Judge as you may!

What is believed to be the first three-way trade in the history of the Federal Hockey League was struck this afternoon at Mercury headquarters.

Here are the details of the historic deal:

To Josh Lewis and co-manager who wishes not to be named:
Ondrej Pavelec
2nd round pick (17th overall)
3rd round pick (31st overall)
8th round pick

To Chad Saxon:
Devan Dubnyk
1st round pick (8th overall)
Two 5th round picks

Saxon then flipped the 8th overall pick and Tyler Ennis to Brant Kersey for Thomas Vanek and an 8th round pick.

"It's a bittersweet day," said Lewis, who has already announced that he is taking Mikael Granlund with the first overall pick in tonight's draft.

"Tears well up in my eyes just thinking about the players we could have had at #8... but goaltending is king in this league, and we did what we had to do to shore ours up."

Lewis then left the room sobbing.

Picks in tonight's draft:
1st rounder (#1)
2nd rounder (#15)
2nd rounder (#17)
3rd rounder (#31)
6th rounder (#71)
7th rounder (#85)
8th rounder (#99)
8th rounder (#101)

Fantasy draft #3

Pretty sure I had my best hockey draft yet last night. So many guys taken way later than they should've been. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

12 teams, and it's now a keeper league after this draft took place. I had two 1sts and two 3rds, with no 2nd.

My picks:
4. Jonathan Quick
11. John Tavares
28. Carey Price
35. Jordan Eberle
36. Dustin Byfuglien
45. Alex Pietrangelo
52. Ryan Getzlaf
54. Max Pacioretty
69. Drew Doughty - steal of the draft
76. Pavel Datsyuk - never mind this is the steal of the draft
124. Matt Carle
141. Nail Yakupov
148. David Perron
165. Nick Leddy - steal of the draft #3
172. Mikhail Grabovski
189. Jake Gardiner
196. Derek Stepan
213. Derek Dorsett - NHL PIM leader, come on down.

Three drafts down, one to go. The big one is tomorrow night. I just brought on my best friend, who happens to be an NHL scout (amateur scout... crap), on as my co-manager. We have the first overall pick and another 1st rounder at seventh. We've already decided to take Mikael Granlund first overall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, a moose has been running around Estevan all day, followed by cops, hunters and Chad Saxon.

Hockey drafts

I'm still mad at the NHL. Really mad. And they're not going to get a penny of my money for a long time. But that's not going to stop me from launching full-bore into hockey pool season.

Two of my leagues were drafting last night at the same time, so I had to juggle both AND talk on Skype with my co-manager in another league about our keepers at the same time.

One of the leagues is entering its third year as a keeper league. With 24 GMs and full 23-man rosters plus prospect slots, it's pretty friggin deep and you have to put your thinking cap on in the later rounds.

(All that and no money involved.)

I'm rebuilding in that one. My keepers were: Luke Adam, Carl Hagelin, Phil Kessel, Kyle Okposo, Matt Read, Mike Richards, Travis Zajac, Jake Gardiner, Andrej Meszaros, Niklas Backstrom and Braden Holtby, along with Jaden Schwartz and David Rundblad for the prospect slots. I've traded Backstrom, Okposo and Rundblad since then.

My draft picks were:

Dave Bolland (4th overall) - yeah, it's deep
Alex Burmistrov (28th overall)
David Savard (52nd)
P-M Bouchard (76)
Simon Despres (100)
Dennis Seidenberg (124)
Gabriel Bourque (148)
Lee Stempniak (172)
Cam Barker (196)
Jordan Caron (220)

The other league is run by my predecessor on the Merc sports desk, known as Brad Brown, Saskawhat or, in one of the all-time great team names in fantasy sports, Dr. Doak. Not a keeper league. 10 teams.

Picks:
Henrik Lundqvist (2nd)
James Neal (19th)
Anze Kopitar (22)
Alex Pietrangelo (39)
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (42)
Ryan Getzlaf (59)
Alex Edler (62)
Max Pacioretty (79)
Jason Pominville (82)
Kevin Shattenkirk (99)
Jeff Carter (102)
Valtteri Filppula (119)
Damien Brunner (122)
Tomas Fleischmann (139)
Brendan Smith (142)

I have another draft tonight that just became a keeper league and another one on Wednesday (the one with the $50 entry and in which I was handed the worst team you ever saw in your life one year ago).

I posted this for validation of how awesome my picks are, so just leave it below. Thanks. Bye.

And it continues

This is what the backyard looks like as of 9:20 pm. Hardly any of it was there when I got home at 5.

Bruin Banter TV Episode 16

Check out episode 16 of The Beef Bar Bruin Banter TV. Guests include Bruins president Jeff Pierson and ex-Bruin Bruce Firth, who is one of the six people going into the SJHL Hall of Fame in March.

It was good to have Bruce on the show. It's always nice talking to former players and looking into the past. I really had fun writing the story on the inductees this week. I was able to talk to Bruce, Ron Dunville, Ray Frehlick and Mel Pierson, who worked under another inductee, Bill Shinske. I enjoy history, especially sports history, and the Bruins have a ton of it.

Meanwhile, there have been a few sports cancellations due to the weather. The Bruins' game at Battlefords tonight was postponed and will be played Sunday (the Bruins play in Kindersley tomorrow). The ECS senior boys basketball tournament also got the hook. It could be made up in March. The midget AA Bruins' home game against the Notre Dame Hounds tonight was also shelved.

Another new venture

Just when I thought I couldn't possibly have my fingers in any more endeavours on the Internet, here's a second blog.

My other blog, Bruins Banter, will continue to provide Estevan Bruins news courtesy of the Estevan Mercury, the brilliant newspaper for which I toil. This blog will be a mishmash of everything, I guess. A bit of local news, a few good rants and some personal stuff. We'll see.

The upside is this'll probably cut down my Twitter use a bit, which will come as welcome news to pretty much everyone.

902 is the area code for PEI, my homeland, which means my obsession with area codes as a tool to cover up my complete lack of creativity continues.