Wednesday, October 5, 2016 we had our fantasy draft for the upcoming 2016-2017 NHL hockey season. As @bacchist will tell you, the event was a success: [SFHL] Steemit Fantasy Hockey League - Draft Wrap-up. It's my turn, after @shenanigator's great My Fantasy Hockey League Draft Picks and Strategy (Steemit League) post, to present my team to the Steemit World in order to help Steemians to do their bidding in the [SFHL] Week 1 Interactive Preview.

MY PICKS

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Patrick Kane

I had the chance to choose as second in line. The three players standing out as the best first choices for anybody picking up soon in the draft order were Alexander Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane. Ovechkin, the high scoring Russian machine came out first so I was left to decide between Crosby, the Canadian or Kane, the American. Since assists are as worth as goals in this game, I wasn't disapointed Ovechkin was gone even if he managed to score more than 50 goals for the last three consecutive years, because his last season's 71 points was 14 less than Crosby's pts (85) and 35 less than Kane's (106). Normally in any given year, I would have had to choose Crosby has a better overall player than Kane on paper, but other than the exceptional 2015-2016 season the Blackhawks player had, what ultimately led my choice was by personal bias and experience in past hockey pools with Crosby's injuries throughout 2010-2011, 2011-2012 & 2012-2013 seasons.

Kane's amazing stickhandling skills

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The Backline Trio

I had no particular plan coming into the SFHL last week's meeting of Steemian hockey lovers as it was my very first draft ever. Never before I had to assemble a team for a game where you earn points from players you exclusively owned from other participants. I think the concept is amazing and so far I'm having great fun and finding the experience as a great motivation to follow closely the upcoming NHL season. Looking back at my picks I found out that, out of the first seven names three defencemen came up. I don't know if it was done subconsciously or not with a general feeling that offensive D-men are rare, that the gap between them and the average blueliner is wider in term of points than with forwards, or if it was more done more intentionally on my part that I would like to admit to myself with a certain pick the best player available no matter what philosophy. Strange outcome as in a game revolving around offensive rewards, we should expect participants instinctively going with forwards first and foremost. Still, the result remains the same having Kris Letang (67 pts), Roman Josi (61 pts) and Victor Hedman (47 pts) as the solid core of my backline. Nick Leddy (40 pts) and Brian Campbell (31 pts) complete the rest of the blueline.

A collection of Kris Letang's goals

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King Henrik

As a fan of the Montreal Canadiens, I was hoping to get my hands on Carey Price who is still in my humble opinion the best goaltender in the world today. Nobody was fooled by his low statistics of last year having suffer an injury and it came to me with no surprise that he was gone early on that night. My eyes then went on Henrik Lundqvist, another future Hall of Famer for sure with all of his New York Rangers/NHL awards & records. I hope he keeps his usual form this year and that his team won't let him down trying to win at least 30 games because as we know, goalies victories don't rely solely on their own individual performances. He will form a duo with Petr Mrázek, the only decent goaltender in my view that was left for grabs at the time when I finally decided I had to take my number two before it was too late. I don't have a backup for these two guys so this is obviously a weakness on my team's roster, but correct me if I'm wrong, I believe this is the position where a player is less likely to get injured in the run of play.

Henrik's Tricks

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Centre to my Team

Center stage to my team are... numerous centres! Whether we're talking about Jason Spezza (63 pts), Matt Duchene (59 pts), David Krejčí (63 pts) or Henrik Sedin (55 pts), the heroic15397 team doesn't lack quality or depth at that forward position. Of course, I won't be able to use them all at the same time but one thing is for sure, I prefer having some of them on my bench than on the ice for my adversaries' teams.

Jason Spezza's amazing shooting skills

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A legend was born (out of my draft)

My main regret about the entire draft is not realizing before the importance of some players having multi-position status that allowed a fantasy manager more flexibility when choosing what 2 goalies, 2 centres, 2 left wingers, 2 right wingers and 4 defencemen to put on the ice versus the 4 other players warming up the bench. My only such versatile player is Patrick Sharp (55 pts) playing both at the right or the left flank at times. The thing is I have plenty of right wingers on the team but the only other left winger being Loui Eriksson (63 pts), the chances are Sharp will stay on the left side of the ice. The players closing the right wing ranks other than Patrick Kane are Kyle Palmieri (57 pts) and Jaromír Jágr (66 pts). It was quite a surprise to me to find out that the Czech legend had not been claimed by anybody else so late (146th overall) in the draft when I happened to pick him. The guy is still performing at 44 years old by keeping himself in shape and hungry for hockey. I was so shocked when I realized he had sixty-six points last year which is more than the greater part of my other players, that I decided to put him on the ice for the first week instead of Kyle Palmieri. I mean, if his numbers are to fade out this season, there are probably more chances it will come down in February-March than say in October-November.

Fresh as Jágr

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To All the Participants and Bidders of this Coming SFHL Season: HAVE A GREAT SEASON!

*All of the rewards from this post will go into the SFHL prizes pot*