Beyond the Rhetoric

I’m in a hockey pool with a bunch of friends and while we don’t have anything on the line, per se, bragging rights go a long way. We decided to take the Sportsnet route because it lets you choose a new squad every week. They don’t really award defensive players in any way and there’s no incentive to pick up an enforcer or two, unfortunately, which is quite different the pool system they have set up at Smallworld. In this way, the Sportsnet Fantasy Hockey Pool is a little unrealistic, but at the same time, it’s much more reflective of where the offensively-geared NHL is going. They want scoring and Sportsnet rewards goal scorers.

As we get closer to the end of the season, the picks become increasingly more important. Precious points are absolutely vital and you must not only seek out the marquee players that are almost guaranteed to perform — Sidney Crosby comes to mind — but you’ve also got to seek out those hidden gems that other people may not know about. You see, each player is assigned a point value and you have a budget of 50 points to spend each week on a team of 10 players. You choose 2 centers, 4 wingers, 3 defencemen, and 1 goalie. Finding the players who only cost 1, 2, or 3 points yet actually put points on the scoreboard is paramount (goals and assists are the only stats that matter here, with the exception of goalies that get rewarded for wins, shutouts, and ties only). As of right now, I sit atop the standings among my group of friends, ranking 3,545th overall out of I don’t know how many players. It’s at least 35,000.

Here are my picks for this week (Monday, March 5th to Sunday, March 11th):

Kristian Huselius of the Calgary Flames, Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins, and Kevin Bieksa of the Vancouver Canucks are probably the best value. Another side benefit to participating in the pool is that the blinders have been taken off, letting me know the other players in the league a little better. I’m familiar with guys like Alexander Semin, Slava Kozlov, and Filip Kuba… and if I wasn’t in this pool, I probably wouldn’t know them.

Go Canucks Go!

Filed under Sports and Games.