Early Returns on the Preseason Waivers

I thought it would be quite interesting to see how the Preseason Waiver Draft results have fared, now that we're five and a half weeks into the season... was there really any gains in it?

First off, there were seven moves made between the actual draft and the puck's drop on the regular season, where six players taken in the draft were dropped and one player taken in the Waiver Draft was also dropped.  Out of the six players in the draft dropped, two of them still haven't played a game, both David Booth of the Leafs and Sam Bennett of the Flames.  Therefore, these drops were pretty good and any pick-ups in those cases would be positives.

Ryan dropped Booth for Devante Smith-Pelly of the Ducks, who has been okay, picking up 7 points in 17 games for the Ducks, while Wyllie made some hay with Pascal Dupuis of the Penguins, who he picked up in place of Bennett, picking up 9 points in 14 games.

The only other team in the pool to make a single move at the Preseason Waiver Draft was Tony, who dropped Columbus forward Boone Jenner and picked up Long Islander, Anders Lee.  This move has been deemed a disaster and it was from the start, as Lee was sent down to the minors for the first couple weeks of the year and upon his return, has been less than effective.  Lee has played in nine games for the Islanders, scoring a pair of goals.  Jenner, on the other hand, returned to action last week for Columbus and has played four games, picking up 4 assists.

The biggest story of the Preseason Waiver Draft was the number of times that Allan went to the well,  First, Allan had to drop injured defenseman Sergei Gonchar, then with the Stars, picking up Michael Del Zotto of the Flyers.  So far, this move has proved fruitful, as Del Zotto has 7 points in 14 games, while Gonchar only had 1 assist in three games with the Stars, since returning from injury.  Gonchar has been since moved to Montreal, so it will be interesting to see what kind of impact he has there.  Secondly, Carolina's Jeff Skinner went down with a preseason concussion, so Allan proceeded to take Kris Versteeg of the Blackhawks.  Versteeg later suffered a lower-body injury, only days after the second pick, so with Allan's fourth move, he dropped Versteeg for Vincent Lecavalier of the Flyers.  As it turned out, to this point, Lecavalier is the worst of the trio, as Versteeg has 7 points in 12 games, Skinner has 6 points in 10 games and the Flyers vet has 5 points in seven games.  Allan made one more move, dropping Lubomir Visnovsky of the Islanders with this third move, picking up Oilers captain Andrew Ference.  This move also proved less than favourable, as Visnovsky currently outscores Ference, 4-1, in four less games.

The end result, to date, is Wyllie leading the pack with a +9 in the scoring department, followed by Ryan at +7.  After all the math is said and done, thanks to Del Zotto, Allan is a +1 out of the waivers, while Tony sadly comes out -2.

It's a gamble, to say the least, but in the case of both Wyllie and Ryan, they would be in much tougher spots without these two moves.