Over All-Star Weekend, Rudy, Niesy and I did our own Kings fantasy draft. Any player with at least one game in a Kings uniform was eligible. Rudy selected first, Quisp (me) second, Niesy third. Each team was to have 13 forwards, 7 defensemen and 2 goalies.
Originally, the idea was just to look at the different rosters, organize them into lines, and put up a poll to see who everyone thinks the best team is. Then it occurred to someone (me? I forget) that we could play a round-robin tournament with the three teams, in NHL 11. This will involve a lot of custom players, since the NHL 11 database includes only current NHL, AHL, “world” and Canadian juniors players. But the notion of running simulations of games between these made-up teams is too good to pass up.
So, here’s how the draft played out.
| RUDY | QUISP | NIESY | |
| 1 | Kelly Hrudey (G) | ||
| 2 | Rogie Vachon (G) | ||
| 3 | Wayne Gretzky (C) | ||
| 4 | Luc Robitaille (LW) | ||
| 5 | Bernie Nicholls (C) | ||
| 6 | Felix Potvin (G) | ||
| 7 | Marcel Dionne (C) | ||
| 8 | Tomas Sandstrom (RW) | ||
| 9 | Dave Taylor (RW) | ||
| 10 | Butch Goring (C) | ||
| 11 | Drew Doughty (D) | ||
| 12 | Mattias Norstrom (D) | ||
| 13 | Ziggy Palffy (RW) | ||
| 14 | Anze Kopitar (C) | ||
| 15 | Jonathan Quick (G) | ||
| 16 | Larry Murphy (D) | ||
| 17 | Charlie Simmer (LW) | ||
| 18 | Bob Pulford (LW) | ||
| 19 | Alexander Frolov (LW) | ||
| 20 | Rob Blake (D) | ||
| 21 | Jari Kurri (RW) | ||
| 22 | Lubomir Visnovsky (D) | ||
| 23 | Tony Granato (LW) | ||
| 24 | Bob Berry (LW) | ||
| 25 | Juha Widing (C) | ||
| 26 | Tim Gleason (D) | ||
| 27 | Jimmy Carson (C) | ||
| 28 | Dustin Brown (RW) | ||
| 29 | Mike Cammalleri (LW) | ||
| 30 | Jim Fox (RW) | ||
| 31 | Jay Wells (D) | ||
| 32 | Ian Laperriere (C) | ||
| 33 | Mark Hardy (D) | ||
| 34 | Mike Murphy (RW) | ||
| 35 | Adam Deadmarsh (RW) | ||
| 36 | Tiger Williams (LW) | ||
| 37 | Larry Robinson (D) | ||
| 38 | Mathieu Schneider (D) | ||
| 39 | Steve Duchesne (D) | ||
| 40 | Aaron Miller (D) | ||
| 41 | Corey Millen (C) | ||
| 42 | Alexei Zhitnik (D) | ||
| 43 | Paul Coffey (D) | ||
| 44 | Rob Scuderi (D) | ||
| 45 | Garry Galley (D) | ||
| 46 | Jason Allison (C) | ||
| 47 | Sean Avery (LW) | ||
| 48 | Jozef Stumpel (C) | ||
| 49 | Wayne Simmonds (RW) | ||
| 50 | Bill Flett (RW) | ||
| 51 | Ryan Smyth (LW) | ||
| 52 | Charlie Huddy (D) | ||
| 53 | Mike Donnelly (LW) | ||
| 54 | Bryan Smolinski (C) | ||
| 55 | Craig Conroy (C) | ||
| 56 | Jack Johnson (D) | ||
| 57 | Justin Williams (RW) | ||
| 58 | Warren Rychel (LW) | ||
| 59 | Bob Nevin (RW) | ||
| 60 | Darryl Sydor (D) | ||
| 61 | Marty McSorley (RW/D) | ||
| 62 | Dave Hutchison (D) | ||
| 63 | Sean O’Donnell (D) | ||
| 64 | Stephane Fiset (G) | ||
| 65 | Jamie Storr (G) | ||
| 66 | Mike Corrigan (LW) |
Next, we’ll look at the line combinations for each team.