Well it's time to bring back this little challenge. It's been a couple years since I ran it but it's too much fun to pass on yet again this year. We've already missed one Saturday Night but there is no reason why we can't take care of the remaining 14 weeks.

Basically all you need to do is pick the winner of the Saturday Night games each week for 9 weeks. After the 9 weeks the top 16 in ranking will move on to the playoffs!

The last time I ran this challenge Hockeypoolgeek pulled off a victory over CaporalRadulov on the final night of the challenge to win it all. It should be mentioned that Shoeless absolutely cleaned up during the regular season portion of the challenge though!

I don't have access to the full rules the first time I did this but here's how we will do things this year.

You select one of the following choices

H - Home team wins (1 point)
V - Visiting team wins (1 point)
H+ - Home team wins by 2 or more goals (2 points)
V+ - Visiting team wins by 2 or more goals (2 points)
T - The game is a tie (or a shootout win by 1 team - games won in overtime are not considered ties) (3 points)

Shootout wins are not considered wins but are considered ties for this. If you select H - and the home team wins by 2 or more then you still only get 1 points. If you select H+ and the home team only wins by 1 then you get 0 points.

The deadline for submitting picks is just before the first game on the Saturday starts.

Everyone will be ranked on 2 different categories. Both total points (so starting the challenge early will be an advantage) and pick percentage (so someone joining late can still get into the playoffs if they pick well enough).

To be eligible for the playoff portion of the challenge you must have participated in a minimum of 3 of the 9 weeks of regular season picks.

The playoffs will be single elimination with some tiebreaks and potential additional nights added in case tiebreaks don't break the tie. The rules for the playoffs will be laid out once we get there, but it will only be based on points earned for the night, with prediction percentage not being a factor.

If you want in just post your picks for the week and away we go. It's short notice for this week so hopefully a few folks can get in now, with more joining in the next few weeks. Good Luck!

Saturday, January 26th - My picks

Colorado @ San Jose - T
Toronto @ New York Rangers - H+
Chicago @ Columbus - V
Philadelphia @ Florida - T
St Louis @ Dallas - V
Los Angeles @ Phoenix - H
Edmonton @ Calgary - V+
Nashville @ Anaheim - H