WARNING: 'Hockey - the Magazine' - SUCKS

I was out on Vancouver Isl. yesterday and ran across a hockey publication I hadn't seen before;

'Hockey - the Magazine' is a pool guide. At least, it wants to be a pool guide.

Let me count the ways it wasted my money:

- Too many glossy pics. The mag is simply packed with them. Which is fine if I were 4 years old and couldn't read, but now that I'm an adult, I'd prefer, you know, actual information.

Here's a sample of the bio information they do provide on a player; 'He was 7th in the league in powerplay goals'. Which is ok, but here's the thing, that is the sum total of writing on Patrick Marleau. However, in larger font, in bright orange on black background we are informed that he is the 28th ranked forward. Gosh, that's helpful. Not.

- The Ducks top prospect is... 'Matt Auffrey-R'. Who? No information to help me find the kids stats, just his name. Which I have never seen before. Worth noting the Bible has no knowledge of this kid either.

- Player bios.

A. These are broken up into forwards, defenseman and goalies, with players listed alphabetically. I hate that. I want everyone listed with their team, a rundown on how they've done and where they are going, and if possible, I'd like to have a reasonable expectation of who their linemates are. If I wanted to look up players alphabetically, I'd Google them.

B. The forwards are listed in an eye-gouging orange/black colour scheme that can induce headaches among anyone possessing both eye-site and a brain.

C. The projections are whacked beyond what any reasonable person should expect (more on that), but mostly they look lazy (How many pts last year? Put him down for that again).

D. The big feature no. for each player isn't the projection of their performance, no, that would make things easy for poolies, no, the big featured stat for each player is where they rank among the forwards/d-men/goalies. Useless.

- They offer pool creation tips at the front. None of the pool formats they reccomed couldn't have been invented by a group of autistic trainspotters in England who have never even heard of hockey.

Now, I mentioned the projected stats were whacked. Here's some examples of the sterling predictive power of this crap-tastic magazine;

Top goaltender? Marty Turco. Kipper is #2, Cam Ward is #5, Ryan Miller is #14, Henrik Lunqvist is #25.

Top forwards? Thornton (check), Jagr (check), Daniel Briere....(wtf?)

Most idiotic suggestions:

#14 Marc Savard over #15 Jason Spezza

#18 Andy McDonald over #19 Joe Sakic. Hands up all the GMs who think Andy (one hit wonder) McDonald will outscore SuperJoe this year? C'mon, raise 'em high so I can see 'em....

#8 Teemu Selanne over #9 Eric Staal. I sure hope Brian agrees with this prediction.

#30 Colby Armstrong over Lecavalier #33, and Modano #34. There ought to be a stupidity tax for people who think outside the box like this.

#51 Steve Bernier - #60 Todd Bertuzzi. Yeah, I had to read that twice and then swallow my own vomit too.

And then we got to the part where they simply blew my mind;

#32 Ryan Getzlaf, #34 Justin Williams, #35 Vaclav Prospal - which looks a little out of order, but isn't exactly ridiculous until we see...

#57 Marian Gaborik, #58 - Jarome Iginla, and best of all, #64 - Peter Forsberg

So, there you have it. It is now absolutely clear to me that we can put a better pool guide together than these complete bozos.

Who's with me?

In any case, you've been warned - save your money and buy the latest 'Astronomy Weekly' instead. I know I wish I had.