Monday, January 31, 2011

Hockey Pool, week, um, er, 17 I think.

And so, I have the unmitigated pleasure of bringing you the VWXYnot Hockey Pool update for week 17, the Lamest Week Of The Year™. For those of us (me included) who faffled around with their picks, bewildered by the apparent lack of games, it's because the NHL All-Star game intervened with the real schedule. And, in case you missed the connection, it's the All-Star game that makes it the Lamest Week. Trust me on this.

Of course, there were other things going on as well, not least of which was the Rolex 24 Hours At Daytona (won again, somewhat predictably, by the Ganassi Racing team), and of course the NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown, which was actually quite fun to watch, even though the many caution flags resulted in it running overtime. Which meant, of course, that my PVR missed the end of it. Nevertheless, let me take a moment more and throw out some congratulations to Canadian series champ D.J. Kennington, who outlasted dozens of other drivers, and finished second overall.

DSC01808 - D.J. Kennington, press conference, Jumpstart 100
Mr. Kennington, last July.

But enough of that! On to the results...

Thin week or not, nothing really startling happened with the overall standings. Lavaland's still on top, I'm still running roughly parallel in second, and so on and so forth. The only notable change is that Gerty-Z and ScientistMother have switched spots, following a very strong performance by one, and a rather flabby one by the other.

Weekly totals... look at that blue bar for ScientistMother!
And here are the standings for the last three weeks or so:

So there you go. I am, in fact, creeping up on Lavaland - but very, very slowly, and with the newly-adjusted points values for the players, I really have no idea how my picks for this week will pan out. Stay tuned...

3 comments:

Cath@VWXYNot? said...

Thanks for hosting!

The all-stars game is indeed lame. Our local media did their best to hype up the "ZOMG the Sedin twins are going to be on DIFFERENT TEAMS!!!11!!1!" aspect, but still, no-one really cared. We watched part of it, because we were having brunch in a restaurant that was showing it, and it wasn't like real hockey at all. Hooray for the return of proper hockey tonight!

Mr E Man has an idea, though - he thinks the all-star game should be played at the very end of the season, and every point a player scores should give his team a better chance of a better draft pick. i.e. make it mean something, and take away the fear of getting injured right in the middle of the season.

This week could be very interesting. I have some players in my team who I haven't picked before, and don't know much about. Could go either way!

Richard Wintle said...

Cath, it's my pleasure of course. :)

I like your Mr. E Man's idea! Another would be $ bonuses for the winning team, but these guys make so much to begin with that it probably wouldn't work. Having it at the end of the season could also tie in to the NHL Awards (although those are usually smack-dab in the middle of the playoffs, aren't they?).

I've also had to do a lot of juggling with my picks - the balance between centres and forwards seems a lot trickier with the new points values. Some of my faves are a bit "pricey" now. We'll see...

ScientistMother said...

THat was no lame week!!! I kicked some serious ass. And luckily today was the deadline for updating not yesterday, not that I know anything about any of the new players I've had to choose. Did either of you watch the skills competition? that was pretty fun