Fantasy Focus: Mining the waiver wire on October 17

Guess who’s back? Back again? The fantasy hockey season, that's who... or what, rather.

That’s right, the fantasy season is upon us and with it comes the first of many weekly installments in our waiver wire series. We're back again to help you unearth some of the 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 have any experience with fantasy hockey, you already know the importance of working the wire. Every year we see players who were unheralded, underappreciate, and 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 rostered 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.