HBIC Playoff Pool 2011

There's no sense in re-creating the wheel when it already works so well. The 2011 edition of the HBIC Playoff Pool is here with authority, and we're looking at shaking things up a little this year. The prizes were pretty incredible last season, and I'm working to see if I can bring the same quality of prizes this year on a much lower budget. As you may be aware, I'm a starving college student (may not be entirely true) so most of my cash is going towards school, bills, and preventing me from starving while I make my brain smarter. That being said, I already have some pretty good prizes in the HBIC Shwag Bag, so we'll see what kind of prizes we end up with once all is said and done. Enough chatter about prizes for now, though. Let's get to the meat of this contest.

Straight from the previous years' Playoff Pool rules, here is the format for the 2011 Hockey Blog In Canada Playoff Pool.

• Entrants will be required to pick the winner of each game for each series. In doing so, one will also choose the number of games played by the two teams in each series.
• Entrants will be required to pick the game-winning goal scorer for each game.

Sounds pretty easy, right? No real strategy as to which team will go further, who is playing whom, and all that jazz. Points will be based upon your predictions.

• For each correctly-predicted team that wins the game, one point will be awarded. For correctly predicting the series length, two points will be awarded. For correctly predicting the series length and winning team, five points will be awarded. If one correctly predicts the series length and winning team, the two-point option is overridden by the higher-scoring option.
• For predicting the player who scores the game-winning goal per game, that entrant will receive an additional two points per game per correctly-chosen player.

The following example should help you weed through the rules:

• For the Pittsburgh-Tampa Bay series, I predict that Pittsburgh will win Games 1, 2, 4, and 6. TeeBay will win Games 3 and 5. I also predict that Chris Kunitz will score the game-winner in Game 1; Paul Martin in Game 2; Jordan Staal in Game 4; and, Tyler Kennedy in Game 6. Vincent Lecavalier will score TeeBay's winner in Game 3 while Steven Stamkos will score in Game 5.
• If I correctly predicted the entire series (highly improbable with my record of prognostications) of Pittsburgh winning in six games with all my game-winner scoring choices being right, I would earn 23 points (6 for each correct game + 5 for correctly predicting length and series winner + 12 for each game-winning goal scorer).

The catch to this whole thing is that no one will be eliminated until the Stanley Cup is handed out. With each new round beginning, each entrant will be required to send in their picks just as they did in the previous round. This way, everyone has a chance at some free shwag. And everyone loves free shwag.

I would hazard a guess at there possibly being a tie between two or more people, so your tie-breaker, required at the start of the first round, is to name the team who will accumulate the most penalty minutes throughout the playoffs. Those who are tied will have their answers reviewed, and the entrant who picked the team with the higher PIM total for the playoffs will be crowned as the winner. Secondary tie-breaker, in case two entrants pick the same team for PIMs, will be number of series correctly predicted in length of games. For example, if Entrant A picks Boston and Entrant B picks Detroit, and Boston has the higher PIM total, Entrant A would be the winner.

The best part of the HBIC Playoff Pool? It's FREE! That's right, kids. You can enter at no cost, and the shwag is up for grabs. The only thing I ask, to be fair, is that you only enter once, please. Also, if you want to be eligible for all prizes, you need to play all four rounds of the 2010 Playoff Pool. I don't think it's fair if someone is forced to take a lower prize if they finish lower than someone else who didn't participate right through to the end. For those only play one round and do well, complain all you want about this rule, but showing up is the first step in any activity.

There has been a MAJOR CHANGE in terms of entering. I have opened a brand-new email account specifically for the HBIC Playoff Pool simply because my normal email is ridiculously cluttered and I need some time to go through it. That being said, you MUST send all picks to this new email address: hbicplayoffpool-at-gmail-dot-com. Entries sent to any other email address that you have for me will be categorically deleted so that I can keep all of the HBIC Playoff Pool entries in one place. Clear? Nod your head. You don't want your Poolie Picks to go missing in my disorganized mailbox, do you?

Now to expedite the marking, I have created a pretty little Excel document that can be opened in both Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Calc. Fill this out and send it back to me WITH YOUR NAME AS THE NAME OF THE EXCEL DOCUMENT (ie. Teebz.xls).

Click here to download if you missed the link above.

And I think that about does it. If you have any questions, fire me an email here. DO NOT SEND YOUR PICKS TO THAT EMAIL! Follow the directions above to do so.

And may the best prognosticator win!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!