Draft date: October 2, 2014

We're drafting October 2, 2014 to avoid the painful Week One / Week Two snafus of recent memory. Craig is hosting. Looking forward to it. Not sure about you folks, but when I prepare for a draft I listen to the Josh Ho-Singers and … Keep Six (Plus Pixxx).

(Special bonus feature: The Making Of …. Keep Six.)

Talent hunt

We need a third commissioner. Soon.

We also need a vocalist. Or vocalists. And even sooner. Time is money at the AHHL Recording Studios and the season is upon us. This is genre-defining stuff and you know you want in on the ground floor.

Oh, and kindly go to the damn Yahoo! site and register your damn team if you haven't done so.

What if we gave a banquet and only the usual suspects came?

Catching up with old news: the (eighth?) annual AHHL year-end banquet survived a kitchen fire scare and a terminally boring but satisfyingly inevitable Habs loss on the television.

We dispensed the cash and every award but Trash Talk.

Checking it out

Sorry, did I say cash. I should have said cheques.Not over-sized, but still (it is 2014, after all) something of a novelty.

We tried not to talk about the Regulators' win, as deserving as it was.

And we did some league business, including the lottery.

Not peeking, we swear.

The three lottarians went in like so:

3DFunKaijuLupulXJobu

That's what SHE said

Mighty Camels

AHHL-branded condoms?

And came out like so:

That's what SHE said

Mighty Camels

3DFunKaijuLupulXJobu

tanks a lot

So we had a lively discussion over the message board along with a vote on scrapping the lottery.

The lottery stays. For now. The voters have spoken. But we're still waiting for someone to make a compelling argument in its favour. Tradition and entertainment value seem to be its strongest points.

By now I think that the lottery and indeed the word "tanking" has lost whatever sting of the moral lash it once had. At least in the AHHL.

2013 entry draft

The draft results are here. Plenty of drama in the early going. But as 3D House of Pancakes was heard to observe, it wasn't long before we got down to the stems and seeds. And, eventually, to Roberto Luongo, 124 picks in...

We conducted some quick League business. Apologies to the online crowd, but there were enough votes to carry the day and we voted to abolish the mid-year prize (10% of the pool) and roll it into the final payouts. This time only.

Dave R / Reddy's Rebels kindly agreed to act as our Cashier and he's already started to collect the dough: $30 each. We'll have to figure out a way to collect (and dispense) money without transaction fees cutting into the meagre amounts involved. Does anyone still write cheques?

Watch this space for a proposal on changing the lottery set up. It may have Tank Hard implications...

here we go

The 2011/12 trade list and draft board (link above) is complete and up to date. If you spot a problem, lemme know.

Submit your list of protected players by Thursday @ midnight, Atlantic Time, please and thanks. Email it, post it here, update this table (http://bit.ly/V5zbJF), whatever turns your crank....

yesterday's news: 2012 banquet a resounding success

So we had a banquet in the spring and among other things we held the draft lottery.

We're nothing if not scrupulous here in the AHHL. And so we conducted the lottery under the watchful eye -- and finger -- of the AHHL's spiritual consultant and moral touchstone, Mr David Redwood.

As for the trophies, if anyone can remember who won what we'd be most obliged for a quiet reminder on the side.

If anything the hardware outshone the winners.

The AHHL Cup (ed. doesn't it have a better name than that?) sat unclaimed at the head of the table.

The Tank Hard came back very much the worse for wear, now sporting a hinge on its once-proud plinth.

The Trash Talk award was once again trashed albeit in a bright, lemony-fresh kind of way.

And with that the sun set on another successful AHHL season.

Moving on.

The summer trade period (August 1 to September 15 every year) is now open. Yay!

Final rosters (already distributed by email) will be linked, above, soon. Yay!

There are two openings in the team ranks. (Moment of silence.) Said openings soon to be filled. Yay! And we're very likely to return to a full 20 team complement. Yay!

math is hard

Special assignment: who among us cares to provide something in the way of analysis (involving actual and verifiable data) that might help us with the following premise: the pool of fantasy-worthy players increases (in some quantifiably significant way) with the addition of any stats beyond G, A and PIM. 

Chuck had yet to share his insight on goalies...but just for kicks let's run the numbers on stats beyond W and SO.

This is numbers-only, for now. If you think it a foolish enterprise, well, keep your powder dry. For now.

There's a link somewhere to our work last year adding plus / minus to the basic AHHL stats. If that's of use, please advise. 

2011/12 protected lists

We picked for the Camels. We accepted the Hammers' and SHE said's late submissions. All three have had trouble with this before. 

So let's review.

The date is fixed. 

It is September 16. 

At 11:59pm AT.

Every year. 

We voted on it. 

Remember?

It is in the Rules.

Yeah, the Rules. You know, that bunch of words and mumbo jumbo and stuff.

The complete protected lists are here, hopefully. 

As for Draft Nite 2011!, kindly do the doodles if you haven't already...and even if you have--some of you, at least--"No" across the board isn't really an option, at least not without adding a comment or something. If you can't attend in person or online you get a proxy. For one or more of the given dates. Yes.

2011/2012 entry draft night ... when, and where

I say "draft night," but I'm feeling goosebumps. We have an opening for an event planner with superlative event planning skills....