Over the following week or so I am going to try and create protection lists for each NHL team based on what we know about the upcoming expansion draft. I am going to go alphabetically and hammer out a handful of teams per blog.

At the end of this I will attempt to draft the Las Vegas expansion team based on the players who are unprotected from this series of blogs.

I will be using General Fanager's expansion tool in order to be as accurate as possible with my selections. You can find that tool here . It is an incredibly clean interface and makes this process very easy to execute.


I am going to select protected players based on the current roster and will not assume future trades IE: Pittsburgh moving Marc-Andre Fleury to protect Matt Murray or Anaheim trading Fowler to free up an extra protection slot. I don't have a crystal ball so I will just use what is in front of me right now. Doing it this way is also a good way to see what teams have some work ahead of them in advance of the expansion draft.

Alright. Here we go.

Anaheim

Anaheim is not in a great spot. They have a number of talented defensemen but they also have a number of no movement clauses which will impact their ability to maneuver this draft. The most damning one is probably Kevin Bieksa. Anaheim is a team that I would use the 4 forward/4 defensemen protection model for.

Forwards: Ryan Getzlaf (NMC), Corey Perry (NMC), Ryan Kesler (NMC), Jakub Silfverberg

Defense: Kevin Bieksa (NMC), Hampus Lindholm, Sami Vatanen, Cam Fowler

Goalie: John Gibson

Available to Las Vegas: Rickard Rackell, Andrew Cogliano, Simon Despres, Jonathan Bernier

I thought about protecting Simon Despres over Cam Fowler but at this point I think you reduce Fowler's minutes and role and hope he can generate some offense in a less stressful role.

Arizona

This is a team that does not have to protect much at all. They are incredibly young and a lot of their promising players do not need protection. They have a large amount of pending unrestricted free agents which don't need protecting either. Their list of protected players will probably be among the most underwhelming of this exercise. I had to look up Arizona's prospect rankings because I'm not familiar with some of the players I am protecting here.

Forwards: Anthony Duclair, Jamie McGinn, Henrik Samuelsson, Tobias Reider

Defense: Alex Goligoski (NMC), Oliver Ekman Larsson, Connor Murphy, Jared Tinordi

Goalie: Louis Domingue

Available to Las Vegas: Mike Smith, Brad Richardson, Luke Schenn

Like I said. Not a lot here with Doan, Hanzal, and Michalek all pending UFA's.

Boston

The Bruins have some no movement clauses they have to protect but none of them should prevent them from protecting who needs to be protected. Brad Marchand is a pending UFA and I see no need to use a slot to protect him. I have a strong feeling that teams will leave their UFA's unprotected with "gentlemen's agreements" made prior to the draft. This will be the loop hole that GM's will use so they can protect more players.

Forwards: Patrice Bergeron (NMC), David Krejci (NMC), David Backes (NMC), David Pastrnak, Ryan Spooner, Matt Beleskey, Seth Griffith

Defense: Zdeno Chara (NMC), Torey Krug, Colin Miller

Goalie: Tuukka Rask

Available to Las Vegas: Malcolm Subban, Jimmy Hayes, Adam McQuaid, Anton Khudobin, Riley Nash

I was enticed by Seth Griffith's numbers in the AHL last season. He put up 77 points in 57 games. The Bruins are short on skillful players. I'll take a risk on Griffith. The Bruins are pretty bare on defense so I protected Colin Miller. He is 23 years old and led all Bruins defensemen with 1.02 5v5 points per 60 last year. He also led all Bruins defensemen in raw CF% at 52.1% which was tied with Torey Krug.

Malcolm Subban is an interesting player here.

Buffalo

The Sabres are pretty straight forward. They have a ton of young talent that does not need to be protected and have plenty of protection slots to keep their big ticket items around. Buffalo looks to be in pretty good shape heading into the expansion draft.

Forwards: Kyle Okposo (NMC), Ryan O'Reilly, Evander Kane, Tyler Ennis, Marcus Foligno, Zemgus Girgensons, Johan Larsson

Defense: Zach Bogosian (NMC), Rasmus Ristolainen, Jake McCabe

Goalie: Robin Lehner

Available to Las Vegas: Matt Moulson, Josh Gorges

Like I said the Sabres are in excellent shape.

Calgary

Another young team with more than enough room to protect the important components on the team that are exposed.

Forwards: Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Sam Bennett, Mikael Backlund, Michael Frolik, Troy Brouwer, Hunter Shinkaruk

Defense: Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, Dougie Hamilton

Goalie: Brian Elliott

Available to Las Vegas: Matt Stajan, Emile Poirier, Linden Vey, Alex Chiasson, Jyrki Jokipakka

Brian Elliott is a pending UFA but so is Chad Johnson. The team had to protect one of them so I chose the better one. Emile Poirier was the second of Calgary's three 2013 first round picks. He was selected two spots ahead of Hunter Shinkaruk. It was a coin flip between the two of them on who was protected.

That is part one. Look for the part two tomorrow which will contain Carolina, Chicago, Colorado, Columbus, and Dallas.

Thanks for reading!

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