Fairly Symmetrical

So the hockey season is over. We lost our first (thus only) playoff game 3-0. Our goalie let in a pair of really soft goals, but to be honest they just outplayed us; they deserved the first goal and obviously that was all they needed.

The summer season starts in a few weeks; I think it will be interesting, because the league admin wants to shake things up a bit. This last season it seemed like emotions got a little high; there were several actual fights, at least one "abuse of officials" misconduct, etc. From what I've heard, in the leagues up around Dallas that kind of thing is endemic, in part because the teams stay together season after season, which leads to a build-up of rivalries and resentments. In the league here, we re-draft every season, which usually helps to keep that kind of thing to a minimum. In my experience, anyway, when you play with different people from season to season, you build up friendships, and it's harder to get mad at a player when you know them from a previous season.

The last few seasons captains have been allowed to "protect" players from the draft, and several goalies became captains, both of which allowed teams to keep a "core" of players together, and it seems like that helped contribute to this season's unpleasantness. So this summer, the league admin requested all new captains, eliminated "protected" players, and isn't allowing goalie captains. Hopefully things will get shaken up a lot.

Also, at Jenny's urging I put my name in for captain, and got selected. It should be an interesting experience. Noone who knows me should be surprised to know that as soon as I heard I'd been selected, Jenny and I put together a spreadsheet of the players in the league and started filtering. I really want to have a fun, clean season, but it would be nice to win some games, too. ;) So after a couple of hours working on the spreadsheet, I have a plan for how I'm going to make my picks. I'll have to do a little revision after the new player skate on Tuesday, but by and large I feel pretty good going into the draft. We'll see how I come out, though. ;)