Canadians, Fantasy, and Not Knowing Anything

Today marks the long awaited beginning of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. For my money of the leauges/associations that have playoffs, they rank in this order: NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA. This is no slight on any of them, because I watch and enjoy them all, but Major League baseball has a wierd schedule and no real advantage for being the best team during the regular season and the NBA has the dumbest seeding system of anything you've ever seen. On top of this, the refereeing gets worse in the playoffs, the finals switch to an entirely different format of games (they must be penalized for this) and the teams you thought would win almost always do. The NFL comes in second, but only with an asterick. The asterick is that the NFL creates drama by having less games and less teams (this use to work for baseball also), thereby making their regular season more interesting, and the playoff games crazy exciting. Also home field advantage actually means something still in the NFL (ask the Saints). Having said this, I still take the NHL playoffs. Two things you must know about me to make sense of this selection: 1. I watch almost no hockey during the regular season. 2. I have no home town favorite teams (I have always kind of liked the Sabres since Lafontaine and I rooted for the Hurricanes because I used to live) like I do in the other sports. Because I have no favorite teams, the NHL is the one league where I am not passionate either way, there are no teams I hate (unlike the Lakers, Pistons, Yankees, Cubs, Vikings, Bears) I watch only for entertainment, storyline and excitement. On these levels no one delievers like the NHL. Also, their format for each series stays the same for the entire Stanley Cup (take that NBA and MLB). On top of this, the NHL combines the best of the other playoffs systems, one player can take over a game (as per MLB and NBA) and this player plays every game (as per NBA). The team with the best record is awarded home ice throughout (as per NBA). The lowest seeds on occasion beat the highest seeds (as per MLB), but not to a rate that it is unfair statistically to either one. It is not single elimination (take that NFL), and the refs actually step their games up in the playoffs (take that everyone else). As part of my love of the NHL playoffs and my love for Canadians, I have joined with some college friends of mine to participate in an Playoff fantasy pool. How it works is I put together a list of 85 guys (about 68 of which I have never heard of) then we each pick players we think will do the best over the course of the playoffs. This combines knowing the players (which I don't), knowing the teams (which I also do not), a ton of luck (we shall see) and trash talking with Canadians (which is worth the price of admission all by itself). If you choose to begin watching the best of the best in terms of playoffs, pull hard for a

Nashville

versus

Atlanta finals. Also, I forgot to mention that the playoff beard is single coolest playoff inovation in any sport, and everyone gets to share the trophy for a day which is pretty sweet. So, in a nutshell, suck it other sports, I am watching HOCKEY!!!