Thanks to all those that participated in the fantasy draft last night, our 20-team league should prove to be very robust, and we had a fun chat going on during the marathon 2.5 hour draft.  Given 320 picks, that’s less than 30 seconds per pick, so it didn’t feel like it dragged too much at the time.  I must admit, drafting is my favorite part of fantasy.  Doug was unable to log on, but we traded dozens of texts during the draft, so his fingerprints are all over our team.

I know fantasy is inherently boring to those that aren’t participating, but I’m going to give a couple of reactions to the draft, that may even be amusing to non-participants:

• My favorite pick of the night for SuperDudes: Mikkel Boedker, 1st line LW for PHX, drafted in the last round, 315th overall.
• My least favorite pick of the night for SuperDudes: Travis Zajac in the 11th round (205th overall).  I know he might be on a line with Kovy, but he just signed a cushy deal, gets hurt a lot, and has cracked 60 points only twice.  Nathan Horton probably would have been a better pick here, or even Adam Henrique, who’s also on the Devils, but I didn’t have the balls because Henrique is hurt.
• The best pick of the night: Alex Burrows 6th round (104th overall) by WhyDoIKeepComingBack.  On a top line with the Sedins, Burrows gets some of the most sheltered minutes in the league.  We drafted Bobby Ryan in the 5th, so I’m not super disappointed about our picks before (we would take taken him in the 6th if we could have) but I do think several other teams drafted clearly inferior players in the 4th and 5th rounds.
• The worst pick of the night: Dany Heatley 2nd round (40th overall) by Behind Enemy Lines.  I know he might play on a line with Parise, but his production has been steadily decreasing (82, 64, 53 points the last three years).   I think other teams will key very heavily on that line and deny Heatley the open space he requires.  Some slam dunk 70-point or higher players were still available here, like Thornton, Spezza, St. Louis, and Kane, so I think this is a reach, especially on a team that Hockey Prospectus is forecasting to finish 22nd in the NHL.  And they are projecting 53 points for Heatley.

Next year I think I want to do an auction draft, especially after listening to the Backhand Shelf podcast here.  For the poor bastards that logged into the draft and saw they were picking 15-20, they knew there was no chance they could get some of the best players in the league.  With an auction draft, you can vastly overpay, like the Rangers did for Scott Gomez! Or Wade Redden!  Or Bobby Holik!  Or Michal Rozsival! Or… you get the idea.