The Second Waiver Draft Has Begun

It's All-Star Weekend in the NHL and there isn't a great deal of news to cover, so I thought I would throw together a quick post, making sure all my poolies know that we're under way in the second Waiver Draft, a few days early, since the order has already been decided.

With the order going from last-to-first and then last-to-first again, we should see some interesting picks from the lower teams, taking away the best players from the top teams, who are fighting it out for the money.

Dale C., who picked 8th in the 1st round of the first waiver draft, he has fallen to the deepest depths of the standings with too many Basement Dweller nods, so he got to pick first.  Of course, he had to move Derek Roy out of his team, as he found a season-long injury.  Replacing Roy is Mikhail Grabovski of the Leafs, who was completely passed over in the first waiver draft, but has kept a steady pace of scoring, keeping up as the highest scoring forward available.

Next up in the draft, picking 2nd in consecutive waiver drafts is Derek W., who decided to drop Mark Recchi, one of his first waiver draft pick-ups and take Olli Jokinen of the Flames, who has started to score again.  This should at least give Derek someone to cheer for on both of his teams, both the draft team and his favourite team.  Otherwise, this pick makes little sense.  Olli should be a healthy enough body to possibly raise the number of games played in the year before the end of the season.

Picking 3rd in the draft, up two spots from the first waiver draft, was Clayton C., who also had a season-long injury to dispose of with his first move.  Tomas Fleischmann of the Colorado Avalanche went down with an aneurysm in his blood, so he was traded off for Alex Steen of the St. Louis Blues.   Clayton's draft team finished Week Seventeen with the least amount of skater games played this year, so a healthy body will be welcomed on his side.

With the 4th pick in the draft, Wes M. wanted to make sure that he stayed ahead of Clayton C. in the standings and was able to take the best goalie available, Pekka Rinne of the Predators.  Rinne was dropped due to injury in the first waiver draft, so upon a healthy few weeks back, he was an attractive pick-up for Wes, who dropped Nikolai Khabibulin of the Oilers to accommodate the move.  I think most would agree, if you had a goalie to move, Rinne was a no-brainer.

Interesting note, this is likely the first time a healthy player, who has won a Player of the Week nod in the pool, has been dropped twice in the same year for an upgrade.  Khabibulin was the Week One honouree and has now been dropped by both Stacey C. and Wes M..

The 5th pick in the draft went to Neil B., who has quietly kept on chugging away in the pool, but has fallen drastically from the first waiver draft, having the 13th pick the first time around to 5th now.  Letting go of an injured player was the big focus of his pick, dropping Andy McDonald of the Blues and picking up Teddy Purcell from the Lightning.  Purcell has found a good home in Tampa and has risen up the ranks of the available players for the draft.  This might be a pretty good pick-up.

With the 6th pick, we find another team that didn't find any improvement from the first waiver draft, as John P., who picked 9th last time around, gets a better chance to improve his standing with this pick.  With his selections, he dropped Senators forward Peter Regin, who has been in the doghouse for a while now, and picked up Nikolai Kulemin, a part of the Leafs top line.  Kulemin was close to the top of the available players in the last draft as well, but the Leafs jersey was enough to keep people away from him for a while, but much like Grabovski, the consistency of scoring had to be kind of attractive.

The last pick that I have written down for this post is Ryan M.'s 7th pick overall, in where he has kept on using Tampa Bay goaltending this season, dropping the close-to-being-healthy-again Mike Smith, for the new kid (okay, not a kid) on the block Dwayne Roloson.  The goaltending in Tampa was sketchy, at best, before Roloson got into town and since the arrival of the oldest goalie in the NHL, the Lightning have a renewed sense of confidence, leading the Southeast Division going into the All-Star break.

Next up in the waiver draft, it goes Jani K., Peter H. and then Larry D. to round out the top ten picks.  Jani has a few candidates for his drop, but no one seems to be head and shoulders over the rest of them at the moment.  I could see Peter dropping a guy like Steve Sullivan for another forward, while Larry will likely drop Marc Savard, due to his new (but old) concussion problem.

I'm not sure how much more I will get to write for this waiver draft, but if the first round will conclude over the weekend, I'm sure I can draw up 13 more photos and paragraphs for the blog.