Hockey News Pool Predictions

The Hockey News Ultimate Pool Guide is out and they have made the following predictions for Flames players :

Jarome Iginla 75GP 44G 54A 98Pts
Alex Tanguay 77 25 60 85
Daymond Langkow 82 30 40 70
Matthew Lombardi 78 25 39 64
Kristian Huselius 79 27 33 60
Craig Conroy 79 22 36 58
Dion Phaneuf 80 21 35 56
Owen Nolan 70 21 20 41
Adrien Aucoin 70 9 32 41
Dustin Boyd 73 18 18 36
Mark Giordiano 72 10 24 34
David Moss 76 14 19 33
Robyn Regehr 80 4 18 22
Wayne Primeau 75 10 10 20
Stephane Yelle 70 8 12 20
Anders Eriksson 72 1 18 19
Marcus Nilson 68 7 11 18
Cory Sarich 82 2 15 17

On the whole I find these numbers optimistic. That's 12 forwards and 6 defensemen scoring 298 goals. A big increase over last year's big increase. As this is not a full complement of players (eg no Rhett Warrener) and as it does not take into account the contributions of call-ups the Hockey News is basically predicting more than 300 goals for the Flames this year. Not that it wouldn't be nice to see. That includes 8 players who score more than 20 goals. Hello 1983.

I think they have overestimated Conroy, Aucoin, Boyd, Giordiano and maybe Moss. They may have underestimated Huselius but then again the Keenan factor could make him back into a 40-point scorer again.

Here are my predictions:

Iginla 77 46 51 97
Tanguay 78 26 58 84
Huselius 79 31 39 70
Langkow 80 22 43 65
Phaneuf 81 21 41 62
Lombardi 71 26 34 60
Conroy 80 14 28 42
Nolan 75 18 19 37
Aucoin 76 5 29 34
Taratukhin 78 12 21 33
Moss 67 11 17 28
Yelle 71 9 14 23
Eriksson 81 3 17 20
Regehr 80 4 14 18
Giordano 47 4 12 16
Boyd 24 6 9 15
Nilson 76 5 8 13
Primeau 64 4 6 10
Sarich 81 2 7 9
Warrener 50 1 5 6
Germyn 22 3 2 5
Hale 59 0 3 3

That's 272 goals over 22 players. My numbers probably suffer from some preseason optimism as well.

The Pool Guide was rife with errors and typos again. I understand the rush to be the first to publish with the ever increasing number of pool guide and pre-season magazines but it is disappointing to see The Hockey News be so sub-standard. But I digress more on that in my next post.

Your predictions on Flames players' point totals welcome

pmc