Fantasy Hockey (or Pucked!)

An email went out at work a couple of weeks ago inviting the staff of the Upgrading unit to participate in a fantasy hockey tournament.

Now to put things in perspective, I never entered the footy pool back home because I knew that I wouldn’t care enough to get around to putting my tips in each week. I figured starting the year of without having forked out any money was a win compared with throwing 40 bucks away for everyone else to have fun with.

But this time around, I’m in a new country and I figured that it would be a good opportunity to build some bridges and become a part of the team. I knew that I’d be in a for a shellacking, but that wasn’t the point of my entering.

Now there’s guys from the soccer club back home that used to talk about their fantasy teams, but I’d never paid any attention or been interested in it. So I tell you what, this has been an eye opening experience!

It started on a Saturday morning with an 11am conference call to go through the ‘draft’. Yes, this was a hell of a lot more commitment than I’d anticipated and the bloody thing hadn’t even started yet. I panicked somewhat but Caroline had a stroke of genius and suggested that I call her friend Nancy’s husband Bob, who happens to be something of a hockey nut (yes, I’m a local now, there’s no need for the ice). He was on night shift the night before the draft and went to extraordinary lengths for me, printing out statistical lists of the top players, by position (wings, centres, backs, goalies).

I dialled in to the conference call at 11am with the other 11 participants in the competition, lists of players spread out before me, thinking I was ready. How wrong was I! I had the first draft pick which was about the only thing that really went right for me.

What followed was something of a traumatic hour. We each had to pick 18 players to make up our squad and given the pool I was in contained, Aussies, South Africans and Canadians and many of the actual Hockey player’s names are French and Eastern European, added with the fact that even when I could understand the name that was stated I didn’t know who they played for, by the time we were about three names in, I was lost.

That of course meant I was one of the people at the back end of the draft that every time I named someone heard a resounding chorus down the line of “gone!” I had been expecting an online draft where I could at least see who had disappeared of the selection list! All I can say is thank God Bob was there.

Anyway, I did survive the draft, but it turned out that that was really just the tip of the iceberg. Hockey get’s played 7 days a week here and it was only on about day 2 and three that I came to the double realization that a) you needed to change your team line up to match up with your players that were actually involved in a game on any given day and that b) you didn’t actually have to field a hockey team, just 12 players for your line up (so you don’t have to have a keeper in your line up and they could all be fullbacks).

Having said that, at the end of the first week, I dipped out on knocking off the VP of Upgrading by 3 points, 111 to 108. I was pretty chuffed with that up until I saw a message posted on the league message board that read:

Scrubbers Needs a New Manager (Apply Here)
Sad, could have been a big upset with the upstart from downunder spanking canadian wonderboy....... Nice 43 points sitting on the bench.

That’s great, except I don’t even know how I find out how I left the 43 points on the bench!
2 days in to week two I’m down 41.1 to 22.9. Might have to find out just how I avoid leaving those points on the bench.

Until then, I’ll just have to deal with my trauma and see what I can do.