Fantasy Hockey Tips: Some of the best info available

Despite the fact that the response was, well, not-so ecstatic, I've decided to give it a go and provide a few priceless nuggets of fantasy hockey knowledge for you.

In case you were wondering, I'm still quite BoC-heavy, with the San Jose goalie platoon, Mark Bell for the Sharks and Selanne, Niedermayer (Scott) from the Ducks.

Anyway, as a first post, I thought I'd share some of my "secrets." By secrets I mean some of the sites/features I go to when I have a fantasy waiver wire or trade conundrum. This might not necessarily be the most comprehensive list available ... in fact, feel free to leave some of your favorites in the comments and this post can keep rearing its ugly but helpful head.

Great feature: SLAM! Sports' Chris Nichols

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For the first month of the season, I went back to the way it was in the bad old days: I made panic moves without a voice of reason. What, like you expect me to trust OTHER TEAM OWNERS?

Thankfully, Nichols is back and he's here to answer (pretty much) all of your fantasy hockey questions. Brevity is the key, as you only get 500 letters (including spaces, so paragraph breaks be damned!). Still, this guy answers just about every question you can think of. While a lot of fantasy hockey writers will answer one question or five questions in a mailbag format, I genuinely cannot remember Nicholls NOT answering one of my inane questions.

Plus, according to his mini-bio, he's currently residing in Southern California. Awesome.

Great feature: Yahoo's Matt Romig's "NHL Skinny"

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If you're in Yahoo! leagues, you probably already know about this feature. At least, I hope. There are definitely times in my league where I say: "God, I hope all of the league's owners are too busy talking about designer handbags to read these little breakdowns."

It's a nice thing because it's a good read, the "Goalie Hot Seat" is FANTASTIC, and it has a little bit of everything for overworked fantasy poolies.

Great site: FOXSPORTS/ROTOWORLD/Brian Rosenbaum

Link for Rotoworld

At first, I was foolish enough to think that Foxsports.com deserved all the credit for their (suprisingly) effective fantasy hockey coverage. So naturally, I read a little deeper and realized that their content comes from Rotoworld.com. It has great features, including it's waiver wire that gives letter grades for hot topic-waiver pickups. Not only does it say "Possible Pickup A" is good, it gives you context into whether or not "PP A" is better than "PP B."

I also love the week ahead, which gives you a great resource to plan your week, especially if you have a limit on starts per position (a headache I've gladly avoided).

Brian Rosenbaum seems to be responsible for some of the best stuff. With Rotoworld, there's certain features that you have to pay for. That goes for a lot of these resources - only pay if you WANT to.

Great site: Hockey Informer

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When I used to write weekly Injury Reports for Fantasyhockey.com, Hockey Informer was one of my five favorite sources for information.

But beyond injury reports, this site is the bible for goalie starting questions. If you have three goalies (possibly) playing on one night and only two goalie slots, this will help you know which goalies might be starting.

It's also a very nice resource for something even more important: the heartbeat of which goalie will ultimately keep the starting job. Hockey Informer takes a bunch of newspaper previews/reports and gives you a one-stop source for that consistently annoying question. Even if you have a goalie platoon like I do, it still helps – why waste your two goalie spots when only one will start?

Naturally, it's not 100 percent accurate, but it's more than 90. That's a whole lot better than throwing a dart at a trading card, or whatever you normally do to decide which goalie to start.

Other sites I might write more about later
ESPN.com - damn Insider straight to hell, but Tristan Cockroft is good. Even if I think that's not his real name.
Rotowire.com - great site, too much exclusive stuff though.

More to come soon...