We're seven weeks into the season and we're just around the corner from making some key changes to our draft line-ups. Last season, we would be going into the waiver draft in Week Eight, but since we have some even segments this season, we have ourselves one more week before we get to start dropping and picking up new players, which also means we have another couple weeks worth of action to go before our first jersey prize gets handed out as well.
Top prize in the waiver draft this time around looks to be Sergei Bobrovsky of the Philadelphia Flyers, who has taken on the number one job in the absence of Michael Leighton, who has been battling injury to start the season. But with Leighton on the verge of making a return to the line-up, there is plenty of questions as to whether or not Bobrovsky has done enough to solidify his job as the number one guy.
Justin Williams of the Los Angeles Kings is the top forward available for the draft next week, as per right now, leading all available forwards with 20 points in 19 games. I would have to believe that his health issues in the last number of seasons led to his omission from the opening night draft and may be a factor when deciding whether or not to pick him this time around.
The top defensemen available with a week to go is Dan Girardi of the New York Rangers and Steve Montador of the Buffalo Sabres, both sitting with 11 points each. Neither player has really amazed with their play, but they have done well enough to possibly find a job at this waiver draft.
Well, this has been a tiny little preview for the draft coming up, let's see how the pools work out.
Price has now jumped up into the conversation for best player in the pool this season, now leading all goaltenders with 33 points, which currently ranks 3rd in the league. Price was in the conversation for the same honour last week, which suggests that he is on quite the hot streak at the moment.
This is Allan's first nod of the regular season, making it a pretty good one. His team has been consistently at the top of the weekly standings so far this season, staying on the good side of the scoring table for five of the first seven weeks.
Helping lead Allan to a great week in Week Seven was both James Neal and Pekka Rinne, who each came away with 6 points each, while Matt Duchene, Claude Giroux and Marian Hossa all had 4 points in a supporting role. That is a lot of young talent leading the way, isn't it? Allan had a pair of zeros on his team this week, but obviously, that didn't really make a big difference in his weekly performance, as he did get plenty of help from the rest of his team.
Allan's biggest strength through seven weeks is his skaters, who have stayed very healthy thus far, ranking 2nd in games played with 232 and in 3rd in points-per-game at a rate of 0.74, so consistency up front has helped him to lead the pool in points from forwards (132) and the 4th best defensive ranks (40). He will definitely challenge for top spot all year with numbers like these.
It was only a matter of time before Clayton found his way onto the newsletter for dwelling in the basement, as injuries and very low scoring numbers have finally caught up to his team for a weekly mention. His team finished with six zeros, three due to injury, one for the minors, one for a lack of starts and the other is just cold. There were a couple of bright spots, as Mike Richards finished with 7 points and Ryane Clowe finished with 5 points, but two players making up more than 50% of your weekly points is not a very good sign at all. It doesn't look like a waiver draft is really going to help him very much this year.
Clayton is now 44 points out of the money contention this year, which is not good news for his team at all.
Top spot in the week for scoring was Zach H., who finished the week with a whopping 85 points, heads and tails above anyone else in the pool for the week. He was 5 points better than 2nd place. Zach also moved up six spots in the standings from 15th to 9th place and he has made trades this year, so there's a great example of why you should. Helping to lead the way for Zach in Week Seven were Brian Rafalski (7 points), Jarome Iginla (6), Sidney Crosby (6), Thomas Vanek (6), Tim Thomas (6), Alex Tanguay (5), Milan Lucic (5) and two others with 4 points each. That is quite the collection of names for the weekly honour!
Since the most points and the biggest gains are the same team, I'll try and find a couple boxes of note to possibly make a trade in. Box 3 has a clear leader in Chris Stewart of the Avalanche. He's running the table in that box with 24 points, both Bobby Ryan and Dany Heatley only have 19 points each as 2nd place in that box. In the same category box in the Eastern Conference, Box 19, Alexander Semin is also running away with it, leading Andrew Ladd, 26-21 in points. Those two boxes could really help your team to succeed, if you had the right players in there.
NEWS AND NOTES
Link to the Injury/News Page
HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA
A couple of non-playoff match-ups on Hockey Night In Canada probably highlight the least interesting weekend of hockey on CBC to date. In the opening match, the Maple Leafs head to Ottawa to take on the Senators, while the Sharks and Oilers go head-to-head in Edmonton.
In the late game, there will be 22 players from the draft represented by the logos on the sweaters, each team having 11 players each on the docket. Sure, Nikolai Khabibulin will likely still be on the shelf and Thomas Greiss is still in Europe, but you know what I mean. Leading the scoring race between these two teams is Dany Heatley, who has 19 points in 19 games.
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