I'm a Lumberjack, and I'm Okay
Hey everyone - I'm James, and I'm the GM for the Vancouver Lumberjacks. I'm a huge Canucks fan, so going after another Vancovuer team (albeit it fictional) was a no brainer.
So, the draft went through, and for those not in the know, it was an auto-pick draft. This meant that you put together your list of players you want in order, and the fantasy league will automatically draft players to your team in that order. I ended up with the 2nd overall pick. Ovechkin went first, so I was able to get Crosby, who is a guy that any fantasy team GM loves to have. I'll be banking on him all year. From there, my team seem to end up being heavy with talented forwards, as I was able to get Jason Spezza, Johan Franzen, Wojtek Wolski, Jordan Staal, and Corey Perry.
I also got Ray Whitney, Justin Williams, Evander Kane, Lars Eller, Kevin Porter, Drayson Bowman, and Nazem Kadri. Some of these later guys will be up and down from the AHL this year, but depending on what's available, I may hang on to them for a bit - we'll see what happens.
On defence, there's some work to do. Michael Del Zotto, Lubomir Visnovsky, and James Wisniewski are all good pick ups, but that's where it ends. My bottom 3 defencemen are rounded out by Toni Lydman, Matt Niskanen, and the AHL-bound Thomas Hickey.
However, my goaltending ended up being the biggest weakness - my best two were Michael Neuvrith, and Mathieu Garon. I also got Justin Peters and Johan Backlund, but that wasn't much of a comfort. I knew I needed to balance this out a little, as in a league where goalies get 5 points per win, having two back ups would be my downfall.
As such, I was able to compelte the following trade with Andrew, GM of the Seattle Aviators:
Vancouver gets: Antii Niemi & Sergei Kostistyn
Seattle gets: Michael Neuvrith & Corey Perry
I didn't like having to part ways with Perry, but with Niemi looking like he'll get the majority of the starts on a good SJ team, I'm in a good spot to get 5 points every time that team plays. I'd have rather kept Neuvrith than Garon, but I believe that Kostistyn will get all the chances in the world on an offensively-depleted Nashville team. The goals have to come from somewhere, right?
On a whole, I know my team isn't the best on paper now. With snaking drafts, high or low draft picks mean you go for long stretches without drafting. I'm going to need good years from guys like Crosby, Franzen, Spezza, and Niemi to keep me competitive. However, anything can happen, and I'll just have to keep my eye open for good deals and the waiver wire, which is fine.
If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, feel free to pass them my way - I'll definitely look at them. Click here to review my team, and click around for the other teams, too.
lumberjacks 
Reader Comments (2)
Fellow Canucks fan here. Never played fantasy hockey before, but that's a solid team. Hard to go wrong with that forward lineup.
The feeling I've been getting out of SJ is that Nitty will be getting the slight majority of the starts. Niemi's been less than impressive during the preseason. Although, to be fair, the feeling out of SJ was that we weren't going to sign Niemi to begin with, so who knows?