A hockey pool update

This is Year 2 of the giant hockey bloggers pool I host on Yahoo, and with only a few weeks left until the playoffs, no one's going to catch The Forechecker in the No. 1 seed:

Rk	Team	W-L-T	Pct	Pts
1	The Forechecker	157-79-24	65.0%	338
2	The Alcoholic Army	129-92-39	57.1%	297
3	Mirtle blog	133-103-24	55.8%	290
4	The blogless wonders	131-102-27	55.6%	289
5	Matt (Battle of Alberta)	127-102-31	54.8%	285
6	Spector	121-106-33	52.9%	275
7	Pension Plan Puppets	119-114-27	51.0%	265
8	CANUCKS HOCKEY BLOG	116-112-32	50.8%	264
9	MetroGnome	115-112-33	50.6%	263
10	Six Pack	113-114-33	49.8%	259
11	Covered in Oil (Chris)	112-117-31	49.0%	255
12	Earl (Battle of California)	111-116-33	49.0%	255
13	MattGunn	110-115-35	49.0%	255
14	Sharkspage	108-116-36	48.5%	252
15	Mark Bell Fan Club	109-129-22	46.2%	240
16	HockeyAnalysis	103-124-33	46.0%	239
17	Sudafed Heroes	98-123-39	45.2%	235
18	Islanders Army	99-129-32	44.2%	230
19	Dan Tolensky (HockeyBuzz)	92-142-26	40.4%	210
20	Confessions of a Fanatic	88-144-28	39.2%	204

The fellows without links are a few ringers I tried to bring into the mix, from The Globe and elsewhere. They've had mixed results.

The top six pull into the championship playoffs, while six to 12 will play the consolation round. Everyone else is done like dinner.

So, why is a guy from Tennessee romping in a hockey pool? Well, he picked 12th in the draft, took Tomas Vokoun first, Olli Jokinen second and went with Sergei Gonchar third. His fourth pick was another goaltender who's had a strong season, Rick DiPietro, and then he went with Zdeno Chara, Markus Naslund and Jason Arnott.

Getting Vinny Prospal and Cory Stillman later than that have given him a pretty balanced attack, and the fact he got Jose Theodore at the end has certainly helped. Good goaltending's been hard to find in a 20-team pool.

I won this thing last year, but my team's in trouble this time around. Simon Gagne was a major part of the offence, and Martin Gerber's my No. 2 goaltender behind Niklas Backstrom.

Tough pool. Those interested in getting in next year, let me know in September.
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