2015 Winter Classic Preview

New Year's Day, 2015... the scene: Nationals Park in Washington, DC. This is where the NHL will hold the 2015 edition of the Winter Classic, the outdoor festival that celebrates the beginnings of our favourite game at sites in the United States, which make it far from being a classic, but from there, I digress.

This year, it will be a match-up of some teams previously involved in these outdoor games on January 1st, as the Chicago Blackhawks, veterans of their own Winter Classic previously, take on the Washington Capitals, who have visited other Winter Classic sites before hosting their own.

Where this blog is concerned is in the hockey pool, of course, and this is where the preview really starts to take shape.  I have a table below of all the players taken in the draft this year, where the Blackhawks have a two player edge over the Capitals, which suggests that our poolies thinks that this could be a close game, like many of the outdoor games have been.

Stacey C. has the decided edge in players in the game with four, three Blackhawks and the Capitals goalie... how undecided is that?  You have to think that Stacey is hoping for a slightly high scoring game with Washington coming out on top, right?

Clayton and Kristy & Don each have three players going in the game, all of which are offensive.  Clayton is mainly Chicago, 2-1, while the pool duo is all Washington, so there is a little bit of a clash of biases in that match-up.

Chicago			Washington
Corey Crawford	Dale C.		Braden Holtby	Stacey C.
---			---
Patrick Kane	Stacey C.		Nicklas Backstrom	Wilton
Jonathan Toews	Stacey M.		Alex Ovechkin	Kristy & Don
Kris Versteeg	Stacey C.		Marcus Johansson	Clayton
Brandon Saad	Wes		Joel Ward	Stuart
Marian Hossa	Stacey C.		Troy Brouwer	Kristy & Don
Brad Richards	Clayton		Evgeny Kuznetsov	Benson
Patrick Sharp	Wyllie
Andrew Shaw	Stacey M.
---			---
Brent Seabrook	Leo		John Carlson	Kristy & Don
Duncan Keith	Clayton		Mike Green	Troy
Niklas Hjalmarsson	Dale C.		Matt Niskanen	Cam

After the game, we'll have a comparison of pool teams and how many points they got in this game.  It's really too bad that I wasn't able to secure a prize for the outdoor game, but with only 12 of 23 pool teams active in the Winter Classic, I may not feel quite so bad.