Sunday, August 26, 2018

The Pool Worthy Goon Squad

This is a fun blog post to write, I must admit.

The mini-game wheel didn't favour the PIM pool last season, which was too bad, because it is a really good mini-game in the hockey pool season, certainly for those teams that have a rough go of it early on in the year, they can goon it up and try to earn their money back.

This is the third time I've written this post, missing out on the 2016 season, mostly because of the hooplah around the World Cup of Hockey, it was somewhat overlooked.  So, only 2015 and 2017 were done before and that will be my frame of reference now looking back.

So, to qualify for the Pool Worthy Goon Squad, you needed to finish in the hockey pool worthy conversation in points, top 200 in forwards, top 100 defense and top 50 goalies, and then we take the top penalty minute getters.

Forwards Team Points PIM
Tom Wilson WAS 35 187
Evgeni Malkin PIT 98 87
Miles Wood NJD 32 84
Evander Kane SAN 54 82
Milan Lucic EDM 34 80
Ryan Johansen NAS 54 78
Mikael Backlund CAL 45 78
    
Defense Team Points PIM
Dustin Byfuglien WPG 45 112
Nikita Zadorov COL 20 103
P.K. Subban NAS 59 82
Ian Cole COL 20 76
    
Goalies Team Points PIM
John Gibson ANA 71 16
Andrei Vasilevskiy TAM 106 14
    
673 1,079


So, here we go!  Dustin Byfuglien will wear the the "C" for this squad, as he has now appeared on all three teams and if I was to go back and look at the 2016 goon squad, I'm sure he would have been there as well.  Maybe one day, I will look at that team.

Evander Kane and Milan Lucic each make their second appearance on the team and then there are some surprises here and there.

Tom Wilson may be more of a surprise, given the number of points he had, rather than the penalty minutes, but Evgeni Malkin and Mikael Backlund do come as somewhat of a surprise.  There is a lot of top end talent on this team, so much so, that the team would have finished 7th in points, if you were to slot it in to last year's hockey pool standings.  That's a good finish.

With all of that being said, we should have a look at what the remaining goon squad would look like.  We won't use any of the already drafted players above and we'll see what they come in with.

Forwards Team Points PIM
Michael Haley FLA 9 212
Antoine Roussel VAN 35 187
Austin Watson NAS 19 123
Cody McLeod NYR 4 111
Ryan Reaves VGK 10 94
Zack Kassian EDM 19 92
Garnet Hathaway CAL 13 88
   
Defense Team Points PIM
Alex Petrovic FLA 13 98
Jamie Oleksiak PIT 17 87
Radko Gudas PHI 16 83
Kevin Bieksa UFA 8 83
   
Goalies Team Points PIM
Cam Ward CHI 50 14
David Rittich CAL 16 14
   
229 1,286

Lots of familiar names on this list, especially in the forward department.  If you were going to just goon up this season from day one, without any hesitation about whether or not the PIM pool lands on the wheel, you could take most of these forwards and be very confident that you would win your money back.  Antoine Roussel, Cody McLeod and Ryan Reaves have appeared on all three lists now.  The defense and goalies are a good mix, but you might not want to draft Kevin Bieksa, as he has not been signed to a new deal on any NHL team yet and he could have been replaced by Travis Hamonic in Calgary, losing out on a few minutes in the process.

All in all, I do hope that the PIM pool makes its return to the hockey pool this year, but that's not for me to determine.  That's for the wheel to decide.

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