Week Nine Waiver Mock Draft

It's that time of year again!  We're only one week away from the start of the Week Nine Waiver Draft and with that, I have done up what the draft could have looked like, using the order from the standings at the start of Week Eight and I just went down the line, using the available players list, making sure that the players were not hurt.

Let's review the rules first, shall we?

We will do two full rounds of the Waiver Draft, the order being decided after the audit on Monday, last place to first place in both rounds of the draft.  Teams will be permitted to drop one player and pick up a player of the same position in each round.  Players dropped in a round will not be permitted to be taken again until the next round, just so everyone has a shot at some players dropped that may have been dropped for mini-game reasons.

There will be a bonus round and the kicker there is that only players who are injured can be dropped in the bonus round.  This round is to ensure that your team is healthy going into the second segment of the season and not to just get rid of some duds.  The first two rounds are for that.  The second round will be a full-on free-for-all, first come, first serve, once the notice goes out, you can have your fun and reboot your roster, assuming that you have a team lined out the door of their local infirmary.

With all of that being said, let's have a quick peek at the first round, as these drops may or may not happen and they are replaced by the next best player available, no mini-game consideration was done.

Pick	Team	Dropped Player	NHL	Pos	Picked Player	NHL
1	Scott Gilmore	Pat Maroon	STL	F	Jason Pominville	BUF
2	Brenda & Seward	William Nylander	TOR	F	Chris Tierney	OTT
3	Derek Bell	Martin Necas	CAR	F	Kasperi Kapanen	TOR
4	Dale Corley	James Reimer	FLA	G	Louis Domingue	TAM
5	Derek Wilton	Mattias Janmark	DAL	F	Travis Zajac	NJD
6	Chelsea Bradley	Cam Fowler	ANA	D	Ryan Murray	CBJ
7	Tony Dourado	Cory Schneider	NJD	G	Casey DeSmith	PIT
8	Benson Greenley	Riley Nash	CBJ	F	Jason Spezza	DAL
9	Eric Wheeler	Malcolm Subban	VGK	G	Mikko Koskinen	EDM
10	Stacey Campbell	Kailer Yamamoto	EDM	F	Anthony Duclair	CBJ
11	Jeremy Dieser	Tanner Pearson	PIT	F	Colin White	OTT
12	Ryan Miller	Scott Darling	CAR	G	Antti Niemi	MTL
13	Jesse Phalen	Troy Terry	ANA	F	Nick Foligno	CBJ
14	Wes Moroz	Mark Jankowski	CAL	F	Valtteri Filppula	NYI
15	Brian Towers	Valeri Nichushkin	DAL	F	Cody Eakin	VGK
16	Grant Saskiw	Michal Neuvirth	PHI	G	Curtis McElhinney	CAR
17	Neil Buysman	Tristan Jarry	PIT	G	Pheonix Copley	WAS
18	Mike Somerville	Derek Ryan	CAL	F	Blake Coleman	NJD
19	Steve Bishop	Tyson Jost	COL	F	Tyler Bertuzzi	DET
20	John Preston	Niklas Kronwall	DET	D	Maxime Lajoie	OTT
21	Kristy & Don	Ryan Spooner	EDM	F	Devin Shore	DAL
22	Clayton Corley	Ryan Donato	BOS	F	Brett Howden	NYR
23	Stacey McDonald	Mathieu Perreault	WPG	F	Nikolay Goldobin	VAN
24	Stuart Greenley	Max Pacioretty	VGK	F	Mikkel Boedker	OTT
25	Troy Berkley	Erik Haula	VGK	F	Phillip Danault	MTL

Jason Pominville of the Sabres is currently the hottest commodity on the market for the Waiver Draft next week, as he leads all available players with 17 points in 20 games this season.  He'll be ending up on the pool coldest team, belonging to Scott, who starts the week 10 points back of 24th and would need some real help to move up that spot and lose out on Pominville.

Top rookie available in this first round of the draft, Ottawa's Colin White, who has had a slow start to his NHL career, but has seemingly started to find his groove this year.  He has 6 goals and 12 points in 20 games and would certainly help any team trying to either improve upon their standing in the rookie mini-game or even get their feet wet in it.  Nevertheless, he will be taken, even for his general scoring talents, 12 points is a good boost to a team.

How about the game-winning goals mini-game?  Devin Shore of the Stars is day-to-day with a lower-body injury, but still leads the available players with 3 winners in the first eight weeks of the year.  Eight other players, including Pominville, are rocking 2 winners and could certainly help out a team looking at that mini-game, looking for that clutch goal scoring this season.

The shootout goals is another mini-game that's going to pay this year and as much as we haven't seen nearly as many shootouts this year, but there are still goals going in and we're not cashing in on them.  Eight players have scored a goal in the shootout, still available on the list, so we might not list them all here, but there are a few to look at.  Markus Granlund of the Canucks, projected for the second round, leads all available players with two attempts in the shootout, so that might be something to consider.

Pick	Team	Dropped Player	NHL	Pos	Picked Player	NHL
26	Scott Gilmore	Justin Schultz	PIT	D	Robert Hagg	PHI
27	Brenda & Seward	Evan Bouchard	EDM	D	Jake McCabe	BUF
28	Derek Bell	Danton Heinen	BOS	F	Jake Virtanen	VAN
29	Dale Corley	David Backes	BOS	F	Josh Anderson	CBJ
30	Derek Wilton	Andreas Johnsson	TOR	F	Conor Sheary	BUF
31	Chelsea Bradley	Jesse Puljujarvi	EDM	F	Michael Grabner	ARI
32	Tony Dourado	Ryan Strome	NYR	F	Markus Granlund	VAN
33	Benson Greenley	Zdeno Chara	BOS	D	Mike Green	DET
34	Eric Wheeler	Milan Lucic	EDM	F	Oskar Lindblom	PHI
35	Stacey Campbell	Marco Scandella	BUF	D	Ben Hutton	VAN
36	Jeremy Dieser	Oliver Bjorkstrand	CBJ	F	Vinnie Hinostroza	ARI
37	Ryan Miller	Deryk Engelland	VGK	D	Jamie Oleksiak	PIT
38	Jesse Phalen	Daniel Sprong	PIT	F	Dominik Simon	PIT
39	Wes Moroz	Tyler Myers	WPG	D	Braydon Coburn	TAM
40	Brian Towers	Travis Dermott	TOR	D	Scott Mayfield	NYI
41	Grant Saskiw	Sven Baertschi	VAN	F	Lars Eller	WAS
42	Neil Buysman	Dion Phaneuf	LOS	D	Matt Grzelcyk	BOS
43	Mike Somerville	Bryan Rust	PIT	F	Artturi Lehkonen	MTL
44	Steve Bishop	Nikita Zadorov	COL	D	Cody Ceci	OTT
45	John Preston	Michael Del Zotto	VAN	D	Erik Gudbranson	VAN
46	Kristy & Don	Anthony Beauvillier	NYI	F	Brett Connolly	WAS
47	Clayton Corley	Matt Benning	EDM	D	Dylan Demelo	OTT
48	Stacey McDonald	Ondrej Palat	TAM	F	Frans Nielsen	DET
49	Stuart Greenley	PASS			PASS
50	Troy Berkley	Thomas Hickey	NYI	D	Tony DeAngelo	NYR

I didn't add any players that may have been dropped in the second round of the Waiver Draft, this was strictly dropping players to pick up players from the available list.  I think we'll see a good number of defensemen shifted in the second round, since they are not nearly as valuable than the forwards that are available, but there could be some decent ones in there.

Also, there are a number of teams that do have some more injury concerns and I didn't necessarily want to point them all out, so the bonus round, if it happens, will be a bit of a mystery, until the end of the second round, of course.

Some teams will certainly struggle with some decisions, like whether or not dumping William Nylander is a good thing?  Will Jonathan Quick ever play again and if so, how good could he possibly be?  What is the actual timeline for Andrei Vasilevskiy being out... is it worth dropping him for minutes now?

This Waiver Draft should make for some interesting questions and the answers will take their time to unfold, but make no mistake, we will answer those questions!