A Word From Our Defending Champion

Some of you thought he was a robot or a supercomputer, because he does nothing all year…nope, he is real, and he has submitted a guest blog for us to enjoy.

A recent Puck You! blog asked this question, “What does it take to win a fantasy hockey league?”

To answer this, let us start at the beginning. A log in ID to yahoo and a password is a great start. I know this may be stating the obvious, but from the idiotic moves I have seen in this league by some of the particpants (GM Jesse Cook claims that Jimmy Howard was drafted 9TH OVERALL on accident), it must be stated and probably has been done for some of our friends from the north. The second thing that must happen is you need to acquire great goalies. Just ask the Montreal Wanderers GM Court Watson; the years he won he had them and last year in a runner up finish he wishes Brodeur was healthy to lead him to the title. Lastly, you just have to be lucky. It does not matter how much you know about hockey. Please see Dave‘Killer’Carlson GM Mike Gaunt; He thought that Court was joking about drafting a guy named Semen or Semin.

All in all, probably the best bet for most of our league’s hockey savants is to just leave their teams alone except when someone gets hurt. All of you think you are an expert, but you are not. Watching hockey has nothing to do with doing well at Fantasy Hockey. Fantasy sports were designed by nerds (why doesn’t Bert Fong win every year then?). It requires some analytical math skills and a presence of mind to look at what is coming. No, not Semin, but schedules, number of games played, and head to head matchups. By changing or trading your team every week you are trying to time the market. None of you are Jim Cramer, but you do look like him….“LOSERS”.

Lastly, it helps to be an American. We have no civic pride or tradition related to hockey. We do not get emotionally or physically attached to this sport. The one exception is GM Cole Ballard who does and loses every year. (Hint: he will trade his entire team for Ovechkin and the Semen guy). He loves to think about getting Semin on his face team.

Who knew the Borg could be so eloquent.

Listen Up Grasshoppers

Today with have a special guest post from one of our GMs. Today is a good day.

What does it take to win a fantasy hockey league?

It takes time, dedication, and a willingness to commit yourself to everything hockey. You need to read a blog or two weekly so that you can keep track of who is hot, cold, and injured. You need the rest of the people in your league to know substantially less than yourself to make a trade go through and if it does go through in our league you may want to ask yourself, am I smarter than the other person? Or did I just get screwed? If you want to know what kind of dedication is required to win ask Montreal Wanderers GM Court Watson; He is your 2005, 2006, and 2007 champion and your 2008 runner-up. Court Watson may be dead last in the standings after six weeks but don’t count him out as he works harder than anyone at this and here is proof.

Where were you November 6^th, 2009 at 4:12am? Like most people probably sleeping, or making your way through a taco bell drive-thru with the rest of the DUI’s. What about if you are Court Watson? Court Watson is awake, giving advice to Amish Rake Fighters GM Peter Burns on fantasy hockey and approving trades! I am not going to judge. If that is what Court likes to do at 4am on a Friday, so be it. Just keep in mind he is a three time champion and last year’s runner-up.

Keep up the good work Court and I am looking forward to your inevitable rise to the top!

Ninja (Turd Ferguson GM Scott Freeland)

Roster Updates

Marian Hossa is returning shortly, and will be on a line with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews (forever referred to as the the TKHo line). Alexander Ovechkin is back, and looks like he hasn't missed a beat, same with Evgeni Malkin and Sheldon Souray. David Krejci is back from the flu, and Boston still sucks. Alexander Semin went on IR like a ninja from too much furious masturbation a sore wrist. Rumors are Chicago's contracts with the big three (Kane, Toews and Duncan Keith) are all but finalized, with salary points still in negotiations with Kane.  At the root of a heated discussion; Chicago offered Kane $4,999,999.80 and Kane wanted $5M...apparently he wasn't laughing.

Power Rankings: Week 6

As the league gets further along and the bottom feeding teams drop even further, I am hoping that some of you will submit guest posts to this blog. I will give you the title and all I ask if for a response….”Why I hate my fantasy hockey team.” With that, here are this week’s power rankings.

1. Grand Rapid T-Hawks (previous: 3) – Anze Kopitar continues to look good, Ryan Getzlaf, Cristobal Huet and Carey Price have all stepped it up. All this team really needs is some solid d-men. This team is looking strong.

2. In Over My Head (2) – Eeked out a win against the worst team in the league this week. What does GM Cole Ballard do to fix the issues? Adds another Atlanta Thrasher. For those of you keeping score, that is 4 players from one team on the starting roster. Works when they play well, leads to decimation when they get shut out. The active offensive roster on this team is almost comical, with representation of only 6 of the 30 teams in the NHL.

3. Suck It Trebek (6) – Another steamrolling week to take the top spot in the Prince of Wales conference. This team will have its hands full this week against the underrated Texans, and the result will show if this team is more than smoke and mirrors.

4. Kanucks (5) – Solid performance this week. Can’t really say what will happen this coming week; only 4 players remain on the starting roster. Some concern over whether one of the goalies on this team; Jean-Sebastien Giguere has lost his starting job and isn’t interested in being a backup. Giguere pointed a finger almost solely to the time wasted in his new training fad regime, fashionably called Crossfit. As Giguere put it, “it was a complete waste of fucking time.”

5. Dave’Killer’Carlson (1) – The Borg lost a week, there is hope yet.

6. Texans (4) – Quietly hanging around like they have alligator blood in their veins. Goalies have stepped it up, now the rest of the team has to as the 4 Canucks on this squad only play twice this week.

7. Turd Ferguson (7)

8. People Know Me (12) – Clearly this team is a fluke, as discussed in a previous post, but GM Jesse Cook has managed to stay out of his own way this season to date, lets see how long that lasts.

9. Amish Rake Fighters (9) – Roster management makes this team a contender, shameless self promotion and excessive use of hash tags on twitter does not.

10. Malkin in the Middle (8) - “Hoodey...hoodey...hoodey tink gonna beat dem Bengals?”

11. Andre Poodle Lussier (11) – Eeked out a win against arguably the worst team in the league. This means they are only slightly better than arguably the worst team in the league, which means this team is now included in the argument for the worst team in the league.

12. $0.20 Kane (10) – I wanted to reach out to you as a concerned friend: the phone number for the battered women’s shelter is 604-875-4924. Give them a call, after last week you may need some help.

13. Swedish Old Balls (13) – From People Know Me’s GM Jesse Cook. “Two words Bert….YOU SUCK.”

14. Montreal Wanderers (14) – Nothing is going right for this team, 2nd in the league in total points this past week and still got waxed. No real hope in sight. GM Court Watson has turned to the bottle as a source of relief and has begun making trade offers that other GMs have said “looks fair, which means I am getting screwed somehow.” Unfortunately, this team is so bad and desperate that the trade offers actually are fair. How the mighty have fallen.

House Special: OverCooked Roster

Slash to the top of the helmet of Red McIntyre for the initial observation

Six weeks into the season, something we may never, ever see again has occurred. YTD, one team has 9 offensive players ranked in the top 78, and 10 ranked in the top 105. This is unheard of, and of course this team has a comfy lead sitting atop the standi..wait, what? 8th?!?!

People Know Me has a dynamite team this year, which we know from the debacle during the first round of the draft where GM Jesse Cook drafted Jimmy Howard, has zero to do with Cook’s drafting skills. Clearly, it has to be complete, dumb, blind luck. But what about his standings in the league? Is that luck? A quick analysis, which involves pulling my thumb out of my ass, licking it and holding it up to the screen (known in the statistical analysis community as “Cooking the books”), gives me a 95% confidence level that there is no luck involved. With a r-squared of 0.98, I can confidently conclude that the reason People Know Me sits in 8th has to do with the idiocy team mismanagement of GM Jesse Cook. Lets take a look at 5 possible reasons for his poor mismanagement, with input from various GMs from the league contributing thoughts (anonymous, of course).

1) He consults with Paymon on roster changes, but often times mishears him because Paymon’s cock is on one of his ears, and a tube of toothpaste is in the other. “Very, very plausible. Most likely true,” says one GM, named Ryan Schauble. “He may even consult on roster changes with Paymon as well…oh, I thought you were just asking me about the cock in ear thing.” Indeed.

2) He is fighting with his lover Paymon, which is why he has been distracted in the league. “Nah, the fighting just make the sex better,” says $0.20 Kane GM Red McIntyre. “What Jesse really likes is when Paymon brings a friend and they both try to wrestle him, one gets his upper body, one gets his legs, and the whole time his pet gerbil Hansel is in his ass.” Wow, TMI.

3) He is dumb. Montreal Wanderers GM Court Watson: “Yup”

4) He has trouble using a mouse and keyboard. “That big, dumb white, fuck says he has the best hands in Richmond, but they are such gorilla hands he has no touch on a computer at all, what a buffoon.” Old Swedish Balls GM Bert Fong

5) He is a cock-blocker. “Heck yeah he is.” This response was actually unanimous, coming from all GMs.

So there you have it, I don’t know about you, but after this analysis I walked away getting a pretty good understanding of why Cook sucks.

UPDATE: After reading this post, GM Steve McIntyre pointed out that Jesse’s goalies suck even worse than he does. This further supports the notion that Cook is an idiot; anyone with that many players ranked that highly who has been able to translate them into zero trades for better goaltending clearly doesn’t know what he is doing. Even Bert Fong has made a trade this year.

Power Rankings: Week 5

Scary moment this week. Nope, it wasn’t the laceration Cam Ward received, it was when Paymon almost didn’t get it up for pulverizing Cook. Luckily, Jesse relied on his gay porn fluffing skills and the night ended fantastically for him. When you take a look at the standings, with the exception of two teams, everyone is lumped together in the standings. However, rarely do the standings actually reflect how good or bad a team actually is.

1. Dave’Killer’Carlson (Previous: 4) – Want to know how to excel in this league? Autodraft, rank goalies high, and pick up 1 player who is on fire. 60% of the time it works every time.

2. In Over My Head (2) – Jarome Iginla was drafted on accident when his system disconnected, he will potentially have 3 Toronto Maple Leafs and 3 Atlanta Thrashers starting…no way does this team take the 1 or 2 seed this year unless there are big changes. It defies logic. It can’t happen, it just can’t.

3. Grand Rapid T-Hawks (1) – My mild case of turrets comes out every time I look at this team. I keep screaming “ANZE FUCKING KOPITAR?!?!?” Played down two because of injuries this past week. Odds are, he will forgot to move those guys out of his roster until tomorrow, which means he will be short again this week. Unlikely to be manager of the year any time this millennia.

4. Texans (5) - Elias is back, Backstrom hasn’t had any drop off since the Ovechkin injury, and the Canucks are playing pretty decent. As long as the goaltenders can stay decent, this team can compete with anyone.

5. Kanucks (3) – To be honest, I am not exactly sure who is on this team right now, as a lot of trades by manager Dave Kitchen went through. In the surface, I think I like them, which could be a bad omen, cause I don’t know what I am doing anymore. On a side note, Dave is participating in Movember this year, growing a mustache to raise awareness for prostate cancer. Highly worthy cause, and you can support him here. If there is one thing funny about professional male sports, it is how they all dress up in pink to put their full effort behind breast cancer but completely ignore a cancer that will affect 1 in 6 men...higher than the rate of breast cancer among women. I guess the NFL pissed away a bunch of money on pink shoes and doesn't care that about 18%% of their alums will piss and shit in a bag...go figure. Not saying professional sports shouldn't support breast cancer, but they should have equal if not more support behind prostate cancer.

6. Suck It Trebek (12) – Dominating performance this week , with amazing goaltending and some of the most well rounded offensive prowess we have seen so far this year. Tough to tell if this is something that will continue or if the stars were aligned this week. Since I am a pessimist, I think I saw Schauble 3 putt on the 14th hole yesterday.

7. Turd Ferguson (9) -

8. Malkin in the Middle (8) – I am still trying to figure out how this team won 4 offensive categories in their matchup when they had the fewest points of any team this week. Definitely not something that can be maintained the entire year.

9. Amish Rake Fighters (10) – Look at that, you put your best player into the starting roster, you win…weird.

10. $0.20 Kane (7) – Bizarro week, lost in PIMS and had solid goaltending for a change. I don’t expect that to last long.

11. Andre Poodle Lussier (6) – Nothing went right for this team this week, losing Ovechkin and Ward for extended periods of time. If manager Matt Welsh ever figures out that IR works exactly like it did last year, the team might improve in the interim.

12. People Know Me (14) – Surprisingly, this team held it’s own this week in a tough matchup. As a result, I will give it some credit, at least one week. I expect nothing more from this team though.

13. Swedish Old Balls (11) – Nothing has happened with this team that has proved me wrong, except it has gotten worse this week after losing Roberto Luongo.

14. Montreal Wanderers (13) – Ryan O’Reilly is their best offensive player, and the top two fantasy draft picks had a combined, COMBINED, 2 points. This team is in a hole, and is going to have to find a way to dig itself out. Manager Court Watson got so drunk on Friday night he started talking to random strangers about potential trades at a Seattle bar. Yup, your 2009-10 Montreal Wanderers, ladies and gentlemen.

Rusty, Much?

No power rankings this week, too busy with the real world and I don’t get paid enough to do this (Umm, lets see, zero over zero, carry the zero….). Anyway, first podcast of the year is up in iTunes, or you can download it here. It is bad…I mean, real bad.

Enjoy.