I'm taking part in a Fantasy Draft over at Cycle Like the Sedins. I'll be drafting for the Flames (naturally) and was gifted with the first overall selection for the first time in my hockey pool career.
There's quite a bit of pressure associated with first overall. On one hand, it's hard to go wrong...on the other, there's a lot of great choices available. A number of choices ran through my head, including:
1.) Pavel Datsyuk. We're operating under a cap for the draft, so the fact that Datsyuk is one of the best players in the league but only costs around 6M a year was attractive.
2.) Crosby and Malkin. Both young, both elite, both centers.
3.) Joe Thornton. Similar to Datsyuk in that he's consistently top tier but is relatively cheap.
After all that, I settled on - who else - Alexander Ovechkin. He's the most expensive player in the league but he's just so damn good. He outshoots and outscores the competition and is deadly on the PP. I'll obviously have to find bargains later in the draft in order to compensate for his huge cap hit, but I dont think that'll be a problem.
I'll update Other picks and the final roster (as well as my competition, which should be fierce) as we move along.
