2017 Hockey Pool Draft Day Announced!

It's that exciting time in the summer again, where we are watching all of the major free agent signings in the NHL tail off, prospect camps for teams have already come and gone and now we continue to enjoy the warm weather in the summer and quickly mark our calendars for this year's hockey pool draft.

This year, we have the benefit of not having a preseason tournament, like the World Cup of Hockey, delaying and compacting the 2017 regular season and it also forced the hockey pool draft day, which I like to have done on the last Saturday before the regular season, to fall on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.

This year, we're heading back to the same location, but it has a different name... what was Nicastro's last year, it is now North On Centre Public House and we should be in for a much better event this year.  You can find the location, here on the map.  If you weren't with us last year, North On Centre has a great upstairs room, which has a projector, tons of seating and another bar for us.  They will have their regular Saturday specials on, which include $3 tacos and $6 pints of Caravel Brewery beers, a good local brewery.

So... when is this awesome event, you ask?

September 30, 2017 at 1pm

The NHL regular season gets started on October 4, so teams should be all set to rock and roll by that Saturday, possibly still with a couple of cuts to make, but otherwise some full rosters.

The format shall remain the same, in terms of team sizes and scoring... why mess with a good thing?  14 players, which will include eight forwards, four defensemen and a pair of goalies.  The scoring will be as follows:

• goal - 1 point
• assist - 1 point
• win - 2 points
• shutout - 2 points

Dale B. won last year's pool with 668 points, taking home the trophy and the $750 1st place prize, narrowly beating Brian from down under.  That's a pretty sweet prize for a $60 buy-in, wouldn't you say?

Prizes were paid down to 3rd place and let's not forget about the mini-games, where there will be three more games during the year for teams to try and win their money back.  Last season, we had the goalie survivor pool, the penalty minutes pool and the outdoor games pool, all of which will be on the mini-game wheel, when we give it a few spins, once we conclude the draft.

I think that's pretty much everything.  I am hoping to get 25 teams (or a few more) again for the coming season.  With the inclusion of the Vegas Golden Knights, we'll have a couple more goalies to pick from, which is usually a position of contention in the draft, so the more players will make the draft a little merrier.

We'll see you at the end of September!