In a fun swing of events, PuckLuck.com has you covered today for all of your expansion draft protection needs. Why today? Well, there are two key deadlines this Saturday afternoon that can affect the entire landscape of the NHL.
The first is a roster freeze at 3pm EST, which prohibits and trades, signings, and player movement ahead of Wednesday's expansion draft. This freeze allows the Seattle Kraken management to zero in on exact targets from each NHL team without any further ambiguity.
The second deadline, of course, is the 5pm EST deadline for all teams to submit their protected player lists. This is the final list of players (either seven forwards, three defensemen, and one goalie, or eight skaters and one goalie) that the Kraken cannot select in Wednesday's draft.
This also, of course, reveals who is exposed to Seattle, who is allow to select one player from each team. It is expected that side deals will by made to allow NHL GM's to protect an extra player or dictate who the Kraken take by giving up an additional asset, so things could get even more interesting.
Ahead of the protection list deadline, we will be revealing what our version of the protection lists should look like for each NHL team, based off of a player's GDV (Goal Differential Value), contract, and aging curves. GDV is a PuckLuck exclusive metric used to measure each player's value on goal differential for each game, allowing us to project each NHL game throughout the year with success.
We will be revealing one team every 15 minutes leading up to the 5pm deadline, so be sure to follow along throughout the day to see what we come up with for your favorite team!
Next up? The Carolina Hurricanes:
Protect (7-3-1): Sebastian Aho, Steven Lorentz, Nino Niederreiter, Jordan Staal (NMC), Andrei Svechnikov, Teuvo Teravainen, Vincent Trocheck, ALex Nedeljkovic
Exempt: Martin Necas
UFA: Jani Hakanpaa, Dougie Hamilton, Jordan Martinook, Max McCormick, Brock McGinn, Cedric Paquette, Petr Mrazek, James Reimer
Expose: Jesper Fast, Warren Foegele, Jake Gardiner, Morgan Geekie, Brady Skjei
Carolina's one of those teams that no matter who they protect, there will be some good talent available to the Kraken. Lorentz earned protection over Fast and Geekie thanks to his play last season, though he may have lost out on a spot to Foegele if not for the rumors of his wanting a fresh start somewhere else.
I went back and forth on Bean and Gardiner, depsite the latter being much older and seemingly falling out of favor with the club. Gardiner is still very effective, so don't be surprised if he gets strong consideration from Seattle should he be exposed.
Nedeljkovic made this a rather easy decision with his play last season. Though Mrazek was also stellar, he is still pursuable in free agency should he not obtain a better job elsewhere.
