IceHL Premiere & Player Pool Problems

(Don’t count on me checking in every day, but I had to talk a bit about the first day of the season!)

Good start so far to the season for the Wave. You should have heard me when I saw Claude Giroux’s shorty to start my season. Based on the giant sample size of today, the Wave, Salt Lake City Scorpions and Houston Hellcats should have a pretty exciting race in the Robbins Division.

The Wave have come to an agreement with the Calgary Cavalry to trade Steve Mason in exchange for Nathan Horton. Horton had a pretty good year last year on a pretty bad team in Florida. With the quality of players around him improving in Boston, I figured I’d be willing to trade my high risk/high reward 3rd goalie.

In other news, please welcome the other new addition to the Wave: Cal Clutterbuck. He steps in as Maxim Afinogenov steps out. Btw, I’d like to thank the Cavalry for pointing out my stupidity about picking up Maxim Afinogenov. (Btw, thank you, Milwaukee, for making the same mistake as I did. Now I don’t feel quite as dumb. ;] )

That brings me to my big gripe of the day: ESPN’s player pool. It’d be nice if they took out the players who went to the KHL in the off-season like Afinogenov. Or those who retired like Scott Niedermayer or Phillipe Boucher. I mean seriously? Phillipe Boucher? How long ago did he retire? Listen ESPN, there’s a very good chance we’ll be looking at picking up players at crazy hours of the night.  Please don’t tease us with players who aren’t in the league anymore.

As always, keep it real. Keep it fresh. And keep it real fresh.