Goalies Taken By Round Historically

Ask any NHL team and they would probably agree, getting a top end goalie is a hard thing to do.  That might be especially so in a hockey pool draft, when top end goalies are just as good as those top end forwards we're always chiming on about.

When forwards (and defense) are getting a point for every goal and assist they get, not to mention having the ability to play in all 82 games, finding a evening out point for goaltenders wasn't all that difficult, when the true number one goalies, in a healthy season, are playing 60-70 games in a season and certainly, they're not capitalizing every night on the 2 points for a win and another 2 points for a shutout.  Still, there is a school of thought at the draft, that you need at least one good goalie, if you're going to win this pool and if you can get two, you might be able to make up for the lack of top end forwards late.

In recent years, this has created a bum's rush for goaltending at the draft, as illustrated by the table down below.  What we see here is goalies taken by round over the last nine drafts, thankfully, the structure of the pool hasn't changed, so this does become a pretty good exercise in statistics.

Last year's draft saw a record-high in goalies taken in the 1st round, topping out at 19 keepers in a 25-team draft, not leaving a lot for the rest of the pool.  That rush wasn't quite as significant as the 2015 draft, where 38 of 54 goalies were gone by the end of the 2nd round.

Year	Teams	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
2017	25	19	8	1	3	3	4	0	2	3	0	3	1	1	2
2016	25	18	7	5	5	2	1	0	2	0	3	3	2	0	2
2015	27	18	20	1	0	0	0	0	1	1	2	3	1	4	3
2014	23	7	16	8	1	1	2	4	1	0	0	3	1	1	1
2013	24	6	15	2	3	2	4	5	3	0	1	1	1	1	4
2012	17	7	11	8	4	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	2
2011	22	10	11	6	3	5	3	2	0	1	0	1	1	0	1
2010	20	8	13	3	2	0	1	4	2	2	0	0	1	1	3
2009	17	7	7	2	6	5	3	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	2

Does it really pay off in the end?  Stuart, last year's winner, didn't take his first goalie until the 3rd round and his second goalie until the 13th round, opting to exchange Louis Domingue for Keith Kinkaid at the opening Waiver Draft and then the rest was history.  Having a little bit of luck at the one-third point of the season certainly helps.

Of the top 25 players in hockey pool scoring last year, only six of them were goalies, five of them were taken in the 1st round, while Connor Hellebuyck of the Jets, wasn't taken until the 5th round.

How much help was Hellebuyck as such a good bargain pick?  Not much.  Neil, who ended up with the pick, finished 18th.

I think everyone certainly feels more comfortable with at least one starting goaltender that they can hang their hat on after the draft, but it is a long season and lots of things can certainly happen.  If you can identify the teams that you think will be at the top of the overall standings at the end of the year, pick out their number one goalie, then you might have a pretty good case for a 1st round pick, but if you're hoping that Cam Talbot, Mike Smith and/or Carey Price are going to turn around their clubs in the coming year, enough so to be a 1st round pick, you're taking a huge gamble and could be better off with Evgeni Malkin, Steven Stamkos or an Alex Ovechkin, all three players going in the 2nd round last year.

Don't let me disrupt your strategy though... I mainly did this post out of my own curiosity.

Breaking Down the Draft

Back-to-back seasons of 25 participating teams... that's just about right and I think just about everyone would agree.  350 players were taken again this year, 200 forwards, 100 defensemen and 50 goalies, which kept a lot of depth in the pool.  Thankfully, we avoided a lot of the technical issues that we had last year and the Thanksgiving weekend disaster, so we were able to finish up all the picks in three and a half hours.

I like having a look at who came from where and what position players went in which rounds, so let's have a quick look at that, just for shits and giggles.

Well, there's no surprises here.  The Calgary Flames were again the most popular team in the hockey pool draft.  Last season, they were tied with the Penguins and the Jets for the most popular, but this year, they are all by themselves, as the pool took 14 players from their hometown team.  Mike Smith was the lone 1st round pick, taken in the early goalie rush, 18th overall, while Johnny Gaudreau was taken in the 2nd round, 50th overall, and Mark Giordano was taken right next to him, 51st overall in the 3rd round by pool newcomer, Steve.

There were a couple of Flames players taken, which didn't hit my pool worthiness marks for the draft, so there are some teams in the pool that think they could really lift up and shoot out the lights.

The least popular team at the draft this year was the Los Angeles Kings with only eight players taken, while three other teams, the Panthers, Sharks and Golden Knights, all failed to hit double-digits in players selected, all three with nine picks.

Jonathan Quick was the top Kings player taken, 30th overall in the 2nd round and they were few and far between afterwards.  In fact, there were no Kings taken after the 10th round of the draft, with the pool taking the scraps from other teams, no belief in the Los Angeles depth.

The Golden Knights, in their inaugural season, don't have a lot of representation, but they do have a 1st round pick, as newcomer Scott opted to take Marc-Andre Fleury with the 22nd overall pick.  The next Vegas player didn't drop until the 9th round, when Steve shocked everyone by taking Luca Sbisa ahead of some other key players.

Let's not forget... Ryan took one unsigned free agent in the legend, Jaromir Jagr.  Jagr is still negotiating with teams to make a return and a signing has to be around the corner, with the puck dropping in a couple days.

19 rookies were taken in this year's hockey pool draft, with Nico Hischier leading the pack, taken in the 5th round of the draft.  The top pick in this summer's entry draft has been impressive for the Devils in the preseason and Clayton is hopeful that the Devils are going to play well around him as well.  Sadly, the rookie mini-game didn't hit on the wheel this year, so it is a bit of a moot point.

By my count, I am showing that seven hockey pool teams have a pair of out and out starting goalies, while there are still a few teams in the league that have their goaltending situation up in the air and that could lead to a few more, but we'll await some of their decisions before we get ahead of ourselves.  Those seven teams have to be considered favourites for the goalie survivor pool, but Stacey M. won it with only one clear starter and a back-up that got lucky with extra starts, due to an injury situation.

On the opposite end, three teams in the draft picked up a pair outright backup goalies and they'll be hoping for the tides to turn in their respective NHL clubs.  They'll certainly get some starts with lots of back-to-back nights on the NHL schedule, but they'll need a lot more starts, if they are going to keep the pace.

The other two mini games this season, the plus/minus mini-game and the All-Star Game competition are a little more difficult to project going forward, but they'll certainly be fun to watch.

It was a good day out and there are a lot of good teams in this year's pool.  We'll be getting to the side bets here in the next day or two, as there were a ton of them going around and someone actually wrote them all down this year.  Stay tuned to the blog and the website for those updates, when the season goes live.

Pool Worthy Players in the 2017 Season

Well, since there isn't any playoff pool on the site this year, my off-season gets to start right away and it's a light load, up until the draft lottery, which happens next weekend.  Once the draft order is settled, I will begin my annual Pool Outlook, a pre-off-season look at all of the teams, as they are eliminated from the playoffs, piecing together my mock entry draft at the same time.

What you're going to see on these posts is the term, "pool worthy," which pretty well stands for a player of his position, who scored enough in the season to rank within the top number of players taken at that position, multiplied by the number of teams in last season's pool.  For example, as the pool is setup, we take eight forwards, four defensemen and a couple of goalies and in the 2017 draft, we had 25 teams, therefore, we're looking for the top 200 forwards, top 100 defensemen and top 50 goalies to be pool worthy.  You have to love easy math!

The hockey pool MVP was Washington's Braden Holtby, who finished with 102 points on the season and it was a good year for goalies, as five of the top 10 overall scorers were coming out from the crease.  Cam Talbot of the Oilers, Sergei Bobrovsky of the Blue Jackets, Tuukka Rask of the Bruins and Devan Dubnyk of the Wild rounded out the top five, which went down to 90 points on the year.

Six more goalies were ranked within the top 25 players, which means 11 goalies would have been 1st round picks in this year's draft, redone for the new scoring numbers, which is well below the 18 goalies taken in the 1st round, back in October.

50th spot among the goalies, officially belongs to Jacob Markstrom of the Canucks, who finished with 20 points, tied with two others, but had the most wins of the three goalies at 10.  I guess I could give the extra nods to Michael Hutchinson of the Jets and Jonathan Quick of the Kings, who were the other two goalies with 20 points, but this pool's tie-breakers starts with wins for goalies and the more shutouts you get, the lower you go.

There's no question that Connor McDavid of the Oilers has lived up to his billing, as soon as year number two.  McDavid was tops of all skaters, rounding out to the 100-point plateau in the final game of the season and he was worthy of the 2nd overall pick in this year's draft.  With five goalies taking the first half of the top 10 in overall scoring, the other five were forwards, rounded out by Sidney Crosby of the Penguins, Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks, Nicklas Backstrom of the Capitals and Nikita Kucherov of the Lightning.  Kucherov finished with 40 goals and 85 points this season, rounding out the top 10.

The forwards made up the better part of the top 25, as eight more forwards brings the position's total up to 13 players, starting with Brad Marchand of the Bruins and finishing with Evgeni Malkin of the Penguins, down at 72 points.  It wasn't a bad year for forwards at all, but from 1st to 25th, it was a 30-point difference, but it is in those mid-to-late round picks where you make that up with a blend of luck and homework.

The last of the pool worthy forwards, 200th overall, was down at 10 goals and 29 points this season, where Joel Ward of the Sharks and Brendan Gallagher of the Canadiens finished, Ward playing 14 more games than Gallagher as well.  I value games played more than points per game, because of the ability to stay healthy gives more chances than someone who is liable to get hurt more often.

In a pool of 25 teams this past season, it is still quite something that a defenseman can make it into 1st round consideration and that's just what Brent Burns of the Sharks did this year.  Burns played in all 82 games for San Jose, scoring 29 goals and 76 points, ranking him 15th overall in pool scoring,

There were two 2nd round picks from the blueline in pool scoring in Victor Hedman of the Lightning and Erik Karlsson of the Senators, then Kevin Shattenkirk of the Capitals was worthy of the 3rd round, followed by Duncan Keith of the Blackhawks, Dustin Byfuglien of the Jets, Justin Schultz of the Penguins and Torey Krug of the Bruins, all solid enough for a 4th round pick.  Schultz and Krug each finished with 51 points in the season, all of the above could benefit from a higher draft pick next season, because of the drop off in points, when you get deeper into the position.

Josh Manson of the Ducks, Brian Campbell of the Blackhawks and Chris Wideman of the Senators all finished with 5 goals and 17 points this season, ranking 99th to 101st, rounding out the pool worthy players on the blueline.  The difference from the top to the bottom is quite great, so if you can boost your blueline with at least one top 10 defenseman, you should be in great shape for the year.

Of course, these are only guidelines at best, because of the potential changes for next season.  Who knows how many teams will return for the draft, it could be more than 25 it could be less than 25 and let's not forget... the Vegas Golden Knights will be in and adding a bit more flavour to each position, especially the goalies.  Stay tuned for the Outlooks, we'll have some fun with all 31 teams, just as soon as we know the draft order for the entry draft next weekend.

Breaking Down the Draft

It was unfortunate that we had so many technical issues over the Thanksgiving weekend, the one statistic of the draft that was daunting was that it took us well over four hours to get done. We had two less teams in the pool this year, but three more were drafting online and that was a little bit different, something that I would like to blame on the World Cup, if anything. It was the event that pushed the last Saturday before the start of the regular season to the long weekend. For shame, NHL!

Nevertheless, we still managed to have 25 teams join this year, which gave us 350 selections over the 14 rounds and we'll quickly have a look at where these players came from.

There were three teams that led the charge for the popularity contest, as the Flames, Penguins and Jets all had 14 players taken from them to start the year.  The Jets were the most curious of the three, mostly because the Flames are usually quite popular (being as though the draft is done in Calgary), while the Penguins are the Stanley Cup winners and the champs are always popular.  The Jets were not short on forwards being taken, they were the better of the three teams in that regard, having eight taken, while all three goalies for Winnipeg were taken as well.  Ondrej Pavelec, Connor Hellebuyck and Michael Hutchinson were all scooped up and there is only one starting position there, which makes this one really interesting.

Seven more teams in the pool had 13 players taken from them and they were Buffalo, Colorado, Columbus, Edmonton, Florida, Long Island and New York, throwing fashion out there as a possible reason for excitement.  These teams are rocking some good quality young players these days and after everyone climbed on the bandwagon of Team North America at the World Cup, it doesn't come as a big surprise that this is the direction we'd all want to take.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Vancouver Canucks were avoided, almost like they were the plague.  With only eight players drafted, they were the least represented team at the draft.  The Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils, both known for their lack of offense last season, only had nine players taken in the draft this year.  This likely means that all three teams will be well represented at the Week Eight Waiver Draft, since there will be more options from these teams to choose from.

One of the interesting points in this season's draft was that we didn't know what the mini-games were going to be until after the draft.  Last season's popularity of the rookie pool still seemed to resonate or maybe it was that Team North America here again, but we saw 24 rookies taken in this year's pool, way up from the 13 we saw drafted last time around (which had two more teams drafting!).  It was a bumper crop for freshmen, but there is no money in it this year.

We did, however, see the return of the PIM pool and in the draft, there were 18 players taken among the 350, that registered 75 minutes or more last season.  To be fair, most of them were deemed pool worthy before the draft, while defensemen Radko Gudas and Adam Larsson were more fringe players in scoring, but they each carried loads of frequent sitter's points for the sin bin.

Starting goalies are generally very popular in this pool and rightfully so.  The last few years have been somewhat dominated by the goalies and getting those fairly consistent starts can go a long ways to pumping regular points into your totals.  18 goalies were taken in the 1st round, 35 goalies were taken in the first four rounds altogether.  35 goalies meant that the draft was already into back-ups before some people were filling out top forwards... the madness!

The top defensemen didn't go nearly as early as I would have thought, as we didn't see Brent Burns go until the 2nd round and Erik Karlsson wasn't too far behind.  Both players finished in the top 27 of scoring last year, which would have made them 1st round picks.  Blueliners were spread out quite well in the following rounds, peaking at 11 selections in the... 11th round.  Go figure.

How about the most popular teams in one round?  One of the things that I was noticing at the draft, as it was going on, was that there were a few teams that got popular in the same round and those suspicions were indeed confirmed, looking at the figures.  The Sabres, Avalanche, Canadiens and Jets all had a round in the draft, when they saw four players taken from their team in them.  Winnipeg was the 4th round, Montreal was the 5th round, Colorado was the 11th round and Buffalo was in the 12th round.  It was the "hey yeah, I want a guy from that team" syndrome.

This season feels about right with 25 teams... I think we're definitely in for a good one!

Who Would Have Won If the Draft Went According to the Final Numbers?

Out of curiosity (and some out of boredom), I thought I would take the draft order that we had come up with and redo the draft, as per the scoring ranks we finished up with in the regular season and applying the rules of the pool, just to see what we would have come up with.  In the draft, it's eight forwards, four defensemen and a pair of goalies, so if they were already full up on a position or two, they would take the next best in the position(s) they hadn't filled.

Pick/Finish	Draft	Actual Finish	Points	What If	Points
1st	John S.	Jeremy	661	John S.	616
2nd	Mike	Brenda & Seward	655	Mike	615
3rd	John R.	Brian	637	Derek & Dan	612
4th	Allan	Eric	627	John R.	612
5th	Eric	Ryan	623	Eric	604

As the draft order went, John S., Mike and John R. took the 1st, 2nd and 3rd picks in the pool draft and the final order for players went John S., Mike and then Derek & Dan for the money positions.  The one remarkable team on this list belongs to Eric, as his team shows up on each list, getting a good draft pick, finishing a little bit better than his pick and the 'what if' scenario played out well for his pick position as well.

I think one of the most interesting things about the teams is how spread out the talent was, which was what led to the top four teams finishing among the top.  John S. didn't have a starting goalie on his team, while Mike and John R. only had one, and then Derek & Dan managed to snag a couple mid-range starters.  Let's have a quick peek at how John S.'s draft would have gone to win this 'what if' scenario.

John Swan	Position	Team	Round
Patrick Kane	F	CHI	1
Mark Stone	F	OTT	2
Roman Josi	D	NAS	3
Leon Draisaitl	F	EDM	4
Mikkel Boedker	F	ARI/COL	5
Nino Niederreiter	F	MIN	6
Rickard Rakell	F	ANA	7
Tobias Rieder	F	ARI	8
Nick Foligno	F	CBJ	9
Alec Martinez	D	LOS	10
Jake Gardiner	D	TOR	11
Antti Raanta	G	NYR	12
Jonas Gustavsson	G	BOS	13
Brett Pesce	D	CAR	14

On the surface, this is a pretty good looking team, regardless.  In this 'what if' scenario, you're not going to see any bargain picks, you'll be getting players where they should land, for the most part.  The separation of Patrick Kane to the rest of the pool was probably the biggest reason why John got such a good finish, but as we all know, that's just not how the draft works out every year.

Another interesting point was Kristy & Don, who picked last in the snake order, their team finished 14th out of the 27 teams in the pool standings, the way that it all fell.  Of course, the season doesn't finish like what the final rankings are and the duo actually finished 6th, thanks to a good fortune in the Waiver Draft.

The real benefit to picking in those first 10 spots is that you're going to get some top end talent, but it is what you do in the remaining 13 rounds that really defines your team.  In John S.'s case, he had Carey Price with the 1st overall pick and he managed to snag Patrick Kane with the top pick n the 3rd round, but his team still failed to crack the top half of the standings.  Some of it is luck and some of it is also what your fellow poolies are drafting around the same time.

Next season will run much of the same way for the draft order, because it is quick and easy.  I will do more of a roll call before clicking the button and determining the order, avoiding that snafu I had this year.

Breaking Down the Draft

Hooray! It's game day! Finally! It's been too long, no?

Well, now that it's here, we can finally get this hockey pool going, but not before having a quick peek at the breakdown of the draft.  This is one of those things I like to do, just for my own curiosity more than anything.

We had 378 players taken in this year's draft, chosen by 27 teams, taken from 30 NHL teams.  Calgary and Chicago were the two most popular teams, hardly a surprise, given where the pool is located and who the last Stanley Cup winners were.  Yeah, that is definitely the makings of two popular teams in a hockey pool.

Both the Flames and Blackhawks had 16 players taken from their team and they are only allowed to have 23 players on their active rosters, which were officially announced this morning.  Of the two teams, the Flames were the only team in the pool where three goalies were taken, as a few pool teams were taking the risk that one would play more than the other two or that their goalie would be dealt to another team where he would play.  An interesting gamble, to say the least.

The two least popular teams in the pool this year, to no surprise again, are the Arizona Coyotes, with seven players taken, and the New Jersey Devils, who had eight players taken.  Neither team are expected to do a great deal, but the players that will get the bulk of the playing time were looked upon to help out a few pool teams, at the very least.

In goal, with the Flames having all three goalies taken in the draft and 54 goalies taken in total, Arizona, Boston, Colorado, Columbus, Florida, New Jersey and Washington are the only teams to have only their starters taken in the pool, leaving the rest of the league with two goalies taken and not necessarily the right back-ups.  Back-up goalies in Edmonton and Montreal have both been sent to the minors to start the season, which act as plans that have backfired.

Five NHL teams topped out with five defensemen being taken from their sides, as Calgary, Chicago, Long Island, New York and Washington were all looked upon to have the best bluelines in the league.  Only Oliver Ekman-Larsson was taken from Arizona this year on the weakest blueline in the league.

Finally, up front, Chicago and St. Louis were exceptionally popular for the forwards this year, each coming away with nine selections from their top 12's.  10 teams each have eight forwards each, which made it a pretty tight race.  New Jersey was left with only four forwards taken in total.  Talk about not popular at all.

Well, I thought that would have been somewhat interesting to write/read, so there it is.  A quick breakdown of what everyone thought was the best course of action was.  Now, we'll see where the best points are going to come from, starting tonight.

The Week One Curse

In the chase to win the annual draft hockey pool, we all pick our teams, hoping that they can do their best every day and every week, no matter how many weeks it takes to get through the season.

Well, I have a table that may suggest that you may not want your team to do so well in the opening week of the season, as the team that has finished atop the standings after the first week of the season in the last seven years, has not gone on to win the hockey pool.  A couple of teams have finished 2nd in Week One and gone on to win the whole thing, but no one has gone wire-to-wire or at the very least, been on top at the beginning and the end.

One team has gone from 1st to last, but that's not what you're after at all.

	Week One		Final Week
	1st Place (Finish)	Last Place (Finish)	1st Place (Week One)	Last Place (Week One)
2014 (24)	Brenda (9th)	Benson (11th)	Allan (10th)	Doug (5th)
2013 (17)	Wes (12th)	Clayton (6th)	Stacey M. (7th)	Ryan M. (16th)
2012 (22)	Wayne (5th)	Stuart (2nd)	Clayton (2nd)	Darren (19th)
2011 (20)	Jani (17th)	Chris (3rd)	Allan (2nd)	Dale C. (17th)
2010 (17)	John P. (17th)	Peter (15th)	Leon (5th)	John P. (1st)
2009 (17)	Dale C. (8th)	5 teams	Clayton (10th)	Grant (13th)
2008 (17)	Marcus (16th)	7 teams	Stuart (7th)	Ryan (11th)

As you can see, two teams have finished in last place in the opening week of the season and have come back to get into a money position, both in 2011 and 2012.  That's pretty remarkable.  They may not be pool wins, but at least it has been proven that money can be won from that position.

The lowest position in Week One to win the pool is 10th place, done twice, as recently as last year.  To me, it looks like a top ten position should give you the most hope, no matter how many points you may or may not be behind.

It's a new year and anything can happen, but who doesn't like to try and find patterns in the past?  Do you want your team to finish 1st in Week One after seeing this?

Pick Trends Between Last Year and This Year

In this year's edition of the hockey pool draft, there was a major run on goaltending and defense in the early rounds, which set a different pace to the picking momentum.  Last year, with a record of 24 teams in the pool, there was a fair bit of anxiety on some of the more limited positions and I think that carried over, thanks to a bit more homework, into this year's pool, where there is 23 teams.

Last season's winning side, belonging to Allan, had the strongest goaltending in the pool in the year, 71 points better than the average team picked.  Allan's side had average forwards and average defense, so it might be safe to say that goaltending was key.

In the first three rounds of the draft, 31 of 46 goalie spots (67%) were filled, which meant that there was a pretty good premium on points from the crease, especially compared to the draft last year, where (48%) of goalie spots were taken by the end of round three.

In both years, the 2nd round has been the round of goaltenders, 15 being taken out of 24 picks in 2013 and 16 of 23 in 2014.  A lot of teams want to make sure that they have at least one number one goalie on their side, not being left out, after picking a significant forward in the opening round.

Remarkably, five out of the seven teams that picked goalies in the 1st round this year (including our reigning champ), had their pairing set by the 2nd round.  An onus on goaltending, indeed.  Only four more teams had their pairing set by the end of the 3rd round.

Only one team in the draft failed to pick up a goalie in the first three rounds, as Wyllie didn't pick his first keeper until the 6th round, getting Los Angeles back-up Martin Jones, and then his pairing was set in the 11th round, snagging Michal Neuvirth, a potential starter in Buffalo.  Bold moves.

Mike led the pool last year in defensemen points, 48 points better than the pool average, but he had below-average goaltending and slightly below-average forwards, so his 10th place finish didn't seem too far out of whack.

Defense had a slight increase in popularity in the first five rounds as well, as 22 of 92 spots (24%) were filled in the first five rounds, whereas last year saw only 18% filled by that time.  Last year, we did see a defenseman taken in the 1st round, Erik Karlsson, and none taken in the 2nd round, where there were none taken in the 1st round this year and three taken in the 2nd round, including Karlsson.

One of the most noticeable difference to how popular the defense was in the draft this year is in the number of selections in the last four rounds.  In the 2013 draft, there were more teams filling up their defensive vacancies with the depth defenders, as 43 of 96 spots (45%) were filled late, while 27 of 92 spots (29%) needed to be filled in the same time this year.  By the end this year, most teams had done their defensive and goaltending shopping, filling their boots with the remaining forwards.

Finally, putting a premium on forwards didn't do much of anything for Clayton last season, as his team had 102 points more than the pool average in forward points, but was below average on the blueline and horrendous in goal.  He finished in 8th place, as the support he received beyond the forward lines was abysmal.

The last four rounds actually saw more forwards being taken than the first four, 59-47 the margin, but the 47 in the first four rounds will likely come up with a boatload more points, given the talent that was taken.

With so many teams, however, taking forwards late, this may even out the competition through the pool, assuming they took the right defenders and goalies earlier on in the pool.

More Figures from the First Segment

Now that we're into the second segment of the hockey pool year, with another jersey up for grabs, I thought I would go over some of the numbers from the first segment of the season. I think this is more for my own curiosity than anything, but I thought I'd share at the same time, just in case someone else thought it was interesting.

So, Allan S. won the first segment with 199 points and his breakdown of points went down like so... 120 points from his forwards (5th in the pool), 37 points from his defense (8th in the pool) and 42 points from his goalies (4th in the pool).  It's a pretty even keeled team across the board, which doesn't excel in any one position, but is pretty decent in all of them.

Brenda's team led the pool in points from the forward group with 139, which was 13 points better than 2nd place in the list, Dale B..  Down at the bottom, both Leo and Doug each sat with 77 points, which led to them being at the bottom of the pool, quite clearly.

On defense, Grant's team took the first segment crown with 55 points, followed closely by Kristy & Don and Scott with 53 points.  All three of these teams are definitely in the top half of the pool, some doing better than others.  Down at the bottom, Wes' team only managed to pick up 14 points from the blueline, but his team sits in the middle of the pack.

A big reason why Wes' team was in the middle of the pack, his goaltending.  At 55 points from two goalies, he put a lot of eggs in this basket and they are buoyant enough to keep him afloat.  He was also followed rather closely by Chris M., who was also kept afloat by his goalies at 54 points.  The bottom of these ranks was Derek Wyllie, who only managed 9 points from Michal Neuvirth and Viktor Fasth.

At the Waiver Draft, Leo swapped a pair of forwards to improve his shortcoming, while Doug swapped a goalie and a forward to help his cause.  Wes swapped a defenseman and a forward, hoping to help his team get into the top 10, while Wyllie swapped one goalie and a forward.  Needs were somewhat addressed by the teams in dire need of some help.

I found that goal scoring was also a good sign of teams doing well in the pool from year to year and the Week Eight leader in goals was Brenda F. with 78, who was 4th after the first segment.  Allan, who was tops in the pool finished 2nd in goals in the segment with 74.  Wes was down at the bottom of the list with only 35 goals for, but obviously had more than enough wins to help his cause there.

Another key to successful teams... staying healthy.  Four teams, all within three skater games played, led the way in the healthy team discussion.  Kristy & Don led the way after Week Eight with 277 games collected, followed by Allan at 276, Grant at 275 and Stacey C. at 274.  All four teams are either in the prizes or making their way in.  Down at the bottom, Wes only collected 200, thanks to a lot of injury and minor-league problems, followed by Ryan M., who had 208 and Chris M., who had 220.

Goalies, measured in minutes played, since appearances could be slightly skewed, thanks to relief appearances and pulls, seems to be about right.  Chris M. saw the most minutes at 2,448 (Marc-Andre Fleury and Roberto Luongo), while the goalie points leader, Wes, wasn't too far behind at 2,358 (Tuukka Rask and Mike Smith).  Both teams had their goalies going constantly, making them into exceptionally good picks and helped to keep their numbers so high.  On the other end of the spectrum, Cindy only managed 659 minutes collected (Dan Ellis and Ray Emery), followed by Wyllie at 706, Wilton at 850 (Craig Anderson and Tomas Vokoun) and Mike S. at 878 (Jonathan Bernier and Jake Allen).

When you're talking about skater games to goalie minutes, your skaters are going to have the greater impact, since you have 12 skaters to your two goalies, so staying healthy with your skaters is way more important in the long run.  Goalie minutes have kept Chris and Wes in the running, so if they have improved their teams in the skater area at the Waiver Draft, which they tried to do, they should be better in the running for prizes in the second segment.

I think I'll likely have another look at these same numbers after the second segment, as they should give us good indicators of why teams moved up and down from the first segment and why teams are in the money.