Chris Stewart

proxy for damagemiller Brent Burns - D

Fifth Round (10:00) LW - RJ Umberger

RW - Dustin Penner

RW - David Jones

team lundqvist: Braydon coburn
team selanne: Nicklas kronwall

D Johnny Boychuk team 1

D Karl Alzner team 2

Round 6 (5:30) D - Dustin Byfuglien

Off to a great start everyone.  At some point, I'd like to bump up the selections to two picks per team (at once).  I want to speed up the draft, but we're also racing the WIS database update.  Someone already suggested round 14.  Other ideas?

what if we started it at round 10 but limited ppl to taking 2 different positions until round 15, at which point we can take anyone to fill our rosters?

I suggest Round 11, no position limits. 

We're doing Round 6 today.  That means Round 10 will happen on Sunday, the last day of the season.  If we start doubling up on Monday, in Round 11, we will be scheduled to finish this draft on the 17th, one week after the season.  The new stats may or may not be out by then.

I'm good with damag's suggestion.  2-teamers being able to make a real dent on any potential position runs is a little less than optimal, but more than anything I want to have as few picks influenced by the new stats as possible.

* Just a random prediction here *

I am really interested in seeing what the database does with Lidstrom this time around.  It's one of his better scoring seasons, and his worst plus-minus season... and the Wings are pretty poor in goals against, but also high scoring.  I have resisted the notion that certain players get "reputation points" on their D ratings... but Lidstrom will make a good test case.

I would like to see positional limits once we kick off the 2 picks a day simply to ensure some defence left for us late pickers.  It may be enough to refer to forwards, defence and goalies.  I do not think it necessary to restrict forward positions since we have relaxed rosters.

I think one thing we're going to see when we get into later rounds is how many players with < 60 games played there were this season.  With so many "minor" as well as major injuries in today's style of hockey, the number of 65+ games played skaters is dropping.  

According to NHL.com, there are 142 defencemen with 60 or more games played so far.  That gives them a pretty good chance of getting to 62 games, which is over 75% games played.

Between 24 teams, that means 5.9 defence with 75% games played per team.  There are 90 more d-men with between 20 and 59 gp.   
 
295 forwards with 60 or more so far.  That means 12.3 forwards per team.  There are another 141 forwards with between 20 and 59 gp.