September 18th - October 1st

After the draft had concluded and players had reported to their respective camps, the Ducks started to realize just how hard GM Morgan Smith was trying to sabotage hockey in Southern California. Calling a team meeting just a few hours into their first practice, Smith announced that left winger Paul Bissonnette was to become the team's captain with Alexander Ovechkin and Vincent Lecavalier as his assistants. The move came as a shock to the Ducks faithful, but was widely accepted, much to GM Smith's chagrin, as a shrewd move from within the locker room.

"I like BizNasty he funny! Hahahahaahaaaha!!!!!" Ovechkin later tweeted. Bissonnette, who once again devoted his time to exploring what he called "the talent" in Anaheim's Whole Foods supermarket, was unavailable for comment.

As the first preseason game against San Jose approached, there was much mystery surrounding the Ducks camp. All of the practices had been off-limits to the public, but sources from within the team claimed that GM Smith had the team practicing the famous "Flying V" formation and using eggs in the place of pucks to promote "soft hands".

The lack of real practice didn't seem to slow down the Ducks, however. In the first game of the pre-season, the team won 3-1 on goals from Simon Gagne, Mike Ribeiro, and Tim Connolly. GM Smith was said to be furious with the fantastic display of puck movement and relentless physicality.

The next two games against division rivals Phoenix Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings, respectively, both ended with 3-0 wins with Ducks goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov looking impressive in two shutout outings. Captain Paul Bissonnette got on the scoresheet against his former team, while Ovechkin provided a pair of goals in both games.

The teams' biggest test of the preseason came against GM Smith's favorite team, the Dallas Stars. Before the game, the GM burst into the locker room with a picture of Stars legend Mike Modano lifted high above his head, screaming that "NONE OF YOU WILL EVER BE AS GOOD AS HIM" before starting to run laps around the locker room in a Stars jersey.

Ducks coach Randy Carlyle quickly pointed out that Modano signed with the Red Wings the year before only to receive a reprimanding glare from Smith, who promptly fired him on the spot. The team started the game coached by head athletic trainer Tim Clark, but midway through the second period, Smith fired his impromptu coach because "the Stars still weren't winning". Smith then appointed defenseman Adam Larsson, who was filling in for the injured Scott Hannan, as temporary coach. Minutes after the appointment, the Stars scored to take the lead, which they would hold until the final whistle.

The Scene

The year is 2012. In an unexpected twist, Gary Bettman has stepped down as Commissioner of the NHL, leaving the door open for long-time garden gnome enthusiast Buck Finsmeister to take the reigns at the head of North America's 11th most popular professional sports league.

In a surprising twist, his first course of action is to void the contracts and held rights of every player in the league. His second is to officially state that Aki Berg was the greatest player ever to play the game. His third is to announce the first and only NHL Fantasy Draft.

The move has it's critics, namely Vancouver Canucks GM Mike Gillis, who complained that the referees in an intrasquad scrimmage held by the team weren't calling what he labeled "blatant goaltender interference" against star goalie Roberto Luongo. After being reminded what the interview was about, Gillis went on to comment that Alexandre Burrows was not a dirty player, just a "misunderstood" one.

Other GMs, like Toronto's Brian Burke, expressed elation at the move, describing to reporters in an expletive-laden tirade how sick he was of having to put up with "f#@*ing prima donnas like Nazem Kadri".

Many players from around the league made their anticipation ahead of the draft known on the social networking site Twitter. Former Washington Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin said "I excite play out washington!!!!! hahahaaaaha!!!!". Twitter sensation Paul "biznasty2point0" Bissonnette clearly missed the memo, deciding instead to post a picture himself poolside at a Las Vegas casino in what many in the blogosphere termed as "an altogether ludicrous banana hammock".

The day before the draft, Commissioner Finsmeister revealed the order of the draft, calling it "initially alphabetical but otherwise completely random", giving the Anaheim Ducks the first pick in the Serpentine-style selection.

The uproar from around the league was deafening. Between intermittently calling Bobby Ryan the best player to ever touch a hockey stick and telling Los Angeles Kings fans exactly which part of their anatomy they could adorn with their saliva, Anaheim descended into utter chaos. Mickey Mouse and other members of the Disney stable of talent were seen joyriding in their heavily-decaled Toyota Priora, brazenly displaying the several containers of alcohol that they had vanquished in the minutes after the news.

In all of the commotion, Ducks General Manager Bob Murray resigned abruptly, stating that the "completely unexpected pressure of a knowledgeable fan base" was the reason for his sudden departure.

The power vortex left in his wake, described by many hierarchy-metaphor experts as "more of a slight breeze", was quickly filled by an unexpected source, a 19-year old Texan man called Morgan Smith.

"I'm not quite sure how I got here, in all honesty," Smith said in his introductory press conference held just hours before the Fantasy Draft. "I've been a Dallas Stars fan for most of my life, so you can all rest assured that I'm going to do my best to drive the Ducks straight into the ground."

Smith's first order of business was to re-instate the retired eggplant and seafoam jerseys of the team's pre-Reebok Edge days.

"As a child I was heavily inspired by the entire Mighty Ducks franchise," Smith said. "I recently went back and watched the movies and realized that that was exactly how I wanted to see this team play. You know, as if they've never so much as seen ice in their lives."

The draft, in which teams had 30 seconds to choose their players per round, took around six hours to complete, as it was constantly interrupted by Canadian broadcaster Don Cherry who, dressed in what appeared to be an unintelligible mish-mash of bed clothes, shouted drive-by insults at players who were known to wear visors or be European.

In the end, GM Smith was "grudgingly happy" with the choices his team made, headlined by former Washington superstar winger Alexander Ovechkin.

Anaheim Ducks Roster - 2011/2012 Season

Forwards
# 98. Paul Bissonnette
#26. Erik Cole
#19. Tim Connolly
#13. Sean Couturier
#12. Simon Gagne
#14. Brian Gionta
#29. Eric Godard
#23. Milan Hejduk
#11. Jonathan Huberdeau
#88. Kirill Kabanov
#92. Gabriel Landeskog
#4. Vincent Lecavalier
#9. Maksim Mayorov
#91. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
#8. Alexander Ovechkin
#63. Mike Ribeiro
#15. Sergei Samsonov
#24. Tom Sestito

Defensemen
#2. Jared Cowen
#42. Calvin de Haan
#7. Garnet Exelby
#18. Erik Gudbranson
#22. Scott Hannan
#5. Adam Larsson
#79. Andrei Markov
#17. Ryan McDonagh
#53. Derek Morris
#28. Robyn Regehr

Goaltenders
#30. Ilya Bryzgalov
#1. Jack Campbell
#35. Marty Turco
#40. Stephen Valiquette

(Out of Story: I set it so that there isn't a salary cap, mostly because I find it's more fun to play it that way. As to the difficulty, I decided that if I go on a five-game winning streak, I bump the level up one level (right now I'm on All-Star), but if I go on a three game losing streak I'll knock it down a level)