Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Used to be a time when a guy could be dead sure who was the number one goaltender for any given NHL team.  Used to be a time a guy could reliably count on that goaltender to be between the pipes for the majority of games.   Used to be a time a guy could manage his fantasy hockey goaltenders with little effort.

Those days are gone.  Now, if you really want to have a fighting chance in your fantasy hockey league, you pretty much have to put other parts of your life on-hold, just to track the daily myriad of possibilites as to which goaltender gets the nod that night.

No doubt many a guy has allowed yardwork, homework, work work, and personal relationships to deteriorate thanks to the absolute need to scrutinize the daily internet hockey news in an attempt to ascertain who’s going to start in net.  No doubt a number of woman also find themselves in this same bind.

For starters, fantasy hockey is not real hockey.  Not even close.  That’s why they call it fantasy hockey.  To the uninitiated, it might sound as if the likes of Clare Danes, Mila Kunis, Zooey Deschanel, Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Silverman are skating around, with Scarlett Johansson in net.  Actually, that’s a fantasy hockey team alright, one which would probably outperform the team I’m currently managing, as long as they knew that Johansson was starting most games.

During our fantasy draft back in late September, I stayed away from goaltenders, until they started to go near the end of the first round.  Brodeur and Luongo left first.  I managed to get my paws on a goaltender I was confident would be solid for the season.

Marty Turco.

Okay, so that’s why they actually play the games.  The real hockey games, that is.  They play them just to cause major pain to the fools who dabble in the black art of fantasy hockey.

I stayed away from drafting a second goaltender, going with the belief, particularly in our league, that scoring numbers/plus-minus would win the day.  When the backup guys began to fall off-the-board, I had to change plans once again, and decide who would be goaler number two on my squad.

The choice came down to either Martin Biron or Cam Ward.  I dithered.  I looked for a coin to flip.  I quickly checked my email to see if Johansson had gotten back to me.  Finally, with precious little time remaining on the draft clock, I gulped, and took young Ward.

Which earned me the almost immediate wrath of fantasy hockey guru Rob Higgins, who, when he’s not screaming into a microphone, channelling his inner Lemmy, leads the way in pouring over stats and minutiae and dominating his hockey pool.  Or so he says.  No one’s actually thought to confirm these claims.

Regardless, the hasty slapdown by Higgins had me limping away in shame, quickly logging onto the nearest computer, and furtively scanning the waiver wire, trying to pick up a third netminder.

As luck would have it, Biron got off to a rotten start.  As luck would also have it, Ward wasn’t doing much better.  In fact, Michael Leighton appeared to be getting as many starts as Ward.

So naturally, doing what most poolies do, my knees jerked me into moving the mouse, hovering over Leighton’s name.  One click later, I had my third goaltender.  Since Turco was Turd-o, he was going to see a lot of pine on my team.  I wasn’t going to outright release him, bury him in the minors, lend him to a Russian team, or trade him to Boomer.  I was sure (I still am…really) that Marty will get his act together.

But until then, the two Hurricanes were going to rock my team.  I was going with a tandem, which broke most hockey pool “rules”, but I had to know I’d get four starts in a week, or risk losing valuable goaltending points.

Trouble is, Leighton didn’t do much, either.  So, naturally, I panicked, and dropped the bum, instead looking for comfort in the arms of Ty Conklin.  There was no way that Chris Osgood was gonna last, I told myself, and the Red Wings are stacked.

Mr. Shows got me some wins, but my goaltending was still preventing my team from performing to their full potential.  They were letting down the rest of the team, costing us points.  And then I started noticing Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers hanging around the rink.  He seemed to be getting some starts up in Edmonton, even though they had about 28 goaltenders on their roster.

So, naturally, I parted ways with Conklin and went with the hypen man.  Who. naturally, was returned to the bench in favour of Dwayne Roloson.  Which got me to noticing former St. Mike’s Majors’ netminder Peter Budaj, who appeared to be getting his game together in Denver.  But he’s been running hot-and-cold, so I’m waiting to see how he does over the next few games.  Which means he’ll be gone by then.

Turco was still on-and-off, while it seemed whenever Ward picked up a win in the Carolina net, I had him nailed to the bench.  For no explainable reason really, expect perhaps I was obsessing about my third goaltender, and neglected the rest of the team.   Sorry guys.

I see that Ty Conklin is still available.

We’re only seven weeks into the regular season, and I’m already exhausted.  Good thing we don’t put up any money on this madness.

When does baseball season start?

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s