Hiatus.

Obviously my posting has been sporadic at best of late, when it should be ramping up (season starts in four days....). I've decided that I need a short but officially clean break for a while. To those (~3 people...) that do read, keep in touch via e-mail. I'll still be checking on the links listed in the blogroll below (right column) on a fairly regular basis and hope to be back soon.

...and I do have a shell of a prediction article - I should post that at some point so I can laugh at it in spring.

Enjoy the opening of the season - and I'll hopefully be back posting by the end of the month.

Experts league

Click here for our league home page.

Click here for draft results.

We're going with the same format as last year, with G, A, +/-, PIM, PPP for offence and W, GAA, SV% for goalies.



I've got drafts the next 2 nights and then I'll be finishing up my season intro article with predictions on standings, since it went so well last year.

Experts draft tonight...

As described in this post, I'm back in the industry experts league - our draft is tonight at 8:30pm EDT. With 14 teams this year, I have the opportunity to actually do *worse* than last year's cellar finish (12th place).

I'll post draft results tonight or tomorrow.


UPDATE: Roberto Luongo goes first! to Rotoworld. Shocker - Scott Cullen of TSN is thrilled as Sidney Crosby falls to him at the second spot. Goalies are going fast as Miikka Kiprusoff went #3. I got Joe Thornton with the 5th pick. And there are now 15 in the league. 285 players overall. I'd better start brewing some coffee...

...Earliest goalie run ever...6 goalies gone in the first round. I need to take one on the way back to me...(although Jason Spezza is still available).. Nick Backstrom gone. wow.

Spezza went 4 pix before me - dammit. With 10 of the first 22 picks being goalies though, I had no choice but to jump on that train and I managed to grab Ryan Miller at the 26th spot.

No less than 12 goalies are gone, and the 2nd round isn't complete.

Amazingly i got Daniel Alfredsson in the 3rd round. Fantastic.

UPDATE: 3rd round, 17 goalies are gone. With each of the 15 teams needing 2 goalies in the starting lineup, i've got to get another #1 right here. Peter Budaj is available, i'm up in 7 picks. It's either him or Cam Ward.

...I got Budaj. Unlike last year, my goalies are set.

FINAL ROSTER:

SportsGrumblings

View All

Round	Pick	Player	Position
1.	(5)	Joe Thornton	C
2.	(26)	Ryan Miller	G
3.	(35)	Daniel Alfredsson	RW
4.	(56)	Peter Budaj	G
5.	(65)	Maxim Afinogenov	RW
6.	(86)	Zdeno Chara	D
7.	(95)	Nathan Horton	C
8.	(116)	Brendan Shanahan	LW
9.	(125)	Chris Neil	RW
10.	(146)	Martin Straka	C
11.	(155)	Wojtek Wolski	LW
12.	(176)	Francois Beauchemin	D
13.	(185)	Carey Price	G
14.	(206)	Raitis Ivanans	LW
15.	(215)	Mike Van Ryn	D
16.	(236)	Marc-Edouard Vlasic	D
17.	(245)	Kyle Calder	LW
18.	(266)	Guillaume Latendresse	RW
19.	(275)	Mikko Koivu	C

I was pretty thrilled at how the first 10 rounds went. Straka with the 146th pick, even Wolski at 155 when I still hadn't picked up a LW yet (a very thin position after the top ~10). Amazing how the talent thinned out dramatically after that - I took a future flyer on Carey Price as my third goalie (hoping he'll win the job and I can deal either Ryan Miller or Peter Budaj) and then went for some young defencement. Only 4 bench spots which makes it tough to take too many chances.

more down time

i'll be back up full-time (mostly) starting next week. vacations, renovations, etc. have kept me away a bit but with 3 league drafts in the next 7 days I should be back and ready for the season in a week or so.

Listing of every NHL trade since 1960

Just came across this site: History Of NHL Trades which attempts to list every single trade in the NHL since 1960.

Edmonton holds rookie camp in Yellowknife

Yellowknife is the capital city of the Northwest Territories, and is located precisely 632 miles (by air) north of Edmonton (which itself is over 300 miles north of the US-Canadian border):



Last week the Edmonton Oilers held their annual rookie camp in Yellowknife:

"I knew it was going to be somewhat remote. When we flew over I didn't see a piece of infrastructure till we got to the airport, but once we were here, the community embraced us," O'Marra said.

"Right from the time we got off the plane we had a warm reception. It was just a great experience, right from the first night until today," said defenceman Bryan Young.

"It's like a lot of things that you do," MacTavish continued. "You think it's a bit of an inconvenience to come up here then by the time you finish you think it's really worthwhile."

The Oilers' official website posted a slideshow of the city here (nothing hockey-related, just a flavour for the area)

7-0-1 for Canada

In the so-called "Super Series" - Russia managed a tie in game 7, and that was it.

We're now within a month starting the NHL and CHL seasons.

Fantasy hockey prep - centers

In preparation for the annual SportsGrumblings.com Fantasy Hockey Sourcebook, I did draft preparation on centers. Not knowing when it will be published, I thought I'd post (in a very crude format - spreadsheet!) my write-ups here:

Click here for my writeups on 143 centers for 2007-08.

I did a ranking of what I considered the top 40 - after that it was way too subjective so I listed the rest by team.

As I stated there, nearly all of these were written in late July so some inaccuracies may be found in terms of team assignments. Feel free to email me (address on right bar) with anything you might find.

Advanced +/- statistics

To the anonymous commenter who inquired about better +/- stats, I'll paraphrase here what I left in the comments on that remote post:


I believe Gabriel Desjardins at Behind the Net has done exactly what you were looking for - check out these links:

Quality of Teammates - adjusted +/-

On-ice vs Off-ice +/-

Experts League shocker: they invited me back

Last season Eric Maltais at TalentedMrRoto.com (since purchased by ESPN) started what we believe to be the industry's first ever Hockey Expert League, and I was lucky enough to get an invite as one of 12 teams. Here's how the draft went last fall.

Yeah, and here's how the league ended up...as I declared myself the 12th greatest fantasy hockey expert in the world.


Well Eric - who now writes for DobberHockey.com - has invited me back, and I've declared (to myself) that I will remember that this is NOT a keeper league. Something I obviously knew last season but I failed to adjust my usual drafting strategies. Anyways, our draft is in two weeks and I'll be sure to post the results - surely the first of many frustrating nights for me in the league.

Labor Day Hockey notes

1. Team Canada has completely dominated Team Russia in the SuperSeries thus far, taking game 4 on Saturday 4-2 and winning each of the four games in Russia. The Canadian half of the series begins tonight at 8pm ET in Winnipeg.


2. It seems that John Tavares is, in fact, looking for a waiver to make him eligible for next year's NHL draft; he was born 5 days too late to be eligible for 2008. Tavares' agent, Bryan Deasley, is making overtures about playing in Europe next season if special consideration is not granted. Tavares would be a shoo-in for the number one pick in the draft - as of now that honour might go to Steve Stamkos.

3. So much for the rumours about Patrick Marleau being dealt - last Friday he signed a lucrative two-year deal to stay in San Jose, giving the Sharks an enviable top stable of forwards for at least the next three seasons (including Joe Thornton, Jonathan Cheechoo, and Milan Michalek)