text: Fantasy Owners - Blogs - The Columbus Dispatch - Columbus, OH
  Aug 31, 2009 at 12:01 AM Sep 1, 2009 at 9:38 AM
  Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock has found a new way to spice up the first few days of training camp this season. You might have a hard time believing this, but I swear it's true.
  On Tuesday, at a private function in Nationwide Arena, the Blue Jackets' ownership group -- majority owner John P. McConnell, and minority owners Ron Pizzuti, Jay Crane and John F. Wolfe, publisher of The Dispatch -- will each draft a 16-player team off the club's training camp roster. That's three centers, seven wingers and six defensemen per team. The goaltenders will be assigned to teams each day by the coaching staff.
  Clearly, fantasy sports have reached all parts of society, all tax brackets.
  This isn't "fantasy" hockey, in terms of goals, assists, saves, etc., being accumulated to determine a winner. But the owner's teams will square off in a tournament the first two days of camp. The back-channel workings as of this hour would suggest that these four are taking it very seriously, even contacting "scouts" to aide in the "drafting" process.
  The teams will square off on Sept. 13, the first day of on-ice camp: McConnell vs. Crane, 10:30 a.m.; Wolfe vs. Pizzuti, 2 p.m. The following day, the consolation game and championship games will be held at the same time. If a game is tied at the end of regulation, it's straight to a shootout. (Insert Blue Jackets' shootout joke here.)
  The games are set for the Dispatch Ice Haus. The games are open to the public and free of charge. We'll have a story about this in Tuesday's edition of The Dispatch.
  Hitchcock conjured the idea for two reasons, he said. First, it puts everybody on equal footing at the start of training camp, rather than putting them in two groups -- A & B -- right from the start. Second, it allows the owners to take a recreational role in the day-to-day operations of the club. Hitchcock noted that lots of players don't know the names of the ownership group, much less know them personally. This might help put a name to face.
  It's an interesting concept, this draft. Whom would you draft first? Any pominent players you'd avoid in this format? Any under-the-radar players you'd take relatively early?
  It'll be fun to see the owner's sweating it out and talking smack in the Ice Haus early in training camp.