Take Carl Soderberg's name off the list of remaining free agents. Because of the injuries to Kirby Dach and Alex Nylander, the Blackhawks had a need for a center who could also play some wing. Soderberg should fit in as a middle-six forward who can also play some wing, which makes him a possible waiver-wire add this season if he can find the right linemates. He's very quietly recorded just over a half point per game over the last three seasons (121 points in 229 games), including 35 points (17g-18a) in 70 games in Arizona in 2019-20.

Soderberg's contract is for one year at $1 million, which makes it low risk for the Blackhawks as they attempt to fill a short-term void. If they fall out of the playoff race, Soderberg seems like the perfect player to flip for a draft pick.

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Ilya Kovalchuk has made his return to the KHL official, signing a two-year contract with Avangard Omsk. If this is it for his NHL career, then perhaps he'll receive some Hall of Fame consideration. In 926 career NHL games, Kovalchuk scored 443 goals and 876 points. In his two-season return to the NHL, Kovalchuk scored 26 goals and 60 points in 100 games, which may have been disappointing given his prior status as a superstar. Yet Father Time seemed to catch up, as Kovalchuk is now 37 years old. Best of luck to him in Russia.

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The Oilers added some depth to their blueline on Saturday, signing Slater Koekkoek to a one-year contract worth $850,000. The Koekkoek acquisition could be a sign that the Oilers aren't close on a contract with RFA Ethan Bear. It doesn't hurt for teams to have additional defensemen in the fold, and Koekkoek was effective enough in a third-pairing role with the Blackhawks last season (51.9 CF%).

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In case you need a summary of the World Junior games on Saturday, here's all you need to know.

Team 🇨🇦 scoring today

Cozens 3-3
Mercer 2-2
Krebs 2-1
Newhook 2-1
Tomasino 2-1
McMichael 1-2
Perfetti 0-3
Barron 0-2
Guhle 1-0
Harley 1-0
Pelletier 1-0
Suzuki 1-0
Byfield 0-1
Byram 0-1
Drysdale 0-1
Holloway 0-1
Quinn 0-1#WorldJuniors

— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) December 27, 2020

USA wins this one 11-0 over Austria. Shots were 73-10. #WorldJuniors

— Steven Ellis (@StevenEllisTHN) December 27, 2020

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After last week's mock draft, I decided to attempt another mock draft – this time in an auction format.

I don't find auction leagues to be as popular in fantasy hockey as they are in other sports (eg. baseball), and that may have to do with the fact that leagues that want to use dollar values for players opt for salary cap amounts instead. Still, I play in auction leagues in both fantasy hockey and fantasy baseball and find them to be a lot of fun. The fantasy hockey league uses a slow draft instead of the quick draft that is often used.

One of my league members is practically begging me to write something about auction leagues here, specifically our league. Since our league has a lot of unique rules, it's probably better for me not to discuss it here. So I'll use the more common Yahoo auction draft format.

Teams were given $200 to spend. Other than the salary cap, this draft had the same settings as there were for my previous mock draft. 12 teams; 2 C, 2 LW, 2 RW, 4 D, 2 G, 4 BN; G, A, +/-, PPP, SOG, HIT, W, GAA, SV%, SO.

I appeared to be the only live person competing against 11 autopickers, so Nikita Kucherov did go at what would have been his pre-injury price. Don't make the same mistake as the Yahoo supercomputer.

With a $200 budget, I did not want to spend more than one-quarter of my money on one player, looking for value instead. I generally nominated players that I didn't think I would want to bid high on, especially early on.

My team:

1. Connor Hellebuyck (Wpg – G) $39

2. Jake Guentzel (Pit – LW, RW) $39

3. Patrik Laine (Wpg – LW, RW) $30

4. Gabriel Landeskog (Col – C, LW) $36

5. Dougie Hamilton (Car – D) $27

6. Blake Wheeler (Wpg – C, RW) $9

7. Brent Burns (SJ – D) $5

8. Seth Jones (Cls – D) $2

9. Rasmus Dahlin (Buf – D) $3

10. Kris Letang (Pit – D) $2

11. Jacob Markstrom (Cgy – G) $2

12. Kevin Fiala (Min – LW, RW) $2

13. Anze Kopitar (LA – C) $1

14. Timo Meier (SJ – LW, RW) $1

15. Juuse Saros (Nsh – G) $1

16. Anthony Cirelli (TB – C) $1

If it's your first auction draft, you'll probably want to sit back and observe early on, as the most expensive players will generally go first. I won the first player to go for under $40, which was Hellebuyck.

This is a good experience, even if you don't plan to play in an auction league. It forces you to look for value among certain players. Also watch for what other teams are spending, as it might be the perfect time to obtain that player you need.

Give yourself more time for an auction draft! Because of the time needed for each player to be nominated, then for bids to take place, I've found that they can be twice or even three times longer than regular drafts. If you have to leave for a few minutes to go to the bathroom or get something to eat or drink, feel free to do that if you've reached a point where you've overspent relative to other teams. I did this after landing Hellebuyck, Guentzel, Laine, Landeskog, and Hamiton at high but not premium prices.

At a certain point, there can be a huge disparity between certain players, especially when teams realize that they've overspent and can only afford so much. Even though values were between $1 to $68, only five players went between $10 to $20. On the other hand, over half the players drafted were sold for just $1. In other words, don't count on auction values being on a perfectly sloped curve. Perhaps having more humans involved will allow for more analysis. That's why Wheeler at $9 looks like a virtual steal when compared to his teammate Laine at $30. Or Kopitar at $1 when compared to Wheeler.

An example of prices being all over the map in an auction league is in my real auction league. I won't describe this league at length because it is a slow draft (bids must last 72 hours) and there are about a million other rules. In this league, I paid $4 million for Aleksander Barkov (different scale, so don't compare to this mock draft). So when I paid about $6 million for Evgeni Malkin, I thought I was overpaying a bit. Yet when Sidney Crosby will fetch $15+ million, I think I made out fairly well. Crosby is the only real gamebreaker left, which explains the high price. The laws of supply and demand and timing can really create variance in prices.

I finished earlier than everyone else, so I had to sit and wait for other teams to finish. I noticed that I was in the lead in terms of projected roto stats when I was down to $0, so it was just a matter of waiting out to see if the closest team (Team 9) would eventually catch up to me. Since Team 9 still had the budget to pick up a few more $1 players, they eventually passed me for first in the projected standings. So did Team 2 at literally the last pick, so my team would be projected to finish third out of 12 teams.

Team 9 used a similar strategy to mine of not paying the premium prices and keeping bids to players at $40 or less. On the other hand, Team 2 went all in by paying Gucci prices in the beginning for Artemi Panarin, Alex Ovechkin, and Patrick Kane, then mainly spending $1 on the remaining players. I'll stick to my strategy of setting an internal budget and being more of an observer at first. Not too long, though, as you don't want to be left empty-handed once the difference makers fall off the board.

You can view the full results and the projected standings at my personal blog Goods Fantasy Hockey.

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Just as I get ready to post this, the Coyotes have traded Derek Stepan to the Senators for a second-round pick (previously acquired from Columbus) in the 2021 draft. Fantasy take to follow.

News Release: The #Sens have acquired forward Derek Stepan in a trade with @ArizonaCoyotes: https://t.co/dSIhEwodWA pic.twitter.com/L2kdmE6W6a

— Sens Communications (@Media_Sens) December 27, 2020

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For more fantasy hockey discussion, or to reach out to me, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding