rick@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/13/85)
<<< out damn bug >>>
The NHL hockey season has finally begun, and that signals time for another
USENET HOCKEY POOL
Last year was the first time a USENET Hockey Pool was held (actually 2, one
regular season and one for the playoffs; strange - both were won by Edmonton
natives). This year there will be no entry fee (and, so, no prize(s)) so there
should be more entries than the 5 we got last year. Today is Oct 12, and I will
accept electronic mail entries until 12 noon on Nov 4 (a Monday). That should
be plenty of time for people to receive this, think about their lists, and
mail them to me. If I get an overwhelming number of requests I will push that
date back.
A pool entry consists of a list of NHL players that you would like to draft.
Your list includes *all* players that you think are any good, ranked from
best to worst. All the lists submitted will be placed in a random order and
a draft will be held. The drafting proceeds by taking the top player, from
the appropriate list (as the drafting order indicates), who has not already
been drafted by someone. The drafting order reverses after each round to
try to balance the advantage of drafting first. The actual drafting will
be done automatically by a program I wrote so the list format is pretty
rigid. Each line is a separate player as follows (all in lower case, please):
last-name,first-name,team-abbreviation
The team abbreviations will be:
Boston Bruins bos New Jersey Devils njd
Buffalo Sabres buf New York Rangers nyr
Calgary Flames cal New York Islanders nyi
Chicago Black Hawks chi Philadelphia Flyers phi
Detroit Red Wings det Pittsburgh Penguins pit
Edmonton Oilers edm Quebec Nordiques que
Hartford Whalers har St Louis Blues stl
Los Angeles Kings los Toronto Maple Leafs tor
Minnesota North Stars min Washington Capitals was
Montreal Canadiens mon Winnipeg Jets win
Vancouver Canucks van
So a sample list would look something like:
kurri,jari,edm
bossy,mike,nyi
dionne,marcel,los
hawerchuk,dale,win
...
(notice there is no Wayne Gretzky at the head of the list. No one may
select him because I feel that he skews the pool too much towards the person
drafting first. The pool is a contest for the mere mortals :-)).
There should be no less than 80 players in your list, and the draft will
consist of an even number of rounds greater than 10. The actual number of
rounds will depend on how many rounds are needed to exhaust any one list.
As I mentioned earlier I will accept entries until Nov 4. I will also cut
off entries when I have 10 people who have either sent a list or told me
they will send a list (so don't delay).
So, what is the point of the whole thing? When the draft is finished everyone
has a list of players that "belong" to him/her and ONLY him/her. Whenever
a player that you "own" gets a point (goal or assist) in an NHL regular
season game you get a point. In order to offset the effects of unexpected
injuries (or minor league demotions - snicker) the worst player that you
own will not be added to your total (thus if 'n' players are drafted to your
team, then only the top 'n-1' will count towards your final score). This will
change to the worst 2 players if there are 18 or more rounds to the draft.
The person who amasses the most number of points at the end of the season is
the BIG WINNER. He/she will be highly praised in this very forum, and will
receive a phone call of congratulations from President Reagan :-).
Things there will NOT be in this draft:
1) entry fee
2) monetary prizes
3) trading of players (it never works anyway)
4) reentry draft (you're stuck with the players you start with)
If there are any questions MAIL them to me (don't post to the net, that's
just a waste). Now, get out there and RESEARCH!
ps - if anyone would like to volunteer to maintain the standings, let me know.
The local papers don't give the weekly stats released by the NHL, and the
Hockey News is always a couple of weeks behind.
--
Rick Gillespie
ARPANET: rick@ucla-locus.ARPA or (soon) rick@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
UUCP: ...!{cepu|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|ucbvax}!ucla-cs!rick
SPUDNET: ...eye%rick@russet.spud