Welcome to the 2011/2012 Hockey Pool Draft

A big thank you to everyone who showed on Tuesday night, it looks like we'll have a very successful draft this year, as we have increased pool participation from 20 in the 2011 season to 22 for the 2012 season.

Welcome to a new NHL season and a brand new pool, I hope everyone enjoys themselves this season.  I hope to have the whole website, with full team pages, up this weekend and working before the season starts next week.  It will be good for everyone to stare down their opponents before the season starts, I'm also hoping to have a new Trash Talk page up, so the regular two or three people can chat on there all season.

With 22 teams in the pool, we have a prize pot of $1,100 and some of that will go to some jersey prizes again this season and the remainder will go to prizes for the end of the year.  Please stay tuned a little bit later on in the season to see what the prizes look like.  Cash prizes won't be announced until the jersey prizes are purchased.

For those wondering, in accordance to the poll I had at the top of the blog for the last couple of weeks, Sidney Crosby did end up being a 1st round pick, going 14th overall.  That would put him as 'late 1st round,' where one vote was cast for it.

Other players of note in the draft... The 1st overall pick this year was Steven Stamkos, so the pressure is on him to be the best player in the pool this year.  The first Winnipeg Jets player taken was Ondrej Pavelec, who went 60th overall in the 3rd round and there were 11 Jets taken through the draft.  Jaromir Jagr was taken 70th overall in the 4th round.  Gabriel Landeskog was the first 2011 draft pick taken in the pool, taken in the 13th round, 266th overall, followed closely by Adam Larsson.  Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was the last player taken in the draft.

Yes, it looks like it'll be a close one again this year.  308 players were taken this year, which means we had to dig deep for some of our last players, which should bring the talent in together and hopefully we don't have a runaway winner, like we did last season.

Have fun everyone!