Fantasy Focus: Mining the waiver wire on February 14

We're back again to unearth some of the waiver wire gems that are likely sitting around waiting to help you in the short term and maybe even turn into long-term assets.

If you’ve read any of my weekly Waiver Wire articles, or realistically, have much experience with fantasy hockey, you already know the importance of working the waiver wire, especially in a season like this one where we’re faced with constant roster upheaval by positive COVID diagnoses and COVID-related travel issues.

Every year we see players who were unheralded, underappreciate, underrepresented on draft day come out of the shoot hot and pay dividends for those who were fast enough to scoop them up. Some of those players fall back down to earth and end up back in the heap for anyone to take a stab at. Others continue to defy preseason expectations and turn into tangible pieces capable of helping your team charge toward the fantasy playoffs.

As we do every week, I'll explore some candidates that are owned in fewer than half of Fantrax leagues at the time of writing but suddenly find themselves in better situations, with a hot hand, or facing an overly generous schedule.

The Edmonton Oilers are the only team with five games this week, and I’d love to tell you to go out and scoop up some of their streaming options if not for the fact that they don’t have any. I told you to pick up Kailer Yamamoto last week on the basis that it could work out playing with Connor McDavid and Evander Kane. He rewarded my conviction with a minus-three rating and a doughnut in the points column. We simply have to face up to the reality that the Oilers stars are good but they’re all rostered, and the spare parts belong in the junkyard. 

Moving on from that dose of negativity, let’s focus on some players that could prove useful in the short and long term.