License To Ilya

The key to Team Wyatt's FHL Championship hopes.

The FHL is the grand-daddy of all fantasy leagues. With all due respect to everyone else, once the FHL begins, the rest of the leagues take a back seat. Way back. Of the eleven teams in the league, I have been good friends with nine owners since college. (Badger, Vinnie, Deathlok, Louie the Lock, Grimjack, Badger and Deathlok's brother Sean, Other Kev, and Fish are all GM's. Ant, from Canada, is the newest member.) On Saturday night, we gathered at Vinnie's for the 2006-07 draft.

After the ritual fat jokes at my expense, we picked names from a hat to determine draft order. My fabulous brother-in-law picked the names, and stuck me with 10th . . . of 11. Swell. The draft uses inverse order, so we go from one to ten, then ten to one for the length of the rounds. Surprisingly, at the end of the evening, my team didn't suck ass. And since I have bored everyone except RT to death, here's my 2006-07 team:

Forwards

Ilya Kovalchuk (ATL)
Jonathan Cheechoo (SJ)
Ladislav Nagy (PHX)
Vaclav Prospal (TBY)
Slava Kozlov (ATL)
Jason Arnott (NSH)

Defensemen

Joni Pitkanen (PHI)
Zdeno Chara (BOS)
Kimmo Timonen (NSH)
Sami Salo (VAN)

Goaltenders

Mikka Kiprusoff (CGY)
Hannu Toivonen (BOS)

The perfect all-American team. Heh.