Roll your eyes: It's my fantasy team(s)!

No one cares about other people's fantasy hockey teams, but since I'm writing up these fantasy hockey guides I figure it makes sense to air my dirty drafting laundry.

For the record, I plan on having three fantasy hockey teams. To some that is excessive, but drafting is fun. So we'll see if I can limit myself to three. (Sad, I know.)

Team 1: ESPN league

Skater Categories: G, A, PPG, +/-, SOG, PIM, Average Time on Ice

Goalie Categories: W, SV% and GAA

Goalie importance: 30% of stat categories, so not excessive

Defense importance: 5 D spots, ATOI make defense slightly more important than usual

Winger vs. C importance: Not that much since it uses "F" instead of C,LW,RW ... unfortunately I didn't realize that was the case (d'oh!)

Scattered Thoughts: Being used to Yahoo!, the ESPN draft format felt a little clunky to me. I think it's easier to navigate Yahoo's system and set real-time lists of people you can keep an eye on (making it simpler to keep track of your sleepers). It also kind of bugged me that ESPN's stat categories seemed less flexible. (no FW, no extra points category, PPG instead of PPP? Hmph.)

That's not to say ESPN's format is terrible, I simply prefer Yahoo at this point.

ANYWAY, here's my team. I picked #6 in a 10-team draft, so that means I was in basically the same general middle area each round.

1. Zach Parise

2. Dany Heatley

3. Mike Richards (panic pick ... was devestated that Ilya Kovalchuk almost made it back to me in the third. Fuck!)

4. Henrik Lundqvist

5. Alex Semin

6. Mark Streit

7. Duncan "Yo Yo" Keith

8. Daniel Alfredsson

9. Teemu Selanne

10. Shane Doan

11. Niklas Kronwall

12. Daniel Briere

13. Marty Turco

14. Ales Hemsky

15. Brian Rolston

16. Steve Ott

17. Alex Frolov

18. J-S Giguere

19. Shane O'Brien

20. Brad Richards

21. Ilya Bryzgalov

22. M.E. Vlasic

Feelings about my team: For some reason, I always pick poorly in the first round. Maybe it's a panic situation or maybe I'm better at finding value later in a draft.

I don't think Parise's the fourth best player in the league, but he just seems to do a lot well. He takes a shit load of shots (3rd in the NHL last year), scores a lot of goals and should maintain a nice plus/minus. The real jewel, I'd say, is Dany Heatley. Although it was a toss-up between Heater and Kovalchuk and I wonder if the combination of negative public sentiment and low ESPN ranking might have allowed me to grab Heatley in the third round if I instead would have nabbed Kovie.

Meh, either way, I was pondering Heatley in the first round so it's still a nice move.

Vlasic was a great last pick in my opinion, since he might get some of the PP time vacating San Jose since Ehr-head is gone. There are certain situational picks (Briere, Frolov, Hemsky, Brad RICHards, Kronwall and Doan) where it almost appeared as if I had no choice but to select them.

Pretty happy with my goaltending overall, because Lundqvist is steady and I expect Marty Turco to have a respectable bounce back year. Giguere is the wild card both in fantasy hockey and ... the other fantasy hockey league so my hope is that Sleek's impressions are just of a guy having a bad day a few weeks before any of this matters, not clarification that there is a fork sticking out of Giggy's back.

While I was unable to get champion PIM man/general knucklehead Daniel Carcillo, it's my hope that Steve Ott and Shane "No Relation" O'Brien can make my fake team competitive in affecting their real-life teams negatively.*

* - I kind of like PIM as a fantasy hockey stat, but it IS fucked up to root for a guy to make a dumb mistake. Then again, someone has to root for Todd Bertuzzi, right?

Anyway, I feel like my team will win by quantity over quality. By goals, PPG, +/- perhaps, SOG and being reasonably competitive in the other categories from week-to-week.

Thoughts? Think I'm a fraud? (Don't worry, this won't be on the front page very long ...)