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 New Jersey Devils:
Protect (7-3-1): Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, Andreas Johnsson, Janne Kuokkanen, Michael McLeod, Miles Wood, Pavel Zacha, Will Butcher, Ryan Graves, Damon Severson, Mackenzie Blackwood
Exempt: Kevin Bahl, Jesper Boqvist, Nolan Foote, Jack Hughes, Ty Smith, Tyce Thompson
UFA: Connor Carrick, Ryan Murray, Matt Tennyson, Aaron Dell
Expose: Nathan Bastian, Nicholas Merkley, Yegor Sharagovich, Jonas Siegenthaler, Marian Sudenic, P.K. Subban, Scott Wedgewood
There's a group of Devils forwards sort of clumped together here, so many of these protection pieces are interchangeable. In this case, Bastian and Sharangovich barely miss the cut, but most likely this decision won't have a major impact on the future landscape of the team.
The trade for Graves adds him to the protection list over Siegenthaler, who is exposed along with Subban and his contract.
Wedgewood was solid at times last season, but Blackwood is the easy choice to protect in net.
