Sporting Madness

I'm starting up a Yahoo! fantasy basketball league with some of my fellow bloggers from The Rookies . We still have a few spots left, so if you're interested in joining us, the league id is 360797 and the password is neilyoung. You should be able to join us here . Our live draft will be Friday, Nov 6 at 5:15 p.m. PST (8:15 p.m. Eastern), but you can also autorank players if you're not able to make the draft. Hope you can join us!

Yes, this is a little late, but seeing James Mirtle 's playoff bracket yesterday inspired me to create my own. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near as pretty, but it's functional. If you're interested in joining my bracket pool for fun, just go to Simply Sports Ware ; the pool name is SportingMadness and the password is Sporting. The pick deadline is Friday night at 7 p.m.; that will allow picks to be made after one game in every series has been played. Let's see who comes out on top! Here's my picks: Round One: West: - Vancouver over St. Louis in six games. - Anaheim over San Jose in seven games - Detroit over Columbus in six games - Chicago over Calgary in five games East: - Boston over Montreal in five games - Washington over New York in six games - Carolina over New Jersey in six games - Pittsburgh over Philadelphia in six games Round Two: West: - Vancouver over Chicago in five games - Anaheim over Detroit in six games East: - Boston over Carolina in ...

Round Three of the NHL playoffs starts tonight, so here's the promised update on my fantasy hockey team (in the GlobeSports Fantasy Hockey Playoff Challenge ). The challenge lets you pick six forwards, four defencemen and two teams' goalies (one team from each conference) for each round: you then get two points for each goal scored by your players, one point per assist, two points for a goalie's win and an extra point for a shutout. Here's the breakdown of my picks so far and how they've done. Round 1: Forward 1: Alex Ovechkin, WSH: 13 points (tied for Forward #1 lead with Jarome Iginla, CGY) Forward 2: Evgeni Malkin, PIT: 9 points (leader: Vaclav Prospal, PHI, 12 points) Forward 3: Marian Hossa, PIT: 6 points (leader, Daniel Briere, PHI, 17 points) Forward 4: Petr Sykora, PIT: 6 points (leader, Alexander Semin, WSH, 11 points) Forward 5: J.P. Dumont, NSH: 2 points (leader, Ryane Clowe, SJS, 12 points) Forward 6: Jeff Carter, PHI: 7 points (leader, Joe Pavelski, SJ...

Just a quick note about the hockey playoffs: I've entered a team in the globesports.com challenge, which works on a pretty simple basis: pick one player from each list (i.e. a list of #1 forwards, #2 forwards, #1 defencemen, etc) until you have six forwards, four defencemen and two teams' goalie tandems. You get one point for each assist and two for each goal any of your players score, plus two points for each win your goaltenders put up and an extra point for each shutout. You can also completely retool your roster after the first and second rounds. Thus, I wasn't too concerned about picking teams that could go deep into the playoffs: I was more interested in finding the most offensive player available at each slot, and particularly those playing against teams with weaker defence and goaltending. My players and their performances to date are listed below. So far, I've accumulated 15 points from the first two nights, good enough to put me into a tie for eighth (however...