If Bill Gates played hockey: center, rated 78

Bill Gates as a hockey player: scouting report

Bill Gates would play center, because the center is the player who has to see the whole system. He started programming as a teenager at Lakeside School in Seattle, cofounded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and spent the next decades building software that ran on most of the world's computers. A mind that thinks in systems reads a forecheck instantly. Passing is the best thing on his card, and his feeds would arrive on the tape before the defense realized the play was coming.

His goaltending grade is the second best part of his game, which fits a famously patient problem solver. He is a serious contract bridge player, a game built on memory, partnership and reading what the other side is holding, and he is known for reading dozens of books a year and sharing lists of them. As a Harvard student he even coauthored a published paper on the pancake sorting problem in mathematics. That analytical bent makes him a sound defensive center who knows his assignment and takes smart faceoffs in his own zone.

His shot is the weak spot, so he is a setup man rather than a scorer, and his skating and physical play are only average. Goalie is a good second spot and defenseman a distant third. Pair him with a shooting winger who can bury his passes and a hard working forward who wins pucks in the corners, and put him on the power play, where a player who can see the open lane like a bug in the code does his best work.

Plays like A system center who reads the ice like code

Put Bill Gates in your lineup

8 rolls, a starting six and a bench, 82 games. Can you go 82-0? Free, no account.