Grant 33 Rick 29
I hold onto first place in the Millen division and remain without a loss and also have the pleasure of dropping Rick to 1-4. Lindros led the way with eight points and my defensemen were pretty strong with 10 points. Rick’s defensemen could only muster 3 assists.

Chris 28 Mike 19
Chris breaks 20 points for the first time and breaks into the win column. Leetch had his best week with 5 points. Reichel and new acquisition Stillman also had 5 points. To sum Chris’ season up so far, at the beginning of this past week Juneau was placed on the Capitals’ first line with Bondra and Oates. During the first game with this potentially high scoring line, Juneau tallied a goal and an assist before being injured and missing the rest of the week. For Mike, Sanderson and Smyth continue to be pretty big disappointments. Plus it usually is not good news when your defensemen outscore your forwards, as his did this week, 10-9.

Tony 30 Brett 27
Tony gets a close win over Brett to move into sole position of second place in the Millen division. Last week I stated that Tony would need production from someone other than Selanne and Hull. He got much needed scoring from Amonte this week who had 4 goals. Selanne chipped in another 3. Brett’s continual shuffling of losers into his sixth forward position has not paid off yet.

Bill 41 Charlie 27
Bill continues to dominate and takes the early lead in the second period. Leclair had 9 points and Recchi returned to form and Berard continued to be ridiculous with 8 points each. Bill moves to 5-0 and builds an early three game in lead over second place Tom (2-3) in the incredibly weak Dion division (except for Bill). The other three teams are 1-4.

Rich 31 Tom 19
Rich gets his first win led by Messier’s resurgence. He had 10 points. The Canucks still suck though. Tom loses his third straight after winning his first two.

A quick word regarding making moves. If you can, it is recommended that you e-mail your moves to me with a copy to Chris. This is recommended because 1) it makes it easier for me on Wednesday to go back over my e-mails for the moves, rather than trying to find the pieces of paper where I scribbled the information from the phone messages. 2) By copying Chris, he should have the latest moves if you need to call him. 3) Also, one of us should get your message in case it gets lost in cyberspace on the way to the other. If you are e-mailing and you want to be sure to replace a player for the upcoming week, you should e-mail me early enough so I can get back to you if the player you chose is taken. Or you can list two or three player in the order you want them (as some of you have done), in case your first choice is not available. And you can always call Chris (don’t forget to use the 327-7996 number) or me with your moves if you have to.

So far there have not been any trades yet. It can be tough to make a trade, because a team will rarely be so loaded with forwards or defensemen that it would be in a position to make a trade. In addition, most of the time you can pick up a free agent that is just about as good as you would be able to get in a trade. Anyway, you can e-mail me information to be included in the newsletter on anybody you would like to trade and also let me know what you want in return.

Here are some interesting, obscure, and otherwise useless observations from the first month of the season.

• Everyone knows that Chris has the lowest total points. He also has the lowest points against so far. A side note to Chris: Eric Daze is hot.
• Modano wins the NHL player of the month award. There are, however, a couple of players with more points than him.
• Selanne has goals in 8 straight games for Tony. And he is doing it without Kariya.
• For Charlie, recent acquisition Tim Taylor has 7 goals this season. Three have been empty netters. The over/under is three weeks before Charlie drops him.
• This year it is Bill who has the killer defensemen. His defensemen have 61 points, 14 higher than the next highest team. If you recall last year it was Tony whose defensemen dominated, although he used higher draft picks to stock up.
• Rich is the only team with two holdouts on reserve (Federov and Tverdovsky.) It must really suck for him because he can’t make a move unless he drops someone. Plus neither of these situations appears like it will be resolved any time soon. Other holdouts on reserve include Mogilny (Mike), Nedved (Brett), and of course Kariya (Chris).
• Just like last year (I think), Rich has the highest points against.
• So far this season, Keith Tkachuk is not really putting up numbers worthy of a first round pick. But he got some attention over the weekend when he said that the Flames were a bad team that plays "cheap shot, bullshit Brian Sutter hockey" after Fleury took out Gartner for 4-6 weeks. Gartner remains 2 goals short of being the fifth and easily the most unheralded player to score 700 goals.
• Rick’s pick up last week of Brind’amour was the third EFHL team for Brind’amour in the first five weeks. He might last awhile for Rick since he managed 3 goals.
• With the announcement of some of the player selections for the U.S. Olympic team, I guess the other countries will name their teams soon and we will be able to start planning our draft strategies for our Olympic draft. For those new to this league, we will most likely have an Olympic fantasy hockey draft. For a few bucks, we’ll pick some Olympic players and just add up the points for each team for the entire Olympics. We’ve done the same thing during the playoffs the last two years and it has been pretty cool. The time difference in Japan will make it difficult to watch the games live, assuming they are on live at all. I think I saw somewhere that a lot of games would be starting at 5 AM EST.

Standings and total points

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