NHL All-Star Mock Draft

So for a little bit of fun tonight, a friend of the blog, Kevin Gregus of CL Game Misconduct, and I decided to do a cross-blog mock draft of tonight's NHL All-Star fantasy draft. We set up our draft with the same captains and assistant captains (Alfredsson w/ Lundqvist, Chara w/ Lupul) and format of tonight's draft. We also decided beforehand that Alfredsson most likely will "win the coin toss" for first pick. Finally, we did a coin toss to decide who gets who (I won and took Team Alfredsson) and off we went.

Round	Team Alfredsson	Team Chara
Captain	Daniel Alfredsson, F, OTT	Zdeno Chara, D, BOS
A. Captain	Henrik Lundqvist, G, NYR	Joffrey Lupul, F, TOR
1	Jason Spezza, F, OTT	Tim Thomas, G, BOS
2	Erik Karlsson, D, OTT	Kris Letang, D, PIT
3	Milan, Michalek, F, OTT	Evgeni Malkin, F, PIT
4	Marian Hossa, F, CHI	Phil Kessel, F, TOR
5	Marian Gaborik, F, NYR	Dion Phaneuf, D, TOR
6	Dan Girardi, D, NYR	Jonathan Quick, G, LAK
7	Jimmy Howard, G, DET	Tyler Seguin, F, BOS
8	Henrik Sedin, F, VAN	Daniel Sedin, F, VAN
9	Shea Weber, D, NSH	Brian Elliott, G, STL
(GOALIES) 10	Carey Price, G, MTL	Steven Stamkos, F, TAM
11	Claude Giroux, F, PHI	Kimmo Timonen, D, PHI
12	Ryan Suter, D, NSH	Corey Perry, F, ANA
13	Alexandre Edler, D, VAN	Brian Campbell, D, FLA
14	Keith Yandle, D, VAN	Jarome Iginla, F, CGY
(D-MEN) 15	Pavel Datsyuk, F, DET	Dennis Wideman, D, WSH
16	Patrick Kane, F, CHI	John Tavares, F, NYI
17	Jordan Eberle, F, EDM	Scott Hartnell, F, PHI
18	Logan Couture, F, SJ	James Neal, F, PIT
19	Jamie Benn, F, DAL	Jason Pominville, F, BUF

Both Kevin and I predicted that the captains would appease their teammates early, with Kevin making some Penguins picks in between and I guessed that Alfredsson would bring in Hossa, his teammate of seven years before bringing in the Rangers.

Other fun little tidbits we predict:

• We broke up the Sedins again, with me taking Henrik first this year after Daniel went first last year.
• The player nobody wants in this draft, Carey Price of Montreal (neither a Bruins or Sens player will want him), ended up with Team Alfredsson following a little gamesmanship by Kevin taking Team Chara's third goalie a round earlier than necessary.
• Fun lines we predict: Team Alfredsson runs out a Kane-Datsyuk-Hossa line (The Wings-Hawks Connection or Before-and-After line) or a Gaborik-Sedin-Giroux line (Multinational Goal Corporation line). Team Chara runs out a Seguin-Tavares-Stamkos line (the Young Guns line) or Kessel-Malkin-Lupul (the What-If Toronto Had A Star Center or the 44-Years-And-Counting line)
• Mr Irrelevant in our predictions: Jason Pominville of the Buffalo Sabres. Young man is getting a new car, makes up for playing on that crappy team this year.

Finally, we predicted how the rookies would break down for the skills competition:

• Team Alfredsson: Justin Faulk (CAR), Carl Hagelin (NYR), Colin Greening (OTT), Matt Read (PHI), Ryan Johansen (CBJ), Luke Adam (BUF)
• Team Chara: Raphael Diaz (MTL), Gabriel Landeskog (COL), Cody Hodgson (VAN), Sean Couturier (PHI), Nick Johnson (MIN), Craig Smith (NSH)

There's our mock draft for tonight's All-Star Fantasy Draft. The second half of our fun was a cross-blog fantasy draft that we would do if we were picking captains, asst captains, and our own teams of 2012 All-Stars (i.e., if we were captains). You can check that out over at CL Game Misconduct, a blog that I highly recommend you spend some time checking out while there. This was such fun that I can promise more cross-blog endeavours in our future, something I hope y'all will enjoy.

NCAA Hockey Tourney Prediction Jan 23

Following a week that saw more than it's fair share of upsets and some more moving around within the pairwise, I was left with a tougher job to make a bracket this week than last.

Once again, the only host that made the tourney is Minnesota, so they are the only team automatically put in a regional.

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

4 Ohio State 15 Minnesota

5 Michigan 12 Denver

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

2 UM-Duluth 13 Miami

8 Merrimack 10 Northern Michigan

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

1 BU 16 Mercyhurst

7 Ferris St 9 BC

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

3 UMass Lowell 14 Michigan St

6 Notre Dame 11 Cornell

(Bubble Teams: CC, WMU)

Going purely by pairwise, I started by putting Minnesota in St Paul. Then going with the one seeds, I put BU in Worcester, UMass-Lowell in Bridgeport, Duluth in St Paul and Ohio State in Green Bay. That gave us two interconference matchups in the first round, with Miami-OSU and UMD-Minn. That's a simple enough switch, that keeps Duluth in a western regional (in Green Bay) and moves OSU to St Paul.

Now the next group is where it gets brutal because the CCHA has 4 teams, including three of the 2 seeds. Michigan and Notre Dame both match up with nonconference foes and keep bracket integrity, so I left them alone. The question is how do you split the BC-Merrimack and Ferris-NMU matchups. Do I send BC to Green Bay or Merrimack? While keeping BC in Worcester would rock, Merrimack is less likely to travel all the way to Green Bay. On the flip side, I think keeping Northern in Green Bay makes more sense than Ferris. So, I went with BC-Ferris in Worcester and Merrimack-Northern in Green Bay. (Honestly, you could convince me of either configuration, but a possible BU-BC regional final in Worcester was too sexy to pass up)

The only regional there that might struggle in attendance is Bridgeport, but I like that bracket overall. It looks like a very fun and intriguing tourney. Until next week!

Weekly NCAA Tourney Look

Starting this week, I will use the pairwise to predict how the NCAA hockey tournament would look at the time of publication. The beginning of every week, I will present my own bracketology, with the sole intent of showing where teams stand every week. It should be known that the pairwise will constantly be changing, so where a team may be a one seed one week, three weeks later, they may be out of the tournament completely. This is due to the complete lack of powerhouses this year, and a large amount of good-to-great teams. And without any further ado, here's my NCAA bracket for the week of Jan 16, 2012:

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

1 UMD 16 Mercyhurst

8 NMU 9 Minnesota

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

2 Ohio State 14 CC

7 Merrimack 10 Western Michigan

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

3 Boston U 15 Michigan St

6 Notre Dame 11 UMass Lowell

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

4 BC 13 Ferris State

5 Michigan 12 Cornell

(Bubble Teams: Miami, Denver)

The Pairwise pretty much set up a perfect bracket. With two eastern teams and two western teams in the top 4, it made choosing where to send the one seeds pretty easy. The only change that needed to be made was moving Michigan State, as their initial matchup was with Ohio State and members of the same conference can't face off in the first round. The choice was either to send MSU to St Paul for Mercyhurst or to Worcester for Colorado College. In this scenario, I felt that none of those three schools were going to make or break a regional by moving, so I decided to reward Minnesota-Duluth for being the overall number one. This meant that they got to keep Mercyhurst as an opponent. Instead, we send State to Worcester to face BU, and Colorado College to Green Bay to face Ohio State. And that folks is how the tourney shapes up as of today.

More of What's Stewing on my Mind

Another couple weeks away from y'all, so I start by offering my apologies! The holidays means lots of travel for me. Now that I'm back home and settled in, let's see what's been a-brewing in the ol' noggin.

• College Football

First, the Sugar Bowl was a terrible display of football by the Michigan Wolverines. At the end of the day, though, a win is a win is a win and that's what Michigan finally did: win a BCS game! What a great season for Team 132, 11 wins, a Sugar Bowl victory, and most importantly, a win over OSU. I am so happy that the team bounced back and am really excited about the recruits coming in, the idea of our defense having another year of development under Greg Mattison, and a season opener in Dallas at Jerry's World! I plan to make my first visit to the home of my NFL team for a college game between my team and my most hated coach in the sport. Speaking of which, over the past month, all I've heard from everybody is how the first game between LSU/Bama was terrible and how they don't wanna watch it again. Then don't! Stop whining about it. I loved the first game. I love great defense. My favorite players have always been defensive players: Roy Williams, Charles Woodson, Deion Sanders, DeMarcus Ware. It's so fun to watch a game where a defense imposes it's will on the opponent. That first game was exactly that, two defenses imposing their will. It wasn't bad football, it was just great football on the opposite side than most fans enjoy. Too bad for them, hells yeah for me!

• NFL

The sport which I could care less about. That's right, I'm burned out on the NFL. The Cowboys season was sooooo draining as a fan. I mean, they finished 8-8 while blowing games against New York, Arizona and Detroit. That's 11-5 right there. Then they also blew leads against New England and the Jets in games they should have won. So a 13-3 team ends up 8-8. Tell me again, Mr. Jones, why Jason Garrett still has a job? It's mind-boggling that a man who singlehandedly killed a playoff run still has a job. Romo lost the Jets game, yes. But Garrett's play calling cost the Cowboys the Lions game, his icing of his own kicker cost them the Zona game, and his inability to get the team to show up against the NFC East is just inexcusable. I hate being a reactionary fan, calling for my coaches head, but I truly believe this is a case where it's called for, Jason just isn't ready to be a top coach. Maybe this weekend's game will solve my NFL blues...most likely not though.

• Basketball

College basketball this season has been great, but I feel like the masses still don't know. So here's my public service announcement: watch B1G hoops this year. Please, if you enjoy the sport, watch it. Every night and every game has been a blast. There are a legit 9 tourney contenders, and the other three (Iowa, PSU and Nebraska) all have fun pieces they bring to games. The B1G is a better conference top-to-bottom than the Big East this year. On top of that, with only 12 teams compared to 16, you are more likely to get great matchups every night, meaning much more enjoyable ball every week. That does it for my PSA. Continuing with hoops, the NBA is completely unpredictable this season. I refuse to get suckered in to thinking any team is good or bad, because the very next night the bad team beats the good team by 40. At this point, it just feels like teams are going Ali on the early schedule, playing rope-a-dope to see how beat up they will be at the midway point. If they are in the playoff hunt and able to make a push, they will, if not, they sell off for next season. This season will not feel real to me until around game 30. Up til then, I enter every night excited for what craziness will ensue.