Guerrilla Campaign of the Week: Operation Eriksson

People, the time has come to mobilize against the forces that employ Anders Eriksson and allow him ANY FUCKING ICETIME WHATSOEVER. The usual suspects have excellent game coverage and there are some glimmers of awesome in the roster. On the flipside, a fair amount of commentary revolves around Anders and his horrific defensive zone turn overs, his appalling offensive zone turnovers, and his lack of puck awareness. Apparently the only places Eriksson excels are sitting on the bench, warming the penalty box, and the neutral zone. Regarding the game of hockey in the NHL he's hitting the epic failure button pretty hard and frequently. Please don't dress him for the rest of the season and no one will get hurt.

File this under WTF

The new NHL season has barely started and my hatred campaign regarding Gary Bettman has picked up serious speed. The NHL, looking to open the 08-09 season with some punch, has hired the greatest arena band EVER to perform in Detroit; Def Leppard. Well, if the NHL was hoping to attract new fans I guess mullet sporting, camaro driving, high top wearing 80s throwbacks is a great target demographic. However, everyone knows the greatest arena rock band is The Darkness. You go Gary, you're in touch with reality.

Perhaps the leaf nation will have something to celebrate this year after all. They handed Buffalo a can of whup ass in a preseason tilt. 7-4 was the final tally.

In a bit of Flames news, Kipper showed up with his best fitness ever but has been laid low with the flu. Never a good way to start the season. Hopefully it's not the flu going around my office, it's pretty nasty.

In a bit more Flames News, Iron Mike was quoted as saying, "There are no Kyle Wellwoods on this team." Damn straight.

Kyle Wellwood and the Canucks

With the firing of Nonuts, the Canucks off season strategy became readily apparent, pick up all the chaff and offal from the Toronto Maple Leafs. With the Sundin deal falling through the Nucks were placing a great deal of hope in a questionable 2nd line forward, Kyle Wellwood.

Welly is a nice enough kid but he's never crossed my radar as a second line offensive threat. At any rate, Kyle pulled into training camp and has failed to meet the conditioning expectations of Coach Alex. By failing to meet the standards, I mean dude rolled in kinda fat, taChunk styles.

Granted Kyle broke his foot in the early offseason but damn, show some discipline! If Britney Spears can lay off the cheetos, Kyle Wellwood certainly can. It's cool though, the Sedins have offered to follow him around and make sure he doesn't eat everything in site while watching TV on the couch.

As for the 'Nucks, this bodes well for their extended season plans. It looks like another long season of riding 'Bongo into the ground. Maybe the Flames will be able to beat them handily this season.

Minor Technical Issues

Hey Loyal GSN readers. You may have noticed our swank URL redirect is . . . BROKEN. I am working diligently with various levels of tech support to resolve this most alarming issue. Let's be honest typing guerrilla with any regularity is on the monumental side of annoying.

In other news: Dave and Leanne, WI, and people other than me have been checking out the early season training camps. By the sounds of it we might have some talent. This season will be very telling, Sutter is a genius or a fool.

In other news, we have to give a Guerrilla Fist Pound to Kent at 5holeFanatics for returning the GSN to his blogroll and his seeming rise to the mainstream of sports blogging. That or the Flames have enlisted him as their statstician and prognositicator.

Hiatus Explained

It was a busy summer and hockey was never far from our minds. Unfortunately our posting schedule went out the window and we apologize. A little bit. After getting culled from Kent's blogroll over at fiveholefanatics we realized we better get back to work. Bear with us, we're re-designing the blog and adjusting our theme. Don't worry, we're surly and anxious for some icy rubber and plexiglass. Crappy grammar, expletives and outrageous claims are all we promise. We hope you're entertained.

Ask GSN: How do I dominate my hockey pool?

It's that time of year again - bidness time! And by bidness, I mean dominating your opponents in hockey pools and winning large piles of "cizzy". In fact, we received a letter asking us exactly that:

Dear GSN,

I love reading you guys and I think you're hockey gurus, can you teach me how to dominate my hockey pool?

Yes. Here are some guidelines to dominate your way to victory.

1. Join a pool with of blowhards who brag a lot and are basically lazy. The louder, more obnoxious they are, the less likely they are to know anything about hockey. Watch the quiet ones! Also, fear newbies. Newbies often win, even when they don't know anything. I dominated my pool the first year a joined a bunch of guys who were talking it up.
   
2. Don't take pity on the nice people who respect your genius. The urge is strong to help those who aren't shooting their mouth off at a hockey pool draft. This includes people like your less-hockey-knowledgable significant other. Don't give these people tips - they will end up beating you. Don't take pity on people who are unprepared at a draft! Your second choice for rookie of the year will end up being the guy that wins while your pick is an epic failure.
3. BE PREPARED. Seriously, 95% of people are lazy. Including hockey fans. If you are prepared beforehand, you can own these people. Most hockey pool online sites like Yahoo Fantasy Hockey and Officepools.com have tools that you can use to rank players from last year according to the scoring rules for your pool this year. Make use of these lists. People often don't know about them! And for heaven's sake, don't tell anyone. (I'm fundamentally breaking this rule by posting, but I am desperate for your admiration.)
4. Look for guys that were (abnormally) injured last year. These are never on anybody's lists and can make a killing if they are generally a reliable, healthy performer. I made a killing by taking Brendan Morrow as my enforcer last year when he had a bad injury this year before. This year, look at a guy like Horcoff. (uck. stupid oilers). That said...
5. Don't pick really injury-prone guys. Especially if your pool doesn't have trades/free agents. I'm talking about guys like Forsberg and Havlat. You are asking for it by picking these guys. It's rarely worth the risk, even late in the draft. Slow and steady wins the pool.
6. Pick up key goalies and defencemen early in the draft. While everyone else is going to be freaking out about Crosby, Ovechkin, Thornton, Iginla, etc. the fact is that there are a lot of forwards in the league. If you have a relatively small number of people/not too many picks, there will always be good forwards available. The same cannot be said for blue chip defencemen (Lidstrom, Chara, Phaneuf) and goalies (Brodeur, Luongo, Nabokov). Once you get past the very small A-list on defence and goal, there is a steep drop off. Not so much for forwards. This hold true in pools with and without trades - with trades, you can always pickup some hot forward that nobody expected to be this good (Mike Richards, Patrick Kane, etc).
   
7. In a pool with trades/free agents, you can win by sheer brute force. Read the hockey news websites (cough*GSN*cough), pick up guys that are hot. Even pick up guys from teams that play more than other teams in a given week if your pool allows for that. It may be worth having a couple of spots on your rosters dedicated to churning the hottest player through there. However if you fall upon a guy that's really lightning it up and it's not just a streak, hold on! This is what happened to me with Kane last year. Free agents are more valuable than trades - people rarely want to trade with you unless it's a huge blockbuster that actually benefits/harms both parties equally.

OK, with these 7 tips, you should be on your way to fame and fortune. Send us a cut of your earnings via PayPal. Good luck!