My NHL

On Saturday I picked up the NHL 2006 from EA Sports. I thought about checking out the competition this year, until I saw in the commercial that Bob Cole and Harry Neale were doing the commentating. No thanks. By the way, that reminds me of a great comment Kevin made last night as we were watching the LaDainian Tomlinson show against the Giants (almost 70 fantasy points for one game? You have got to be kidding me). Kevin noted that the best thing about the CBC lockout/strike/whatever the hell it is, is that if it keeps going on, we won't have to suffer through any Cole and Neale. An excellent point indeed, and one that I think should make all sports fans side with management, if only for a little while.

But I digress. The whole point of this post is that I picked up NHL 2006, beat Nathan and his filthy Flames in a Best-of-Three Series, and have now just finished drafting my own team. For some reason, you can't have a fantasy draft in the Dynasty Mode, so I had to go with the Season mode. I think I saw somewhere that you can take that Season team and transfer it to the Dynasty mode, but I haven't attempted to do it yet. In fact, I haven't even played a single game with my new Oilers team. I wanted to share my lineup with all before I began.

I have already improved my Oilers with the fantasy draft. Ranked with an 83 (out of 100) in the game, my new Oilers lineup is already at an 87. I am sure that with my talent and dedication, as well as savvy management, the team will rapidly grow beyond that level. Here is my lineup:

Goaltenders:
Marc-Andre Fleury
Jani Hurme

Defense, Pair 1:
Joni Pitkanen
Barret Jackman

Defense, Pair 2:
Jay Bouwmeester
Eric Brewer

Defense, Pair 3:
Steve Staios
Mike Rathje

Offense, Line 1:
LW Henrik Zetterberg
C Vincent Lecavalier
RW Marian Gaborik

Offense, Line 2:
LW Vaclav Prospal
C Patrice Bergeron
RW Mark Parrish

Offense, Line 3:
LW Ethan Moreau
C Shawn Horcoff
RW Tomas Holmstrom

Offense, Line 4:
LW Vaclav Varada
C Ron Francis
RW Georges Laraque

Other than Laraque and Francis, no homer moves were made. Yet somehow I ended up with four Oilers (five if you include recently traded Eric Brewer) on my team. I have no idea if Sidney Crosby is in this game. I suppose I will find out soon enough if he and other young prospects are scattered around the league.

One final comment, which is that the music sucks. This appears to be a common problem with EA this year, as the music for Madden sucked too.