October 2, 1997

The season is underway! Before I get to the team previews, I should go over a few administrative things.

I think we will probably use team names. I didn’t want to at first because most of them last year were long. But I guess we'll use them. E-mail me your team name or I can just use the one from last year. Be aware that if it too long, I may abbreviate or shorten sometimes in the newletters.

Now a few words on moves. I think we decided that everyone would e-mail me when making a move. It is probably a good idea to copy Chris as well. That way he will know the moves when you guys start calling him to ask him who is available. Also, the rosters will be updated periodically on the web. See the info below.

Next, I hope everyone understands what constitutes a move. We went over this at the draft and at least one person (Chris) has expressed some cluelessness. It counts as a move to change your active players. It does not count as a move to replace a reserve with a free agent. You can replace your reserves as much as you want. I think I brought up the idea to limit these to one per week, but nobody cared. The logic here is that when you change your active players, it requires a little work on my part to update the spreadsheet. Let's look at the first two moves that I have so far to illustrate this point. I picked up and reserved Igor Kravchuk and dropped my reserve defenseman Zalapski. Does this count as move? No. Brett picked up Jarome Iginla, and dropped Brind'amour, who was active. This counts as a move. It's pretty simple.

I have taken the liberty of naming the divisions after Penguin goaltenders from days gone by, Greg Millen and Michel Dion. If you don’t remember Millen doing his jig to the stinking Budweiser song against the Blues in the 1981 playoffs or Dion playing goalie for the hopeless Pens’ teams of the early to mid 1980s, don’t feel too bad. You probably just didn’t care, and you didn’t miss a whole lot.

Just in case you did not get it at the draft, here are the revised pay outs for this season.

Finally, most of you are getting this as an e-mail attachment in Microsoft Word. Also attached are the rosters in Microsoft Excel. If you have trouble, let me know. But I think I would prefer to focus on e-mailing the stats and newsletters if everyone can access them. This would probably be easier, but I keep going back and forth on this. This should also allow me to include bonus stats periodically, such as player scoring rankings and other cool stuff. Some stuff will still be posted to the web. One page I will do is an alphabetical listing of the players on teams. This will help when you need to determine who you can pick up as a free agent. It is posted now. You will have the players by team in the weekly e-mail. Anyway, we’ll see how all this works out. Just let me know if you have any concerns. My e-mail address in grantg@dc.net.

These previews are based solely on my opinion, so don’t be offended if I don’t like your team. If I don’t like your team (or maybe even if I do), you may want to ask yourself the question, "What the hell does he know?" This is especially in light of my performance last season.

My team may turn out OK, but I need big seasons from three guys who basically missed all of last season for various reasons. La Fontaine was traded to the Rangers, as speculated, so there might be hope for him. It could be that the Sabres doctors didn’t clear him to play when his doctors did because he wasn’t included in their budget for this year. We’ll see. Just missing Koivu was a major disappointment and yes, Fleury was a stretch, but hopefully LaFontaine and Roberts will make up for that pick. I’m actually pretty satisfied with my defensemen.

A team that started so promising with Kariya and Koivu ended up with some question marks with his next four forwards. No doubt there is good potential there though. However, it is doubtful that Riechel and Smolinski will produce at the level they did late last season. Gratton could be great, however he is playing behind some other good players and may not see the ice time he needs to really produce. Daigle will probably be close to last year unless he steps it up with Alfredsson gone.

I was very impressed by the drafts of the new teams in the league. Mike’s team looks to be right up there with Brett’s as the best in the Millen division. The first five forwards and first three defensemen are very solid, although Mogilny’s situation is still up in the air.

Selanne, Hull, and Amonte are good for the first three forwards, but after that there are some question marks. I like Gelinas, but think he would have slipped pretty far. And I think that Tony could have done a lot better than holdout Green with his fifth pick. His defense looks decent, but not spectacular.

Jagr slipping to fifth overall, along with Morozov could be the death of the rest of the league. I have no clue on Morozov, but it sounds like he could be great real soon. If Nedved gets out of Dreamland, he will have three Pens. Above average defense anchored by Lidstrom and Hamrlik.

Not bad for a first attempt if he gets Bondra back soon. Top three forwards very solid as Bure should bounce back and Yashin should continue to improve. However, Verbeek and Ciccarelli may need to be replaced soon. Defense appears about average.

This team could challenge Rick. Very solid first five forwards. I think #5 Kovalev will have a breakout season. Defense has some question marks but Berard should continue to improve.

This team is hard to call. Sakic could be a real bargain at eighth overall if he can regain his goal scoring touch. The Federov and Tverdovsky situaitions will be watched closely by Rich, as he used his third and fourth picks on holdouts. And I think that Stumpel, Kovalenko, and Coffey are relatively big question marks.

Team Sporting News is the early favorite to lead the league in assists, with Francis, Yzerman, and Turgeon, with Zhamnov coming off the bench. He could have done worse. On defense, he probably could not have done much worse and I see two or three quick moves coming.

Oh no. Our worse fears could soon become reality as Rick’s team looks pretty strong. His top three forwards look real good. The fourth, Arnott, could really breakout as he plays in the final year of his contract. Nieuwendyk and Gartner should be steady if he can’t find anyone better. Gartner should be good for 30 goals as he has done like 17 times and does not appear to be slowing down. In addition, I think Rick’s defensemen will end up near the top of the league.

Next, I will offer some useless predictions that you will surely be able to laugh about in April, if not sooner.

Playoff predictions:

First round: Brett defeats Grant, Bill defeats Charlie

Second round: Mike defeats Brett, Rick defeats Bill

EFHL finals: Mike defeats Rick

That’s it. As far as newsletters go, I will be attempting to do one each week, but I may miss a few weeks here and there. Good luck to all and I'll be in touch next week.

Other 1997-98 EFHL information.
Standings and total points
EFHL home page