Chasing Eric Staal, or Why I Drafted the Young 'Uns

In my first blog post, I bragged up the strategy I used for my ’08 hockey pool. Essentially, I targeted those players who were approaching the end of their careers and were thought by most prognosticators to have nothing left in the tank. I put my faith in the old guard, believing they had a lot left to prove and that today’s training regimens would allow them to prove it. It turned out to be a fairly misguided strategy. Not that all the old farts played that poorly, but not enough of them played that well, and they suffered a lot of injuries. In the end, I finished near the bottom of the pile, not so much because I utilized a bad strategy, but rather because it wasn’t a good strategy. (Lesson learned: don’t brag up your drafting skills less than a month into a season, because you never know when Joe Sakic’s senility will kick in and he’ll stick his hand into a snowblower blade.)


I decided to take the opposite approach this year, inspired by the early career of Eric Staal. He entered the NHL with high expectations after being drafted 2nd overall behind Marc-Andre Fleury. He didn’t live up to the hype, though few rookies do, and he finished with a lowly 31 points. After a season in the AHL during the NHL lockout, Staal exploded for 100 points, finishing 7th in league scoring. Jonathon Cheechoo also exploded that year for 93 points, the beneficiary of San Jose acquiring Joe Thornton early in the year. Both would have been incredible steals for poolies that year. One big difference though: people who drafted Cheechoo got lucky; people who drafted Staal were being astute.

Then again, other top draft picks from Staal’s draft year include Nathan Horton and Nikolai Zherdev. Horton had 47 points in his sophomore year while Zherdev had 54. Respectable numbers, but not the type that will elevate someone into first place in a hockey pool.

Picking players involves a consideration of risk and reward. The risk of the all-too-common “Sophomore Jinx” is well known. And reaping the rewards of a young superstar coming into his own early in his career after a shaky rookie season, like Staal managed to do, might be too rare an occurrence to bother trying to chase, like the moron who spends $500 a month on lottery tickets instead of saving for retirement.

But, goddamnit, I certainly chased Staal this year. Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, Peter Mueller, Dave Bolland, Michael Frolik… all had decent rookie campaigns with occasional flashes of brilliance and all were strong prospects. Like my old farts from the year before, though, they may not have all played too bad for me, but none of them have been that great, either. I’m going to finish near the bottom of the pack again this year, let down by a very different though equally misguided strategy as the year before. (It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t able to draft Steven Stamkos, or I would have resisted the idea that drafting sophomores isn’t a good strategy.) Not that this strategy is the sole reason I'm stinking up the place -- most of my veterans have been just as disappointing as the sophomores -- but it certainly wasn't a winning strategy.

Much like my Edmonton Oilers, even though there’s 15-17 games left, I’m already looking towards next season and I’ll be using this summer to retool. I haven’t given up on the concept that there’s a winning formula to picking players for pools, one that can be applied from year-to-year and will give me an edge. I just have yet to solve it.