March 9: Both players have cleared waivers and can now be assigned to the taxi squad or minor leagues.
March 8: Two more players are available to the league today, as Chris Johnston of Sportsnet reports that Justin Dowling (DAL) and Colton Sceviour (PIT) have been placed on waivers.
Dowling, 30, only returned from a conditioning stint in the AHL a week ago and has barely seen any ice time in the two games since. Averaging nearly 13 minutes in his first nine appearances, he received fewer than nine in losses to Tampa Bay and Columbus last week. He wasn’t in the lineup at all for the last two, so his arrival on waivers shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
The undrafted forward has only 60 regular season NHL games under his belt, instead spending most of his professional career at the minor league level. In 2018-19 he scored 53 points in 62 games with the Texas Stars, which ended up landing him a good stretch of play at the highest level. Still, his upside is extremely limited, meaning it is unlikely that someone claims him at this point in the year.
Sceviour meanwhile will likely clear for a different reason entirely. The 31-year-old forward has logged nearly 500 games in the NHL but provides very little offense and carries a cap hit of $1.2MM. In 16 games this season, his first with Pittsburgh after coming over in the Mike Matheson–Patric Hornqvist deal, Sceviour has scored just two goals and failed to record a single assist. For a team pushed right up against the cap like the Penguins, his salary is prohibitive, meaning he could easily find himself buried on the taxi squad if he clears.
It’s that salary that could protect him from claim too, given how few teams want to add money at this point. Sceviour is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year, so perhaps a rebuilding team could claim him in order to try and flip later, but given how few skaters have been claimed this season it still seems unlikely. The fact that he was on the COVID Protocol Related Absences list yesterday only complicates the matter, though it is unclear how long he will be unavailable.