Holdovers

The season has come to a close. Forget summer holidays, forget the lousy 1st & 2nd place winners from last year; its time to start looking at next year's edition of Superdraft.

You will be allowed to keep five (5) of your players from last season. Any player is eligible to be held-over. As this will be only the second season, no player has been held-over before. Your holdovers from this year will not be eligible for you to hold over next year. Hello blockbusters at the next trade deadline!

For this year, you may hold-over up to two (2) of the top 50 leading scorers from last season. The top 50 from last year included players with 69 points and above.

As we get closer to picking the Superdraft date and time, we'll set a deadline for holdover declarations. I would think that we'll leave about 1 week inbetween the deadline and the draft (so the accountants can run the numbers).

Rumours are going around saying that the NHL salary cap will grow to $44M from $39M. Superdraft salary cap will grow from $37M in a proportional amount (and rounded to the nearest $500K).

Here is my best attempt (no guarantees) to identify the top 50 players on the Superdraft 2005 teams:

Stadnicky: Thornton, Spezza, Sakic, Datsyuk, Gagne, Zubov, Staal

Outlaws: Heatley, Jagr, Kovalchuk, Zetterberg, Modano

Iffy: Jokinen, Ovechkin, Marleau, Prospal

Dogs: Richards, Alfredsson, Hossa, Gomez (You've got to love the Richards, McCabe, and soon to come Chara signings here!)

Stubble Bumpers: Crosby, Sundin, Savard

Stumblin' Bumblin': Tanguay, Bergeron, Shanahan

Forgot my Jock: Forsberg, Selanne

MILF: Kariya, Cheechoo

Happy: Stillman, Sedin

Double Chili: Naslund, Bertuzzi

Leaker: Lecavalier, Hemsky

So we picked 36 of the top 50. I guess that's not too bad.