Along with every NHL team, the Dallas Stars released their protected list for the 2017 Expansion Draft. The list is as follows.

Forwards (7): Jamie Benn, Radek Faksa, Valeri Nichushkin, Brett Ritchie, Antoine Roussel, Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza.

Defensemen (3): Stephen Johns, John Klingberg, Esa Lindell.

Goaltender (1): Ben Bishop

Most notably, the Stars protected their rights to Russian forward Valeri Nichushkin, who left the team a year ago to return to Russia's KHL after chafing under the direction of now-former Stars head coach Lindy Ruff. He remains a valuable trade chip even if the prospect of playing for Ken Hitchcock in Dallas would not be appealing to him.

The following unprotected players are among the possible candidates for expansion draft selection by the Vegas Knights: Cody Eakin, Curtis McKenzie, Dan Hamhuis, Patrik Nemeth or Jamie Oleksiak. Veteran goalies Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi are also available in the expansion draft but it would take a trade with sweeteners (most likely a high-end draft pick and possibly taking on another team's albatross contract for a year) to move one of the players to a team other than Vegas. The Knights will have their pick of more highly sought goalies than either of the two Finns from the Stars.

Impending unrestricted free agent forward Patrick Sharp is also preemptively available to Vegas during their exclusive 72-hour free agency window (which would preclude Dallas losing anyone else via the expansion draft) but that does not seem to be a probable outcome.

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