Welcome to the 2017/2018 Draft Pool

It's October!  That means that it's hockey season... finally!

A big thank you to everyone who showed up on Saturday afternoon, we're running another solid 25-team pool again this year, which will mean that the prizes will be very similar to last season, where the winner took home $750 for their troubles.  As for the actual prizes, I will have a post published on the blog here in the next few days, explaining the payout structure again here.

This season, we welcomed a few new faces to the pool, so we'll see how they fare in their first year... a big hello and good luck to you three, Steve, Chris and Scott.

We'll have three mini-games this season, like we have had the last couple of seasons and the wheel fell on the goalie survivor pool, a plus/minus pool and the All-Star Game as well.

The goalie survivor pool is a pretty easy premise... the weeks are Monday to Sunday in the regular season and your goalies will need at least one win to stay in the competition for another week.  If your goalies fail to win one game in between Monday to Sunday, you're eliminated from the mini-game.  Last season, Stacey M. won her money back after John S. fell out of the running in Week Twenty-Two of the season.  Stacey's team didn't register a win in every week of the year, failing to do so in the final week of the season.

The plus/minus stat is a new mini-game for us this season.  Your forwards and defensemen will have their plus/minus numbers counting this season and you will be able to see an updated number every Monday, after the weekly statistical audits are done.  This will be a hard game to adjust for in the Waiver Drafts, but it should be a wide open competition, regardless.

Last season, I did keep a tally of the plus/minus in the hockey pool and if it was a mini-game last year, Marcin would taken his money back,  as his team ran away with the statistic, having a +102 rating.  The entire pool was on the positive side of the ledger, finishing with a combined +135 rating for the year.

The last mini-game will revolve around this year's All-Star Game, which will go in Tampa Bay in February.  It has been already announced that they will go with the 3-on-3 tournament again, which means there will be three games played and the points will count exactly the same as they would in the regular season for those three games.  Most points on the day will win their money back.

Of course, I kept track of this one too last year and Marcie would have won her money back in this one, if it was a go, as her team combined for 11 points from four players in the mid-season classic.

There are 27 weeks in the season, so the two Waiver Drafts will go on Weeks Nine and Eighteen, with the players going live on Ten and Nineteen.  Once we have some scoring in the league, there will be an updated list of available players for you and you'll be notified by e-mail or text that the Waiver Draft is getting started.

I think that's about it for now... stay tuned to the blog!  All the posts on there from here on in is all going to be related to the pool players, so keep a close eye here.  Everything that happens passes through these digital pages.