The Pooler's Guide from 'Hockey - The Magazine'

Sure, the Hockey News has provided some interesting food for thought about the coming season and how to apply their prognostication to your local hockey pool draft, but I thought I would deviate a bit from the norm and pick up something new. So new to me was the magazine, Hockey - The Magazine, which wins for very creative title. They have produced a pretty eye-popping pool guide for the coming season, which I've almost lost all interest in the numbers and focused on the pretty pictures and colours.

Once I got past all the busy colours and layout, I tried to really get down to the numbers and get an assessment of where this magazine was heading with their predictions and projections. In all honesty, they are a little more conservative, if you can be, with their numbers.

Sidney Crosby does continue to lead the pack, which seems to be inevitable in most circles, while Alexander Ovechkin trails behind yet again. "H-TM" only projects four players to eclipse the 100-point mark, while only one player (Ovechkin) passes the 50-goal mark. Now, that's very conservative. There only seems to be one difference between the two publications top 10 players list in scoring... THN has Marc Savard in their list and H-TM includes Daniel Alfredsson.

Let's continue to compare in my interesting points of note: Joe Sakic finishes with 69 points, Mats Sundin finishes with 77 and Teemu Selanne finishes with 58. Somewhat comparable, but still conservative in the older free agents (although Sakic has signed now).

The rookie race sees a bit of a surprise winner in Kyle Okposo taking the crown with 65 points. Kyle Turris and Steven Stamkos finish back in the pack with 52 and 43 points, respectively. Another rookie that will get some attention this season is Fabian Brunnstrom, who is pegged for 30 points in 60 games by H-TM.

In net, the top goalie is Martin Brodeur at 98 points, while Evgeni Nabokov trails at 96 and Roberto Luongo and Miikka Kiprusoff are both expected to be at the 90-point mark. Those numbers are very close to the THN numbers, but Marc-Andre Fleury trails behind those four, instead of being second.

On the blueline, Nicklas Lidstrom does continue his dominance at a reasonable 68 points, while Tomas Kaberle is pegged to have a big season in fourth spot with 56 points. A point worth noting, especially if Bryan McCabe does eventually get dealt to Florida. Otherwise, it's the same cast of usual suspects on the blueline.

Certainly being conservative doesn't hurt when you play in the Hockey Pool, so it's well within reason to take this publication to your draft and read from it. It does pose quite a few good thoughts in it's articles, which is helpful in making up your mind. At the end of the day, you may want to make sure you can cheer for your team as well... if you don't like a guy like Sean Avery, maybe you shouldn't worry about what the books have to say and move past him, even if he is the next best player available.