Hockey Season is upon us. You can tell from the scent of shame, my deal with the devil’s dong and my Barbie™ RV.

Fantasy Hockey Edition of OMOP.

This post is dedicated to Shawny and 
the Red Deke Fluffers (fka Juice’s Red Larionovs)

Many purists won’t herald in the most wonderful time of the year until they see their first frozen snot rocket, hear the sweet hum of the zamboni, shave off their playoff beards and spot the first Robyn Regehr at training camp.

But for my money, the first sign that hockey season is upon us is the Fantasy Hockey Draft.

My head to head league- comprised of a legion of some of the best hockey bloggers/sports writers (see links) and smartest fans ever assembled - is a ruthless, badassed group of managers. I assert this confidently because when I join other leagues, I win them.  Hell I win them with autopicks. 

Not so with my sports writer friends. In this league I consistently finish out of the money. And not just by a little. Over the past two years and out of 14 teams in the ICDL league, I finished ranked 9^th and 12^th.

And not just because T-squared let me down colossally last year and Mikael Sammuelson was my best skater (Damn your ankle, Danny Sedin). Or because I forgot to set goalies twice last year and forfeited 2 weeks.  

Although I am still terribly bitter about Tim Thomas.

It’s what I get for playing with smart savvy people who write about the sport.

But I love it, and I love this group- I feel totally honored to even compete with these cool kats.

Ok, ok while that might be totally true, I also hate losing.

And Fokknockers, I hate losing bad.

As a result, this year has shaped up to be the pinnacle of all that is soul selling, character annihilating, shame riddled and self loathing in my life.  I have sold my soul to the Devil.   And not for the kind of money we are accustomed to seeing Mr. Lamoreillo and Co. throw around. Not for any money really.   

This Year’s draft has taken me so far over the blue line, that I can’t even see the line, Nic Lidstrom is a dot to me.

And its all because I got sick of losing, and stuck to my “process”. I let the numbers rather than the heart run the show.

I love draft preparation. I love to pour over and manipulate stats and draw my own conclusions. When I have the time, I spend weeks obsessing over fantasy League drafts. It's not easy. As some of my overseas friends will understand, being in LA means no access to fantasy hockey magazines- at all. Not at CVS, not at Borders, B&N, gas stations or the staggering number of Newsstands we have all over the place.

I refuse to pay for online guides from people who haven’t convinced me they know WTF they are talking about. (I’m talking to you, rotoworld.) Sorry, I don’t trust people whom I don’t know to be smarter than me.

You might argue that a chick who regularly eats it in her favorite fantasy league might not be smarter than those actually getting published for their hockey opinions, but my championship trophies in less talented leagues say otherwise.

Fantasy mag-rags are only good for one thing: comparing my own process to popular opinion.

And my process is, uh. Well. I was trying to succinctly explain it to a friend, but it can’t be done. If you want to skip over the details, ignore the next 7-ish paragraphs, just know it has 7 labor intensive steps that manipulate scoring stats of 200-250 players, a bazillion ways, the crux of which is that after weeks of number crunching analysis,  I then cut players I dislike from the draft list. If you need the details, read on…

I first start with the numbers. I can’t help it. I pour over stats like water from a zamboni resurfacing for overtime.    Here are my steps:

1. Build Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, with 8-10 workbooks sorted for the various positions, to track the “Scoring Stats”: the stats the league uses to score the team.

2.  Sort the top 200-250 players (according to Total Points) by Position. This may seem like a superfluous start but it’s crucial for late rounds when you have to fill bench holes and need to know whether Steve Downie or Brian Gionta is a better grab.

3. Input last year’s Scoring Stats for each player. If time, do two years worth.

4. Rank players by their Scoring Stats.  I color code each player’s good stats.  30+ goals = excellent, 35+ assists = excellent; Plus Minus greater than 9 = excellent, PIM in excess of 75= excellent, SOGs over 250= excellent.  Sure I might use red to signify “excellence”, Purple for “Top Notch”, and Pink for “better than average”, But red does = excellence, and the girlie colors make me feel less testoterony.

Ovie, for example, earned red for each category in 2009. Straight across the board – two years straight. Scott Hartnell was red in two 2009 categories: Assists and PIM.

5. Compare each player against the 2-5 players ranked around him and analyze whether the straight numbers tell the whole story.

For example, Danny Sedin’s numbers have to be weighted to account for the fact that he missed 20 games to the ankle last year. There is no accounting for Tim Thomas’ utter failure last year, so he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.

[Insert your favorite Great White lyric here.]

This is the most labor intensive part of my draft prep, but the most fun a girl can have without taking off her jersey. Trying to decide if Jerome Iginla and Rick Nash truly deserve equal ranking is like watching Roenick hand Milbury his ass.

I troll the internet for injuries, off-season surgeries, unsigned UFAs and I re-acquaint myself with trades and make the call as to whether they factor. For example, I think the Turco trade will have a temporary effect. Playing for a better team will put a skip in his step through February, provided he can overcome the gutting the ‘hawks took in the off season. I am betting he can’t keep it up long term. Therefore, Turco isn’t worth a pick until late rounds, unless someone in the league starts a run on goalies early in the draft and picks Brodeur in the first round, forcing you to pick a goalie rather than Pavel Datsyuk.   

THEN I read what others are saying, pouring over THN’s BIGS  , HF boards and website articles. But this is just so I can shake my head in superior pity and gloat. Sometimes though, people give me good info, like when one writer mentioned that Eric Stall gets his points on streaks, I discounted him, because that SUCKS in a head-to-head league. 

J’adore THN’s BIGS, J’adore.

STEP SIX (the exclamation point is implied) I assemble a Draft Order worksheet, which disregards position for purposes of ranking. I drop all players into the list then I repeat Step 5. Then,

Wait, Juice- There is more? 

Of course there are more steps. It may come as a surprise, but I am detail oriented, to a fault. In fact, as a girl, I would spend hours “setting” up to play Barbies. I would cordon off the entire living room and use legos, encyclopedias, couch cushions and anything else I could find, build elaborate homesteads, houses, stables, acreage. Then I’d spend hours with the interior design of Barbie’s awesome townhouse or her RV. (yes you read that right, I had a Barbie RV- ‘nother story, nother time) But when it came to actually playing “Barbies”- I didn’t really want to. Just wanted to set up.

Are you really discussing a Barbie RV in a really over written, diabolically long Hockey blog Juice? On a Monday? Geebuz, yer killin us – is this a test? 

The point of the story is that I am one of those people who lives for the detail work, the prep, planning, the journey... Yea- its the journey I live for, not the destination.  Feel free to remind me of this at the end of the post...

STEP 7:  FINALLY I remove players from the Draft Order list “For Cause”. Those I detest are deleted from the list entirely. Seriously.  I cannot stomach the idea of having to follow Sid or Pronger or Buck Twenty Kane for a whole season. In 2008, Sean Avery was excluded from my draft order for cause. (In later drafts he was excluded because he sucks.) I would never even joke about picking up Corey Perry, Ray Emery or Sergei Gonchar.

Step Seven has been non-negotiable in any and all league. In all previous years, I have maintained strict allegiance to my Hockey Prep plan, my morals, principles and fiber. In other words, I have refused to draft players I despise.  When stuck in a draft position where I could have taken Malkin, I chose Danny Sedin. Last year I picked Jeff Carter over Patrick Kane and it cost me. 

Until now. Until this year. After two years of pathetic showings, I have forsaken Step Seven and my principles.

The outcome of this year’s draft was such an affront to my personal beliefs, I scarcely know who I am anymore.  I had 4^th pick, which is typically not a bad position to have. Here are the results.

First Pick: The Donkey Dong Devil, Bucky Sanchez himself: Sid Crosby.

Second Pick: Sharky Second Rounder, Season Spoiling Patrick Merlot.

Third Pick: Patrick “Deez Nutz” Sharp- who porpoisefully speared Nicolas Lidstrom in the Family Jewels during Game 3 of the 2009 WCF, causing Nico to miss the very first playoff game he has ever missed in 20 years. 

Fourth Pick: Jimmy Howard. Sure I might have wanted Brody or Hobie, but they went in the first damn round. Plus I had to do something to save myself from excommunication.

My Draft Ranking System supported these choices. I should have removed Sid, and Sharp from the draft order in Step 7, but I didn’t. Instead I picked Sid when he was still available as the fourth draft pick. I could have picked Pavel Datsyuk or Nic Backstrom, or Stamkos or Henrik Sedin and his 112 points for gawd sake.

But I didn’t.  I didn’t just go down like a 2 dollar fleury, I spent the first 3 rounds picking evil doers.

Ok, fine, Patrick Merlot isn’t anymore of an evil doer than Joe Sakic, but he looks whiny.

I should have felt dirty when it was all over. But I didn't, I felt confident and ready to seriously compete. I am a Barbie RV owning, number obsessed hypocrite who apparently just wants to win.

There I said it. Waiting for the “feels better part”….