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Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends! Or as Ron Desrosiers of The Phantoms might be inclined to say, "Bienvenue en arričre mes amis ŕ l'exposition qui ne finit jamais", or something like that (more on this later)... The 2002-2003 Slap Shot Fantasy Hockey League finally kicked off this week after a two week delay from Draft Day, held a little earlier this year than usual. Two weeks. Or about the time it took The Phantoms, Ron and J.R. Burnham, to drive down to Hoboken from Massachusetts for this year's draft. OK, so it was five hours from J.R.'s house to Oddfellow's, who's counting anyway… In honor of the new hurry-up face-off rule the NHL has instituted for this season, we had a hurry-up Draft clocking in at just a tad over two (2) hours from start (Curtis Joseph) to finish (Adam Foote). Thanks to all who attended for being prepared and for those who didn't attend for making sure The Commish was prepared to draft your teams for you. Thanks to Don Cardoza for picking up an extra round of libations for all those who stayed for our post-draft wrap-up. Thanks also once again to Oddfellow's Rest in Hoboken, New Jersey for allowing us to occupy a few tables for a long period of time while consuming fine beer and Cajun burgers and staring out the front window of the restaurant admiring the many "sights" that Hoboken has to offer when it wasn't our turn to draft. And given the fine quality of these "sights" (and those of you who have attended a draft in Hoboken know from whence I speak), let me just tell you that I'm glad there was none of this new "behind the goal safety netting" on the Oddfellow's window to obscure our view… Other Draft Day highlights include Don Cardoza breaking his Big Easy cherry, finishing off his very first Big Easy Burger, and enjoying every bite! Rob Hanratty names his team Five Minutes For F***ing and then The Commish winds up drafting Radek Bonk for Rob as one of his forwards! Totally unplanned, I swear! If I was trying to make sure Rob got him, I would've messed it up… Neil Eskow drafts a real team! In a surprise move that none of us saw coming, it looks like Neil went through a little Goon Rehab in the off season and has actually drafted a balanced, competitive team this season. Sure he's still got his share of "very nice" players, but he's also got scorers like Miroslav Satan (who if you look at the team name, you'll see he trusts implicitly) and John LeClair (rhymes with Legere), whose 4 goal game in the first season was also quite a nice surprise… Moving right along to the league franchises let's start with defending champion Brian Boghosian who returns this season with those Fargain Hansons. Brian's raring to go and looking for the repeat this season. In fact he's so revved up for hockey, he's started his own Yahoo fantasy league this season and invited all of us to join in the fun. Of course, I was too busy trying to track down an 11th hour replacement for our league stats service and I missed his draft, perhaps some of you were able to get in? If not, we'll make sure we invade his league next season, provided of course, we're all allowed to eat Big Easy Burgers in front of our computers on Draft Day… Former champs Charlie "Hobey" Baker (the Blackhawks fan) and Joe Mastrangelo (who lives in Florida but still insists he's a Bruins fan despite a secret fetish involving a Lightning jersey) return once again this with their usual tribute franchise. This time, it's a tribute to movies involving hockey as Stan Mikita's Donuts jumps off the Wayne's World screen and into your league standings report. Car!… Game On!… Party on Joe. Party on Chuck. Party on Theo Fleury, oops better not go there… Next up, it's the man with the Rangers pre-season tickets, Don Cardoza, who changes team names this season to Pardon My Misconduct. Speaking of pardoning misconduct, Don once again left the Oddfellow's waitress a "tip" of two tickets to a Rangers pre-season game the day after the draft. This time, the waitress immediately arranged to take the day off and then lamented that she was still trying to figure out who to go with. Obviously not getting the hint, Don failed to reclaim one of his tickets. Whistle! Two minutes for chickening out… Who knows? It could've been "Don on the power play" the next night! Oh well, maybe next year… Reunited and it feels so good… Yes folks, after a miserable season with their own franchises, the league first ever champions, Kevin Kelly and John Legere (a.k.a. The Commish) have rejoined forces (Wonder Twin powers activate!), leaving us with an odd number of teams this season (11 to be exact) and want to let everyone know that if they don't like it, you can Stick It Up Your Ice! The usual suspects return (Bondra, Modano, Weight, Brashear) to the franchise after a year apart. In fact, next season I don't even think these guys need to be at the Draft, we'll just let Brian Legere and Fabrizio call out the selections each round as they were doing for the first 9 rounds on Draft Day. While we're on the subject, Brian Legere (rhymes with LeClair) returns this season with Between Periods. Eager to get home to his familial duties, yet still wanting to get in a Big Easy Burger and as many selections as he could, Brian was the biggest beneficiary of this season's new hurry-up draft selections as he was able to fill in his entire franchise, from Jagr to Brathwaite, before it was time to go home and relieve his wife Sarah of baby-sitting duties. Now about this team name? Are we talking "between periods" as in "Zamboni refinishing the ice" or are we talking "between periods" as in "28 days and a maxi pad"? Inquiring minds want to know… The soft spoken Islander fan, Fabrizio Sparacino, returns once again with The Bada Byngs, a weird hybrid of The Bada Bing strip club, of Sopranos fame, and the Lady Byng trophy. Hey wait, I think I've see the connection. Club full of ladies dancing for gentlemen, an award named after a Lady given for "gentlemanly play". Yeah, it works for me! Anyone else got a problem with that? If so, I think Fab's gonna have to bring a new meaning to the words "obstruction crackdown"! Now he just needs to find a left wing named Silvio… Our early season leader is everyone's favorite Korean who Knows Hockey, Dave Kang. Dave failed to make the Draft (some small thing involving a wedding, not his own!) but The Commish was nice enough to fill out his roster for him. Having a little fun with rhyming words (any I never do that!) it was decided that Kang needed to have Robert Lang and Daymond LANGkow on his roster. Unlike the Radek Bonk thing, this was done on purpose. Happy with his Opening Night roster (he is in first place after all!) Dave's thinking about asking The Commish to draft for him again next season. Only this time he's going change his name from Dave Kang to Daromir Kagr… Rob, that was Five Minutes For Flaking, right? Oh and by the way, "very nice" set of defensemen you got there. I think Neil's got "goon envy"! Oh and did I mention that Neil once again drafted his dog? Yes, Darcy Tucker is again a member of Neil's team. Neil's dog is named Tucker for those of you who've forgotten or in Chuck's case repressed this information. Like Dave's strategy, Neil's thinking about continuing this "draft your dog" thing next season. Any bets he breeds Tucker in the offseason and winds up with puppies named Probert, Grimson and Robray? Anyway, I talked about both of you guys in the opening paragraphs so let me get around to wrapping this column up, OK? And last but most certainly not least it's our two time former champion Walt Cherniak, wo brings Foil Up Coach back into the fray again this season. Walt's very fond of guys who shall we say, lack a deft scoring touch, and this season, with the debut of the "team photo" on the league web site, we find that Walt may in fact have the most debonaire looking goon of them all. For those of you who haven't already done so, check out the picture of Columbus Blue Jacket hitman Jody Shelley on the Foil Up team page. And if anyone knows a good orthodontist could you send Jody the number… Well I believe that covers all 11 franchises for this season, doesn't it? If I've left anything out, such as a vital piece of team/owner information (nobody's wife is pregnant are they? I believe that's just a football league thing!) or a memory from Draft Day '02, please let me know. Otherwise, I've only got three more things to discuss and then I'm going to call it a wrap on the first News & Notes column of the season… First off, DirectTV Center Ice. Drop what you're doing, go out right now and get it! Every NHL game, every night, on it's own channel! All the home team announcers, including all the guys from CBC's Hockey Night in Canada! And you can still switch over to ESPN or The Deuce for NHL tonight and Barry Melrose's mullet if you like! I may never sleep again… The highlight of my viewing thus far? Monday night, Columbus versus Phoenix, first period and four separate fights break out on four straight face offs (can you say "hurry up goonage")! I thought I was watching Slap Shot on Pay Per View! At one point there are 11 guys in the penalty box, including six Coyotes trying to cram themselves into the box at once! In fact, I think Ossi Vaananen had to sit on Darcy Hordichuk's lap (hey, a lap dance at the Bada Byng!), not that there's anything wrong with that! And speaking of, does it disturb anyone else besides me that the Nashville Predators play their home games in a rink called the Gaylord Entertainment Center? Can you say "thanks for the visual"! Can't be long now before Showtime's Queer As Folk shoots a hockey themed episode. The show takes place in Pittsburgh (I looked it up, I'm not a regular watcher) and I bet the show's cast would be much happier in the Gaylord Entertainment Center than they would be in The Igloo… And finally, a treat! As most of you know I like to play around in this column from time to time by translating English phrases to French phrases and asking Ronnie D (our token genuine French Canadian) if I'm right. Well, I'm happy to say that not only have I re-automated our stats feed this past week, but I've now also automated Ron! Well, his verification of my English-to-French skills at least. Feel free to try out the new AutoRon Linguistic Translation System linked in below this paragraph! You can translate any word or phrase up to 150 words from English to many other languages and back. In fact, this thing is so cool, it even translates English into Korean (although I'm not sure the font will display correctly)! And to think all these past seasons I've been over utilizing Ron, I failed to tap into the potential of Dave Kang…
Well, if you've made it past the cool programming toy, I'll say "au revoir", "Auf Wiedersehen", "arrivederci", "adeus", "adios" and just plain old goodbye! 'til next week…
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