The NHL team training camps get rolling this week and the start of the regular season is less than 4 weeks away. No better time to start thinking about who you're going to pick to try and knock off last year's champ, Gary Newman.

Entry fee for this season's pool is again $10. As always 1st place will win 40-50% of the prize pool, and there will be a payout spot for at least 1 in every 10 teams. This year's pool again features a few bonus prizes, awarded for the most points over a specified part of the season. The standings page and your team page show your teams and your players progress for the current block, as well as the full season.

This year's pool is the second pool that counts towards the 2009 SublimeWeb Cup standings. The winner of the '09 SW Cup will also take home a $50 prize as the overall site champ for the year and get their name on the cup as well. The hockey pool tends to play a big factor in the outcome as it generally has the most entrants.

The deadline for this season's pool has been moved up to the season start, and will be October 4th, 2008 at noon eastern, so get your picks, or your changes in before then. Payment deadline will be November 1st, and the payout will be set shortly thereafter. You can check out the payouts page for a guideline of how it's worked in the past, and with other pools.

As always you can edit your team right up until the deadline, so you're not locked into your original picks once you make them, so there is no need to wait until the last minute to register. So come join the fun, invite your friends and make this years pool the biggest yet!

The marathon that is the NHL regular season is now over, and with that the hockey pool has wrapped up. Congrats goes out to Gary Newman whose Gar's Guesses squad took down top spot for the 2007-2008 pool. This is Gar's first win in only his second pool. It was a tight race for a while between 3 or 4 teams but Gar pulled away over the last 3 weeks of the season to win it all.

Rounding out the top 5 were Stephen Martin in 2nd, Darcy Sheffer in 3rd, Mo Loosemore in 4th, Michelle Loosemore (or whatever her last name is now) in 5th. Somehow Mo and Michelle managed another back to back finish in the last payout spots following up their 3rd/4th in football. Mike Bradshaw is the King of Last Place this year as he's 2 for 2 so far. Luckily he didn't enter Nascar so someone else has a chance.

This was the first year of the bonus prize for most points in a block of the season, and it was good to see someone who finished well back get on a good run and at least get something. Stephen picked up the most points up until the end of November, Gary accumulated the most over January and February, and Kenny Ellis beat Ricky T down the stretch to win the final bonus prize.

Congrats also goes out to the Big O who finally beat Tracy in a pool! Well done Orrin ;)

I just want to thank everyone for participating in this years hockey pool. Next season's pool will be up in early to mid September.

The playoff pool is still open and you can pick your team prior to Saturday, April 12, at 2pm eastern time. Go to the home page and click the link in the announcements, or on any pools page that has the list of teams/leagues in the top right corner. Good luck to everyone in the playoff pool, and everyone else, have a great summer! See you in September!

The season is almost one-third completed and as always, some things change and others stay the same. A couple teams that started off on fire have definitely cooled. Philly and Ottawa both rode stellar goaltending to solid records over the first month or so, but have recently gone into a bit of a funk and find themselves sliding back down towards the pack. The Leafs continue to be the model of inconsistency, winning a couple, losing a bunch, getting early leads and coughing them up in the third, and being completely inept at the shootout.

Steven Martin takes down the first bonus prize of the season as he was the leader after all of November's games were completed. He picked up the most points in this 'block' of the season, beating out his buddy Andrew, and Mr. Monk by 12 points a piece. The next 'block' is December and January, and you can see how you stack up on the standings page, as points for the current section are in the parenthesis...thats the round brackets for you non-English scholars. Frank McMullin has the early lead after 4 nights of games.

Alot of injured players came back in late November including some key players like Martin Havlat and Kari Lehtonen, who went out early and had no points until the past week.

Vinnie Lecavalier tore it up this month to put himself atop the scoring race. Amazingly enough only two teams selected him. The scary part is Tampa tends to start slow and then pick up after Christmas.

A couple tenders also had great Novembers, namely Lundqvist and Luongo. Both put up several shutouts in the past month, including a stretch by Luongo where he managed to pick up 5 points for his owners in 3 straight games. That will definitely give any team a boost.

December could see the return of Scott Neidermayer to the Ducks, as I'm sure with their current record, Brian Burke is on the phone with him daily trying to convince him to return. Word is an announcement could be made in the next couple weeks and a return to the ice a week or two past that, as he has been working out and skating with several other former players to get back in shape.

Good luck to all in December, and have a happy holiday season!

The NHL season is now in full swing, and the leaderboard is shaping up like it usually does at the start of the season. Evan Monk always tends to be near the lead a month into the season before his gradual decline into mediocrity. A couple newbies are right with him as Andrew Bell and Stephen Martin are within a few points of first. Taking a quick gander towards the bottom of the standings you'll find a Habs fan...and a Bruins fan...co-incidence?

I just wanted to point out a few things that are new with this year's pool. The numbers in the brackets on the right in the standings page and on your team page, are points accumulated for the current 'bonus period'. The season is broken up into 3 stages (Oct/Nov, Dec-Jan, Feb-Apr) so those numbers reflect the points for the current stage. There will be a 'bonus' prize for the most points during each stage. So for the first stage, whoever has the lead after games on Nov 30th is the winner.

Several players have spent considerable time on IR so far this season, and as usual, injuries will play a huge role in who ends up winning the pool. Some early stints on the sidelines were taken by players that seem to end up there on a regular basis, including Hasek, Havlat and Gaborik. All 3 tend to be point a game players when they're healthy. Unfortunately they don't tend to find their way into 82 games, or in Hasek's case 55-65. I've been a little lax on updating injuries so far, but once Nascar is finished I'll be updating them once a week. Injured players will show up in red on your team page.

Henrik Zetterberg is currently leading the league in scoring, and with that finds himself at least 8 points up on the next highest scorer in his group. That's pretty impressive only 15 games into the season. Fortunately for Zetterberg this is only a regular season pool, so he should be able to keep up the production.

As a side note, several of those teams with lines through them at the bottom will be disappearing later this week. Anyone who hasn't already talked to me or arranged payment will be deleted.

September in Canada can only mean one thing. Hockey is almost here! With it comes this year's edition of the SublimeWeb Hockey Pool. This year's pool promises to be the biggest and best yet, so SIGN UP now!

As always 1st place will win 40-50% of the prize pool, and there will be a payout spot for at least 1 in every 10 teams. This year's pool features a few more prizes than last year as there are a few bonus prizes for the most points over a specified part of the season. A column has been added to the standings page and your team page to show your teams and your players progress for the current block of the season.

This year's pool is the second pool that counts towards the 2008 SublimeWeb Cup standings. The winner of the '08 SW Cup will also take home a $50 prize as the overall site champ for the year and get their name on the cup as well. The hockey pool tends to play a big factor in the outcome as it generally has the most entrants.

The deadline for this season's pool will be October 7th, 2007 at midnight, so get your picks, or your changes in before then. Payment deadline will be November 1st, and the payout will be set shortly thereafter. You can check out the payouts page for a guideline of how it's worked in the past, and with other pools.

As always you can edit your team right up until the deadline, so you're not locked into your original picks once you make them, so there is no need to wait until the last minute to register. So come join the fun, invite your friends and make this years pool the biggest yet!