Week Nine Waiver Draft (Nov 30)

A big thanks to everyone for yesterday's effort through the Waiver Draft, we plowed through a ton of picks, leaving us with just the leaders to tidy up with this morning and now we can shift our focus to the bonus round here right away. Remember, players that are currently injured can be swapped out for someone on the available players list at any time, first come, first serve. The deadline will be Monday's puck drop, 5pm MT, to get that done, as players will be playing right through Sunday and could be eligible to be moved right up until Week Ten officially gets started.

We left off at Benson's pick, the 6th pick of the round, where he dropped Columbus forward Riley Nash and picked up Tyler Bertuzzi of the Red Wings.  Of course, last night, Nash scored his first goal of the season and also had an assist, but it was too little, too late for his play, replaced by Bertuzzi, who has been a fairly consistent contributor this season.

Stacey C. stayed with his theme of sticking with his favourite team, the Edmonton Oilers, dropping the recently demoted Kailer Yamamoto and filling his spot with Alex Chiasson, who is 3rd on the team in goals with 11, getting some regular playing time in the top six there.

With the 33rd overall move in the Waiver Draft, Tony dropped the often scratched Andrew MacDonald in Philadelphia and picked up Erik Gustafsson in Chicago, who has been a regular in the Blackhawks lineup.

More injuries and disappointing offensive numbers forced Dale C. to drop Robby Fabbri of the Blues from his lineup, taking on Washington Capitals forward Brett Connolly for that spot.  Connolly was deemed a more consistent player on a better team, which made the move fairly academic.

Between injuries and some pretty poor results, Wilton pulled the trigger on a big goalie drop in Pittsburgh's Matt Murray and he took the Carolina goalie that has stuck around on the roster, Curtis McElhinney, to start putting some wins together.  Murray is currently out with a lower-body injury and McElhinney has been getting a good portion of the starts for the Hurricanes, so the math checks out.

Brian looked to improve his blueline with the pickup of Jamie Oleksiak of the Penguins and dropping Toronto defender Travis Dermott.  Oleksiak has put up some solid offensive numbers already this season, but he would have really been handy if we were playing in the penalty minutes game this year.

Talking about Carolina goalies, Scott Darling was put on waivers for the purpose of assignment on Thursday and we await the news of whether or not a team would claim him and his big contract or not.  Ryan wasn't going to wait around to find out, dropping him for Minnesota backup, Alex Stalock.  Ryan's team ranks 21st in goalie points and could use all the help he can get.

Neil used his 2nd round pick to dispense of underachieving defenseman Dion Phaneuf from the underachieving Los Angeles Kings and he picked up a Chicago defenseman in Gustav Forsling, increasing the number of Blackhawks defensemen taken in this draft up to two.

Jeremy didn't see any value in what was left on the board, so he took a pass on the 2nd round.

There were some high expectations for Daniel Sprong in Pittsburgh, but they never were reached in the first segment of the season, so Jesse opted to drop him and take the guy that sidled into his spot, Dominik Simon.  Simon has seen some top six play already this season and has produced, so that makes him a good candidate for a pickup.

Wes followed Jeremy's lead and also took a pass in this round.

Another player with some high expectations, only to fall short, was Colorado's Tyson Jost, only had 10 points in 21 games this season.  Steve dug pretty deep in the available player list and found a player with a much better scoring rate, 7 points in eight games, Nashville's Austin Watson, who had a late start to the season, thanks to a suspension.  A savvy move, I must say.

John P. chose to divest a little bit of his rookie stock for the big pay day on Thursday, dropping Casey Mittlestadt from the Sabres in order to pickup Phillip Danault of the Canadiens.  The Canadiens have been surprisingly good this year and Danault has certainly carried some of the load for them, with 14 points already this year.

A move that will try to help both the rookie pool and the overall pool on Clayton's team sees him upgrade a rookie forward from Boston's Ryan Donato to Ottawa's Drake Batherson.  Batherson was called up from the AHL a couple weeks ago and has been excellent for the Senators since his recall, picking up 7 points in his first eight games.

Mike's team was in need of some clutch scoring, currently ranking tied for 18th in the game-winning goals mini-game, so he took a flyer on Dallas' Devin Shore, who led all available players in the category, dropping Derek Ryan of the Flames, who was last among his forwards with only 21 shots on goal and no game-winners.

Kristy & Don are fairly comfortable with their team today, with no injuries to take care of, so they passed on the 2nd round.

A late night move saw Grant look to improve his goaltending, dropping off the oft-injured Michal Neuvirth of the Flyers and picking up Anton Khudobin of the Stars.  Grant opted to make his goaltenders less of a priority at the draft and it seems to have been working out for him, so far, so improving upon those goalies can really only help to improve his side, which is in the hunt to make some money this year.

The last move that I have on the sheet before hitting the publish button was Stacey M. also passing on her 2nd round move.  Her team was also free and clear of any major injury concerns today.

This leaves only Stuart and Troy to decide on their 2nd round moves, if any.  Then we launch right into the bonus round and the free-for-all can begin.