No matter how great or miserable your fantastic start to the season was, it’s always a good idea to browse the waiver thread for potential help.
After all, you never know when a player might get cold, benched or suffer an injury. And even the strongest fantasy teams will have weak points. It’s better if you have a potential list of replacement candidates ready to fill the gaps instead of rushing out at the last minute.
Below are 10 potential waiver wire pickups at the start of this season. Browsing through the waiver feed, you can find plenty of players in a top-six situation who are still available, as well as plenty of defenders who can help you win some of your outlying categories.
For this list, we’re focusing on players available in at least 70% of Yahoo leagues as of Sunday night. One of them is available in 99% of the leagues! The deeper your fantasy league is, the less these names are still available, but hopefully even those of you in the deep leagues can find a player or two that might be useful.
One thing to keep in mind is that you may need to act quickly. When I started researching this column on Friday night, Max Domi belonged to less than 10% of Yahoo leagues. By Sunday night, that had skyrocketed to him being listed in 39%. Most fantasy GMs are smart, and they’ll jump on the hot hand.
10. Brandon Hagel, held in 8% of Yahoo leagues
Last season, Hagel had a career-high 44 points in 77 games between Chicago and Tampa Bay. Now, the 24-year-old looks set to beat that number as he has three goals and six points in nine games with Tampa. Those six points have come in the last four games. The reasoning behind the optimism? He plays five-on-five with Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point. Hagel is on the second power play unit and doesn’t produce enough in other categories to be considered a staple, but he can be a useful player if you’re looking for a potential fast-scoring offense.
9. Taylor Raddysh, held in 4% of Yahoo leagues
Last week I wrote about Raddysh’s surprising amount of power play time. Although he’s been useless on the power play in five games since last Monday, the team didn’t seem concerned about his lack of production on the power play. Since then, Raddysh has two power play points in four games. During the season, he plays in a top-six role and has six runs in nine games to go along with a plus-two, 12 shots and 16 hits.
8. Alexander Barabanov, held in 1% of Yahoo leagues
Barabanov missed the opening games with a lower-body injury and was returned to the lineup in his first three games. So its overall numbers may not seem so impressive. However, in his last four games, he has had three points, one power-play point, three shots, three hits and four blocked shots while being used on the best power-play unit (on the ice for about 70% of the man from San Jose – advantageous minutes). He also got reps on the front line with Tomas Hertl and Timo Meier finally starting production.
7. Jason Zucker, held in 8% of Yahoo leagues
Zucker is finally producing as Penguins management had hoped since they gave up Alex Galchenyuk, Calen Addison and a first-round pick to acquire him in 2020. Zucker was overnight last week, but was back in the lineup Saturday night. He doesn’t get a lot of power-play time since he’s on the second unit, but he plays with Evgeni Malkin five-on-five. In seven games, Zucker has six points, which equates to a 70-point pace, the highest point pace he has ever achieved. He also has 15 shots plus two, 20 hits and two power-play runs.
6. Rasmus Ristolainen, held in 10% of Yahoo leagues
He missed the first few weeks of the campaign with a lower-body injury, so he only saw two games of action. He’s back in the lineup, so his time on the ice hasn’t returned to normal yet. However, if your league counts hits and blocked shots, Ristolainen is a must. Last year, he had 230 hits and 125 blocked shots in 66 games. He’s still an injury risk, but when he’s in the lineup and you have to win some of the peripheral categories, he should be in your lineup rather than someone else’s.
5. Kevin Hayes, held in 24% of Yahoo leagues
Everyone was shocked by the Flyers this season. They were expected to be so bad that many fantastic GMs chose to stay away from anyone in Philadelphia. However, many of them have had crazy starts to the season. Hayes is used on the top line on the power play and also averages more than 19 minutes per night, a usage he has never seen before in his career. It helped Hayes to 10 points in eight games. He also averages more than two shots per game. The only thing stopping Hayes from moving higher on this list is that he can only be listed in the central position. If he ever gets dual eligibility, his value should increase even further.
4. Jared McCann, held in 21% of Yahoo leagues
Honestly, there are a lot of Kraken who could make it on this list because there are only two Seattle players (Andre Burakovsky and Matty Beniers) who were in over 33% of the Yahoo leagues as of Sunday night. We’ll focus on two of them with the next two picks. McCann is here doing normal McCann things, but he still doesn’t belong in the majority of fantasy leagues. The Kraken’s third-line center is on the upper power play unit, which helps increase its output. In 10 games, McCann has five goals, eight points, 23 shots and four power play points.
3. Jaden Schwartz, held in 21% of Yahoo leagues
Schwartz has always been a big fantasy producer, though his health has been an issue for many fantasy GMs. In the seven seasons from 2013-14 to 2019-20, Schwartz had an 82-game 55-point pace on six occasions, with his highest at a 78-point pace in 2017-18. Although his last season with the Blues and his first season with the Kraken were disappointing, he seems to be back on track this year. His poor plus/minus aside (he has a minus-six in 10 games), Schwartz produces in many fantastic categories as he has five goals (four on the power play), five assists, 32 shots, 12 hits and four power- play points.
2. Filip Hronek, detained in 24% of Yahoo leagues
It’s still early days, but Hronek has been a fantastic better option than teammate Moritz Seider so far. Just compare the numbers between the two to eight games:
Hronek: zero goals, five assists, plus-four, six PIM, 14 shots, 14 hits, three power-play runs, four blocked shots, 3:18 PP TOI, 21:50 TOI
Seider: zero goals, one assist, minus-one, two PIM, 16 shots, 18 hits, one power play run, 20 blocked shots, 2:51 PP YOU, 21:59 YOU
I’m not suggesting you drop Seider for Hronek, but grabbing Hronek would also be smart play right now.
1. David Krejci, held in 29% of Yahoo leagues
After taking a high stick in last Thursday’s game, Krejci is day to day with an upper body injury, but that’s why your league should have IR spots. You don’t drop it, which some fancy general managers have done. Krejci was just awesome for the Bruins, which is phenomenal considering he didn’t play in the NHL last season. Even if you include last Thursday’s game, when he played less than seven minutes due to injury, Krejci has eight points in eight games. He also has four IMPs, 11 shots, four power-play runs, five hits, five blocked shots and 47 game wins. He plays with David Pastrnak at even strength and is part of the top power-play unit. Even though we don’t have a more definitive answer to questions about his current injury, he still deserves to be number one on this list.
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