had a good season in the KHL and had looked good in camp, so I took a flier on him and he was towards the top of the league until he got injured. Those late round picks and how you manage the waiver wire are where leagues are won, in my opinion.
So, back to Crosby. I don't disagree one bit about the luck or his talent, but I wasn't willing to accept the risk in drafting him. I know that Stamkos could go down for the season tomorrow and Crosby could play all 82, but based on the information available, I saw my best bet as drafting the way I did.
Regarding blog two and the issues of goalies, I think some people in this pool overstate the importance of goaltenders. I guess it is hard to argue results, and IC won last season largely due to stockpiling goalies. Don't forget, though, that last season was an anomaly at 48 games; I'm not sure such a strategy holds up over 80+ games. And truth be told, IC had a pretty solid team over and above the crease.
As I see it, person A can grab a high profile goalie in the first round, while person B can grab quality but less obvious goalies in the later rounds. And person B has just as good a shot at winning GAA and SV% as person A. Shutouts are highly dictated by luck, so I'm not sure person A has the advantage there either. Sure, he will likely win the goalie win category, but that's 1/11. Personally I'd rather focus on depth at the seven offensive categories, take my chances with 3/4 goalie categories, and concede 1 category. Then again, as I said above, it remains to be seen. But there's absolutely no way I'd be selecting a goalie in the early rounds.
I don't think your strategy is bad here, but I think you are over-correcting. I do think goalies were a bit overvalued this year, which I'm sure IC's success last year helped to drive, but goaltending performance is much less susceptible to small sample size fluctuations. For all of the offensive stats, besides +/-, it's simple addition that decides who wins. If all of my players go on a cold streak and stop scoring goals, I cannot win Goals or Game Winning Goals. Wins and Shoutouts for goalies work the same, but Save% and GAA are the averages of them as a group. If I have multiple high quality goaltenders, I can survive one of them having a crappy game because the averages can easily swing back down if another goalie has a good game.
