While some of the other members of the Yahoo 20-team fantasy BLOGGER CHALLENGE have been posting their picks and bragging like an NFL Wide Receiver, I'll be a little more reserved.

See, I didn't expect the auto draft to be run when it did, so I had clumped up a bunch of goalies and defensemen at the top of my list and didn't sort my rankings very well. Needless to say, I was in for a big shock and ended up with a very...err... risky team. (excuses, excuses)

After a bit of tweaking and failed trade talks, here is the roster so far:

Erat-Horcoff-Havlat
Hagman-Lindros-Hemsky
Huselius-Staal-Vasicek

Tarnstrom-Berard
Blake-T.Kaberle

Gerber
Esche
K.Lehtonen

ERIC LINDROS? Ewwww-huuu-huuu!

I've loaded up on good defensemen, but this team is very much dependant on a bunch of players having breakout and career seasons. I think my team could do very well if every star and planetary formation aligns in my favour, but I'd like some nice sure things like Markus Naslund and Marian Hossa.

...oh...and would I have to cheer for Lindros to succeed just for the sake of my fantasy team? The one thing that really makes fantasy hockey and office pools hard is cheering for a player you really dislike. My office pool (which is a for-profit deal) had me often cheering for players that I'd rather not cheer for. On the other hand, it gives me and other fans a great excuse to check out boxscores for games that they would never normally have an interest in. Why else would I care about a Devils/Islanders tilt unless I was counting on Alexei Yashin to bring home the bacon. (You know you are in trouble if you are counting on YASHIN)

If any other members of the blogger challenge want to trade for Eric Lindros, feel free to submit your offers. I'd rather not have this piece of trash on any of my fantasy teams.

Stat Splits: Phil Pilmar asked about where I found the interesting stat splits that I like to fiddle around with. Until yesterday, I was using the player cards on ESPN.com.

Now, I see that Yahoo sports offers stat splits on players going back 4 seasons!! ESPN.com only offered 2 years of these splits.

Go to: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/stats and then to any individual player card. From there, you can access a player's complete splits and find out some interesting (And often useless) numbers about any player. It's a great find, and I could waste a whole day looking at career splits.

Stat Splits of the Day: Canuck Killers

Not only did Mark Messier kill the Canucks with his cancer-like presence, he also killed them as a member of the opposition. In 28 career games against the Canucks, he had 19 goals and 32 assists with a +16! (At least the # of games shown on the player card). Oh, don't even mention 1994 :(

Milan Hejduk has always been known as a Canuck killer, and his stat splits prove it as he has the more points against the Canucks than he does against any other team. Hejduk has 23 goals and 11 assists in 32 career contests against our club.

His teammate and Burnaby (The burb in which I live) native Joe Sakic has also been known as a Canuck killer through his career and he has the 23 goals and 51 assists in 55 games to prove it. Surprisingly (or maybe not...he is pretty damn good), Sakic has hurt the Oilers just as badly with 29 goals and 46 assists in 57 games against that ragtag bunch.