Preseason Purge: Five Players Hit Waivers as Seattle and Chicago Trim Rosters

Five NHL players cleared waivers Monday as two franchises thinned their preseason camps ahead of the 2026-27 season opener. Seattle placed forwards John Hayden, Logan Morrison, and Jon-Randall Avon alongside goaltender Victor Ostman on the wire, while Chicago exposed defenseman Derrick Pouliot. None of the five carry enough established NHL equity to warrant claim priority—a clean read on where each organization values its depth.

Hayden, 31, is the most seasoned of the group, though his résumé offers nothing to suggest a roster turnaround. He went scoreless in three games for Seattle last year and has compiled just 39 points across 272 career NHL contests, a 0.14 points-per-game rate that screams organizational depth, not impact. Morrison, 24, posted respectable AHL numbers (29 goals, 32 assists in 68 games for Coachella Valley), but his one NHL sample—four scoreless games in 2023-24—revealed the gap between elite league competition and secondary affiliates. Avon, 23, turned in modest AHL production (10 goals, 14 assists in 45 games) that doesn't elevate him above call-up depth. Ostman, 25, made exactly one start for the Kraken last season, a 2-0 loss where he surrendered two goals on 35 shots—a .943 save percentage in a single data point that carries no predictive weight. Pouliot, the former eighth-overall pick in 2012, has been a league journeyman (54 points in 226 games across seven teams), and his 68 AHL games split between Hartford and Rockford confirm he's aged into organizational plumbing rather than reclamation prospect.

The timing and composition of these waivers tell a roster story: both Seattle and Chicago identified no one in this pool as worth protecting through the final preseason squeeze. No team claimed any of them, which validates that read. For betting purposes, this is background noise—none of these players carry enough projected ice time or offensive responsibility to move prop needles. Ostman's .906 save percentage for Coachella Valley doesn't forecast starter minutes for any destination, and none of the forwards have demonstrated the touch or positioning to drive shot or assist volume at the NHL level. The market had already priced these bodies at backup/AHL depth; the waiver action simply formalized it.

Where this matters is on team-total and goal-line analysis for Seattle and Chicago: neither club is reshuffling its primary scoring deck with these moves. The Kraken and Blackhawks had already accounted for the loss of these players in their depth-chart architecture. Any preseason waiver wire activity this late in the calendar (20 days before the season opens) is organizational housekeeping, not the arrival of competition for roster spots. If you're building season-long models for either franchise, Sunday's rosters remain your baseline; today's wire moves don't alter it.