I Am Not Excited For Fantasy Hockey Season
0 Comments Published by Dany Heatley Speedwagon on Saturday, October 02, 2010 at 5:11 PM.
image taken from http://www.ryancatania.com/***Co-Editors note: Apologies for the lack of maintenance over the summer, once again renewed promise for regular maintenance here now that the regular season is upon us. Look at the shiney new banner my blogger mommy has put up for us! GO SENS GO!
I come to you today with a confession. I, Dany Heatley Speedwagon am not excited for the upcoming fantasy hockey season. I can hardly contain my excitement for the upcoming NHL season , but fantasy hockey I could give much less than 2 shits about at this point. You might be asking yourself why. The simple answer is, for me, there is no upcoming fantasy hockey season.
That's right, I've decided to give it up. Or rather I'm taking a sabatical of unknown length. Maybe I'll come back next season, maybe I'll stay away forever but I've decided to just enjoy the NHL season in a way I haven't done since well before the pre-lockout days.
I first joined a fantasy hockey league back in 1998, my first year of University. It was done with a real live in person draft. Results were kept track using excel by my roomate and the standings and statistics were posted on our dorm room door updated every Sunday night. I still remember that draft. I remember I knew slightly less about hockey than I do today and I drafted Teppo Numminen with my first pick. I thought the foundation of a winning fantasy team would be built on a defence that can outscore any other. Surprise of surprises, I lost.
For the most part I was new to hockey and clearly that was evident with my draft choices. While I didn't win that first pool I planted the seeds of a long and not so glamourous fantasy GM career that would span over a decade and has continued uninterrupted (with the exception of the lockout) until today. In that time I've managed various other fantasy teams (surprisingly I've managed championship teams in both baseball and football yet continue to suck at hockey) but none of them stuck. The only constant in all these years is hockey.
Up until now it just seemed a no-brainer that the start of the NHL season brought the start of the fantasy hockey season. I find myself this year not as excited as in the past. Maybe it's part of a maturing process. Maybe it's becoming bored with maintenance pools that require constant attention and nurturing and become all too monotonous once that the big prize seems out of reach. Maybe it's longing to get rid of that constant almost addictive desire to always be checking boxscores and see how "my players" are faring on a particular night. This season I just want to enjoy hockey again rather than observe and analyze it.
Maybe it's sour grapes. Maybe I'm just tired of all the years of losing but I think I need to quit, for at least one season, cold turkey and just enjoy hockey for the game. A way that really I haven't enjoyed hockey ever. I would say I became a hockey fan in that first year of University. Saturday night's were all about pre-drinking, watching HNIC then hitting the bar in time to catch the 3rd period of the west coast game. I've never known being a hockey fan and not cheering for individual accomplishments by players on teams I really don't have much of an interest in at all. I look forward to what the NHL season will bring me and I wonder if fantasy hockey will draw me back in next year, or become a thing of my past.
