American Hooligans

In our office hockey pool, we are down to the final week of head to head match-ups. No surprise, but J-Bla has long since been eliminated and the final two of this epic trek are DoctorD vs. DrunkenMoose. This is a head to head pool with 10 categories. The winner in each category gets a W, whoever has the best record at week’s end takes the pool.

It has been an epic battle, but I am like the New England Patriots. In 25 weeks of match-ups, I won 23 of them. DoctorD has been the Colts; around, doing well, but paling in comparison to my majesty. I finished the year 154-53-13 and he 136-61-23.

Our categories are: goals, assists, penalty minutes, +/-, power play points, shots on goal, goalie wins, goals against average, save percentage and shutouts.

Each team was allowed 2 F, 2 RW, 2 LW, 4 D and 2 goalies in the line-up each night, with 4 reserves (2F, 1D, 1G for me, 3F, 1G for him). The line-ups are set day by day, which means everyone usually plays.

Unfortunately, due to the freak nature of an opponent who had Giguere and Luongo and nearly upset me in the Final 4, I had to make some changes just to survive. Now I am stuck with people like Bertuzzi and Huet and had to drop guys like Leclaire, Horton and Kaberle just to make sure I swept every skater category to offset his insane goalies. My other goalie option was Gerber, but since the Senators play the Canadiens and the Sabers this week, it seemed a bit self destructive to keep three Northeast goalies.

Here are our teams, let’s hear your predictions. Keep in mind this is a small pool:

DRUNKENMOOSE
C - Olli Jokinen
C - Henrik Sedin
C - Mike Richards
LW - Henrik Zetterberg
LW/RW - Dustin Brown
LW/RW - Todd Bertuzzi
RW - Alexei Kovalev
RW - Jarome Iginla
D - Scott Niedermayer
D - Brian Rafalski
D - Andrei Markov
D - Dan Boyle
D - Mark Streit
G - Carey Price
G - Ryan Miller
G - Cristoball Huet

DOCTORD:
C - Derek Roy
C/LW - Johan Franzen
C - Mike Ribeiro
LW - Daniel Carcillo
LW - Alexander Ovechkin
LW/RW - Brian Rolston
LW/RW - Patrick Sharp
RW - Scott Walker
RW - Jason Pominville
D - Niklas Lidstrom
D - Mike Green
D - Pavel Kubina
D - Braydon Coburn
G - Ilya Bryzgalov
G - Martin Biron
G - Cam Ward

It shall be an epic fight that only he and I care about, but I’ll keep you posted. I should win based on being Canadian and, of course, being able to spell Illya Bryzgalov without looking it up first.