Last year might have been my worst season at predicting sleepers in the history of this blog. But I somehow still ended up winning my fantasy league, so that should give you some reason to trust my predictions this season.

If you want to do a little more digging yourself you should check out the official 5MFF fantasy hockey strategy guide as well as a handy primer to using advanced stats to crush your opponents. If you want to blindly trust my analysis jump ahead, I appreciate your faith.

As always sleepers are defined here as any player whose production this season should exceed the output of their draft position. So while this list may not have many obscure players, they should all be quality value picks.

On your road to fantasy hockey dominance, the first step is picking an awesome team name. Even if you're a powerhouse team, none of your friends will respect you if you named your team something lame.

The second step is a little more difficult: Identifying who is going to have a great season. Advanced stats can help you find players likely to rebound or breakout, but that level of research can be quite time consuming. To help make your life easier, I came up with a list of players who you should think about come draft day. Some don't fit the traditional definition of a sleeper, but are still going low enough in Yahoo! leagues that you can get major value by drafting them.

Picture courtesy of D. Courville, who awards it to the owner in his league who trades the most draft picks.

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I must admit I've had this article written for weeks now. I've been too sad to post it.

That infernal lockout.

Fantasy baseball seasons are over, and usually that means immediately shifting gears and preparing for your hockey draft. But what's the point when you know the lockout is going to last until sometime between 2015 and 2022.

However, the two sides are meeting today (to discuss non-core economic issues), which should give a brief 10 minutes of optimism (which will surely be crushed swiftly).

But in those brief moments, you might think there will be a season this year. If that's the case, here are some players to help you win your fantasy pool.

Once bitten, twice shy. That's what fantasy owners who drafted Ilya Kovalchuk last year thought as they passed on the talented sniper before their 2011-12 draft. That's too bad because Kovalchuk had a major bounce-back year and some other owner reaped the reward. Fantasy hockey, like life, isn't always fair.

Fantasy hockey isn't always about drafting the best player in the first round either. You're supposed to hit a home run in the first round. It's more important not to whiff badly in the first round because it's a lot harder to win when the player you expected to hit 80+ points ends up with 30.

Sometimes you can make up for a poor start to the draft by having a few sleepers pan out or dominating the waiver wire. Pulling out a 70-point player or a 30-win goalie from the final few rounds of the draft makes you the Detroit Red Wings of your league of nerds, which means you were likely at the top of the standings.

However you did it, there are players to thank, for good or for bad. It's time to honour the players that helped you win your pool and condemn those that made sure you lost. Here are the best and worst fantasy hockey players from 2011-12.

All draft stats are taken from Yahoo! There could be some differences depending on the league you played, but for the most part they should be comparable.

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Last year I waited until closer to the start of the season to post my fantasy sleepers in the vain attempt to do better in my league, but this year I’ve decided to share my knowledge with ample time before the season begins. I’m a giver.

I will make one disclaimer: the term sleeper is relative. If you’re in a pool with a bunch of fans from one team then those players instantly become overrated. That doesn’t mean you still can’t get them and they won’t be productive, but it means other people will be reaching for those players as well, so they probably won’t really fit the true definition of a sleeper.

I have one more piece of advice: don’t doubt yourself. In one of my pools last year I was planning on taking Carey Price. My thinking was that he was actually pretty decent in the previous season (despite the hate) and with Alex Auld as the backup he was going to play a ton. Anyway, he was hanging around pretty late (everyone already had at least a goalie, some had two), and I was ready to pounce. The only problem was I was in a league with Montreal fans and I began to worry why they were leaving him. Did they know something I didn’t? Was he back in the party scene? If emotionally invested Habs fans didn’t want him, why should I? Well, I didn’t take him and he turned out into a Vezina quality goalie. Trust yourself.

The playoffs start on Wednesday and everyone’s looking for the next Fernando Pisani that is going to come out of nowhere and win them their fantasy pool. The playoffs are much different from regular season pools. No one on this list will necessarily go near the bottom of your draft; it all depends on which teams your pool as a collective are favouring. In a regular season pool you wouldn’t see Alex Burrows go even near the second round, but he’s likely to go that early in a playoff pool because the Canucks are heavy favourites.

With that disclaimer out-of-the-way I’m going to list a player from each team that could count as a sleeper. Of course, players from heavy favourites will go earlier and some of the best players from underdogs might hang around forever, so the definition of sleeper differs for each team.

I had to hold off on posting my fantasy draft report because I didn’t hold the draft for the league I run until last night. I certainly can’t be posting my super secret studs for everyone else to see. Except now everyone can drop their duds and pick them up off waivers...

There is still some time before the season starts, so I’m posting my sleepers list before mid-way through October when I can no longer claim I knew player x was going to put up all those points.