(Ed. Note: "I Hate My [expletive deleted] Fantasy Team!" is a weekly feature on Puck Daddy in which we vicariously live through two Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey GMs as they provide snarky advice and tales of woe. This week's author is The Rev. Zamboni from The Palm Isle. Enjoy.)
By The Rev. Zamboni
While the whole world sinks and the NHL's Board of Governors contemplates the possible effects on a league that depends so heavily on ticket revenue, The Federal League soars.
What with the Sean Avery controversy, the continuing struggles with injuries, continued parity and Christmas approaching, Federal League managers have been more active in comments and on the waiver wire in the past week than for most of the past four seasons.
Manager Salty Dog won the unofficial race to first Avery-themed joke by naming his team "77's Sloppy Seconds" within hours of the story breaking on the Internet. Avery's owner/manager, Hogzilla, followed with a series of press releases detailing the internal struggle to drop Avery, attempt to trade Avery, or simply ride out the controversy. A highlight: "I'm not gay or anything, but Dion Phaneuf must have a big penis because he is not very handsome."
Hogzilla wound up dropping Avery and picking up David Backes.
My team, The Bad Habitants, continue to grind, winning 5-3, 4-3, and 5-3 in the past three weeks. The modest success brings us up three spots to nine out of 12, but only four points out of the playoffs and seven behind third. PIMs and plus/minus continue to be strong points; and with Jason Arnott's justified and poetic 17-minute explosion against the Canucks this week, Les Mauvais Habitants have already staked a 23-4 advantage in PIMs this week.
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Goaltending remains a relative strength, with Cristobal Huet improving (and Khabibulin getting hurt) as Tomas Vokoun is relegated to the bench.
I stared at Pekka Rinne's game logs for 45 minutes this past Sunday, but wisely decided against picking him up; and he gave up five to St. Louis a few nights later.
I'm not convinced Vokoun is toast either, and I will likely keep him around since he's healthy and might benefit on the stat sheet if he's traded. Patience, I've found, works in baseball ...
So yeah, Pekka Rinne, enjoy your Calder Trophy. Maybe someday I'll come by and shine it for you.
I dropped Petr Sykora for Jiri Hudler, despite Sykora "catching fire," if only to spite him and to serve as a measure of intimidation to the rest of the league. "If he's good enough to drop an aging, disappointing veteran who's coming off of a once-a-season scoring binge of three or four goals or something, my god! -- what else might he be able to do? Drop Andrei Kostitsyn? Ignore the siren song of 'Rinne, the soon-to-be christened?'"
Despite the uncertainty, a handful of players are coming back to life even as Alex Tanguay returns to earth, including Kostitsyn and Bouwmeester.
Should Marian Gaborik ever return to the league, this might become a real non-real hockey team. Patience, patience.
