The Rain Man Approach

Fantasy leagues are supposed to be all about numbers. You put up the best, you win the most, and you take home the trophy. But a recent look at Puck Yourself’s statistics shows that this isn’t necessarily true. This could be because of the format; weekly head to head matchups as opposed to the standard rotisserie league. In head to head, stats reset weekly, which means you have to be lucky to be good (and not necessarily good to be lucky). After 19 weeks of play, the list below shows the teams’ average ranking overall, based on their position in each fantasy scoring category in total production.

1) GM Anze Backup	4.06
2) Steve Shankopotamous	4.35
3) Reggie ‘Reg’ Dunlop	5.00
4) Mystery Eskimos	5.12
5) Western WA Capitals	5.24
6) HANK’S AUTOSHOP	5.29
7) Andre Poodle Lussier	5.88
8) Bizzarohawks	6.18
T-9) Ottawa HC	6.24
T-9) RoBERTo LuFONGo	6.24

As you can see, for the most part this table is consistent with the league standings, with the exception of 2 outliers…GM Anze Backup and Ottawa HC, whose rank in the table above have been swapped in the actual league standings. This anomaly is concerning to GM Anze Backup GM Red McIntyre, who assessed his chances of making the playoff’s last week as “slim to none, unless I get my head out of my ass.” As for Ottawa HC GM Court Watson, all he could do is smile and take a nice sip of rye as he watched his team this week from the owner’s box. One interesting note is that the Western WA Caps are the perfect blend of the top ranked offensive stats vs. the worst ranked goalies stats. To much of that blend for GM Cole Ballard will probably leave him similar to Bizzarohawks GM Scott Freeland after too much of any blend of Johnnie Walker; alone, in the cold, miserable, and passed out on the deep freeze (or out of the playoffs).

SAY IT AIN’T SO

Daniel Alfredsson is out for at least a week with a broken jaw. No word on how it happened, but it may have been in the showers.

Patrick Kane is out 3-4 weeks with a knee sprain. Yup, he slipped giving GM Jesse Cook the business.

Chris Osgood has been sent home by Detroit and they have called up Jimmy Howard from the AHL to replace him. Wouldn’t you mail it in if you were traded to Steve Shankopotamous? Speaking of which, GM Jesse Cook’s most recent two trades have resulted in a goalie who is benched, a goalie on injured reserve, and the 2008-09 potential Vezina winner possibly being the missing link to get RoBERTo LuFONGo into the playoffs…nice one.

Carey Price is a partying vagina who RoBERTo LuFONGo drafted way to high, probably the worst draft pick of the year next to Steve Shankopotamous’ drafting of Anze Kopitar. Luckily, GM Bert Fong suckered GM Jesse Cook into dealing Tim Thomas for junk.