Sunday, January 31, 2016

Week Eighteen Waiver Draft (Jan 31)

There was a little bit of Saturday night movement, in line with the NHL All-Star Skills Competition last night, but amazingly, no one even looked twice at John Scott.  There is still lots of time in this draft and someone might be looking for that extra bit of All-Star representation, well after the game is even played.

John R. made his pick, the 2nd overall pick in the draft, by dropping Sergei Plotnikov of the Penguins and hopping into the PIM pool (or at the very least, trying to spoil it) by taking Tom Wilson of the Capitals.  Before the addition of Wilson, John's team sits in 10th in the PIM pool standings, 130 minutes behind Wes, so it's a bit of a long shot to come back from that deficit.  If anyone can do it, Wilson can.

With the 3rd overall pick, Mike was pretty quick on the draw, adding to his rookie squad, taking the leading rookie, heading into the Waiver Draft, San Jose's Joonas Donskoi and dropping an add from the last draft, Brett Connolly of the Bruins.  The rookie pool is a bit of a lost cause, but it's fun to cheer for those freshmen and with a good add, Mike's team has a slight chance to jump into the top five of the pool, as he sits tied for 6th, 12 points back of 5th.

On Sunday morning, after much humming, hawing and stinking...errr, I mean, thinking... Benson wanted to save face in the standings and to not finish last overall, despite the added feature of improving your draft position next year.  He opted for goaltender Louis Domingue of the Arizona Coyotes, who may have earned himself the number one job, even if Mike Smith comes back from abdominal surgery.  On the way out, New York Rangers back-up, Antti Raanta, who hasn't seen much action behind Henrik Lundqvist.

Now, we wait to see who Wes' big drop is going to be... I'm sure he'll want to pad his head in the PIM pool this week and if I had a guess, he'll be looking towards the blueline this week.  His forwards lead the pool in time spent in the box, but his defense are still skating out on the ice, most of the time.

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