Waiver Draft Concludes

Looking back at the previous seasons, I sure had a lot of time to write about the waiver draft as it went along, but this year, with the new job and all, I'm barely getting through the waiver draft, let alone getting the writing done for it.

The first of two waiver drafts this year has now concluded, with players being activated in the pool on Monday night for their first bit of action.  With 20 teams in the pool this year, the pickings for players were pretty slim and a lot of the early standouts that were not drafted originally, were taken in the early parts of the first round, while small improvements were made elsewhere.

The top available players in the waiver draft went to the basement teams in the pool, Sergei Bobrovsky of the Flyers went to Clayton first overall, Justin Williams with the Kings went to Derek second, Ryan Callahan of the Rangers went third to Wes, Jeff Skinner of the Hurricanes went to Don fourth.

It was a good session of picking for some of the rookies in the league, including Bobrovsky and Skinner, but also Kevin Shattenkirk of the Avalanche, Logan Couture of the Sharks and Derek Stepan of the Rangers; all being taken to help improve draft teams.

The team with the most pick-ups at the waiver draft in Week Nine was the New York Rangers, with four selections to their name.  Callahan, Dan Girardi, Michal Rozsival and Stepan were all taken this time around from the blueshirts, as the team is firmly in the top eight of the Eastern Conference standings, that's usually a good sign.

Three teams led the way with the most drops, as the Colorado Avalanche, Minnesota Wild and Nashville Predators have disappointed poolies the most, with three drops each.  Peter Mueller, T.J. Galiardi and Kyle Quincey were all dropped from Denver, thanks in large part to injuries, while Guillaume Latendresse, Andrew Brunette and Cam Barker have not been very productive for the Wild this year.  The Predators were definitely the victims of some big injuries, as Matthew Lombardi and Pekka Rinne are both on the shelf, while J-P Dumont is not playing very well, period.

There was quite a good number of players that were dropped by one team in the draft and then picked up by another this year, giving new life to the expression, one team's trash is another team's treasure.  Jordan Staal, Nikolai Khabibulin and Ian White were all dropped and picked up and likely for good reason.  Staal will be back soon, Khabibulin is getting number one minutes in Edmonton and White should be getting minutes in Carolina, so we'll see how that pans out.

So, with 20 teams in the pool, the difference from 1st to 20th place at the start of Week Nine was 62 points, which is likely too far out of reach this season.  From 4th to 20th was 52 points, also, a bit far, but at least we can start measuring from somewhere.

The winning team in the 2010 draft pool was in 1st at the time of the first waiver draft, while in 2009, the winning team was in 4th and in 2008, the winning team was in 2nd.  This doesn't give a lot of hope to teams below the money positions this year, but stranger things have happened in this world, so I would hope for something a little more dramatic, especially with teams a lot closer to each other in points.

Well, that's it for another nine weeks... time to prepare for the first jersey giveaway of the season!  Check out Monday's newsletter for our winner!