As the Backstreet Boys once said, "Oh my god we're back again!" and well, I am back with another five outstanding revelations on the happenings in the CCHL!
I promise the rest of the blog will be Backstreet-less and it'll be worth the read. Well, maybe. You can be the judge of that but let's get to the meat and potatoes of why we are here.
1) The CCHL looks like the overall standings will show that the league has more parity than the previous couple of seasons. I'm completely curious as to why that might be but I have a few theories.
The first theory is that teams are seeing the fruits of their previous drafts arriving in the NHL at a faster pace than normal and with more high-end skill than a lot of other years. NHL teams are not holding back the young guns anymore and it's allowing the CCHL teams to reap the benefits of that faster.
My other theory is that the removal of the two bye spots and adding two playoff teams in each conference has also inspired teams to be more competitive so they can get their hands on that cold, hard playoff cash.
Either way, it is wickedly refreshing to see that the parity in the league is at its highest point in the last bunch of seasons.
2) Tampere once again is open and we are searching for an owner. If you know anyone, please feel free to send them my way to discuss things. We've had a few nibbles but nothing close to completion. A big challenge is that there is a lot of "Yahoo" kind of people that come forward and want to participate but get scared off by the technology (even though it's not hard to send a lineup) or the depth.
I had a new one this week where for the first time somebody said they didn't want to participate because a season takes too long. I found that comment interesting because all Yahoo pools take that kind of time as well because we run the length of a hockey season (well actually about 3 months less).
We will keep pounding the pavement but really this was inevitable given that Tampere, even with an owner, had invalid lineups 15 times in the 30+ games an owner was in place.
3) Speaking of illegal lineups, we have two teams that will fail to qualify for any bonus money and four that are losing the majority of their lineup bonus cash, and could soon be at zero.
On the positive side, we have eight teams that are perfect so far and six others with just one invalid lineup so most of the bonus money is on pace to be collected.
While we have slipped off the record-setting pace for lineups, we are still on track to have the second most lineups submitted for the 11 seasons it has been tracked. Even being second, the difference is on track to be less than 10 in difference so that's a strong thing for the league as a whole.
One interesting note has one team with more invalid lineups than the actual lineups sent which is a significant concern. If you are concerned this is you, please contact me for the details.
4) I was studying goals for and against this year in comparison to last year and the same number holds true for each season surprisingly. I didn't expect that given the top-end scorers in the NHL last year had some pretty gross seasons but that hasn't translated to our league this year. It could be the fact that with 22 teams, talent is spread more evenly than with the NHL's 31 teams.
5) As of this writing, the trade deadline is just six days away. I'm curious if any major deals take place given the parity of the league but something tells me it could be one of the quieter deadlines yet. Now that I've said that, somebody is going to try to prove me wrong - I can feel it!
Well, we've hit five thoughts and my laundry just finished (nope, the CCHL Commish isn't paid enough to have a laundry person yet!) so I'll end this blog now. Hopefully, I can return next week with a recap on the trade deadline and more!
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