Sunday, June 20, 2010

Hockey draft guide: NHL free agency preview

By Rick Morris

The 21st Century Media Alliance has struck again! The combined efforts of The FDH Lounge, FantasyDrafthelp.com, Sportsology and Card Corner Club have produced your ultimate guide to the NHL Entry Draft (and beyond), HOCKEY DRAFTOLOGY 2010. We encourage you to check out these comprehensive yet compact guides in their entirety, and as an inducement to do so, we are serializing them here.

Here is our feature on the upcoming NHL free agency season:



While the NBA will see its greatest free agent class in history hit the market on July 1, the NHL will have one of its absolute worst and thinnest ones materializing the same day. There is only one megastar in the bunch, New Jersey left wing Ilya Kovalchuk, and even he has some questions surrounding his worthiness of being a player to anchor a championship team. Here are the few players at each position, in order of importance, who could potentially make a decent impact on a team, with positions listed in order of their overall free agency class. NOTE: Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne are not listed because each is expected to either retire or re-sign with Anaheim.

LW: Ilya Kovalchuk, Patrick Marleau, Alexander Frolov, Alexei Ponakarovsky, Ray Whitney
G: Evgeni Nabokov, Chris Mason, Jose Theodore, Dan Ellis, Marty Turco, Michael Leighton
C: Tomas Plekanec, Matthew Lombardi, Vinny Prospal, Saku Koivu
D: Sergei Gonchar, Paul Martin, Pavel Kubina, Kim Johnsson
RW: Maxim Afinogenov, Lee Stempniak, Todd Bertuzzi

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