Twistin’ By The Pool

my 2015-16 fantasy team

My executive director stuck his head inside my office on Wednesday. “Got a minute?”

“Make it fast,” I replied. “The pool draft starts in twelve minutes!”

He stepped over the threshold and dropped his voice. “I’ve done f*** about my picks. Can you resend me the link?”

I gaped at him. “Are you kidding me? I worked on mine for three hours last night! Oh—and Phil Kessel is with Pittsburgh now.”

My über-boss, who has a framed Leafs jersey signed by Wendel Clark hanging in his office, nodded. “I’ll probably pick him anyway. Just send me the link.”

I flashed it at him, our respective doors closed, and the games began.

A couple of years ago, before he took over the division’s helm, he drafted Claude Giroux before I could. I have not forgotten that, apparently, because when I saw that he had eighth pick over my seventh, I thought, Ha! No Giroux for you, buddy! All I had to do was fret through the first six picks, but I was able to nab my top guy.

We have a couple of rookies in the pool this year. I’m a veteran by now, the first female to join in 2010-11 and now comprising maybe a third of fifteen members for the 2015-16 season. Word has spread—and my old nemesis, the wire-and-fake-fur-Flyer fan, is back in the fold after a brief stint with another ministry. Figures that he drafted Jake Voracek and Ryan Kesler just when I was planning to click the button behind him.

Of course you know that this means war.

Or would do, except that the bulk of my roster features more players than not who made my list the day before the draft. Okay, so Nazem Kadri made it from sheer desperation, though I deliberately gunned for James Van Riemsdyk. I’ve got two young defencemen, one going into his second year which often results in a slump, but I’m hopeful that his talent will prevail. If not, veteran BC boy Brent Seabrook will come off the bench to replace him.

If my top five stay healthy, I have as good a chance as any—and better than the poolie who drafted Martin St. Louis and Daniel Briere. It had to have been one of the rookies. ESPN gaffed by leaving these guys on the list, but anyone following the sports news would have known that both players retired in the summer.

Easy pickin’s? Meh. It’s more fun to watch the stats and participate in the chirping. As I emailed when the draft was done, and in keeping with my reputation for choosing photogenic faces, “May the best-looking team win!”

Season Finale

3 cups in 6 years - one more and they'll have a quart

The Chicago Blackhawks have won their third Stanley Cup in six years. Good for them! It’s hard to win one in this age of salary caps and unrestricted free agents, but team management was able to keep the core group together, led by the truly indomitable Jonathan Toews. That kid (kid?? He’s twenty-seven years old!) is the James T. Kirk of the NHL. I’ve seen him carry that team on his back when they’re slumping, and in a duel of captains in the final series, he showed will and grit that Steve Stamkos only dreams of having.

I should probably dislike the Hawks the way I dislike the Islanders; after all, that twerp Patrick Kane scored the OT winner in Game 7 against the Flyers in 2011 and it took me all summer to get over it. Meh. It’s enough for me to not like Patrick Kane. I do like that the whole team gave Roberto Luongo conniptions in various playoff series over the Vancouver years, again led by their Valyrian steel captain.

I paid off my playoff pool debt and collected my regular season pool winnings, yesterday. When the math was finally done, the whole enchilada cost me $5 and gave me the dubious distinction of being one half of the first-ever tie for a money spot.

So hockey mania is over for another year.

Well, three and a half months.

Hawk Trumps Bear



2013 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks



I won’t say that I was totally engaged with the Stanley Cup playoffs this year, but as the rounds went deeper, I watched more of the games. It became a case of voting out the teams I cannot endure, so I was content with Chicago getting to the final for the west. In the east, however, my will was consistently foiled. Pittsburgh is my second string favourite after Philly, but when the Boston Bruins shut down Sid Crosby and the Penguins and advanced to the Cup final, I started to fret.

And foam.

And use poor language.

I loathe the Bruins. Can’t say why, I just do. I think they’re a bunch of goons, and being a Flyer fan of old means that I know goons when I see them. I like their goalie, though. He’s deadly cute, for one thing, and Finnish for another. I like Finnish goalies. They’re steady, efficient, and reliably cool under pressure.

The Blackhawks are young, slick and skilled. I’ve had their captain in the office hockey pool for three years in a row. Patrick Sharp and Michal Handzus are both ex-Flyers. The team bit Detroit in the collective butt in round two, coming back from being down 3 games to 1 and winning in seven. Phew. So I reckoned, if they ran circles around the Bruins and tired out the lumbering oafs, they had a good chance of winning the Cup.

And they did. They had to work for it (winning the Stanley Cup is easy, after all – you just have to win 16 games), but by the gods’ dainties, they did it. How they did it I really don’t know; they were stonewalled at almost every turn, but in the end, I think they did exhaust the oafs. They got hit, they got up. They got scored on, they scored back, even if the game meant going to overtime – and it did. Three agonizing times. They were even shut out in one game, thanks to the deadly cute Finnish goalie. Back and forth, up and down, amid stupid penalty calls and stupider non-calls, the Hawks refused to go away. And last night, just as we were resigning ourselves to a seventh game, Bryan Bickell popped one past Tuukka Rask (I told you he’s Finnish) with something like a minute and a half left in the third period. Now the game was tied and yet another overtime looked imminent. I was just thinking about making tea for the duration when Ter suddenly yelled, “He scored!”

Yup, seventeen seconds after Bickell’s goal, Dave Bolland got another past Rask and it was a done deal. No way could the Bruins come back within the remaining minute, not with their loutish lineup. Hats and horns! The Hawks won their second Cup in four years, and this time I enjoyed it (the first time they beat the Flyers and became anathema until this year).

Everyone is at different stages on the great cosmic journey and Love is the only rule. Kindness, acceptance, tolerance, fairness – they’re all principles in which I implicitly believe. Generally, I live by those principles. However, when it comes to hockey, I become a tiny, petty, egoically-identified cretin whose greater delight stems not from the Hawks winning the Stanley Cup, but from the Bruins not winning it. Yep, it’s small. I’ve pondered my shrivelling wickedness, and I’ve decided against apologizing for it. No one died, no homes were lost, everyone kept his job (unless you’re a coach), the world looked the same this morning as it did last night and, as my father always reminds me, it’s just a game.

Sure, Dad.