…is that I *finally* won the family hockey pool that a BC cousin has been running through regular season and playoffs for, what, ten years?
You’d think that with twenty chances, I might have lucked into a win at least once, especially considering that probably more than half the entries are random picks by septuagenarian aunts and uncles who don’t really follow hockey and pick their teams fairly randomly, choosing players whose names they might recognize or teams in cities they’ve visited! Or another small subset of our pool entries are novelty accounts I put in on behalf of the less hockey-enamoured members of my own immediate family – Sasha always picks completely random players following an up-down pattern through each Selection Box, Pace always picks players on Canadian teams or Canadian-born players (preferably from Saskatchewan), Shea always picks the player in each Selection Box with the longest and/or funniest name (a tradition that started in Calgary when a guy didn’t show up for my cousin’s hockey pool draft and Shea was “drafted” into entering then went on to finish second – and even made some money if I remember correctly!)
On the other hand, there are also a small handful of hardcore hockey fans in the family hockey pool who are probably also participating in “real” pools with weekly trades, money on the line and real research put into their picks. So often, those are the folks who win the pool.
I’ve come close to winning a few times – losing to my dad in the last week once and even this regular season, losing the pool right near the end of the season after having a pretty big lead through most of the year. Ironically, I lost in part because a confirmed major Flames fan cousin picked Leon Draisital of the Oilers who lit it up at the end of the season including a hat trick in the last week to overtake me. (Talk about tainted victory when a Flames fan wins in part because of the success of an Oiler!) 😉
In fact, part of my success in these playoffs was picking a bunch of Dallas Stars only because that was part of what made my cousin’s regular season team so successful. (And in playoffs, the secret is always to pick players from teams who go the furthest so have the most opportunity to put up points. This year, I had about four Bruins and a couple Blues that made it right to the final – more than anyone else in the pool had by the final.)
So anyhow, watching elite athletes win the Cup is a highlight of my sports watching calendar every year. But winning the family hockey pool after a ten year dry spell, now, that’s amazing! 😉
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