Fantasy Focus: Mining the waiver wire on February 7

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.

This is a particularly challenging week to find streaming options. With the NHL All-Star break in the rearview, some sites, like ESPN, have rolled up last week and this week into one extra-large matchup. Additionally, we’re seeing a very wide variance in games played with the Sens scheduled for five games and the New York Rangers, San Jose Sharks, Los Angeles Kings, and Florida Panthers won’t see the ice entirely.

So don’t pick up any players from those teams for fairly obvious reasons. However, here are some ones you could look long and hard at!