The first two games

The first two games of the season were played in London, on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the season starts on my birthday, Wednesday October 3.

We learned a few things:

1) Hockey remains the least predictable of all sports. Without their goalie, captain and chief defender, and top goalscorer from last season, Anaheim, the defending champions, won one and lost one. This is good! All fans want the game to mean something, for it not to be decided in advance.

2) The league's pursuit of blood on the ice pleased the English fans (England's a place of fistfights, but has less gunfighting than the U.S.). As the AP report noted, "it wasn't 10 goals in two days that most of the capacity crowd came to see." It was the fights. There was a fight in the second period and it brought the audience to their feet.

3) We're seeing a lot of goalie interference. I hope the league protects goalies, but if they don't we'll see a repeat of the Geoff Courtnall hit on Jamie Storr, which won a playoff series in its final three minutes when Courtnall slammed Storr's head against the goalpost with the full force of top speed skating.

4) And we had to remind Nick to play Michael Cammaleri. Although he mist Camm's first two goals in game 1, he did get the goal in game 2.

The season begins! Yay!

The Draft

The draft was last Friday eve. 8 team Head to Head (HTH). We did HTH because last year we did Rotisserie and me and one other person jumped so far into the lead that several people dropped out. With HTH, people are more likely to play each week in order to avoid losing to that week's opponent.

I ended up with:

Martin Brodeur (picked first)
Vincent Lecavalier (picked second)
Paul Stastny
Evgeni Nabokov
Peter Budaj
Jordan Staal (picked last)
Jason Pominville
Chris Neil
Sean Avery
Paul Kariya
Brian Rolston
Nicklas Lidstrom
Lubomir Visnovsky (yay!)
Sergei Zubov
Marc Andre Bergeron


Then I made THE TRADE

I traded Lidstrom and Lecavalier to a Bolts fan for Crosby and Zhitnik.
I then dropped Neil and picked up Ray Whitney

Team looks good. Low on G and PIM. Strong everywhere else. Trade improved A but cut back on PPP and G.

We're using:

Goals, Assists, +/-, Power Play Points, Penalties in Minutes, and Shooting Percentage

G, A, +/-, PPP, PIM, SH%,

and for the goalies, Wins, Goals Against Average, and Save Percentage.

W, GAA, and SV%.

Fantasy Hockey Team Name

I figure that naming a fantasy hockey team is like naming a rock band. Anthrax, Staind, Spinal Tap.

I thought of the most obscene thing that could happen in hockey and came up with

CROSBY's CONCUSSION

(can I get some horror wiggles on that? No? okay)

Wayne Gretzky's early retirement was forced by the lack of respect for skill that came to characterize the boring game, the one Brett Hull criticized.

Now we've got the excitement back, the league feels it can be even more exciting if it encourages blood on the ice.

So although we don't have clutching and grabbing, the league is enforcing mediocrity by permitting headshots and other injuries.

Although the reaction to the McAmmond hit is a good start, it seems that there was a cheap shot before that hit that was unpunished.

Similarly, when Crosby speared Blake last year, it was for a reason. When the provocation is on tape, even if it wasn't penalized during the game, it could count against the suspension.

But if the league punished the enforcers of mediocrity, there would be less blood on the ice.

That's the path to Crosby's concussion.