Guten Tag, drones.

That title has nothing to do with this week’s draft topic, it’s just my plea to Eversource, our local utility company, as Winter Storm Hernando crashes into the part of the East Coast that matters, (everything north and east of Delaware, but nothing in Maine above, say, Portland), destroying everything in its path and, as Steve Martin once said about Ronald Reagan, (may he roast in hell forever), “turn America into what it once was: an Arctic wasteland covered with ice.”

Eversource as already sent us customers a text warning us to expect to lose power and to remain without said power for 3-6 days.  Awesome.

Since you may not hear from me tomorrow we’re going with a guest topic this week.  And since the recent, and incredible for both genders, (give or take a few), Olympic hockey tournament includes my pick, we’re going with frequent contributor Scotchnaut’s suggestion of ‘Genuine Hatred Between Rivals’.  I sort of assumed this is limited to sports, but looking at what I laughingly call “notes” I don’t see such a limit in his suggestion so if you have a rivalry that involves genuine hatred between two or, (like genders), more than two parties, go ahead and take it.

For purposes of this draft I’m just using “rivals” to mean “folks who don’t like each other.”  They don’t actually have to be rivals for the same position/trophy/position.

Please do not extend this to that guy or gal that dumped you in junior high.  No one cares.

Scotchnaut was nice enough to give me his pick, which is Mike Babcock vs. Mike Commodore.  This is not something I know much about, but you can click this here link

and you will learn that Mike Commodore really fucking hates Mike Babcock.

With the second pick I will take Marie-Philip Poulin versus the entirety of US Women’s Hockey.  I don’t know whether Ms. Poulin actually hates the United States or the USWNT, (although I would suspect currently at least the latter is off the Xmas card list), but my God does she ratchet up an already impressive game when the latter is involved.

Per AI, (which shows up first and which stole all these stats from other sources who should definitely sue the AI generator and not, for instance, me), Marie-Philip Poulin has played in 104 games agains the US, (which is kind of incredible in and of itself), and has scored 74 points, (42 goals and 32 assists), in those games and, more to the point, scored the winning goal in the gold medal games in the 2010, 2014, and 2022 Olympics.

But not this year

Her reaction to the loss included storming off the ice, slamming the door behind her, and throwing her stick.  “She should smile more” I said to myself, right before she wristed a puck into my forehead, knocking me cold for three days.  OK, that part didn’t happen, but the point is that, despite a long history of victories against the US Women, Ms. Poulin was not taking this loss to them well.  And this despite having come back from a leg injury to get her team, which the USA had absolutely tub-thumped to the tune of 5-0 earlier, without her, to within 35 seconds of yet another victory.

Poulin is a hell of a player regardless, but against the US she raises her game, and team, to another level, and for that I make her the second pick.

She also seems like less of a genuine prick than Mike Babcock, although it doesn’t sound like that’s hard to do.

The rest of you are on the clock.