angus

The 2011 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs are set to begin only a few short days from now, and what  better way to celebrate than with the 2011 DobberHockey Playoff Challenge! The fine folks over at ArmChairPools are hosting the pool this spring, and it is completely free to enter! Playoff pools require quite a bit of luck (or intuition, whatever you may call it) to win compared to regular season pools, thanks to the fact that the success of the players you pick is heavily dependent on how long their teams stick around.

Here are the individual and averaged predicitions for the first round of the NHL playoffs from Dobber, Angus, Bugg, Ma, Miller, and more! The panel's consensus picks boast an impressive 42-18 record over the past four seasons! But, the panel was a very un-expert-like 8-7 last year, a dissapointing spring after posting a solid 12-3 record the year before. On to the picks...

(Join our free Playoff Challenge HERE and win a free jersey!)

The thinking process that goes in to selecting the Prime Cuts roster is similar to Pierre McGuire’s “Monsters” team on TSN (I promise that is the first and only time I will compare my thinking process to Pierre’s). Since this is a fantasy hockey site, the selection process favors players that have had strong seasons on the score sheet, obviously. However, not just goals and assists are weighted – perhaps a player has started to shoot the puck more, or play better defensively. Intangibles like heart, grit, and determination factor in to the selection process as well. It is far and away my favorite article to write each year, and I hope you will all enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

The first part of the series will focus on the six defensemen.

Each year I write out 10 fearless forecasts (some crazier than others). This past September was no different (check my list for 2010-11 out here). I was right in a few cases, I was close in a few cases, and I was completely off base in a few as well. How did you do with your preseason predictions (preferably those that were a bit out there)?