Fantasy Season Wrapup
If you don't give two shits (or even one) about how my fantasy hockey and basketball seasons went you should probably skip down to the music post and vote.

After last season I had kind of lost interest in fantasy basketball. No one that I knew even wanted to try playing so I decided that I wasn't going to play it this season. The only problem was that last year I won the public pool I was in (thanks almost totally to KG). When you win a public pool the following season Yahoo allows you to play in a league with just teams that won their pools the previous year. Since I had never won a public pool before I wanted to see what these winners pools were all about. So to make a long story even longer I ended up joining a winners pool and two regular public pools (one I drafted and one I just let the auto ranking handle). Unless I won any of those pools this was going to be my last season of fantasy basketball.

All three of my teams were pretty mid-level all season and I ended up finishing the regular seasons 5th (winners), 6th (public draft) and 7th (auto draft). In the auto draft one I ended up winning the loser bracket of the playoffs, but thats not really worth anything. In the winners pool I got knocked out in the first round by the team that went on to win the whole thing. So using my logic thats almost as good as a silver medal. Thanks to Dirk Nowitzki and Yao Ming being monsters down the strech I swept through the playoffs of my drafted public pool. Looks like I've got at least one more season in me.

Then theres hockey. 3 of the 4 pools I was in were won by the team that had Jagr. In a pool of 14 teams he was taken with the 30th pick (3rd round). He went 18th in a 7 team pool (3rd round). And this one is the most embarassing: 13th round, 52nd pick of a 4 team pool. If "Ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts then we'd all have a Merry Christmas. Players I drafted before Jagr: Robert Lang, Milan Hejduk, Alex Tanguay, Glen Murray and Todd Bertuzzi twice. Every team in every pool had a minimum of 2 shots at this guy an no one took him. Next season he'll be gone by the 3rd overall pick in most drafts. Everyone knew Jagr's potential so its hard to call this a shocker, but in hindsight its hard to see how everyone missed the boat.

Anyway, on to the results. In my two head to head pools I finished the regular seasons 4th of 14 (Behind Steve in 1st and ahead of Tom and Dennis in 7th and 11th respectivly) and 2nd of 12 in a public pool. The 14 team pool saw me being knocked out in the first round and finishing 5th, while Steve continued the dominance he showed all season and walked away with the championship. Tom meanwhile put up a decent effort but lost in the finals of the loser bracket.

The other two hockey pools I was in worked on the point based system. One of them might as well have given out the trophy at Christmas. Team Asian Sensation used Jagr, Spezza and Staal to jump out to a massive lead early and never looked back. I held on to the 2nd place spot for a little while, but Tom took aim and claimed the silver medal with about 3 weeks to go in the season holding me to the bronze.

Lastly is my largest regret of the hockey season. I dominated this last pool on the strength of my goalies almost all season long. I was untouchable, the way my team was consistantly putting up points there was no way any of the other teams could catch me. Then nearing the end of the season I noticed something funny. The points my team was recording nightly wasn't the same as the points I was getting on the leaderboard. This is where my history of playing head to head pools almost exclusivly kicked my ass. You see, in a points based pool there is a maximum number of games played allowed at each position. Once you're passed that number you can no longer accumulate points at that position. So my stratagy of running 6 goalies in a 2 goalie pool gave me a big lead, but once I was out of games it allowed Tom to chip away at that lead over the final weeks of the season and claim victory.

After this season Tom now has a comanding lead for the all-time hockey championship title having won 4 of the 11 pools he has been in. Compared to the 1 for 12 that Steve and I are both rocking now. Its gonna be an intese offseason, I've got some serious ground to make up.
- posted by Mike @ 5:27 PM