Fantasy Hockey Draft Take 2

[Asher]

My brother's girlfriend went to HS with Nathan Horton...that's my reason for being so gung ho for him. Kinda sad, actually.

[mrboo123]

a VERY good night for me with 2 goals, 3 assits, +/- of 3, 1 PPG, and 2 PPA.

Horray for Heatly and the Sakic/Hejduk combo!

[Sparrowhawk]

I would like to adjust my line up for tomorrows games, should i wait until all of tonights games are complete or when can I make the changes?

/me

[KrazyHorse]

You can adjust your lineup by day long in advance. Note, though, that making an adjustment for tomorrow will often affect the lineups on subsequent days, so you should work forward from today, as it were. I generally set up the next week's lineups on Sundays, then alter them slightly if new information (say, injuries) comes in, or if it looks like I need a lot of one specific statistic (if I need a lot of PPGs then I'll swap out my generalist C for a PPG scoring C)

[Sparrowhawk]

Doh!!

Thanks Krazyhorse. I didn't realize that (and for a minutes had no idea what you meant).

Now I see taht you can adjust it for every day in advance. I assumed that once I took someone out of my active lineup that I would need to wait until after they played their game to change them again (and it shows who is playing against what team which is very helpful, especially since I can't find my printed schedule ).

Now if only you would help out my Texas Hold'em game this much!

/me

[KrazyHorse]

What do you want to know?

[Sparrowhawk]

I was just kidding. I remember that you are a good player at Hold em. I enjoy the game but am more of a casual player. I play with friends for small amount and online for free (neither of which are games that involve a lot of thought)

I may ask for your help when I move up to a higher stakes game in the future however.

/me

[Tingkai]

One game does not a season make.

For the Leafs, it could have been worse. Looks like Raycroft will have his work cut out for him, but things will likely get better.

The Leafs are building a team for the future, which makes far more sense than trying to buy a winning team for today at the price of the future, which is what has happened for the past 15 years.

And yeah, the season isn't going to be pretty, but it'll be interesting.

[Asher]

Cue the excuses, you'll need to get pretty good at them.

It's really what we've all really expected: Belak leads the charge in taking dumb penalties (Domi leads the charge in the dumb fans supporting him), the defense is slow and immobile, McCabe starts the reason off with a -2, and Sundin is the only one who can score.

[Tingkai]

You talk so much about the Leafs that you must be a Leafs fan.

I'm not make excuses, just giving the reality of a new coach starting to form a group of players into a winning team. He's done it before and he'll do it again.

He starts with a francise player, Sundin. Next are three top level defencemen, a corp of young players and a strong goalie.

Success will not be achieved overnight. The players will need time to adjust to Maurice's playbook. That's true for any team with a new coach, particularly when there is a radical change between the old and new coaching styles.

Oh, and yes, the Leafs have heritage. It's something the Flames might get in a couple of decades, maybe, assuming they can win the Cup more than once.

[Asher]

Talk about heritage all you want, but none of that matters today. We live in the present, you should too.

40 years. 'nuff said.

As for the "three top level defencemen", that's purely a matter of opinion. I'm very confident in saying not one of Toronto's defensemen would qualify as a top pairing defensemen for a team such as Calgary, for instance. Toronto's defense is comical to me. It seems that they got the idea that defense is important, but they still don't get that you need to have quality defensemen who can play well within a system.

Toronto's defensemen just seem all haphazardly assembled with no real cohesive strategy, aside from the strategy that apparently lumbering, immobile defensemen are a good thing...and that's already costing them goals.

[Ninot]

Toronto, always good for a laugh.

[Tingkai]

Saskatchewan, always good for... um, well, not much there except for people who want to be somewhere else.

[Tingkai]

And I can see why the Flames fan want to avoid thinking about the past, and the future.

The Flames have no heritage. Just one win and years of a team tottering on the verge of bankruptcy, always missing the playoffs, always being ignored, even in Calgary.

Even worse for the Flame fans is the knowledge that when their team shows potential, the Flames end up being the Ottawa of the west. Fine in the regular season, but in playoffs they choke, choke, choke.

Just like the Alberta economy, boom and bust.

Yup, don't think about the past. There's nothing there for Flame fans. And don't think about the future, you'll just get depressed.

[Asher]

It's not that we avoid thinking about the past, it's that you really should get off about how good the Leafs were when my parents were infants.

And the Flames were never ignored, they still sustained the team during economic downturns and poor Canadian dollars -- per capita they still brought in more money than the Leafs do today.

Toronto has more people and has an older team, this is true. That doesn't make them elite, nor does it make them special. What makes them special is going 40 years without a cup. The last time they could win a cup, they had 5 competitors in the league which is a lot easier to fluke out and win with...

Toronto, today, is a joke of a team that's only around because of the massive amount of Canadians in the GTA.

It's generally considered that there are two "elite" Canadian teams this season: Ottawa and Calgary. Everyone else is a longshot.

So you can masturbate to the thought of those black-and-white videos the Leafs fans are constantly inundated of a time when they didn't suck, but the rest of the hockey world hangs their head in shame for you.