What is Average Draft Position? Explaining the importance of ADP in fantasy hockey

If you are new to fantasy hockey, the draft can be intimidating to some, as knowing when to select which players is key. To help fantasy players with their drafts, beside a player's name will be the letters 'ADP' and a number. ADP stands for average draft position, which is a way of ranking the players.

Each website, ie. Yahoo or ESPN, may have players with different ADP numbers, as that is when those players are being drafted on average in their leagues.

Currently, ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS all have Connor McDavid with an ADP of 1, which means he is being drafted first overall in every league. However, the further you get down, the more of a role ADP plays.

For example, Vince Dunn, a defenseman for the Seattle Kraken, has an ADP of 97 on Yahoo, 105 on ESPN, and 78 on CBS. Meaning, that if you have the 100th pick in a Yahoo league and Dunn is still available, it would be a good pick as you are picking him later than most other fantasy players on Yahoo.

Drafting players below their ADP should result in a better fantasy hockey team. However, you also need to pay attention to your league scoring, as that may make some players more valuable than in other leagues.

How does fantasy hockey scoring work?

Along with knowing about the average draft position, knowing how your fantasy hockey league scores points is also important.

Every league is slightly different in scoring, but in general, fantasy hockey scoring is based on goals, assists, points, power-play points, short-handed points, plus/minus, penalty minutes, hits, blocks, shots on goal, saves, wins, goals-against average, save percentage and shutouts, to name a few.

Out of those categories, most leagues then assign a point value for each category. For example, some leagues may do two points for a goal, one point for assists, 0.5 points for a power play point, and one point for a short-handed point.

However, if your league is head-to-head stats, there will be no points awarded for each category. Instead, it would be whoever has the most goals would get one point, and whoever has the most categories won would win the week.