Hello Out There, We're On The Air, It's Hockey Night Tonight!

Tension grows the whistle blows and the puck goes down the ice.
The goalie jumps and the players bump and the fans all go insane,
Someone roars "Bobby scores!" at the good ole hockey game.

So it's chilly outside and Hockey Season is in full swing. I can't exactly articulate what the appeal really is of watching a bunch of dudes who aren't me battling each other in vicarious feats of athletecism and daring, but I sure can feel it. This year i've stepped up my sport nerdery and joined a hockey pool and an even more exciting fantasy pool.

At the moment i'm sitting in the #1 spot of the hockey pool. It's actually pretty unexpected and I feel pretty excited about it, like I should be sitting at home in a jersey and waving a big foam finger at the monitor. This'll probably end tomorrow as somebody passes me and I get relegated to the bottom of the pack =)

Anyways, here's my picks in the order that I got them:

1 Spezza, Jason
2 Staal, Eric
3 Gaborik, Marian
4 Sykora, Petr
5 Horton, Nathan
6 Lidstrom, Nicklas
7 Hemsky, Ales
8 Toews, Jonathan
9 Brown, Dustin
10 Hossa, Marcel
11 Recchi, Mark
12 Connolly, Tim
13 Fisher, Mike
14 Peltonen, Ville

So no Crosby or Thornton unfortunately but it feels good to have Spezza who already leads the league in points and hopefully Staal will rebound from a relatively weak year. Looking at the roster, I get the feeling I chose with too much heart and it feels like I did pick a lot of dark horses and long shots. I have this ugly feeling that Lidstrom is finally going to decline and of those guys, Gaborik and Connolly have had some serious injury issues in the past (i'm not positive that either of those guys have ever managed a 70+ game year), Horton, Hemsky, Brown, Hossa and rookie Toews are still really developing and haven't reached that "jackpot" stage in their careers, and Peltonen is a near unknown as he's an older vet who came in from the Finnish Elite league... so he's an "inspired" pick to say the least.

Also i'm cheering on my Oilers again after a Smyth-induced hiatus. We're definitely not the team that made the 2005-2006 Finals anymore, but it's a dynamic team with prospects equal to our current weaknesses. In short, we're not going to win many games this year but the hockey's going to be hella exciting with young guns like Super Series MVP Sam Gagner, Cogliano, Nilsson and Gilbert and Smid in the rear.