There are tons of predictions already set in place throughout the wonderful hockey world; take each one you see with a grain of salt and come up with your own. From my experience there are two types of fantasy playoff hockey pools; the box pool and the brackets pool. I’ll explain how these types of pools are setup and how they work. Of course I will give my predictions for the playoffs, and who I think will win the cup.
Before I get into the details about each pool and my predictions this season, I am thrilled to see such great matchups in the first round. I honestly believe there are no guarantees in this year’s matchups and there should be some exciting and hard fought hockey. You know there are always a few underdogs who battle their way through the first round or two and upset some so called favorites. By favorites I mean teams that have been in the hunt for the Cup over the last few seasons and had a higher ranked seed this regular season. This means absolutely nothing at this point. Its playoff hockey, the rest is history…
The box pool:
Usually the person who runs this pool will take a number of highly ranked fantasy players from the regular season and match them up in boxes where their stats are similar in worth. There will be goalie boxes, defensemen boxes and forward boxes; each worth the same in the end. For example you may have a goalie box with Price, Rinne, Crawford, Lundqvist and Fleury. You may have a forward box with Crosby, Ovechkin, Getzlaf, Toews, Datsyuk. You get the drift?
The commissioner of the fantasy pool you are in should do a very good job of making the players you select from each box a tough decision. That is exactly how it works; a number of different boxes with five players in each; and each participant in the pool will select just one player from each of the boxes. Whichever player has the best stats (goals, assists) in each box will be the winner and whoever selected that person in their box at the end of the playoffs will get a ‘point’. Goalies can be broken up by simply wins; as that works best.
Whoever gets the most ‘points’ from all of the boxes at the end, will be the winner and take the entire pot of money. It’s totally up to your commissioner to set things up and sell an allotted number of sheets with boxes. The best way in my opinion to break up a tie is to have each person select who they think wins the Stanley Cup; if nobody selected the winner then you split the winnings. (20 people, $10 a head) seems to work well and rarely ends up in a tie. The more boxes with five players; the less chance there is a tie…something to keep in mind if you are setting things up.
The brackets pool:
This is about as simple as it gets! You look at the matchups and you start in the first round and pick who you think is going to win. Then you move onto the second round, pick your winners there and so on until you pick you Stanley Cup winner for 2015. Sounds easy, but it’s obviously tricky when picking your winner. Of course you have to complicate it a bit more tricky in case of a tie…again, very simple. Whoever you think is going to win the series; you must select how many games you think they will win the series in. It’s never easy predicting a sweep, but the brooms usually come out at some point during the playoffs!
My predictions:
Senators VS Canadiens – Canadiens in 7
Islanders VS Capitals – Islanders in 6
Blackhawks VS Predators – Blackhawks in 5
Flames VS Canucks – Flames in 6
Penguins VS Rangers – Rangers in 6
Red Wings VS Lightning – Lightning in 5
Wild VS Blues – Blues in 6
Ducks VS Jets – Jets in 7
I predict the St Louis Blues to win the Stanley Cup.
Hopefully everyone who followed me over the season had good results in their fantasy pools. I won one of my pools, came second in another and ended up in the middle of the pack in my other pool. Hopefully I can last more than one round in the HBSL pool next season, although it was lots of fun, and that’s what fantasy hockey is all about.
Keeper Leagues:
This Saturday will be the lottery draft for next year’s first overall selection. So those of you who have a first pick near the top of the draft, be sure to keep an eye on who wins the luxury of selecting the first overall pick and so on. Anyone in the top five this draft looks to be an excellent player.
Thanks for reading; best of luck to everyone!