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Digging into Expansion Draft details, Canucks' prospect Truscott at WJSS

July 12, 2021, 2:07 PM ET [501 Comments]
Carol Schram
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Argh! 🤦‍♀️

I messed up the expansion draft protection requirements in the last blog. Thanks to NuckUp and the others who brought this up in the comments.

It sounds like I'm not the only one who's getting bogged down in the minutiae, though. The NHL is holding a refresher course for its GMs as part of a broader general manager's meeting on Monday.



I wonder if that meeting will grease the wheels for some player movement to begin this week?

As for me — I see now that I got the protection requirements and the exposure requirements mixed up. So I was wrong about Olli Juolevi. He does require protection.

Though I'm mostly a CapFriendly devotee, I found it helpful to use PuckPedia's expansion draft page to get everything sorted out in my head.

Their page leads with the question of "Who is eligible?" And I think they phrase the main points more clearly than I've seen elsewhere:

"If a player has 3 or more years of professional experience as of the end of 2020-2021 season, they are expansion eligible...Professional Experience is defined in accordance with Waivers..."

Born in May, Juolevi had a fairly late birthday in his draft class. But he's 23 now. And for all his injury issues, he does have three seasons of North American professional experience under his belt: 18 games with the Utica Comets in 2018-19, 45 games in 2019-20 (and one playoff game with the Canucks), and 23 games with the Canucks this year.

I got sidetracked by the fact that Juolevi isn't experienced enough to qualify as 'eligible for exposure' to Seattle. Each team's list of unprotected players must include two forwards, a defenseman and a goalie who, loosely speaking, can be seen as 'NHL players.'

PuckPedia also makes it clear that the required experience level is pro-rated for the shortened 2020-21 season. A skater or defenseman qualifies if he played 27 NHL games last season.

But they didn't pro-rate the second option — they're showing 70 games over the last two seasons. In their Expansion FAQ, CapFriendly indicates that the pro-rated number is 54 or more NHL games over the last two seasons, which is why Madison Bowey just squeaks in to satisfy the defense exposure requirement for the Canucks. He played 53 games in 2019-20 for Detroit, and two for Chicago in 2020-21, which gets him to 55.

Juolevi has just 23 NHL games last season, and none the year before. So he doesn't qualify under either case.

With all that in mind, I realize the list of players in CapFriendly's expansion draft simulator includes all the expansion-draft eligible players that the Canucks *could* consider protecting — the same as every other team but Vegas, who are exempt.

By using a separate page for each team and spacing things out more, I think the PuckPedia tool presents that more clearly.

They did give me a small heart attack, however, when I noticed the no-movement clause listed beside Micheal Ferland's name. That led to a trip down another rabbit hole.

First — CapFriendly lists Ferland as ineligible for selection due to injury. PuckPedia shows that he *is* eligible for selection. They've explained the injury rule this way:

Players with potential career-ending injuries who have missed more than the previous 60 consecutive games (or who otherwise have been confirmed to have a career-threatening injury) may not be used to satisfy a team's player exposure requirements unless approval is received from the NHL. Such players also may be deemed exempt from selection.


No matter how you want to calculate it, Ferland does hit that 60-game threshold. He missed all 56 games this season, plus the last 38 regular-season games last year and the Canucks' last 15 playoff games.

I think, at this point, his concussion history would be considered to be 'potentially career-ending.' So, based on the wording of this rule, he would be ineligible to fill a slot as a forward who can be exposed. But it's not guaranteed that he'd be exempt from selection.

We saw Vegas acquire some players on LTIR as part of their many side deals in 2017 — they weren't expansion draft selections, but were acquired as part of trades. Off the top of my head, I remembered David Clarkson from Columbus and Mikhail Grabovski from the Islanders. Now that we're getting down to the nitty gritty, I found it helpful to look back at this piece from Rory Boylen of Sportsnet, which clearly identifies the players who were actual expansion draft selections by the Golden Knights, and which ones were part of the various trade packages.

For what it's worth, it took a first, a second and defense prospect Jake Bischoff to get McPhee to take on Grabovski's LTIR obligation and agree to select goalie J.R. Berube — who then went straight to unrestricted free agency. Bischoff is now 26 and still in the Vegas system; the second-rounder from 2019 was dealt to Detroit as part of that big package of draft picks that brought back Tomas Tatar at the 2018 trade deadline — and then Tatar was packaged off to Montreal as part of the Max Pacioretty deal. And the first was used on Erik Brannstrom, who was sent to Ottawa at the 2019 trade deadline as the centrepiece of the package used to acquire Mark Stone.

Would the Canucks have to pay a similar price this week if they wanted to get Ron Francis to take Ferland's deal, or one of their other bad contracts?

As far as Ferland's no-movement clause goes — apparently that applied to the season that's ending, not the new one that's beginning. Even if he's not on the injured list, he doesn't get an automatic protection slot.

Finally — while there's no doubt that the expansion draft will dominate the dialogue over the next week, I want to close by highlighting the return of the World Junior Summer Showcase. It runs from July 24-31 at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Michigan — right in the midst of the draft and free agency — and the Summer Olympics.

Canada has opted out this year and will be holding its own camp near Calgary from July 29-Aug 3. That roster has not yet been released.

Stateside, Vancouver defense prospect Jacob Truscott is one of 44 invitees for Team USA. No Canucks prospects are listed on the rosters for Finland or Sweden, but that could change after the draft. There are plenty of draft-eligible players on the roster for all three squads, including Swedes Simon Edvinsson and William Eklund and American Luke Hughes. All three are believed to be part of the "Big Nine" that the Canucks will be selecting from.
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