Projections from several independent forecasters, next to where players are actually being drafted. Anyone can show you both numbers. The useful part is the gap: the players the forecasters rate well above where the room is taking them, and the ones going earlier than the projections justify.

Drafting for real? Open the live companion and draft off these numbers as players come off the board.

Field guide

How to read the gap

The gap compares two rankings within a position: where the forecasters put a player, and where the draft market puts him. A +8 means the forecasters rank him eight places higher among centres than the room is drafting him. We compare within position on purpose. Ranking a goalie's overall projection against his overall ADP would flag every goalie at once, because starting goalies project high and get drafted late in leagues that only start two. That is an artefact of roster rules, not an edge anybody can use.

A gap is a disagreement, not a prediction. It says two measurements point different ways. Sometimes the room knows something the projections have not caught up with: a line change at camp, a goalie tandem announced, a quiet injury. Check the news before you act on a number.

Read the rest

Dots and source counts

A dot instead of a gap means we have a market price but fewer than three independent forecasters, not enough to argue with the room. The biggest apparent bargains on a board are often players only one forecaster had an opinion about, which is one opinion dressed up as a disagreement. Sources counts independent forecasters, not websites: several sites carry one company's numbers, and one opinion printed three times is still one opinion. Where fewer than three stand behind a player, we mark it.

Three ways to sort the same board

Draft order is the room's view, the board as the market is taking it, and the one to have open when you want to know who will be gone by your next pick. Biggest disagreement puts the largest gaps at the top, positive first, so the forecasters' strongest cases against the room lead the list; the reaches, the players going earlier than any projection supports, sit at the bottom of the same sort. Projected points is the forecasters' view alone, the consensus line scored in your format. Narrow to one position and each sort reads within it, which is where a gap means something.

Where the two numbers come from

The projection is the consensus line: for each stat, the median of what the independent forecasters published, scored in the format you picked. Our own house model fills in only for a player nobody else projected, and such a row carries a source count of one. The market figure is where real drafts in that same format are taking the player, taken as the median across the draft sources we read, with no range invented around it when a single source is all that stands behind it. The two numbers are then ranked within each position and the difference is the gap. Nothing in the gap is a model of ours; it is a subtraction between two things other people measured.

The gaps hockey keeps producing

Certain gaps come back every September, and knowing why they open tells you which to trust. A goalie with a large positive gap is usually a goalie the forecasters expect to win a tandem and the room does not, which is a bet on a coach's decision. A defenceman with a positive gap in a categories league is often a hits-and-blocks player the projections rate and the room has not heard of. A negative gap on a young forward is often the room paying for last season's second half, or for a power-play spot the forecasters are not sure he keeps. None of these makes the gap wrong. They tell you what question the disagreement is really about, and the injury report and the ice time on his player page are where the answer lives.

Change the format and the gaps move

The same player can be a bargain in points and a reach in categories. A sniper who scores forty goals and does little else is worth a great deal in a points league, where a goal is six, and less in a categories league, where he moves one category and little else. A shot-blocking defenceman is the reverse. Since the draft order is read from drafts in the same format, both sides of the gap change when you switch the scoring, and a gap you found in one format does not carry to the other. Set the scoring to your league's before you read a single row.

Where to go next

The full consensus table shows every source behind a projection and how far apart they are. The mock draft room lets you practise against this market, and the live companion is this board with players leaving it as they are drafted. The arithmetic is in the methodology.

Where the forecasters disagree with the room