I’ve given you my picks for what’s going to happen in the first round of the NHL playoffs in the East, as well as those for the West, but what if you’re in a playoff hockey pool that charges you with the task to choose individual players?

Well, I’m in involved in one of those hockey pools too, except I get to refresh my roster with each successive round of the playoffs (with the exception of the conference finals and the Stanley Cup final, which are combined as one “segment” in this competition). The key difference from the regular season pool offered by Sportsnet is that there are no player “values”, making it an absolute free-for-all in terms of which players you can choose. Again, unrealistic, but that’s what my friends got into.

Anyways, here are my NHL playoff hockey picks for the first round only. I was the regular season champion among my immediate group of about a dozen friends… will I perform in the post-season? We’ll see.

In case you can’t read that, here it is in regular old text:

Western Conference
Joe Thornton (SJ)
Teemu Selanne (ANA)
Daniel Sedin (VAN)
Scott Niedermayer (ANA)
Nicklas Lidstrom (DET)
Roberto Luongo (VAN)

Eastern Conference
Sidney Crosby (PIT)
Marian Hossa (ATL)
Dany Heatley (OTT)
Sergei Gonchar (PIT)
Ryan Whitney (PIT)
Martin Brodeur (NJ)

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