Awards and The Draft Lottery

Hello all, hope your summer so far has bee….actually, I don’t care.

Lets talk about the offseason hardware general managers have taken home

Jack Adams – Another year of GM Court Watson of the Everett Silvertips being overwhelmingly viewed as the best GM by his peers, taking 85% of the vote.  In accepting the award, Court was stunned to find out he had peers.

Eugene Adams – From the Anze Cup champion to arguably the worst team in the league and trading away his best players, GM Steve McIntyre of Jesse Loves Paymon is a disaster, taking home 71% of the voting as the worst GM.  Keep it up, the league loves the donation

Andy Kordyban – As long as you have been to www.jessedeancook.com, the winner of this award, for the third consecutive year with 71% of the vote, needs no explanation.  Well done.

The draft lottery was completed today, and there was a stunning turn of events.  Despite having just a 5% chance of landing the first pick, the Texans were the lucky team.  The draft order, prior to adjustments from trades, is as follows each round.

Pick	Team
1	Texans
2	Me So Vyborny
3	Jesse Loves Paymon
4	Dr. Hook
5	Crosby's Concussions
6	Pistol's Hellcats
7	Not Poodle
8	Kanucks
9	Anzoolander
10	Captain Chinese
11	Bizarrohawks
12	Flowers In The Cage
13	Super Sperm
14	Everett Silvetips

‘But wait!’ you say, who was the witness?  Well folks, that is the beauty of technology.  I present to you the full draft lottery recorded in real time.  Seven minutes and twenty nine seconds of fascinating stuff (it gets super boring after sixteen seconds).

Great stuff, huh?  Trades and impact on draft picks can be seen on the trades and transactions tab of this blog (select the 2012-2013 trades tab of the Excel workbook embedded on that page, or just download it into Excel).  Hopefully people start making some trades as we get closer to the season start (32 days!).  Once Yahoo! opens up the new league registration, we will nail down a draft time.  As a reminder, all trades must go through commissioner approval.  We have had two off season trades so far as teams rebuild, here is to hoping there is a lot more.

A Message From Our Champion (Finally)

Here it is, one of my personal favorites, the Champion’s letter.  We have had some great ones in the past, lets hope this one can live up to that standard.  It probably won’t, but without further adieu, here is repeating champion, GM Court Watson of the Everett Silvertips:

Do you smell that?  Drink it in.  That is the smell of crisp air.

One day all of you might get to the top like I have, where the air is crisp.

32 minutes.  That is the total amount of NHL hockey I watched this year (complete guess).  I purposely try to watch very little.  Why?  Because if you watch to much, you pick favorites, you get emotional, you suck at fantasy hockey.  Take Steve, he watches a ton, because he sits on his couch a lot, thinks he knows everything about hockey, and has tanked his team (with 8-10 keepers he says!).

So here I am, with the Anze Cup at its rightful home for one more year.  I know all of you see it when I check-in, and it annoys all of you.  And that makes me enjoy drinking out of it that much more.

I am not going to do what this complete asshole does:

Seriously?

No, I am not going to thank people for something I had absolutely nothing to do with, that is just moronic, and stupid. 

This win was all me.  Nobody else.  I did it.  It feels great.  Fuck this era of it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, it is how you play the game.  You know who said that?  A loser.  Winners and losers are 100% self determined, and only winners are willing to admit it.

Kudos to one person, that guy whose name I forgot who saved Super Sperm from Ryan “the Titanic” Schauble.  Well done.  Finally, a worthy adversary.

And for Ryan Schauble and Super Sperm, I have a knock knock joke as my final words (I am assuming you are smart enough to fill in the blanks, I know, very large assumption on my part);

Knock, Knock?

Second Place.

Exactly.

And that is it for this season.  Be on the look out for a post soon on offseason trading, the future draft lottery and all that good stuff.

Not a New Champion

And that is the season folks, with the Everett Silvertips taking home their second in a row Anze Cup, after taking home their second in a row President’s Trophy.  I hope everyone appreciates the dynasty happening before our eyes.  This team made some tough decisions this year, and has even tougher decisions in the future.  But, good teams make tough decisions well, and bad teams are run by Matt Meier.

Big ups to Sean Stock for leading Super Sperm to the finals; impressive for a first year manager and great proof for future managers that may acquire an existing team that great skill can turn around the worst of teams.

There will be some sort of drunk fest over the break to discuss potential changes for the upcoming season and the next season’s draft.  Most likely, inflation will kick in, fees will go up, and that is about it.

Now on to one of my favorite parts of this blog; year end awards.  Let’s take a look at the finalists for each award.  Please take a moment to vote on each in the sidebar over on the right.

Jack Adams – awarded to the best general manager of the year, as voted on by his peers.

Court Watson, Everett Silvertips – Back to back President’s Trophies, Back to Back Anze Cups.  Pretty much not more to say.  Made a bold move dealing Ilya Kovalchuk at the start of the year but it didn’t seem to hurt the team, all while giving this team another early pick in the draft.  Keepers on the team are pretty young, and this team could be a force for a while.

Sean Stock, Super Sperm – Led this team from near death in to the Anze Cup finals this year.  Hats off to a great first year effort, identifying the right talent to get this team from the disaster whatever-his-name managed it to to make this team a serious contender.

Scott Freeland, Bizarrohawks – How many of you know that this team has been in the semifinals in back to back years?  Like a ninja, Scott quietly does thoughtful analysis and puts his team in a position to win.  Like Flowers In the Cage, I root for this team because the GM has passion for this league.  Some of you jack fucks could take notes.

Eugene Adams – awarded to the worst general manager of the year, as voted on by his peers.

Steve McIntyre, Jesse Loves Paymon – Started the year by exclaiming he had a championship team.  Then finished second last.  The exclaimed that he had more keepers than the league allowed.  WTF?  Audacity of hope?  More like audacity of nope.

Matt Meier, Me So Vyborny – Last by a mile and too hesitant to make any moves that would shake up his roster.  Basically, if this team ever wants to get better, Matt needs to completely ignore his gut feeling. 

Mike Gaunt, Dr. Hook – Believes that holding on to Stamkos and Luongo can make this team great, only problem is they have already peaked and this team is still awful.  Good luck on this one.

Andy Kordyban – awarded to the biggest clown/idiot/douche/joker/homo/jew/circus act of the league.

Steve McIntyre – see above.  Had to be joking, but in all seriousness, wasn’t.

Jesse Cook – As always, an active participant, instilling passion in the league trying to become the best, all the while making others laugh at him, not with him.  Remember when he dropped Derek Stepan for Paul Bissonnette?  One lead the New York Rangers in points, the other was a pylon for the Phoenix Coyotes. 

Ryan Schauble – pretended he had any control whatsoever in this league and everyone played along and then talked about how little control he had when he wasn’t there.  Good times.

Voting is open for the next week or so, and coming up: a eulogy for Super Sperm and a message from the Anze Cup Champion, the Everett Silvertips.