Last night’s game reminded me why I love hockey.<\/p>\n
It had everything: a penalty shot, a 3-0 lead to the good guys, a come-back by the bad guys, the home team going 4-3 down, what looked like a perfectly good Canucks goal being disallowed with 10 seconds to go in the third, the start of a “bullshit, bullshit” chant from the crowd, another Canucks goal with 0.2 seconds left on the clock (and the crowd halfway through the third repetition of “-shit”), overtime, a sudden-death penalty shoot-out, and finally, victory<\/a>! Oh, and a happy, good-natured crowd, where the Flames fan who shouted “you guys got lucky!” in a SkyTrain station packed<\/i> with Canucks fans was treated to laughter and slaps on the back, rather than a beating. Quite a shock for an English football fan \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n And it’s still only pre-season!<\/p>\n Prof-like Substance’s NFL pool <\/a>seems to be going well; would anyone care to join me in an NHL version? Let me know in the comments! And please let me know whether you’d be prepared to sign up for a 3rd party site that would do a lot of the work and let us create our own sub-league – it allows pseudonyms, and we used it with great success (and much hilarity<\/a>) for Euro 2008. I can provide regular updates and graphs.<\/p>\n The season starts in a week or two. GO CANUCKS GO!<\/p>\n UPDATE<\/span><\/strong> in response to a question emailed by a reader. I was thinking of using the league run by Rogers Sportsnet<\/a>. You pick players each week:<\/p>\n “Your fantasy team will consist of 2 Centres, 4 Wingers, 3 Defensemen and 1 Goalie. Each player available to be chosen has been assigned a value between 1 and 10 based on past and predicted performance. Each Week, the challenge is to put together a 10 player team that will score the most fantasy points while not exceeding the of 50.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n and you can set up your own private league within the larger competition. It’s a Canadian site, but from past experience with their football pools, non-residents can play (but may not be eligible for the prizes).<\/p>\n BUT!!! I will offer a first-place prize of my own. Maybe an Amazon voucher, maybe something related to the NHL or the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night’s game reminded me why I love hockey. It had everything: a penalty shot, a 3-0 lead to the good guys, a come-back by the bad guys, the home team going 4-3 down, what looked like a perfectly good … Continue reading