I'm Back!

Apologies readers for my absence. This past month saw me take a trip to Indy and Ann Arbor, prepare for and subsequently take a midterm, and finally (and really the major reason for lack of writing), fight off a cold so brutal, that I'm sure this particular strain dragged itself straight out of hell. I'm still writing at Talk Sports/Drink Beer as well, so continue to check that out. Anyways, I thought I'd drop my thoughts on a few topics real quick for y'all.

NFL Offseason

Let's start with the major move: the Cowboys signing of Brandon Carr just took them to the next level. Oh and some guy named Manning signed in Denver, but we'll get back to that. The Cowboys foray into the free agent market has been great, upping the talent in the secondary and creating more flexibility come draft day. Now the Cowboys can afford to trade down and pick up an extra pick or two and not fear missing out on the top corners or safeties.

Now to that Manning signing. I like it for Denver, as they have a great defense that could make the playoffs in a mediocre AFC West with Tebow at QB. If Manning struggles, then you get essentially the same level of play at QB. If Manning returns to old Manning, now you are a Super Bowl contender. Win-win, and add in an extra win for Elway, who now can trade Tebow without fear of a riot at Mile High. The best landing place for Tebow: Jacksonville. It's the one place he can start at quarterback and replicate his Denver tenure (MJD running takes the pressure off Tebow to throw to win). And for Jacksonville, they need fans to show up bad before they are forced to become the Los Angeles Jaguars. Tebow puts fans in the seats, especially in Florida.

Finally, I love RGIII, so why did he have to go to the freaking Skins? I don't think I'll be able to handle it that first game when RGIII hits Boys-killer Santana Moss for a game-winning 90 yard bomb...and there goes all confidence I had in the Cowboys. That team will be the death of me.

NCAA Hockey and Basketball Tourneys

First, the basketball tournament. Michigan lost, yes, but really, this team was never a title contender in my mind, so losing in the first round to Ohio or the Sweet 16 to UNC really changes nothing. We still are seeing the loss of only two players, who talent-wise were never great, and replacing them with three top recruits (and the return of Horford from injury). I can't wait for next season to arrive! Quick note on the loss as well: I also can't be mad when Michigan saw Ohio's typically mediocre three point shooters hit everything they threw up and Michigan missed nearly a dozen layups. You miss gimmes, your opponent shoots above their capabilities, you lose. Basketball is simple...freaking layups...

The hockey tournament is what matters to me. Since I first started attending UM, I realized quickly that there is nothing better than college hockey, especially come tournament time. Unfortunately, the NCAA tournament being a one-and-done format equals chaos and heartbreak of an extreme level. This season will be no different and I just hope that for once, it's the Wolverines that come out on top. The hot teams entering the tournament are North Dakota and Boston College and luckily for Michigan, those two are on the opposite side of the bracket. A win over Cornell on Friday, followed by a win over the Denver/Ferris St winner and Michigan will be in the Frozen Four for the third time in five seasons, with a chance to finally break through and win that first title since 1998. My prediction: Michigan handles the defensive-oriented Cornell pretty easily (our D ain't too shabby themselves, so the offensive advantage should be the difference), then faces Denver. The Pioneers already beat the regular season champs of every other conference and will end Ferris's first tourney since 2003 quickly. I think Denver is good, but Hunwick will do what he did last season and refuse to allow the Wolverines to lose in his final season in net for Michigan. I see Michigan making the Frozen Four...now I'll just go find a corner to sit in and hate myself for jinxing them.

Spurs and Wings Playoff Races

In the NBA, the Spurs are playing so well (and doing so without Manu!), setting themselves up for yet another high playoff seed. I truly believe this team can make another run at a title, though I don't think they can beat everybody to do it. They need to avoid great interior teams (PLEASE no Grizzlies again) and avoid a hot-shooting team. Finally, the trade for Stephen Jackson has been knocked as a downgrade from RJ, but I don't understand that sentiment at all. Jackson has always been a better defender than RJ and it wasn't like Jefferson was shooting the lights out. Add in the fact that when Captain Jack heard that he was heading back to the Spurs, he was so excited, HE CRIED TEARS OF JOY! This is a man that has always talked about his love for the Spurs and plays with such intensity that I truly believe he's going to be an asset on and off the court for this playoff run.

For the Wings, I have one thought: injuries suck. The Wings have proven that they are one of the elite teams this season, but unfortunately, the injury bug hit the team and hit it hard the past month, costing the Wings the number one seed in the West and even worse, most likely home ice in the first round. The past month saw injuries take out nearly half the team at one point or another and currently has sidelined Lidstrom, Franzen, Kindl, Ericsson, Helm, Joey McDonald AND Jimmy Howard. Losing half your defense and both goalies all at once is bad luck on an all-new level. The Wings now are hoping Ty Conklin can get through waivers to be the emergency starter or they will be stuck with starting the Jordan Pearce era in Hockeytown during the final weeks of play. I believe this team can beat anybody, but my lord, do they need to get healthy quick or Lidstrom and Homer's most likely final season will end rather unceremoniously.

Tourney Prediction Feb 26

The regular season is done in the ECAC, CCHA, and Atlantic Hockey, with the bottom teams kicking off the tournaments next week for each. Hockey East and the WCHA all have one more week of regular season hockey to set up their conference tournaments, but that's all fine and dandy because ladies and gentlemen, TOURNAMENT TIME is here BABY!!!

Here is this week's predicted tourney bracket, with two changes from the straight pairwise rankings. I swapped Merrimack with Denver to avoid a HE first round matchup but to still keep Merrimack out east. I then swapped Minnesota and Miami to put the Gophers in St Paul (where they are required to be as hosts). After that, it seems like attendance is as good as possible everywhere, as the eastern regionals are tough to make strong attendance-wise due to only 6 eastern-based teams making the tourney as of today.

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

4 Ferris St 15 Merrimack

5 BU 12 Northern Michigan

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

1 UMD 16 Air Force

7 Minnesota 9 Union

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

3 Michigan 14 North Dakota

6 UMass Lowell 11 Michigan St

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

2 BC 13 Denver

8 Miami 10 Maine

Tourney Prediction Feb 20

With one week left in the regular season for a couple conferences, here's my latest NCAA Tourney prediction:

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

3 UMass Lowell 13 Ohio State

6 BU 12 Denver

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

2 Michigan 15 Cornell

8 Minnesota 10 Michigan St

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

4 Ferris St 14 North Dakota

5 UMD 11 Miami

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

1 BC 16 Air Force

7 Union 9 Maine

How to Make Our Hot Wings Better

The Wings are scary good right now, doing it all while Hank and Dats are struggling MIGHTILY. I wrote about this over at Talk Sports/Drink Beer, but I'll say it again, the Wings are a contender for the Cup this year. At the same time, I can honestly say, at this point in time, that there are no prohibitive favorites to win it all as there are a good amount of strong teams and it'll truly come down to who's playing at the top of their games come May.

On that note, that brings up the main point of this stream of thought: the Wings need to make a move or two at the deadline to increase their cushion to make errors, solidify those weak points in the lineup. After watching this team a lot the past few weeks, I've come to a few conclusions:

• The power play is struggling not from the players on the PP, but the fact that those players are in a slump. The puck is still moving as crisply and cleanly as ever, and the Wings are getting their opportunities, they just don't have puck luck right now. With Mule connecting on the PP the last couple games, I truly believe all these calls for making a move for a player based on the PP is short-sighted.
• Speaking of slumps, Dats, Hank and Franzen are the three best offensive players on the Wings, hands-down. They also were the three players struggling the most to find the net recently. The past six games, the Wings have scored 17 goals, eight of which have come from Jiri Hudler and Drew Miller. The next six are spread among such game-changers as Cory Emmerton, Danny Cleary, Todd Bertuzzi, and Valtteri Filppula. Out of those 17, only three come from the Big Three, and those goals came as two on the power play by Franzen and Hank's gift goal last night. This is the big area I believe the Wings need to solidify. While it's great right now, that's because Emmerton, Hudler and Miller are playing well. We can't rely on those boys carrying the offense.
• Finally, I'm very impressed by the play of the defense this year. Lidstrom is proving once again why he's the Norris T-1136, a cyborg sent back to protect the Wings' Cup hopes from annihilation by Skynet...err, the Western Conference. His pairing with Ian White have played as good as any in the league this year, a strong statement considering they play in the same division as the vaunted Weber-Suter combo. The second pairing of Kronwall and Stuart has been strong all year and continues to provide a great second pairing to send out against a deep opponent. Finally, the pairing of Kindl and Ericsson scared the bejeezus out of me earlier this year, but now I honestly can breathe most of the time they are on the ice. The defense isn't a dire need to be fixed.

So what areas should the Wings address at the trade deadline? I think the Wings should go after a top-6 forward, someone who can take the pressure off the Big Three and give the Detroit offense a little cushion for error when the Big Three are slumping. Preferably, get somebody who can step into Homer's role on the top two lines and push Homer down to the third line. While that would be a great addition, it's a piece that isn't necessary and overpaying is not necessary, when the Wings are set up to go into this offseason with enough cap space to sign a replacement for Nick AND a forward. The necessary addition, in my opinion, would be a second pairing defenseman who can join the third pairing, for the inevitable time when Ericsson or Kindl implodes. This would make the defense that much stronger and should be much cheaper to acquire. I believe that this alone would be the key move of the deadline and a way for the Wings to make themselves as strong as possible.

In the end, if the Wings makes no moves at the deadline, I will not be greatly disappointed. While I believe a move is recommended, I don't believe it's necessary and should not be a reason for blame if the Wings flame out in the playoffs this season.

NCAA Hockey Tourney Prediction Feb 6

On the day that the most famous in-season tournament gets underway (the Beanpot), my first look at the end of the season tournament in two weeks presents some intriguing tourney match ups and regionals.

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

1 BU 13 Michigan St

8 Merrimack 10 Notre Dame

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

2 Michigan 15 North Dakota

7 Minnesota 9 Maine

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

3 UMass Lowell 14 Northern Michigan

6 BC 11 Union

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

4 Ferris State 16 Air Force

5 UMD 12 Ohio State

Now the explanation for how I came to these regionals:

I began by putting the four one seeds in the regionals, with BU to Worcester, Michigan to St Paul, Lowell to Bridgeport and Ferris to Green Bay. I followed that with the two seeds, with the host school Minnesota going to St Paul, Duluth to Green Bay, BC to Bridgeport, and Merrimack to Worcester. Through the first two lines of seeds, the tournament is looking great, with all 8 schools as close to home as their seeding allows.

The next two lines were subsequently matched up and resulted in two interconference matchups: Ferris St-Michigan St and Merrimack-Maine, one on each line. The first solution is the easiest, as attendance issues were a non-factor in that decision. Maine couldn't be switched with Union (would just create another interconference matchup), so either way a western team was going east and an eastern team going west. The choice was to keep bracket integrity as close as possible, thus Notre Dame to Worcester and Maine to St Paul (it doesn't hurt sending Notre Dame to the Boston area, either).

The next was the tougher decision because trying to keep bracket integrity in this situation was near impossible. Moving MSU off the Ferris game had only one other option and that was swapping with the 16 seeded Air Force. Unfortunately that means the top team in the tourney gets stuck with the toughest four seed. The only other solution I could come up with was sending Northern to Worcester, MSU to Bridgeport, and Air Force to Green Bay. But does that make the bracket integrity better? I decided it did not, so instead I did solely a MSU/Air Force swap, and voila, there's this week's bracket.

Time to start getting excited folks, conference tournaments start in less than a month!

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.