Hockey is my true love & Fantasy Hockey almost goes hand-in-hand with it. This will sound really dumb, but when I was a kid, my buddy Keith & I each had one of those table-top hockey games (and a couple years ago I fulfilled one of my life long dreams & got my own Bubble Hockey game) and we’d have little fake drafts, where we picked players from the NHL & they were on our team. We’d play table top hockey & keep track of who had goals & assists & write up stats & have tournaments. I know, silly.

In the early 90’s my friend Jeff & I got into a Fantasy Hockey league that was done thru the mail. We’d rank the players & send them in for the draft. Each week, we’d have to mail in our lineups & we’d be mailed the results from the previous week. Thinking back on it now and based on the internet & technology, it was a really horrible way of doing it. I think we realized it was horrible at the time as well, as the next season we started up our own league. It was (and still is) a very unique league, where you started 3 lines each week (C, RW, LW, 2 D) and you’re 1st line went against their 1st line with 8 points per line up for grabs (goals, assists, P/M and PIM) You also started 2 goalies and your #1 goalie went head- to-head with the other team’s #1 goalie. We did this for 2 or 3 years, compiling stats by hand from the newspaper as well as typing up the results & rosters each week. We tried to get a league together based on this format last October, but we can not find a stats service that will accommodate us.

In the late 90’s I got into an established perennial league where you get $200 fantasy dollars to use to bid on players at the draft as well as sign players to long term contracts. There’s also a supplemental draft where you can pick up players for free after all the rosters are filled. I did finish in the money in this league a couple of times (it might only be one time) but I don’t think I ever really grasped the concept until this year. So now I’m trying to get prospects for cheap so I can sign them to long term contracts. This year I picked up Jason Pominville & Jordan Staal in the supplemental draft & with the way they’re playing now, they’ll be on my team for the next 7 or 8 years.

You won’t see me talking about this too much until next season, as I am in last place with 3 weeks to go.