Week Nine Waiver Draft (Nov 28)

The official word on yesterday's delay in the Waiver Draft was Wes has a new phone number and I was texting the old number, so the communication just wasn't there on Tuesday in the day and that's why we had to wait.  We are now back to normal working procedures and have been making some head way, between last night and this morning.  Today's recap will cut off at the last pick I received, which has been moving at a brisk pace already this morning.

Once we got to Wes' pick, he began a pretty good run on picking defensemen, by taking Columbus' Ryan Murray to help his underachieving blueline.  Murray has found his game once again in Columbus and has been putting up some decent numbers with this good scoring team, so it looks like a pretty good add there.

Steve went to the surging Buffalo Sabres for his new defenseman, picking up Jake McCabe, who has been getting some pretty good quality ice-time there this season, just over 19 minutes a game.  With the way that the Sabres have been playing this season, including a 10-game winning streak that they are currently on, picking up a body from that team isn't a bad idea at all.

John P. made a double-whammy pick with Maxime Lajoie from the Senators, taking both a defenseman and a rookie, trying to upgrade his blueline and he increased his stake in the rookie mini-game at the same time.  John's team ranks 2nd in the mini-game and adding another player to his side will only put pressure on the leader.

The team that is the rookie mini-game leader belongs to Clayton, but he didn't opt to improve on that, sneaking the returning Shea Weber out of the list, as he played his first game of the season last night for the Montreal Canadiens.  He opened up the season with an assist, but Clayton's team does not get credit for it, as it happened this week and the players we pick are not active until Monday of Week Ten.

Mike nipped the run of defensemen and started a new run of forwards taken in the draft, as we moved higher in the standings and some of the pool leaders started to make those fine improvements up front to get those key points. Mike went to Columbus as well to pick up Nick Foligno, who has been cashing in on some of the high-scoring action with the Jackets.

The move to Edmonton hasn't helped Ryan Spooner's numbers at all, even if it has been a small sample size.  Kristy & Don are not having any more of his lack of offense, so they opted to pick up Cody Eakin in Vegas, which exploded for big numbers last night in Chicago and could be a big hit moving forward.

Grant is enamored with the Vancouver Canucks, it would seem.  He might have to turn in his Calgary Flames fan card after dropping Sven Baertschi of the Canucks and pick up Jake Virtanen... of the Canucks.  Both have some real Calgary connections, but they still play for the green and blue, which is rather suspicious.

The last pick, almost finishing up the opening round in this post, went to Stacey M. and she went to improve her forwards as well, dumping the slumping Mathieu Perreault in Winnipeg and she added Travis Zajac of the Devils.  It's not a major upgrade, but Zajac has been a little bit more consistent and in a top six role in New Jersey.