No Time To Rest!

The HBIC Playoff Pool pushes on tonight as no one gets a night off. The Round Two series begin tomorrow, so we're going to hit the ground running. I am typing this as Game Seven between the Lightning and Red Wings is being played, and the links will go live the moment the final horn sounds on this game and series. Some of you have played the first round extremely well. Others have some ground to make up. There's a new wrinkle to help you make up a pile of ground, but you're going to have to dial in and come up with something amazing. We'll talk about that in the next paragraph as we prepare for Round Two of the HBIC Playoff Pool!

Ok, so you may be asking about this "Risk It!" option. Essentially, it's a lot like Jeopardy's Daily Double. You can risk all or some of your points that you've acquired in the previous round up to the number of points you have acquired. For example, if you have 30 points, you can risk all or some of your 30 points on one series in the next round.

To successfully win the "Risk It!" opportunity, you need to call a perfect series. You must call the winner of every game in your chosen series correctly which, of course, means you called the right length of the series as well. If you do this, you'll double the amount of points you risked! However, if there's an error in your prediction, you'll lose the amount of points you risked. Let's look at an example.

If I risked 20 points of my total points on that series and I called each game correctly, I'd pick up an additional 20 points for calling tat series correctly. However, if Calgary wins Game Two and Anaheim wins Game Three, I'd lose the 20 points I risked despite me calling the series in the right number of games.

In other words, there's a big risk in going for the big reward. However, a number of you called series correctly in the first round. A few people picked the Ducks to sweep the Jets, a vast number called the Nashville-Chicago series correctly, and a number of people had the Rangers-Penguins series correct. It's not unheard of to call a series perfectly, but it is harder than just calling the right team in the right number of games. That's why there's a big risk-big reward aspect.

The other catch to this is that if you risk a number of points on a series, you get no points from the series you called except for the game-winning goal scorers. So even if I had called Anaheim in five games and had Games Two and Three wrong, I'd walk away with zero points because I gambled. This makes it even more important to be correct because you're not only gambling with points you have, but you're gambling away potential points you could earn. Like I've been emphasizing, big risk for a big reward.

Of course, you're probably saying that you have no idea how many points you have at this juncture because you haven't been keeping score. I completely understand. The leaderboard will go live on Friday, so you're probably going to be wondering how many points you can risk.

I'll tell you this information right now: everyone scored more than 20 points, no one scored more than 53 points, and the average score in the opening round was 37. Use those figures for now to determine how many points you'd like to risk if you so choose. If you want your exact total, please see the email directions below. Ok? Ok.

Because this is the first round with the "Risk It!" option, if you prefer to just write "RISK" in the "Risk It!" column, I'll contact you and we can determine if this option is a good option for you and how many points you'd like to risk. Yes, I'm allowing a mulligan in this round so that people who may have second-thoughts about risking a pile of points won't be penalized if they change their minds. This mulligan, however, only exists in this round. Plan accordingly.

With Tampa Bay having just defeated Detroit by a 2-0 score in Game Seven, Round Two of the HBIC Playoff Pool is open! Download the spreadsheet here for Round Two! Fill it out and send it back to me WITH YOUR NAME AS THE NAME OF THE EXCEL DOCUMENT AND R2 AT THE END(ie. TeebzR2.xlsx) to this email address only!

Click here to download if you missed the link above.

If you'd like to know your point total, fire me an email here with the subject line "RISK IT". DO NOT SEND YOUR PICKS TO THAT EMAIL! Follow the directions above to do so. Get your picks in by the puck drop of the Anaheim-Calgary series on Thursday! If you have some sort of issue with this deadline, please email ASAP so we can make arrangements!

May the best prognosticator win, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!