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 Colorado Avalanche:
Protect (7-3-1): Andre Burakovsky, Joonas Donskoi, Nazem Kadri, Nathan MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin, Logan O'Connor, Mikko Rantanen, Samuel Girard, Cale Makar, Devon Toews, Jonas Johansson
Exempt: Bowen Byram, Mikhail Maltsev, Alex Newhook, Conor Timmins, Pavel Francouz
UFA: Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Matt Calvert, Gabriel Landeskog, Patrik Nemeth, Liam O'Brien, Dan Renouf, Brandon Saad, Devan Dubnyk, Philipp Grubauer
Expose: J.T. Compher, Tyson Jost, Jacob MacDonald, Jayson Megna, Kiefer Sherwood, Hunter Miska
The contract dispute with Landeskog allows for an extra protection spot than originally anticipated heading into the expansion draft, but Colorado mainstays Compher and Jost both still miss the cut due to subpar GDVs.
The list on defense is obvious, with an assist to Johnson for waiving his no-movement clause.
The Avs are expected to try to re-sign Grubauer, but protect Johansson over Miska in this case of the lesser of two evils.
